Be Very Afraid

Perhaps I was too sanguine in my previous post. This is my mea culpa.

The above quote, from "The Fly" screenwriters David Cronenberg and Charles Pogue by way of actress Geena Davis, is not the only salient quote I wish to cite in my analysis of a current American political phenomenon. The other, equally famous, is from George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

And so, we have the Tea Party Movement. What was at first an undercurrent of grumbling by mindless losers has now gained a foothold on the Republican Party solid enough to scare Michael Steele and threaten all moderates who dare stand against its vehemence. In Florida, vacillating Republican governor Charlie Crist is trailing a Tea Partier in the senate race. A defeat there would cement the political legitimacy of this right wing tsunami.

Now let's step back and consider some historical precedents and the character of this movement. It evokes anger from the unemployed, the intellectually challenged, the purveyors of ignorance, and the racists. If you think this is an unfair accusation, how about Tom Tancredo's speech to their convention decrying those who voted for Obama as too ignorant to spell "vote". Obviously, a racist comment. Easy for him to make, because how many people of color were in his audience? Although there are legitimate concerns, mostly about fiscal responsibility, that weave their way through the Tea Party orthodoxy, the following is also sadly true: this movement feeds on all the worst of human emotions--fear, prejudice, selfishness, hatred and racism.

The Tea Partiers also hold fast to proved untruths: that Obama is a socialist, that Obama is a Muslim, that Obama was born in Kenya, etc. Any documentary proofs that belie these beliefs are totally ignored or shouted down. A majority of Republicans (not just Tea Partiers) still hold to these falsehoods. Almost all the Tea Partiers do. Truth be damned. We'll make up a new truth.

Like the Big Lie. Like the calumnies that Adolph Hitler and his cronies used to fire up the Germans against the threat of "internal enemies"--when the true enemies of Germany were the Nazis themselves. So Sarah Palin and all do not blame the Jews, though they are condemning anyone left-leaning or "intellectual". A lie to foster hatred is still a lie to foster hatred.

I know it is an easy kneejerk reaction for anyone to call an enemy a "Nazi." I do not make this claim without a sense of historical perspective. Nazism rose in the late 1920s as a result of economic depression and the threat of a new political wave, which was Soviet-inspired communism. It is not unusual for poor domestic circumstances plus perception of a radical threat to inflame the reactionary forces that exist is a society. So when Obama was elected, this sparked a Newtonian political reaction that is the ultra-right Tea Party.

The Nazis had their "persuasive" spokesmen in Goebbels and Goehring. The TeasParty has its loudest advocates in the media. Glenn Beck is a screeching Goebbels; Rush Limbaugh a fatuous Goehring. What the Tea Partiers do not have, quite, is their own Hitler. The founding voice of Tea Partiers is actually the relatively benign libertarian Ron Paul, whose principles have been so coopted and twisted by the more radical Tea Partiers that even Paul is being challenged in his congressional district.

Now they scream and rant as though volume is the only truth. But I'd like to counter their vehemence with another favorite quote, this one from William Butler Yeats: "The best lack all conviction/ while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Their leading spokesperson currently is, obviously, Sarah Palin. Full disclosure, I really hate her, but the only thing she truly shares with Hitler is charisma. She has not written a "Mein Kempf," though her "Going Rogue" is a flailing attempt to present herself as a political force. She does not have any programs or ideas behind her talking points/aren't -I- pretty presentation. She is fully funded and presented to the public by Fox News. Yet she has been named 2009's biggest liar by a non partisan website from the St. Petersburg News for her "death panels" Big Lie. So she is slowly learning from the past, but in the very worst way.

If any of you readers think this Tea Party/ Nazi Party comparison is over-the-top, then let's tweak it a bit. There was a local movement in the late 1930s--also a time of economic woe and international concern--called the "America First Committee." It was led by the most charismatic American figure of that era, the bold and handsome Charles Lindbergh, who gave it an attractive face. Its major political purpose was to keep America out of the European conflict that was about to erupt into World War 2. But it was also an anti-semitic, pro-German fifth column, no less heinous than the German Bund that also existed in America, but swathed in its own lie of American values. Nazism with a pretty face.

I suppose I could present a close parallel between "America First" and "Country First" as slogans that belie the political cynicism of their spokespeople. In whose mind is the preeminence of Sarah Palin among all the Republicans something that the nation or the world should not dread? George Lincoln Rockwell must be rising and applauding in his grave.