For the last eight years, we've observed Karl Rove's non-reality based universe in which logic was entirely abandoned in lieu of whatever reality the administration invented in order to serve its ridiculous policies and to mask its glaring nincompoopery. Intellectually dishonest at best -- destructive and criminal at worst.
This didn't end on Election Day.
Since their thumpin' last week, the far-right has pushed the crazy to eleven and snapped the knob clean off -- an opening salvo of twisted hackery portending an insane four-to-eight years of attacks on the Obama administration. If the last seven days have been any indication, the far-right is shaping up to make the 1990s seem quaint -- even erudite by comparison. That which used to be your basic, off-the-shelf intellectual dishonesty has grown into, as Digby pointed out recently, full-on intellectual violence.
Intellectual violence. While not a new term, it perfectly defines what we're seeing now: accusations and smears that so severely confound logic they literally attack -- violate -- reality and the human intellect. It's like a berzerker dervish of argumentative elbows and fists indiscriminately flailing around, thwacking anything in its orbit, so much so that constructing a counterpoint is literally painful, "Why the hell am I trying to debunk this?! Ow! My head. Aw hell, I need a drink."
The "Impeach Obama" Facebook groups, for example. No, I'm not making that up. They're real and there's a constant variety of disgruntled far-right Republicans joining up every day. And, to our total lack of surprise, they're not ashamed in the slightest to post comments like this one:
"Damn dems stole the election like they always do. GOD wanted McCain and Palin in the White House. That's why it's called THE WHITE HOUSE."
Apart from being a racist, this "Impeach Obama" Facebook member is clearly the most awesome pollster in the world if he was able to sample God. I tried to submit a friend request just so I could ask him if he perchance enlisted a room of undecided cherubim for a Frank Luntz dial group.
Shortly after discovering this, I was talking with a colleague and found myself instinctively trying to form a rational argument about why the Facebook members were wrong. It began with the obvious: "He's not even the president yet!" And then, after I segued into Article II and the constitutional grounds for impeachment, I stopped myself. What in name of Randall P. MacMurphy am I doing? Arguing against this crap is like explaining to a meth tweaker that the shadow people aren't real. That's when I decided that it'd be more fun to just infiltrate one of the groups and post comments like, "The moon landing was staged!" and, "Obama is a bionic -- just like his half-aunt! I have proof!"
Then on Monday, Michelle Malkin posted an item in which she referred to the president-elect as the "overlord-elect." And on Tuesday, Congressman Paul Broun told the AP, "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential." Uh-huh. On the scale of probability, "Obama is a fascist dictator" is about as likely as "Broun is a Jedi Master." But it doesn't matter. Reality is irrelevant.
The obvious intention here is to cobble together an abuse of power meme against President-elect Obama, despite President Bush and Vice President Cheney having, you know, spent the last eight years consolidating executive power, authorizing torture, suspending habeas corpus, illegally invading sovereign nations, ignoring congressional subpoenas and eavesdropping on American citizens.
Whoops. There I go again, talking about facts and treating the crazy like it's real.
But clearly the most egregious post-election trespass came to us from John Hinderaker of Powerline. Some back story: following the president-elect's lighthearted Nancy Reagan séance remark, Michelle Malkin referred to Obama as a "classless jerk" (unlike President George W. "Those Weapons Have to Be Around Here Somewhere" Bush, of course). And she treated the séance comment as if it were part of an on-going pattern of ridiculous Obama gaffes and bloopers.
Picking up on Malkin's lead, Hinderaker wrote this week:
Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated.
No, seriously. I didn't make that up. A popular member of the far-right intertubes actually wrote that. On a public website. That people go to and read. Every day.
Come on now. Fess up, Hinderaker, you can't seriously believe all that. I mean, I didn't think it was possible, but you succeeded in making Malkin's "classless jerk" remarks appear respectable -- even reasonable -- by comparison. Fact: not only is the president-elect one of the finest orators in modern political history, but he far exceeds President Bush in terms of intellectualism and verbal discipline. In other words, a Bush gaffe reveals an inherent lack of intellectual curiosity and a general ineptitude when it comes to, well, talking. An Obama gaffe is an isolated incident, exclusive of his ability to speak, think and reason. Nothing more.
I can't believe I even have to write that down. But that's precisely what makes these arguments so violent. They literally crush logical reality, making it almost impossible to ignore.
In a perfect world, we probably shouldn't react or to take these things too seriously, and yet we'd be making a huge mistake to ignore them altogether -- or to underestimate their efficacy. After all, there's Drudge who somehow remains a bridge between the far-right's intellectual violence and the establishment press. As we've learned throughout the last ten years, it only takes some persistent badgering and a series of red "SHOCK!" headlines for the crazy to travel by osmosis into the mainstream.
So we're in for many more years of insanity from the far-right. They're not dead. They're not as irrelevant as they deserve to be. And they certainly don't suffer from writer's block when it comes to outlandish and illogical attacks and smears.
Put it this way, if President-elect Obama so much as takes a long weekend off this August, you can bet that the far-right will crap their cages about Obama being lazy and shiftless.
Order my new book: One Nation Under Fear, with a foreword by Arianna Huffington. Also available in stores.
Follow Bob Cesca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bobcesca_go
I am optimistic about Obama's governing style and an intellectual being in the White House...but let's not pretend that this "craziness" is unique to the right. Walk through Union Square in Manhattan and take a look at the Bush/Hitler signs...those who claim he stole not one but both elections...the mockumentary about his assassination and feature film about his life (before he left office)...or the comparisons of this last eight years to eras of fascism and gulags, to name a few.
Yes, you say, but those were after his policies. Hardly. Plenty on the left claimed to be pre-emptively ashamed of and angry at the U.S. before Election Day, 2000. Notice that the claims above are from Facebook, which hardly counts as a right-wing stooge or a major political platform and could be made by anyone in their basements, and Michelle Malkin- the right's version of...Rosie? Moore? Olbermann? Either way, this hardly counts as evidence of the right getting crazier.
Yes, there will be fringe right-wingers who jump on Obama's first minor gaffe or his first weekend off in August. It shouldn't be met with shock at how the right is "crazier than ever." Rather, as with the left's bomb-throwers, it should be met with a yawn and nothing more.
More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform ...n/a... into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity
Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated."
This despite the fact that for 2 years (that's 715 days) I had a page-a-day calendar with a fully referenced Bush verbal bloomer on each page !
Americans have awakened from their foggy sleep, finding their nation in tatters--and they're pissed.
And can we remember Dan Rather? Shouldn't anyone who leveled those unfair and unfounded charges at Obama (like Rush did) certainly be forced to have their shows taken away from them under threat of lawsuits? Isn't this how the precedent has now been set by the previous administration?
hey forgot about the American people especially the Middle class. They are all for the rich and upper class. If they continue on this path of exclusion and hatred they will continue to lose elections. Next time they run they will come with a real message and some real candidates. T
hey can either go back to the drawing board and figure out what went wrong and try to make it right or they can go around making bitter and low class remarks about our President Elect.
All they have to do is pick up a New Paper on any given day and read the headlines or the business section and they can figure out why they lost this election.
The coach being a very smart cookie, saw it coming during the 1st period and instructed his players to focus focus and focus on the GAME only. if the villains wanted to provoke a fight or something, the players were instructed to do two things: just defend themselves and show the score.
It drove the badasses so crazy that they ended up playing 15 minutes with 2 men down in the 3rd period.
Needless to say they took a memorable drubbing in the keister, leaving the town under the laughs and sneers of a joyful crowd.
So, let's rub it in the face of the wingnuts: you lost...SUCKERS!!
Ain't gonna fly no mo...hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
The rethugs are sore losers and awful winners. Blech
The GoldenRule- "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", what part of that don't they/repubs get/live?