;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 10, 2012
The Sunday Funnies
Jake Sherman of Politico: "New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman seems to be testing the patience of a couple of his fellow pundits on ABC's 'This Week.' Conservative commentator George Will and former White House aide Mary Matalin both directed pointed remarks at Krugman Sunday that broke with the good-natured banter common among the guests on Sunday political talk shows." CW: I happened to be in the kitchen while my husband had this segment on; Matalin & Will once again proved they are the Village Vicious Idiots. You can watch the performances here (if you're willing to sit through several minutes of ads). The segment begins at about 14:45 min. in. ...
... Pam Spaulding of Pam's Houseblend writes a great post of Matelin's & Will's sorta not anti-gay remarks emanating from the same show. She throws in a bonus remark about Ann Coulter.
AND Lawrence O'Donnell takes on the Newt on "Press the Meat." Igor Volsky of Think Progress reports. With video.
NEW. Charles Pierce has a lovely rundown of what-all you missed by doing something useful with your Sunday morning. Thanks to MAG for the link.
NEW. Driftglass fills in the parts Pierce missed.
Cliff Notes
Jake Sherman & Carrie Brown of Politico: "President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met at the White House Sunday in an attempt to break the logjam on the fiscal cliff. It was their first face-to-face meeting in 23 days." The New York Times story, by Brian Knowlton & Jackie Calmes, is here.
Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Sunday that he's 'beginning to believe' thatfalling in line with President Obama's call to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, then shifting the focus to reforming entitlements 'is the best route for us to take' on the 'fiscal cliff.'"
Joan Walsh has a terrific post on the stupidity of raising the eligibility age for Medicare. CW: I'm getting damned sick of the increasing acceptable idea that Obama has to cave on something like this because House Republicans need some "face-saving" measure so they can say they won. Why in hell is it more important to appease a few prima donnas than it is to guarantee more affordable health care to millions of older Americans? What happened to Obama's campaign line about "fundamental fairness"? Oh. I guess it was just a campaign line.
Peter Schroeder & Bernie Becker of The Hill: "The White House has the power to temporarily protect taxpayers from middle-class tax hikes even as upper income rates rise if Congress does nothing and all of the Bush-era tax rates expire in January. Experts and lawmakers alike agree that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has the power to adjust how much is withheld from paychecks for tax purposes -- for all taxpayers or just for some."
** Paul Krugman: "Increasingly, [corporate] profits have been rising at the expense of workers in general, including workers with the skills that were supposed to lead to success in today's economy.... As best as I can tell, there are two plausible explanations, both of which could be true to some extent. One is that technology has taken a turn that places labor at a disadvantage; the other is that we're looking at the effects of a sharp increase in monopoly power."
** Frank Rich: "What's really shocking about the Petraeus affair is not Petraeus's affair but the fact that once again, we were taken in by a secular plaster saint who turns out to bear only a faint resemblance to the image purveyed by the man himself and the mass media that abetted his self-glorification."
Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "Almost two decades after the Clinton administration failed to intervene in the genocide in Rwanda, the United States is coming under harsh criticism for not moving forcefully in another African crisis..., this time in Rwanda's neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo.... Critics ... who include officials of human rights organizations and United Nations diplomats ... of the Obama administration's Africa policy have focused on the role of Susan E. Rice ... in the administration’s failure to take action against the country they see as a major cause of the Congolese crisis, Rwanda.... Aides to Ms. Rice acknowledge that she is close to [Rwandan President Paul] Kagame and that Mr. Kagame's government was her client when she worked at Intellibridge, a strategic analysis firm in Washington." ...
... AND speaking of President Clinton, Richard Socarides, who worked in the Clinton administration, has a good, short post in the New Yorker on what the Supreme Court's rulings on the DOMA & Prop 8 cases could mean to the future of gay marriage. His post is a reminder for those extolling the virtues of Bill Clinton that Clinton was not a leader on this issue.
Jason Zengerle of New York magazine: "... a month after the election, Obama's campaign team has managed to cast a 2008-like hue on their 2012 victory. The secret of their successful spin: Instead of talking about how their guy won a second term by methodically defining -- and demonizing -- his buffoon of an opponent, they’re gushing about the ingenuity of their apps and algorithms."
Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "Unless and until the federal government takes over the business of running our elections -- which will, in all likelihood, never happen -- the process of voting will remain the shambles we saw on November 6, 2012."
James Allworth in the Harvard Business Review on how political corruption stifles innovation -- by privileging established companies and technologies over new ones. CW: It's worth noting that there's another side to the story. There was no greater or more invasive monopoly in the U.S. than AT&FuckingT, but it also was half-owner of Bell Labs, a citadel of innovation that produced 7 Nobel Prizes. Of course if the Justice Department hadn't broken up AT&T, we'd probably still be phoning each other on black rotary dials & paying AT&T a per-minute fee to use the government-developed Internets. Thanks to Dave S. for the link.
Edward Wong of the New York Times: "In a strong signal of support for greater market-oriented economic policies, Xi Jinping, the new head of the Communist Party, made a visit over the weekend to the special economic zone of Shenzhen in south China, which has stood as a symbol of the nation's embrace of a state-led form of capitalism since its growth over the last three decades from a fishing enclave to an industrial metropolis."
Local News
Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press: "Large numbers of Michigan State Police officers were around the Capitol building early this morning as Lansing braced for a day of protests related to controversial right-to-work legislation working its way through the state Legislature. Today's protests are a precursor to much larger ones planned for Tuesday, when thousands of union activists are expected to converge at the Capitol and supporters of right-to-work legislation have also promised a strong presence there. Union members took civil disobedience training in Detroit on Saturday to prepare for the protests." ...
... Amanda Terkel of the Huffington Post: "The Obama administration told labor leaders that the president will also be weighing in on the right-to-work fight in his speech [to be delivered today at the Detroit Daimler Truck diesel plant], according to union officials who spoke with The Huffington Post." ...
... Greg Sargent: "I'm told that virtually the entire Democratic Congressional delegation in Michigan is set to privately meet with [Michigan Gov. Rick] Snyder today in an effort to persuade him to reconsider the initiative and to find a way out of the impasse.... The lawmakers ... will try to persuade Snyder that proceeding with the anti-union initiative will badly damage the state and that there is a middle-ground way out of the situation...."
Right Wing World
Jonathan Chait on "The Psychology of Defeat": how the leaders of Right Wing World -- especially Charles Krautheimer are handling their pain.
News Ledes
President Obama speaking in Detroit, Michigan:
Washington Post: "Treasury announced on Monday that it is completing its exit of American International Group, the insurance behemoth that nearly imploded four years ago, almost dragging down the entire financial system with it. It plans to sell about 234 million shares, raising about $8 billion and leaving Treasury with a $5 billion profit on its investment. The Federal Reserve, which also invested in the firm, has already unloaded virtually all its holdings, for a profit of $18 billion."
Bloomberg News: "HSBC Holdings Plc will pay at least $1.9 billion to settle U.S. probes of money laundering allegations involving Europe's largest bank..., making it the largest such accord ever. The bank, whose top executives were accused of lax oversight by a U.S. Senate subcommittee in July, has been the target of investigations run by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Controls, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Manhattan District Attorney."
New York Times: "The political crisis over Egypt's draft constitution hardened on both sides on Sunday, as President Mohamed Morsi prepared to deploy the army to safeguard balloting in a planned referendum on the new charter and his opponents called for more protests and a boycott to undermine the vote." ...
... Update: "Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi captured, detained and beat dozens of his political opponents last week, holding them for hours with their hands bound on the pavement outside the presidential palace while pressuring them to confess that they had accepted money to use violence in protests against him.
Guardian: "Russian and American diplomats have met in Geneva to discuss the future of Syria with the UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, according to the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who insisted the meeting did not imply Moscow had softened in its support for the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad. ...
... Al Jazeera: "Syrian rebels have captured parts of a large army base in the country's north, just west of the city of Aleppo, activists say."
AP: "Mexico's music world mourned Jenni Rivera, the U.S.-born singer presumed killed in a plane crash whose soulful voice and openness about her personal troubles had made her a Mexican-American superstar. Authorities have not confirmed her death, but Rivera's relatives in the U.S. say they have few doubts that she was on the Learjet 25 that disintegrated on impact Sunday in rugged territory in Nuevo Leon state in northern Mexico."
AP: "South African former President Nelson Mandela's stay in hospital for unspecified medical tests has stretched into a third day. On Monday there was no new word on his condition. Government officials have said the 94-year-old anti-apartheid icon is 'comfortable' and receiving medical care that is 'consistent with his age.'"
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Reader Comments (24)
How long before we address the real driver of distortions in our economy
How much longer until we have real progressive leaders?
How much longer before a new progressive era?
@DaveS. A long long time, pard. Don't hold your breath.
Not really on the specific point of today's news, yet completely relevant to what is going on in our sad little world. I was reading a review of Kurt Vonnegut's new biography, "Letters," and about how Vonnegut was fascinated by palindromes--a sentence that reads the same backwards as forwards. His favorite was written to him by the poet, Ann Sexton, and he thought it was the best he had ever heard: "Rats live on no evil star."
@DaveS: One of my better Sundays. Didn't watch a single political show. But I did read 'The Short American Century' edited by Andrew Bacevich. If you think the oil film you reference above is the real problem, I highly recommend it to you. Your 'real drivers' are only symptoms.
I'm multi-tasking. Typing this and watching a biographical film on the life of Pete Seeger. After reading the Short American Century I was going to head down to the border tomorrow with my trusty chainsaw and a few wedges. Cut us free from America. Now this. A country that can produce a Seeger isn't beyond redemption.
I was watching Pete as the 50's turned into the 60's and the commie who so often narrowly escaped lynching by 'real Americans' morphed into the protester's folk hero who sang to crowds and marched for civil rights and against the war. And noted that those who were marching and protesting are now my age, 70's, 80's. And you know what they're doing today, right? Yeah. Fucking teaparty members voting for war and discrimination and who shit on the likes of Pete Seeger. Go figure. Were they your progressives?
This morning on NPR I listened to a report on the upsurge in an appreciation for reality in, of all places, North Korea.
About a year ago North Koreans failed to launch an earth orbit satellite. This failure was ("uncharacteristically" is probably too weak a description) announced on state radio and television. The population was stunned. Truth from the state? Since then Pyongyang has seen fit to come clean about a number of other failures. This doesn't necessarily mean an about face from the fantasies of decades past, but the state, for whatever reason, has decided that there are so many failures both past, current, and imminent that they might as well quit trying to sell gruel as if it were steak tartare. They now admit that failure and an appreciation of reality is not always a bad thing if it leads to greater understanding and the hope of success in the future.
Shortly thereafter, I saw the link Marie provided to the incredulous reactions of George Will and Mary Matalin to the tiny doses of reality being fed them by Paul Krugman (a full strength dose would likely trigger grand mal seizures in both of them).
Place this in the context of all those right-wingers who believe a non-existent organization caused them to lose the recent election and the mass of lies and subterfuge floated by Republicans on everything from global warming to erasing the deficit by eliminating taxes, and you've got a steaming smorgasbord of multiple variant of gruel all garnished up as scrumptious gourmet offerings.
Now what does it say about the right-wing in this country when North Korea--NORTH FUCKING KOREA--has a better grasp of reality?
@Dave: Thanks for the Allworth piece––good stuff.
@Kate: Ann Sexton certainly knew of rats and evil stars, didn't she?
@Calyban: From yesterday: I agree that there are similarities with Weimar if you consider the atmosphere of political extremism, but the situation at that time was fraught with national trauma, violent conflict and revolutionary upheaval in which Nazism was born. I think if we want to compare Fox News and right wing radio with a period it would be the red scare issue that catapulted this country to crazy conspiracy theories and gave us Joe McCarthy and his ilk. And as far as the division comparison I still stick by my Civil Rights era starting in Little Rock where Federal Troops finally had to intervene to see that nine black children could get to school, yet once there the slanderous, obscene treatment by other children continued. And this was only the beginning. What opened the country's eyes to all this was the magic of television, a fairly new way to reach the public. So today our technology knows no bounds and we are filled to the brim with information and some of that information is wrong and harmful and feeds into those that desire what most of us don't. BUT––we have many people with loud voices like Robert Kennedy Jr. who continue to fight for what's right and true and fair. As nuts as it is out there it's a hell of a lot better than some other countries where bombs are a daily occurrence. Is that a comparison leap? Only if you want it to be.
Kate,
Great palindrome. That beats mine, "a man, a plan, a canal, Panama".
Able I was ere I saw Elba is a standard too. But for the shortest palindrome I suppose one could offer "I".
O no!
On Krugman:
This drawn from something I wrote three or so years ago:
"Editorials and op-ed pieces donʼt talk about these (technological displacement) numbers. Yesterdayʼs NYTimes editorial “Job Creation Basics,” typically enough, ignored them all, stating instead we had to keep extending unemployment insurance and aid small businesses, both while being mindful of the deficit. True enough, but hardly sufficient. What will the 15 million currently unemployed, let alone the 25 million or so more who will need jobs between now and 2050 do that can or will not be done more cheaply somewhere else than the United States? Or within our borders, by machines? Taking in one another's washing won't do the trick and forty million is a lot of Wal-Mart greeters, many of whom are already subsidized by medicare, food stamps or social security.
Our challenge is far more fundamental than how to employ a willing workforce. As long as we use work as the way people access resources, not to mention as a road to personal fulfillment or sense of self-worth, we will have the distribution problem Mr. Farmer (a science fiction writer who was Guest of Honor at the World SF convention in Berkeley CA in 1968, I believe. A much younger version of myself was there.) mentioned but did not deal with in his speech. Except for the fortunate few who can live on accumulated capital, every family needs at least one steady, reasonably paid job to support it.
Having brushed away millions of workers in the last eighteen months like annoying dandruff, our economy has already hinted at how few workers it really needs; and the numbers tell us it is likely to need proportionately fewer in the years ahead. There may be growth in the percentage employed from time to time, but significant unemployment, the numbers tell us, is the way the future looks. More and more will be unplugged from the lifeline only jobs provide. In the world weʼre facing, food stamps and food banks will not be nearly enough.
That world, it turns out, is not as pleasant as Phillip Farmerʼs genius made it sound: resource distribution is a puzzle we have not yet begun to solve. World- wide, 7 billion people in another thirty five years? Tens, if not hundreds of millions unattached to any viable economy, with no way to get (pay for) food, clothing and shelter? More over-production and vastly inequitable distribution? Thatʼs the very real problem the Crash of 2008 presents, the one we must start talking about before it becomes so large it tears our fragile society apart."
And today I would add, our massive subsidies of cheap energy--counted among them our entire military-- that allow us to ship anything, large or small, across entire oceans for mere pennies make even more distortions of the global markets possible. These hidden subsidies both displace American workers and by placing them in competition with distant labor markets, lower their wages even more until Walmart workers can afford to shop nowhere but Walmart and survive only if taxpayers subsidize them in turn.
As Krugman says, it's a conversation long overdue. By about forty years.
@Calyban. I have no idea what percentage of Germans in Weimar Republic were totally delusional as you describe them, but the percentage of right-wing Americans who are totally delusional is fairly low -- I think I put it at 14 percent (can't quite recall) & that included the large contingent of racists who want to believe that a black president can't be real.
I'm not saying it's encouraging that millions of Americans are Rushbots, and it is certainly discouraging that they are able to elect people to Congress, who -- like Matalin & Will -- are living in denial in perfect comfort.
Democracy is a fragile thing, & vigilance is required, but worrying we are in danger of turning into a Nazi state is probably counterproductive.
Marie
Re: doing a jigsaw puzzle without the box cover; A Piece by Mr. Krugman, response piece from Marie, piece on piece from Ken; piecemeal from JJG.
Out of work, downsized, let go, down-sized, fired; no longer needed, run off.
Krugman says the insiders don't know unemployed.
Marie says once in the club of the lotus eaters the lack of concern is part of the diet; a diet based on the fat of the land.
Ken writes three years past that there is no there there in the job market.
I write, unemployed? No; unemployable.
We have a country full of people that are unemployable because labor is a resource and capital has mined the rich veins of US labor out. Capital will follow the next gold rush of cheap labor to China and India because capital doesn't have a conscience.
There will never be enough jobs for the American workers. Scarcity of jobs means low wages for workers.
Unemployed? for some. Unemployable; coming to your town soon.
For some it's already playing.
To fix the problem is not impossible but not likely given the club of excess that Marie portrayed in her essay. It's not that they don't know someone that is unemployed; they just don't care. Unemployed is only used when the future is employment.
Unemployable is the future.
Today’s link to the Krauthammer story covering the ongoing meltdown on the right regarding their recent electoral losses, including their increasing inability to maintain the cover stories they’ve used for years in pillaging a good portion of the electorate, provides further evidence of just how outrageous and arrogant they have become over their long decades in power.
Krauthammer, like practically every other right-wing genius, is furious that Obama and the Democrats are not cutting “entitlements” like they’ve been ordered to. In the interest of "fairness". As if entitlements had anything to so with unfair, profligate handouts to the undeserving. Thus plenty of breath holding until blue in the face, foot stamping, and tantrums.
First let’s clear up that term. Entitlements are not gifts. They don’t represent efforts on the part of certain Americans to siphon money out of the pockets of the Romneys and Krauthammers and Limbaughs and either throw it down a sewer or hand it to moochers (the same thing in the minds of the righties).
If you’ve been working for 20, 30, 40, or 50 years, chances are excellent that you’ve been contributing to Social Security and Medicare. Contributing a lot. You may also have been contributing to unemployment pools. These programs have been set up to make sure that Americans have a right to retire without fear of crippling poverty or being left without necessary health care, to be able to eat and not lose their home when forced out of a job due, often, to the shenanigans of political ideologues.
Entitlements are not gifts. They are not theft. People, and that means us, have paid for them.
Whenever I hear right-wingers toss this term “entitlements” around in the same vein as “undeserving gift” or “theft from their betters” I want to punch someone. Preferably someone like Krauthammer. But since he’s not usually immediately available for such therapeutic exercise, I reel it in. But it ain’t fun.
Besides the word refers to something to which someone is ENTITLED. It is not a present made to us by the good graces of Richie Riches like Romney and company.
We earned it.
So fuck off already with this entitlement crap.
The ACA will benefit those who have not paid into the plan (mostly children and students and the poor) but what kind of a country allows those people to suffer and die early, unnecessary deaths so that the rich can loll around in their hammocks in the Caymans? So that CEOs can earn 100s of times what their workers earn? So a bloated military with a budget that could not be matched by the next 6 highest countries put together can continue to pile up the cash?
Are human beings not entitled to health care in a Republican America? Obviously not. (History will remember this.)
What do you do you think Paul Ryan would do if you told him that the money he had put in the bank over the years was no longer his but would be replaced with a voucher, worth far less than what he had saved, and that once that was gone there would be no more?
He’d get out his little bow and arrow and start shooting.
But when he suggests that everyone else be put in that position, he needs us all to acknowledge his seriousness as an economic genius.
I'm so tired of Krauthammer and Will and the rest of these douchebags talking about entitlements as if they're talking about grand larceny.
Fuck these people. Seriously.
@Marie and PD: I don't have the statistic on the percentage of Germans that actually believed the "stab in the back" myth that fueled the Nazi rise. After I get finished dealing with Medicare and HealthNet (Grrr!) this morning, I'll see if I can find it. The point is that this myth was actively encouraged by the Nazi press and other right wing media and contributed immensely to Hitler's rise. I don't think the right wing red scare of the 1920s or the Civil Rights struggle of the fifties and sixties are at all analogous.
Ouch!
Was waiting for the defensive response from someone to Dan Froomkin's article/interview (which CW linked on Dec 8th) with Mann & Ornstein...and here it is. NYTimes public editor, Margaret Sullivan ..."And I think the two commentators fail to see the progress that The Times and other newspapers are making – away from false equivalence and toward stating established truths and challenging falsehoods whenever possible." Tho' next paragraph, she concurs it isn't happening fast enough.
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/did-the-mainstream-press-really-bungle-the-campaigns-single-biggest-story/?hp
Charlie Pierce's first post this am...surgically pierced (pun!) the Sunday talk shows! "By the way, if you're keeping score at home, according to the official NBC roster of guests, representatives of organized labor on Meet The Press have appeared about as often as candidates from the Free Soil Party." But, he deftly skewers Kevin McCarthy, the made-outta-mahogany Bob Woodward, and Ricky Santorum among others.
Read more: Sunday Talk Shows On Tax Loopholes - What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days? - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/gobshites-on-tax-loopholes-121012#ixzz2Eg0YhQBb
@Akhilleus: Because the word "entitlement" has been corrupted by the right, some people are suggesting that Social Security and Medicare instead be referred to as "earned benefits."
Now if only we could come up with a clever word to describe the handouts to agribusiness and the financial, oil, and pharma industries so that they'll be first in line on the chopping block . . . .
About "entitlements:" Why is it that nobody on the righty right ever talks about WARS and NATION BUILDING as "entitlements?" Because in a sense they are. Our wars give so much largess (which we cannot afford) to defense contractors and the military, and Congress jumps to approve really crazy, unnecessary spending, with no accountability. (Remember the $5,000 toilet seats?) Nation Building is just more money in the pockets of those same contractors, plus American corporations, who make billions--with questionable results, which are rarely discussed by Congress or the MSM. I think Democrats--at least those not living in thrall of war--should jump the shark and come up with comparative budget costs (and potential deficit reduction) for cutting unnecessary wars and nation building vs. cutting our "really not entitlements"--Medicare and Social Security. And every news outlet should be required to report this--including Foxy No News,
Another question. I am at a loss about why intelligent, curious people watch the Sunday infotainment shows. Can any of you explain this to me? I am so sickened by how phony they are, and how flimsy and dishonest the "moderators," that I fail to understand
the draw. Is it just a hard to break habit--like nail biting? Or am I missing something?
Janice,
I think you've hit on just the right word, the bon mot, as they say.
Handouts. Corporate welfare, Giveaways. Take your pick.
I like the idea of referring these programs as "earned benefits".
Certainly not what the handouts to corporations are, although I'm sure the Mittster (when he returns from his macho gig as boxing fan--oooh I bet he got a woody thinking about being in that ring with a pair of scissors and four or five fellow criminals to hold down his victim), the Kochs, and the MIC denizens would scream bloody murder about it.
As examples, agriculture subsidies, the tax rate for capitol gains, and the tax shelters sought in other countries provide a clear picture of entitlements. Agricultural subsidies are payments for not working the land. How can entitled be defined more clearly. Yes, AG subsidies once provided a legitimate lifeline for farmers - not so much now. People who benefit from national insurance programs like SS and medicare have paid the premiums their entire work life. How did the national rhetoric become so perverted? Obama, as well as Democratic legislators, have made insignificant efforts to change the use of "entitlements". They may make a case that SS etc are not entitlements, but in the next breath they're talking about "entitlements". There needs to be a concerted wide spread public effort ( print, electronic media, political) to correct the rhetoric.
@Kate. I only watch Fareed Zakaria GPS on sunday a.m.. He rarely has the usual suspects and the remote works fine when he does. I feel like I learn a lot more about the perspectives of the rest of the world - DUH..... Global Public Square. The rest of the Sunday a.m. asswipes no way. Besides, writers like Charles Pierce and Driftglass give such entertaining reviews and I can avoid the inevitable extreme gas and bloating of actual viewery ( hmm probably not a word).
@Marie: Quick check on line did not reveal any kind of statistic indicating what percentage of German voters believed the "stab in the back" legend. Don't forget this was long before the days of professional polling ---- although it is possible that a German newspaper might have run an unscientific survey.
A very good article in Wikipedia says the belief was "widely held." Other articles state that because prominent right wingers like General Ludendorff (not just fringe figures like Alois Schickelgruber aka A. Hitler) endorsed the legend, even people on the left believed it was true.
@Marie: According to the Pew Poll taken last week, 49% of Republcian VOTERS (not party members) believe that ACORN stolet he election: that would be about 30 million people, or 1/4 of the electorate in the November election. The percentage of Republicans who believe in creationism is well north of 50% and the percentage who disbelieve in human influenced climate change is upwards of 75% numbers. When that portion of a population in living in what I called a "reality distortion field," I think it is right to worry. The only equivalent I can find is Weimar Germany, in which the right wing media had exactly the kind of role that Fox News has today: stoking completely fantastical and/or discredited conspiracy theories about everything under the sun (Whitewater, Benghazi, etc. etc. etc.).
@Calyban: your arithmetic is way off. Here's what I wrote last week, in part:
The percentage of people who self-identify as Republican is now down 5 points to 32 percent & those of course are whom PPP polled. So if almost half of them think ACORN stole the election, that means less than 16 percent of voters are whacked-out conspiracy theorists. If you consider that a good half of that 16 percent are probably intractable white racists, then maybe only 8 to 10 percent are total ignoramuses, the rest being unable to keep up with the news on account of the white-pointy hoodies impeding their sight.
Marie
@Calyban: the "red scare" that I was referring to was not just in the twenties but went on into the fifties. What all this did to people like Robert Oppenheimer and others, especially in the film and theater, was disastrous. This kind of thing certainly divided the country as did the Civil rights struggle that went on for decades. Why is this not analogous to a division of this country?
From what I remember about the history of the beginning of the end for Germany is during the Weimar period ––a great art and decadence period–-sort of like our twenties––the country was suffering from reparations– the destruction of their ships, weapons,etc. left them naked, humiliated, weak and poor. What a ground for sowing widespread resentment and nationalism. Social Democrats were, however, the bulwark of democracy in theWeimar Republic, but the Catholic church was involved heavily in right-leaning ideology and Communist parties were pushing for seats in the ledge. In other words, ripe for the guy with the great vision and the nationalistic fervor that ruined the world.
@Marie: Before responding back to you I checked on whether Pew/WaPo polled registered Republicans or voters who voted Republican: -----about half the news reports said registered Republicans and half said those who voted Republican. Will have to find the original Pew/WaPo release, which did not come up on my search.
As you point out, it makes a big difference whether we're talking about registered Republicans or Republican voters: half of registered Republicans would be about 23.5 million people. Half of the those who voted Republican would be closer to 30 million people. However, a very sizable proportion of the 32 million people who registered as Independent, consistently vote Republican and share many if not most Republican beliefs. I would be willing to bet that many millions of those so-called independents believe in the ACORN fantasy.
@PD: No question that the fantasy world of right wing delusion poisoned American political life in both the 1920s and the 1950s. However, unlike Weimar Germany, the proportion of the press that fed those lies and delusions was relatively small. In the 1950s, most people got their news from mainstream newspapers, one of the three national TV networks or from mainstream newsweeklies like Time and Newsweek. In Weimar Germany, a huge proportion (probably close to 1/3 of the population) received their "news" exclusively from certified right wing lunatic sources. We are approaching, if we have not already exceeded, that proportion today: almost 1/4 of the population get their news from Fox News alone, and untold millions of others from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham. Those right wing sources are propagating fantasy conspiracy theories on a scale not seen since Weimar.
@Caliban: read my comment. It's pretty clear. Maybe I need to highlight it for you:
"The percentage of people who self-identify as Republican is now down 5 points to 32 percent & those of course are whom PPP polled."
End of discussion, please.
Marie