This article is cross-posted from Blue Commonwealth.The editorial today in the Richmond Times Dispatch is the perfect example of what Farhad Manjoo talked about in his book, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society (2008). Manjoo illustrates the extent to which arguments devoid of any fact whatsoever have intruded on and taken over what is purported to be “discourse.” This is the language of the new tribalism, the symptom of disintegrating society, and the morsels of decaying community. It’s survival of the fittest, zero sum game, “winner” takes all (winner, according to some, not necessarily to be determined by fair elections).
What are some examples of our post-fact world? You know many of them. In recent years, here’s a short list (below the fold) of post-fact representations we’ve seen:
• Our immediate past administration fabricate the justification for war.
• Pretend news segments were constructed by the government and run as if they were real news segments by real reporters.
• Paid hacks appear (even now) as if they are independent news analysts, when they are working (through contractors) on behalf of the Pentagon.
• Evidence of no WMD was turned upside down, meetings were made up, a graduate student paper was used as “grounds” for overturning the Iraqi leader.
• When our Constitutional liberties were struck down, those who questioned were called “fascists and Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. We were called un-American, traitors, and worse.
• Some talking heads called for liberals to be killed.
• “Swift Boating.”
• “Birthers” trying to perpetuate fear and hatred of our president and fanning false claims that he is not a US citizen, born in the US.
• "Teabaggers" clueless abut what the original tea protests were really about.
• “Americans for Prosperity” serving as fronts for big oil.
• A former vice presidential candidate (with presidential ambitions), Sarah Palin said this yesterday (excerpt):
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.Get the full statement here
• Ben Nelson rants that if people don’t stop running ads against him, he will scuttle health care reform.
• Democratic Senators and Congresspersons use Republican so-called think tanks (front groups) for their data and talking points.
• Those who want to attend town halls and have a conversation with their representatives are called Nazis and Fascists if we merely seek to attend these events without being threatened with violence, pushed, shoved, intimidated by those who want to block any discussion.
Amid all of this, the Richmond Times Dispatch makes stuff up about the Democrats approach to the protests.
If the Bush White House had taken similar steps, we'd be hearing agonized screams about the "stifling of dissent," the fascist overtones of event orchestration, and the Orwellian danger of having citizen-informers report the content of private communications to the government. But when the Obama administration does the same thing, it's simply defending democracy.
What Democrats call for is lawfulness, an absence of thuggery, and letting everyone talk. The Democratic Party, advocacy groups and , yes, the President are reacting to the stifling dissent by those fired up with fact-free, outrageous and incendiary talk by pawns of corporate America and conscienceless flamethrowers like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Lou Dobbs. We have the evidence to prove what they have planned and done—stifling dissent, shutting down town halls, and intimidating and threatening those they disagree with. And, the Bush administration didn’t allow Democrats anywhere near the president. It spied on us, took away our liberties, and told people to “watch what they say.” Sec. of State Donald Rumsfeld railed against war opponents that they were appeasing the enemy. Where was the RTD during the Bush administration? Oh, yeh, enabling it. And still, the Times-Dispatch asserts our side is stifling dissent! In what universe? They stifled dissent under Bush and they do it now. If ever there were evidence of a post-fact world, it is at the RTD.
The danger is that the GOP, its front groups, advocacy groups and talking heads have ramped up the hostility, anger, and even rage to a dangerous level. Former conservative Frances Shaeffer thinks they know exactly what they are doing. Read his article here. And, they call Democrats and the President “fascists.”
As David Waters argues in his WAPO/Newsweek column Under God, in the On Faith section, these disruptors have taken the page from the far religious "right," which two decades ago orchestrated disrupting and shutting down school board meetings, and taking them over:
The disruption of these Town Hall meetings is doing more than stifling debate, however. These tactics are dealing punishing blows to the body politic and its capacity to even function like a democracy. For "democratic values" to mean something real, something transcendent, there must be trust. Trust is at the basis of every meaningful relationship--your familial relationships, your communal relationships and even your relationship with God. In all my years of teaching religion, I have come to believe that the most fundamental religious question of all is, "what can I trust?"
Back in the political context, Freedom Works links to instructions from a CT tea party, including to disrupt [‘early – often” [here http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/31/recess-harassment-memo]. But these groups are pitching their message to the lunatic fringe. And this fringe ups the ante and takes the push into the stratosphere, as Rachel Maddow shows here. Watch this chilling video. Now think about the RTD and its absurd, fact free editorial. Trouble is, few watch the shows debunking this stuff. And the RTD knows this. Instead of doing its job, it joins the circus, posing as a newspaper, when it hasn’t been a real one for a very long time.
As the extremists try to shut down the democratic process, they accuse us of doing the same? As they try to make Congressmen and women fearful of even having town halls and citizens of attending them, they accuse us? And as they try to instill corporate control and ratchet down its clamp on all of society, ask yourselves, as Frank Schaeffer and Sarah Robinson have done, just where are the starkly frightening hallmarks of fascism coming from? Once again, we are on the receiving end of this, and the RTD has the propagandist stones to suggest otherwise.
Whether or not you agree that things have progressed as far as Schaeffer and Robinson suggest, what each of us does next is critical. It is not time for retreat, cowering, or letting mob rule win in American. This is a test of who we are, of whether we will stand up for democratic principles, and whether we will ever again be able to bring our country back from the post-fact wrecking crews.
