A Growing Hysteria

"As Katy Abram told Fox News after passionately confronting Specter: “I know that years down the road, I don’t want my children coming to me and asking me, ‘Mom, why didn’t you do anything? Why do we have to wait in line for, I don’t know, toilet paper or anything?’ ”

Besides the chilling prospect of 21st-century America morphing into a cold war state — with Sheryl Crow in charge of toilet-paper rationing — there are also delusional fears about the government tapping bank accounts and convening “death panels,” as Sarah Palin dubbed them, to exploit the cost-saving potential of euthanizing the old and disabled.

At his more placid town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., on Tuesday, the president had to explain that he did not intend to “pull the plug on grandma.” He said that the specter of death panels had spun out of a proposal from a Republican, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has long espoused helping Medicare patients learn about options for care at the end of their lives. In an interview with The Washington Post on Monday, Isakson diagnosed Palin’s interpretation of his suggestion as “nuts.”"  Maureen Dowd

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It seems to be in the air, blowing around like a viral infection in a Stephen King novel, "something wicked this way comes..."  The temptation is strong to think that the shaky voices, incoherence and shrillness are products of the summer weather, but...

I think that the problem is actually best heard in sobbed statements like "...I want my America back...," and   "This country is being systematically disassembled to make a different country..."  These words were spoken yesterday by blonde women at public meetings.

The people who voted against Obama and who insist that he is "the other" are afraid.  They are afraid that this president really does intend systemic change in American society, a redistribution of privilege and benefits and power that will end the domination of the country by white people.  Feeding their inchoate fears are the "projections" that are made by media babblers that white people will be a minority in the US in fifty years or so.  These projections are usually self-serving and based on the assumption that in fifty years it will still be valid to try to characterize people in this way by race.  Look around you.  Do you not see young America evolving away from this primitive notion of race?

From this fear of the loss of power over their environment comes many evils.  The "birthers" are a good example.  Their absurd insistence about Obama's supposed Kenyan birth is merely a screen for their terror of someone they see as an alien black revolutionary.  They don't care where he was born.  They simply do not want him.  They see his policies as steps toward a future that they reject.

"Whose country is this?"  John Wilkes Booth wrote those words in his day book while hiding in the Maryland woods, nursing a broken leg.  The day before he shot Lincoln, Booth stood in a crowd and heard the president say something that indicated that freed blacks would have to be citizens.  Booth then said to one of his men, "That means votes for n-----s.  Now I'll put him through."  That seems to have been the moment of decision for murder.

People should take a step back and then walk away from the hysterics and the media demagogues before the situation deteriorates further. 

Things are going very wrong in this country.  "The center does not hold."  pl

 

Comments

[Leanderthal]

Limbaugh uses the charged "N" word Nazi as a substitute for the other charged "N" word. It's not lost on those who can't deal with a black man occupying the White House.

[William R. Cumming]

PL this is a very interesting post. For someone with whom there love of country is so painfully obvious from your efforts on this blog it has to be stressful to reach your conclusion (s). The primary reasons for your conclusion(s) with which I mostly agree seem to be twofold. The corporate seizure of the MSM by the very largest communication conglomerates and their frustration with not finding profits for their investment in MSM which except for the egotists is not really a highly profitable sector of the economy given the development of alternative news sources. Journalism as we knew it when younger is largely KAPUT. Second, the development of critical thinking skills by the nation's colleges, universities, and other institutions, including the family seems in decline. But do not underestimate Sarah Palin as a medium for certain messages. She knows how much public assistance is required for a down's syndrome baby in the short and long run. After all when she is dead who will care for the then adult child? Just as Americans spend over $60B annually just for routine pet feeding and care (disclosure--recently acquired by adoption a cat)before the VET bills are added on the lack of prioritization in US society seems to be killing US with freedom. Noting that the Chinese government (Communist not Socialist)has recently pledged basic health care for its citizens with an intial $121B investment it is interesting to try and understand how the US develops any priority that is not just an undeserved rewarding of those who manipulate some sector of the economy. Thanks again for the post and real food for thought.

[Fred]

Col. Thanks for a very timely post. Hopefully the corporate sponsors of the 'media demagogues' will also step back, and double quick. These demagogues are quickly becoming American versions of Radio Rwanda.

[eakens]

I miss the days when our economy ran on fossil fuels. Now it just runs on fear

[rjj]

Sounds like another CorpsMedia "LOOK OVER THERE!" tempestules.

[Bill Wade, NH]

From what I understand, the birther movement is being pushed by the Israeli government via their Christian fundamentalist cohorts. I do not like this underhanded attempt to divide my country. If any good came out of 911 it was seeing NYers of all races helping each other, we were all Americans that day. Then, Katrina and that sadness.

[J.]

The center is already collapsing. See militia movements on the rise.

[greg0]

If the rampant hysteria turns into violence as some predict, the gun dealers will be very busy.
The secret service is already.

[Dave of Maryland]

Yesterday afternoon, right here in Bel Air, MD, I saw maybe 200 protesters, with placards, grouped around the intersection at the county building. Protesting ObamaCare. First such protest that I, personally, had seen in at least 35 years.

Unlike left-wing protests, this one was tightly focused. Obamacare Obamacare Obamacare. Not one word about illegal immigration or 2nd amendment or anything else.

But the reason for the protest is not important. People are hysterical & becoming more so with each passing day. They want their mommy. They want their daddy. They want to go home again where everything will be okay.

But that's the one thing that's not going to happen. In my mind it's 1789 & it's the sans culottes (which means "guys wearing Bermuda shorts", not, "naked from the waist down") rioting in the streets. What were they so unhappy about? Were they of any real importance, or were they simply a mob to be manipulated? (I don't think this is a media problem at all.)

A wise leader would announce a one-year moratorium on the heath care plan. A wise leader would suddenly find a reason to send every man jack in the country a check for, I don't know, $20,000.

But we have no wise leaders. Only stupid ones. Mobs are facts of life. They arrive from time to time. Leaders are supposed to be able to handle such things so as to maintain happiness & tranquility. If that means eating crow & spending money, then so be it. This particular malady has a crisis in mid-September. It does not peak until July next year, after which, with much momentum behind it, it will only slowly fade.

Keep your heads down.

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

Unless we are independently wealthy, we all are pretty much always pushing that big rock up the hill.

But, if you can fit into the multi-national corporate world through education and élan, you can make out. Actually, Barrack Obama, although a Chicago Politician, fits into this world more than any other American President.

On the other hand, the screaming you hear at the Town Hall Meetings are those that have been left behind. Another prerogative is being torn from their grasp. It is Republicans and the multi-national media who are obscuring the facts. It is the 1% that holds all the wealth in the USA and Wall Street Banksters and their bought politicians who have screwed them.

[N. M. Salamon]

Colonel:

I agree with you with respect to fear being prevasive in USA society
I rerspectfully suggest that this has three main underpinning:
1., the Persistent attempt by Bush and cohort to scare the population with armageddon - the TERROR, an unforseen backblow of 8 years of psychological abuse.
2., The masses understand that notwithstanding all the talk of green shoots, of growth etc, that the future is bleaker for them than it was for their parents.
3., The masses have lost faith in the politicians and their enablers, the MSM, for acting constantly in opposition to their views:
a., Iraq, and now Afganistan;'
b., bail out of the moneyed elite, while the masses are left with foreclosure and bankruyopcy.

The fear is so great that the in selected individals that they are biting anyone, regardless of possible benefit or damage caused by the opponent of the minute. This psychological ailment is greatly supported, abetted and enflamed by the various members of the FEAR BRIGADE: Ms Palin re end of life, re the moneyed and privilidged who do not wish to loose any of their "goods", even if such selfishness hurts a big minority, or indeed, the majority -represented by variou Senators and Representatives who have state piad for top health care insurance, who live off the avails of the poor tax-payer, and at the generous hand of various K-Street, PAC, etc with emple help from the medical/insurance/pharmacological industries.

If President Obama can not turn the health care issue around, he is lost, for the economy will deteriate for the forceeable future, with occassional rises, followed by deeper falls until that time that the toxis funds are balanced and a new equillibrium conm=mes with respect to energy availability [alternate sources or no more oil].

As I said befor Congress needs ADULTS, lest the collapse happen sooner than preparations can be made to amoliarate the difficulkty

[alnval]

Col. Lang:

Glad you’re back. We need the focus your involvement creates.

SST has been writing about the need for change for a while now. Obama ran on it and we bought into to it because intuitively we understood that if our own situation was to improve that change was imperative. Unfortunately, we all have our own story to tell about change. The kind nobody likes or wants. Mine is children out of work with serious medical bills who were losing their homes. A 401K that was down 40 percent making it harder than ever to think about how best to help them. In short, people were being forced to change how they made choices about basic issues of subsistence that hadn’t bothered them before. Few had the time or energy to give any thought to the kind of positive change they needed that would give them relief. All they knew was that something needed to be done and they didn’t much care what it was.

For many of us the pressure of that crisis has past. Frankly, I’m relieved just to have gotten through it. I have to believe that many, many others feel the same way. Maybe not totally satisfied but at least afloat.

As individuals and families we’ve begun to achieve some personal balance again. Nationally, the banks have been bailed out and the country no longer looks like it’s going to fall into an abyss. Gracious. There aren’t even enough new cars available to sell to people who want to turn in their clunkers! Let’s build some more!

Regardless of the reality of our enthusiasm for endorsing change in the presidential campaign it’s not in our nature as human beings to look beyond the few birds we already have to consider the unknown possibilities the bushes may hold. Few people anywhere are prepared to accept change for its own sake. We’re not brought up that way. CWZ’S anecdote about his campesina maid not wanting to become an American says it all. Change has got to have some substantive and positive relationship to our personal situation before we’ll buy into it. In our system of government, if change is to be accepted it requires that a majority buy into it. Imposing change arbitrarily doesn’t lead to acceptance.

Why won’t the center hold? Hold for what? What common goal for change can we come to as a nation that will make us believe that going once more into the breach is worthwhile. One that will be patently valuable enough so that we can shake off the fear we still feel at having lost our power over our environment. I know that one is out there but until we find it the evils that are produced by its absence will continue to hatch out.

[N. M. Salamon]

Colonel:

Need your help :

http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/928/796.html

what does this mean I do not know how to translate Hebrew to English [Bloomberg news: Israel has real plan against Iran's nuclear power.
Tx for help

[Brett J]

I agree with WRC, the conclusions reached in this post are hard to swallow and food for thought (oh, William already used that term...heh).
My hope remains in the faint silver lining you allude to...young America, my peers, working past the race-baiting and fear-mongering. It's simple to nay-say the young -as every generation does regarding the one following it- but it is the younger that has grown up bathed in the global pool of knowledge, the internet- where unfounded rumors (which may start online) are often furiously chased to determine the reality of the sitaution. These broad strokes don't paint a specific enough picture, but the willingness of The Millenials to let somebody run with unfounded ideas seems to be very brief. "Prove it"- and gimme unconnected, impartial links.
Transparency would help across the board. I just pray that those who are running the show these days -and the bleating, flapping gums in MSM- don't force (like Samson) their own passing to bring down the rest of the structure.

[Farmer Don]

Very well said Col. Lang.

This morning reading my favorite. economics blog, I was thinking the same thing. The USA can't just have a miserable recession like any other country, There must be ENEMIES causing it!!! The health care bill just won't be expensive like most government programs, it will turn the USA into a copy of its cold war ENEMIES! The USA is not in for inflation or deflation, it is in for HYPER inflation or deflation! People won't have to live with less, they will starve and then attack their neighbours!

My feeling is that the constant US preoccupation with its overseas ENEMIES and its feeling of exceptionalism are the main ingredients for this brew. Its ENEMIES are now within!!, (or so some people think).

Obama used the phrase "They almost seem proud of being ignorant" when speaking of his election opponents. Add willful ignorance and magical thinking to the mix and watch out!

[anna missed]

"The people who voted against Obama and who insist that he is "the other" are afraid.
[...] Feeding their inchoate fears are the "projections" that are made by media babblers that white people will be a minority in the US in fifty years or so."

You really have to wonder about those in the media that capitalize on spreading this fear.What happens when someone finally takes some terrorist action based on the media suggestions and lies - and then publicly says they were the directly inspired to do so by one of these talkers?

By the way, sublime choice in connecting that Rothko painting with the subject matter.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

It seems to be in the air, blowing around like a viral infection in a Stephen King novel, "something wicked this way comes..." The temptation is strong to think that the shaky voices, incoherence and shrillness are products of the summer weather, but...

I think that the problem is actually best heard in sobbed statements like "...I want my America back...," and "This country is being systematically disassembled to make a different country..." These words were spoken yesterday by blonde women at public meetings.

The feelings expressed are no doubt genuine, but the protests are being organized by entities with long-time connections to conservative causes and the Republican Party. A number of the more articulate and passionate alleged "ordinary citizens" have later been exposed as GOP party operatives. Check out Greg Sargent's reporting here: http://tinyurl.com/naxz55

For the more video inclined, see this snippet from Rachel Maddow's show last evening: http://tinyurl.com/neptoa

[Nancy K]

My husband who emigrated here in 76 is shocked by what is happening in the US,the hate, the guns, the name calling and the fear. I was born here in 1946 and I am not as surprised. Our Country has changed, everything changes and to hold on to how things once were when everyone lived in a small town and were the same color or went to the same church or etc etc, is just insane.
I feel that the middle will hold and our country will survive but I do feel there is an element that in the name of preserving it, want to destory it.
We have a black president, and some just cannot accept this. They want Jim Crow back, they want other races to cringe in fear when they walk by.
Middle America needs to realize that crazies at both ends of the spectrum have to be defeated, they cannot allow our great country to be destoryed.
Exactly how we do this I'm not sure.

[R Whitman]

I admit it. I am an old man. The last time I saw right wing hysteria like this in the United States was after the election of John F Kennedy.

The wingnuts are out in force. Maybe they will damage America less this time.

[patrick]

Barak Obama's embrace of a man like Bill Ayers is enough to scare the hell out of alot of Americans. Think about it this way, say Tim McVeigh was released from prison on a technicality, and a future President befriended or at the minimum went to McVeigh's residence for community meetings.

Remember, early in Obama's career he attended meetings at Ayers' home.

Both McVeigh and Ayers exploded bombs in a political terror campaign and no politician should have relations with killers or attempted killers.

I have no doubt that Obama was a better choice than McCain. I just wish Obama would use his Sword of Alinsky on Wall Street. However, Goldman Sachs was his biggest donor so that will not happen.

Expect more of the same.

America needs term limits and restrictions on political donations.

[Nancy K]

Why do all of the posts and info on your site have lines through them?

[wdd]

Amen, Col. Lang.

The authoritarian, fundamentalist rump of the Republican party loses an election and calls it tyranny. I thought Bush was illegitimately selected but accepted that after Bush v Gore he was the President with all the office's powers (not as many as he claimed.) The solution was to defeat him in four years not threaten extra-legal action.

Rep. Broun (R- Ga.) is warning today that the 'socialist elite' is planning to use swine flu as an excuse to impose martial law. He is from just across the Savannah from me and I hope when the August heat breaks, the political fever will break. This is not the first time fire-eaters around here have lost their bearings. I'm not hopeful.

[Ken Hoop]

Look on the bright side, Pat. Most of the "xenophobes" and Obamaphobes aren't Ron Paul/Pat Buchanan anti-imperialists, but their actions could unwind the social fabric and help bring the occupying troops home,i.e. dismantle the Empire, for which victimized Iraqis and Afghanis will give thanks.

[alnval]

Col. Lang:

re Nancy's question about the lines going through almost everything --- me too

The first six comments are OK and it's also OK when I first get on the site but going to the comments seems to turn it on

[Patrick Lang]

All

I have sent Typepad a question about this. pl