Posted on 02/25/2010 9:15:48 AM PST by DCBryan1
Fantasies old and new
Gene Lyons
The first great rule followed by all American politicians and most journalists is to flatter the people about how smart and savvy they are.
The reality, of course, is that much of the electorate is so poorly informed that it’s a wonder our political system works as well as it does, which many think is hardly at all.
Last week, CNN released a poll showing that 86 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. government is “broken.” I admit my first reaction was to wonder subversively, “How would they know?”
A contemporaneous Pew survey of the public’s political news IQ showed that on one of the most heavily reported issues of 2009-10, only 32 percent knew that the Senate health care bill passed without a single Republican vote; 26 percent understood that a super-majority of 60 votes is required to break a GOP filibuster. In short, they haven’t got a clue.
“Democracy,” H.L. Mencken wrote, “is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Back in early 2003, with war fever against Iraq heating up, another survey showed that something like 19 percent of Americans could locate that nation on a world map. No wonder the Bush administration found it easy to persuade two-thirds of the population that Saddam Hussein had some connection with the 9/11 attacks. He was the designated villain destined to confront Bruce Willis in hand-tohand combat at the end of the movie, was he not?
Surveys like CNN’s are basically marketing tools. To about half of the 86 percent, government is broken because their side lost the last election; to others, because somebody close to them lost his job. News networks promote the idea of crisis as a ratings builder. Otherwise, viewers might be tempted to watch basketball on ESPN, where nobody pretends to take seriously the opinions of fans unfamiliar with zone vs. man-to-man defenses.
Ignorant, frightened people are notoriously easy to fool. Manipulated by demagogues who assure them of their innocence and wisdom, in troubled times they’re tempted by conspiracy theories and miracle cures. So it is with many citizens interviewed in New York Times reporter David Barstow’s extraordinarily revealing “Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right.”
After months attending meetings and interviewing Tea Party members across the country, Barstow describes a movement “led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.”
Enter Glenn Beck, the fervid FOX News talker oddly fixated upon former President Woodrow Wilson, “an evil SOB” who gave us the “blatantly unconstitutional” income tax in 1913. Never mind that the law was specifically enabled by the 16th Amendment, enacted and ratified under Wilson’s GOP predecessor, William Howard Taft. To the former drive-time DJ’s enraptured listeners, it’s evidence of a worldwide conspiracy against people like them.
Enter a host of fast-talking buncombe artists. “It is a sprawling rebellion,” Barstow writes, “but running through it is a narrative of impending tyranny . . . from the concern that the community organization Acorn is stealing elections to the belief that [Barack] Obama is trying to control the Internet and restrict gun ownership.
“WorldNetDaily.com trumpets ‘exclusives’ reporting that the Army is seeking ‘Internment/Resettlement’ specialists. On ResistNet.com, bloggers warn that Mr. Obama is trying to convert Interpol, the international police organization, into his personal police force. They call on ‘fellow Patriots’ to ‘grab their guns.’ ”
Some are mobilizing citizen militias behind a former Arizona sheriff who promises to save the nation from “utter despotism.” Barstow interviewed earnest grandmothers who spoke melodramatically about giving their lives for their country. “Members of her family,” he acknowledged, “think she has disappeared down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.”
Well, it’s up to the poor woman’s family to do an intervention, isn’t it? What we have here is less a political than a community mental health problem. We’ve seen it all before. Paranoia blooms whenever Democrats take power in Washington. Remember militiamen fearful of U.N. black helicopters during Bill Clinton’s first term? Remember “backward masking”? Procter & Gamble accused of Satanism? Same thing. To an excitable minority, particularly in the South and inter-mountain West, apocalyptic fads are encoded in their religious DNA.
For the Obama administration, the best policy is steady as she goes. As Charles Mackay put it as long ago as 1841, “Men . . . go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” As the economy gradually improves, Interpol cops fail to appear, guns aren’t confiscated, the Internet percolates along and internment camps fail to materialize, most Tea Partiers will gravitate quietly back to TV evangelists and conservative Republicanism. After all, these fantasies aren’t the kinds of things that anybody wants to talk about at work.
—––––– •–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Houston, Ark., author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
What is surprising about his diatribe.
The Dummies think ALL Americans are to stupid to even get up in the morning.
Mr. Lyons: Hi Mr. Pot. I'm Mr. Kettle. You're black.
Gene Lyons writes: “Paranoia blooms whenever Democrats take power in Washington. Remember militiamen fearful of U.N. black helicopters during Bill Clinton’s first term?”
900 seized FBI records?
Waco?
Ruby Ridge?
Oklahoma City?
TWA800?
Vince Foster?
Elian Gonzalez?
The Marc Rich pardon?
What a hypocrite this man is.
When libs don’t get their way, democracy sucks. When the mob is useful in seizing the property or labor of others, then democracy rules the day. Consider their hypocrisy on the “nuclear option”.
“86 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. government is “broken.” I admit my first reaction was to wonder subversively, “How would they know?””
Because they read it in the Leftist Mainstream Media. They were told that by Obama’a CNNCBSNBCABC evening news.
Fact is, the government s working beautifully; it’s frustrating the special interest group called Communists so badly that they can’t operate - just exactly as it was designed to do!
Ummmm...$13 Trillion Federal government deficit?
$1.6 Trillion 0bama deficit for this year's budget?
Over $70 Trillion scale security, medicare and medicaid liabilities?
An $862 billion “stimulus” bill that didn't stimulate and left us with nearly one trillion dollars in debt?
An 0bamacare bill that takes control over 18% of the economy and destroys our current health care system which is the best in the world?
The American people ARE stupid, but Wilson was still an evil SOB.
I guess he never saw Ron Wyden do the dance with the globe when he was running for the Senate, what a show that was.
The Big Lie.
Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of international terrorism. He was not tied to the 9-11 attacks but in a global war on terror, his head was on the chopping block for REPEATEDLY violating the terms of the peace from the 1991 Gulf War.
Even if he never actually ACQUIRED WMDs (and he'd clearly used them in the 1980s and held some in the 1990s), there is solid evidence that he was attempting to procure them in violation. Imagine a felon out on parole trying to obtain a gun. Same thing. He was toast and his defenders make fools of themselves.
The overall, big picture here is that democracy doesn’t work and is ultimately self-destructive. That’s why the founders gave us a republic. They were strongly anti-democracy for most of the reasons we see displayed in this article.
The writings of Franklin, Jefferson, etc. are full of the realization that average citizens just cannot be knowledgeable and subjective enough to keep a stable government.
I can’t stand Gene Lyons. They run his column in our paper. Of course they don’t call him a liberal columnist but when they run a conservative columnist, it says so in the persons byline. Gene Lyons is a frothing at the mouth moonbat and lies like a dog.
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