Extremism and Politics in the USA

The news here about the attempted killing of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the slaying of 6 others including Judge Roll, who was an Arizonan district court judge is, of course, shocking.

A good time to reflect on extremism in American politics - a question which can come up in various forms in the exam. Various interesting pieces are all over the news, but economist turned New York Times op-ed writer Paul Krugman has a good piece here which discusses the issue:

 I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence...
Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

And there’s not much question what has changed. As Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff responsible for dealing with the Arizona shootings, put it, it’s “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” The vast majority of those who listen to that toxic rhetoric stop short of actual violence, but some, inevitably, cross that line....

But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

Of course, the likes of Mr. Beck and Mr. O’Reilly are responding to popular demand. Citizens of other democracies may marvel at the American psyche, at the way efforts by mildly liberal presidents to expand health coverage are met with cries of tyranny and talk of armed resistance. Still, that’s what happens whenever a Democrat occupies the White House, and there’s a market for anyone willing to stoke that anger.

Useful stuff for G & P students to ponder but for me the fact that stands out is the 300% rise in threats against members of Congress.

A worrying conclusion from Mr Krugman:

If Arizona promotes some real soul-searching, it could prove a turning point. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning. 

As an antidote to all this, The Economist magazine's Democracy in America blog has this post which accuses Paul Krugman of "irresponsibility" and a left-leaning partisan opinion. It highlights as an alternative another article in the New York times which goes into the reasons for the attack and doesn't see much right-wing conspiracy, but rather overheated rhetoric from the media and political types of all stripes. The piece highlights other unfortunate political victims of violence:

Nine years after Kennedy was killed, George Wallace embarked on his second campaign for the presidency. This was the early 1970s, the high tide of far-left violence — the era of the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army — and Wallace’s race-baiting politics made him an obvious target for protests. On his final, fateful day of campaigning, he faced a barrage of coins, oranges, rocks and tomatoes, amid shouts of “remember Selma!” and “Hitler for vice president!”

But Arthur Bremer, who shot Wallace that afternoon, paralyzing him from the waist down, had only a tenuous connection to left-wing politics. He didn’t care much about Wallace’s views on race: he just wanted to assassinate somebody (Richard Nixon had been his original target), as “a statement of my manhood for the world to see.”

Obama and the Demoncrats; Glenn Beck and Republicanism

The Economist's Lexington has an interesting post here about President Obama's campaigning message in the run-up to the mid-terms. Essentially the Democrats are ignoring their extraordinary reform of Health Care in favour of talking about job creation in these post-credit crunch times. The President is soft-peddling his success in getting this major reform of America:

The White House has presumably decided that its signature legislation is going to be a negative in a campaign dominated by jobs and the economy. Barnes points out that by steering clear of the health issue local candidates will find it easier to separate their fortunes from Mr Obama's, whose numbers have tanked. The trouble with that way of thinking is that it leaves the Republicans free to paint health reform in the most negative possible light. Worse, it suggests that Mr Obama and his party lack the courage of their rather expensive convictions. If the Democrats are too nervous to defend the bill, perhaps they shouldn't have passed it.

This is of interest to G&P students contemplating any essay about Presidential power, or the direction of the Democratic party.

Healthcare reform may well prove to be a big success in the future, but the costs seem to be very high and benefits are not being felt sufficiently to outweigh the effect of high unemployment and falling house prices.

Elsewhere Glenn Beck, a talk-radio and TV pundit on Fox news who is, um, fairly extravagant in his love for America and hatred of liberals has been campaigning to "get America back". He even has founded a University of his own (latin motto: "Revolution against tyrants, submission to God").

There is not the space to analyse the merits or otherwise of Glenn Beck's views here. However, his views are interesting to G&P students because he is beloved by the Tea Party strand of the Republican party; the core voters who are mad that Obama has got in and is passing laws to reform America. Some call him a communist and a socialist and a dictator and a fascist (I don't think he can be all four). There is a good article from Newsweek about Beck and his impact on the Tea Party and on liberals too here. A brief couple of quotes will help:

Tea partiers are driven by the belief that the America that elected Barack Obama isn't their America, and Beck comforts them by telling them they're right: that the America they love, the America they now feel so distant from, the America of faith and the Founders and some sort of idyllic Leave It to Beaver past, is still there, waiting to be awakened from Obama's evil spell.

For liberals, Beck serves a similar purpose. In an era of massive problems and extreme change—the Great Recession, the health-care overhaul, etc.—liberals can avoid the difficult question of whether Obama is leading America in the right direction by simply telling themselves that the only alternative would be someone like Glenn Beck: hyperbolic, demagogic, irrational, and slightly unhinged—"just like all conservatives." This is comforting. And by choosing to argue against Beck's patently absurd insinuations instead of, say, the legitimate policy proposals of someone like Rep. Paul Ryan... liberals can flatter themselves into believing they're smarter and better informed than anyone who happens to disagree with them.

However, he and Sarah Palin are making the weather in the Republican party and its likely success in November. The BBC's Mark Mardell, one of the resident OEs and US correspondent, thinks it likely Palin will run for the Republican nomination for the 2012 race.

I think its worth while taking a look at some of Beck's statements. On calling Obama a racist white-hater in an extract from a long interview by CBS' Katie Couric (the full interview is here):



The Washington Post describes Beck as trying to claim the mantle of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights marchers for tax-hating conservatives:

Finally, Beck updated the meaning of the civil rights movement so that it is no longer about black people; it is about protecting anti-tax conservatives from liberals.

And from the man himself in a transcript of an interview on his own web-site he compared the US government increasing taxes to Nazis persecuting Jews in 1930s Germany:

Big business, big labor and big government. This is, this is fascism. This is what happens when you merge special interests, corporations and the government. And you know what, guys? If people like you don't take a stand and I'm not suggesting that you, you know, don't sign or do sign. That's up to you. You've got a lot riding on it. But at some point you know what poem keeps going through my mind is, you know, first they came for the Jews. People, all of us are like, well, this news doesn't really affect me; well, I'm not a bondholder; well, I'm not in banking industry; well, I'm not a big CEO; I'm not on Wall Street; I'm not a car dealer; I'm not an autoworker. Gang, at some point they are going to come for you.

Overall, while Beck may be a little extreme, there are a significant number of Republicans who accept some of his argument and this feeds into the Tea Part and into the Republican Party itself. It is likely that the core Republicans will turn out for the mid-terms and former Obama-supporting voters may stay away.

An interesting article here on Slate.com by Christopher Hitchens which analyses the Tea Party-Beck phenomenon:

...nobody with any feeling for the zeitgeist can avoid noticing the symptoms of white unease and the additionally uneasy forms that its expression is beginning to take.

There is a strand of thought that there is a crisis of confidence in the US which includes (according to Hitchens):

This summer, then, has been the perfect register of the new anxiety, beginning with the fracas over Arizona's immigration law, gaining in intensity with the proposal by some Republicans to amend the 14th Amendment so as to de-naturalize "anchor babies," cresting with the continuing row over the so-called "Ground Zero" mosque, and culminating, at least symbolically, with a quasi-educated Mormon broadcaster calling for a Christian religious revival from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The Democracy in America blog has an article along similar lines here.

Arizona and race, California and sex

A quick post to round off my evening, to mention the anti-illegal immigration law that Arizona has passed which it highly contentious.

The Democracy in America blog discusses it here, and the BBC's Mark Mardell does here. Suffice to say, there are complex issues here, including race and racism, complicated by the mid-terms coming up in November when everyone in politics is desperate to get their supporters out.

California's Proposition 8, banning gay marriage, was overturned in the US District Court in Perry v Schwarzenegger. Interesting, because Proposition was a direct piece of legislation voted on by Californians rather than politicians and because the fight about marriage in law is likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court. It is also interesting because it is a highly polarising measure (Democrats against, Republicans for). It also illustrates neatly the legislative process in America and also the ballot proposition measure in California, in which the two sides in the debate raised almost $85 million between them. The Democracy in America blog discusses it here.

I'll leave the final word to Judge Walker who decided the case:

PROPOSITION 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples.