Posted on 07/24/2009 2:31:45 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The long hunt for the new leader of the Republican Party has at last come to an end, and the winner isn't Rush Limbaugh, Mitt Romney, or even Sarah Palin, but this woman in a red T-shirt:
(VIDEO AT LINK)
If you're going to lead a low-tech lynch mob, you've got to be able to get that Gilbert Gottfried screech into your voice like the Lady in Red does when she says, "I want my country back!" That's leadership for you, ever so much more forceful than poor Delaware Rep. Mike Castle, a GOP moderate (one of eight who voted for the House climate change bill), who seems to be ducking a personal Oxbow Incident by meekly asking the crowd if they'd like him to "lead" the Pledge of Allegiance. By then the crowd is already on its feet, one hand on their hearts and the other on an imaginary holster, insisting, like their dimestore-flag-waving leader, that they "don't want this flag to change!"
It's paranoid, it's deranged, and it's as American as Andrew Jackson and the rebel yell. What's different now is that the nativist right has finally had their bluff called by the landslide election of a black man as president, and their centuries-old legitimacy is in question as it never has been since Appomattox. So they are desperately projecting that self-doubt onto reality itself.
Of course, the Lady in Red couldn't scream the N-word in a townhall meeting (which, by the way, was called to discuss healthcare reform), so she screamed about his birth certificate. Karl Rove mentor Lee Atwater called this shot nearly three decades ago, when he explained how the Republican Party should parse its racism for the 20th century and beyond:
You start out in 1954 by saying, `Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say `nigger'--that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And now, finally, things have become so algebraic that the base goes totally into denial, refusing to see a notarized public document as it's waved right under their noses, and the whole nativist scheme falls into ridicule.
The Birthers go beyond simple conspiracy theories--they're cast members of the ongoing American denying-reality show, not unlike the folks who deny the moonlanding or the Holocaust (like James von Brunn, the octogenarian who killed a guard at the Washington, D.C., Holocaust Museum and who had earlier posted a screed entitled "WHO SENT YOU???," charging that Obama is utterly undocumented), and very much like the Creationists who insist that the Earth is but 6,000 years old, the Teabaggers who refuse to believe they must pay taxes, the 9/11 Truthers who say the government attacked the Twin Towers, and, as we might call them, the Inhofers who believe global warming is a hoax.
The word Birther itself comes trailing clouds of associative fog. It's unclear who minted the term, but for the true believers themselves, it can have a positive ring. When I first heard of Birthers I thought maybe they were subscribers to some sub-catechism about the birth of Christ or an offshoot of the anti-abortion movement--pro-life, pro-birth. Which makes sense: The Bircher, er, Birther movement is born from the same psychology that can trace social unease to a single issue--if we could only stop abortion, we could turn the clock back to Father Knows Best; if we could abolish all gun control, we could restore the eye-for-an-eye justice of the Old West; if we could only prove that Barack Obama was "born in Kenya," his presidency would go away and White Power would be restored.
It's great to dream the American Dream, and the right of an individual to pursue whatever fantasy he or she wants is what makes America so admired around the world. There's nothing wrong with dressing up in Confederate grey and re-enacting your defeat--you just can't impose such a monoculture on the rest of us.
What has been so polluting about the GOP's Southern Strategy over the past 50 years is the winking at racism by supposedly mainstream pols and pundits for short-term votes and ratings. It's the cynicism of a Liz Cheney or a Lou Dobbs doling out MSM legitimacy with each Birther encouragement that really opens a rent in the social contract. Occasionally, you might trip up such media figures with factual arguments, as Chris Matthews did this week with both an addled G. Gordon Liddy and a Republican congressman pushing a bill that would force presidential candidates (i.e., Obama in 2012) to pony up their birth certificates.
But with Birthers and others in the fantasy-based community themselves, no amount of argument or evidence will knock some sense into them. Their lives are defined in significant part by the strength of their denial. Maybe the only way to effectively respond is the way a real American hero, like Buzz Aldrin, did a few years ago when confronted by one of those crazies who insist the moonlanding was faked:
(VIDEO AT LINK)
Yep. The fact that they don’t mention Keyes or Berg tells me that they know it isn’t really about race. Its about their own cowardice.
Present!
The left is becoming frightened.
“...It’s paranoid, it’s deranged, and it’s as American as Andrew Jackson and the rebel yell...”
More proof that The Nation hates America.
Well, did they mention Obama Derangement Syndrome? That’s a real malady that I’ve see... :-)
—
Well, there is a certain segment (small and loud... LOL...) who qualifies under the designation of “Obama Derangement Syndrome”... which is different than getting a birth certificate... :-)
One can be a true conservative and ask for the birth certificate, but also realize that there is no legal requirement to produce one.
The conservatives who don’t realize this have a tendency to slide into insanity and go off on the deep end. Something below from another thread...
You know... every time this subject comes up about the birth certificate, I’ve seen these characteristics that identify those of the “Obama Derangement Syndrome”....
No... it’s a *real syndrome* all right. And there are folks who have it. The only thing I can figure out is that some people “went insane” after Obama was elected and this was how they decided to “cope” with the changed world they were in.
As for myself, I was shocked. What can I say? I mean it was really depressing that Obama was elected — but fortunately — I did not descend into the Obama Derangement Syndrome, but rather, started working with my state legislature to pass legislation to require any candidate produce a birth certificate if they were running for office, or else they cannot be on the ballot.
What can I say? Some people “went insane” and some people “got down to productive work” — in regards to Obama, in order to do something in the “real world”....
Here are some of the characteristics of Obama Derangement Syndrome, that I’ve seen and compiled from interviewing various insane people.... :-)
I’ll outline a few so you can see what I’ve defined as that...
(1) A military coup because Obama is not qualified and the military forces his resignation (there are variations on that but they all center on a military coup, forcing Obama out of office by the military people).
(2) Obama is not President right now... (a real detachment from reality).
(3) Obama can be removed from office as President right now by a judge ordering a U.S. Marshal to walk into the Oval Office and arrest Obama and remove him from the White House.
(4) The reason why Obama has not been removed from office thus far and the courts have not removed him is because there is a widespread conspiracy, fear, or collusion or whatever other reason supplied for the conspiracy. “Everyone” is involved in the conspiracy and thus Obama can’t be removed. (can be variations on this but it’s all about a general and widespread conspiracy as to why Obama is still in office).
(5) The idea that Obama must present his birth certificate, even though there is no legal requirement to do so, and even though no other candidates have ever been compelled, legally, to produce their birth certificate, and that if Obama doesn’t produce his birth certificate, then he is not qualified.
(6) The rejection of simple, real-world solutions to this birth certificate problem (like getting an ordinary state law requiring the showing of a birth certificate), and instead, insisting on “solutions” that don’t work in the real world and/or “solutions” that have not worked in all this time.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2298832/posts?page=141#141
The left is getting irrationally angry! They want the Constitution to be set aside for this affirmative action bastard doll and someone is opposing them on it. That really pisses them off don’tchaknow, because ‘they won the election’.
And I want my country back!
The pain and suffering we will deal to these people in the future will be quite enjoyable and well deserved.
And this from the country’s oldest magazine devoted to the ideas of Karl Marx for over a hundred years. What motive do they have for preserving the Constitution as opposed to still trying to push the failed ideas of Marx? This is the best chance, with a guy in their who actually believes their nonsense to the extent he can comprehend, to revive the dead hand of their original inspiration. How can they not attack the ordinary folk who don’t want to be led by the “vanguard of the proletariat” but instead just want their country back?
If you repeat something often enough, people will start to believe it’s true. I think the BC controversy has played a factor in 0bama’s slide in the polls, which makes it easier to stop obamacare etc.
I thought McCain was more-a-less forced to show/prove his bona fides to congress (the senate I believe). This was before the general election.
Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate for president last year, was required to provide a birth certificate to prove his bona fides to the U.S. Senate, so that a resolution could be passed that he was eligible for the presidency, due to his Panamanian birth. Did you miss that story?
Yes, “the rebel yell...”
And the all out assault that follows.
A conspiracy theory does not die through ridicule. 40 years on, JFK is still thought to have dies at the hands of multiple shooters, at the orders of men in our own government.
Do you think calling those people whackjobs shut them down? No!
It only gave their fire the needed air to grow bigger.
The more you nut libs keep talking, the more air this fire gets.
Keep talking.
I’ve never seen McCain’s birth certificate... can you supply a link to it?
And actually, I don’t know of one FReeper who has seen McCain’s birth certificate... if so, please direct me... :-)
I haven’t seen his birth certificate. Is it on the web somewhere? Has any FReeper seen it?
Yawn. I figure that anyone who tosses out accusations of racism is sodden with their own justified race guilt.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.