All Posts Tagged With: "rhetoric"

Whether it’s the illiterate, irrational ramblings of local bloggers or the perfidious, phantasmic rantings of national commentators, the far right has declared all out jihad against the new president, pulling out all the stops — like truth, reality, facts, evidence, logic, reason, rationality — and spreading fear, distortions, misrepresentations and all out lies. I may address some of the local blogger silliness another time, but here’s an example of some of the ridiculous commentary on the national stage.

Marc Thiessen, former chief speechwriter for former President Bush, has been stirring the pot in the last couple of days. Yesterday, I posted about his “twisted op-ed” in Thursday’s Washington Post in which he proffered a very distorted view of the Bush legacy. In a post at National Review Online yesterday, Thiessen ratchets up the rhetoric to unabashed fear-mongering and hysterics:

The CIA program he is effectively shutting down is the reason why America has not been attacked again after 9/11. He has removed the tool that is singularly responsible for stopping al-Qaeda from flying planes into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, Heathrow Airport, and London’s Canary Warf, and blowing up apartment buildings in Chicago, among other plots. It’s not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office.

Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent responds:

Obama is already “the most dangerous” President ever?

Here’s the thing about this. You have here an assertion that crosses over from mere opinion into verifiable or disprovable assertion. If you’re going to say that someone has already proven himself to be dangerous, as opposed to merely being potentially dangerous, you need to point to empirical evidence of this, such as lives lost to foreign threats on your watch. There haven’t been any such lives lost under President Obama yet, unlike other past Presidents.

This type of hysteria is not only foolish, it’s absurd. From Rush Limbaugh to countless, unflinchingly-loyal-no-matter-how-often-proven-wrong, diehard right-wing bloggers, there is a cacophonous chorus of toxic rhetoric desperately wishing and unabashedly rooting for this new president to fail. It astounds me. I’m not sure why exactly; I’m not sure why I expect more from this crowd.

No matter how strongly I disagreed with President Bush’s policies and actions, I never wanted him to fail as president. I would fight his agenda, but I never rooted for him to fail. Why would I? His failures negatively impacted me and my country. It’s like despising my boss so much that I rooted for him/her to fail, even though his/her failure could very well negatively impact me and my job!

It’s this type of irrational fear-mongering and hateful rhetoric that makes me worry more for this country than anything George Bush has done or Barack Obama may do. The cancer of “us vs. them” selfishness and refusal to find common ground is dividing this country in ever more irreparable ways. We are doing more harm to our own country than any terrorist could ever do. “United we stand, divided we fall.” We are a nation divided. If we do not find a way to come together, we will fall.

Oklahoma’s own senator once again grabs the national spotlight with rants based more on fear, hysteria and ignorance than on reason, sanity and reality. His antics leave such a “positive” impression of our state, making us all so very “proud.” Think Progress reports on his latest crusade:

Appearing on Fox News this morning, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) peddled the emerging right-wing trope that Barack Obama’s White House energy and climate adviser Carol Browner is a secret socialist. The source of the right-wing paranoia is Browner’s brief participation in a group called the Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society.

As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson explained in a thorough debunk, the Socialist International is a “worldwide organisation of social democratic, socialist and labour parties” from Albania to Zimbabwe, intended to foster global partnerships to confront issues like climate change. Its members include the center-left New Democratic Party of Canada, the center-left Israeli Labor Party, and the ruling Labour Party in Great Britain.

Nevertheless, following in the footsteps of the National Review, Glenn Beck, the Washington Times, and Drudge, Inhofe called Browner a “socialist.” But he delved even further into conspiracy-land:

I have other problems with Carol Browner. There’s another organization that a lot of people don’t realize — it’s called the Center for American Progress. This report that came out — this is the group that’s trying for the Fairness Doctrine. Trying to, I think, dramatically upend the First Amendment. And try to stop talk radio and talk TV from being conservative.

FOX: And she was a member of that group?

INHOFE: Yes, she was a member of that group. It’s called the Center for American Progress.

In one fell swoop, Inhofe characterized Browner, the Center for American Progress, and the authors of this blog as part of a grand socialist conspiracy.

Inhofe was holding up a copy of a joint Center for American Progress and Free Press report on talk radio, entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” Inhofe might want to open it up and read what it says about the Fairness Doctrine. The report specifically does not call for reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.

A key author of the report said, “There is no need to return to the Fairness Doctrine.” Instead, the report argues, “Increasing ownership diversity [of radio stations], both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming.”

Hewing to the baseless concerns of Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing spends an inordinate amount of time mobilizing opposition on a matter that the left has expressed little interest in pursuing. But don’t believe us — we’re all part of a socialist conspiracy!

Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings writes:

For a long time, I was kind of amazed by the libertarian rhetoric of the GOP, the way that somebody could argue for torture and corporate welfare and unchecked police powers and massive deficits and a global empire, and then follow it up with “Because I believe in limited government and the free market.” The cognitive dissonance wasn’t what bugged me (I’m cynical enough to take it as a given that politicians know how to lie) but rather that they would even bother appealing to the small government crowd that they feel free to screw over. I mean, aren’t we, like, a miniscule faction?

And then it hit me–it was never about us. All those dog whistles that libertarians respond to whenever Republicans blow the whistle? Those were for other people. Second amendment? It’s a cultural thing, not principle. Free markets? Intellectual cover for corporate welfare. Limited government? This is their way of saying to the subsidized farmers of the Great Plains and the employees of the Military-Industrial Complex and all the other beneficiaries of GOP-style redistribution “Don’t worry, you aren’t a welfare recipient like all those city folks that I bash. You’re better than that.  You’re a hearty, self-reliant person who supports limited government.”

I already knew that all of the stances that the libertarians like were just there for other elements of the GOP coalition. But I used to think that the “limited government” rhetoric was a way of fooling us. Nope, it was never about us. The fact that too many of us were fooled was a coincidence (one that Republicans probably still laugh about over drinks). It was for everyone else in the coalition. The fact that we fell for it was just a coincidence. The fact that some of us actually provided them with pet intellectuals was just icing on the cake.

What brought a lot of this to the fore was seeing libertarians swoon over Sarah Palin as she blew dog whistles. I was never fooled by the whistles, but I did miss the purpose of the whistles: It was never about us. It was about the rest of Team Red.

It’s one thing to be opposed to a particular political candidate — even strongly and passionately opposed. It’s quite another thing to be absurd about your opposition, making outlandish claims and suppositions, and generally resorting to hysterics.

While politics will still remain a small fraction of what I write about here, for the remainder of this election season, I will regularly share a post that exposes some of the more outrageous and outlandish rhetoric and political posturing that we see during this excruciatingly interminable campaign. Today’s spotlight is on the right-wing radio darling Hugh Hewitt:

By the way, I — I’m still trying to find two tickets to the Ohio State-USC game. And none of the USC people will give up their tickets to me. I’d pay fair price. They — they know Ohio State’s gonna slaughter the Trojans. They know that they’re gonna slaughter the Trojans, and therefore they do not want me there at the bloodbath, since it’s probably the last football game we’ll ever get to see before the United States gets blown up by the Islamists under Obama.

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More Hewitt hysterics here.