Follow on TwitterWhen Lies And Conspiracies Are All You Have To Energize Your Base, Be Prepared For Violence
If a person falsely shouts ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, thereby creating a stampede in which innocent bystanders get trampled, then that person can be held liable, as was decided in the 1919 Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States.
This verdict distinguished between untruthful statements used to incite violence (i.e. falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater) and truthful statements which may also happen to incite violence (i.e. shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater that is actually burning). The former is illegal; the latter is not.
Most of the criticism leveled at the Tea Party over the last two years has been due to the fact their supporters’ threatening and hateful outbursts are largely based on unfounded beliefs fed to them by their leaders, right-wing radio, and the Fox News channel.
After Republican policies failed so miserably under eight tumultuous years of George W. Bush, they have been forced to manufacture lies and conspiracies to outrage, and in turn energize, their base.
When Barack Obama beat John McCain in the 2008 Presidential Election, the right-wing immediately began pushing forward the lie that he was going to outlaw gun purchases. The result was astounding:
According to FBI figures for the week of November 3 to 9 [the week after Obama won], the bureau received more than 374,000 requests for background checks on gun purchasers — a nearly 49 percent increase over the same period in 2007. Conatser said his store, Virginia Arms Company, has run out of some models — such as the AR-15 rifle, the civilian version of the military’s M-16 — and is running low on others.
Such assault weapons are among the firearms that gun dealers and customers say they fear Obama will hit with new restrictions, or even take off the market.
This fear mongering campaign continued unabated into the next year. MediaMatters, at the time, compiled a sample of these lies on “outlawing guns” dating from Obama’s victory through April 2009. Here’s a clip of a Glenn Beck episode embodying this fear mongering.
And sure enough, their falsely “screaming fire” incited its first act of violence when an angry, young, paranoid, conspiracy theorist, Richard Andrew Poplawski, gunned down three police officers and wounded a fourth in Pittsburgh, PA. Here’s how he was described by friends and family leading up to the murders:
He slept with a gun under his pillow in a basement room filled with firearms and ammunition, convinced that Jews controlled the media and President Obama was scheming to take away his arsenal, friends and relatives said Saturday. […]
[Poplawski’s lifelong friend Edward] Perkovic said Poplawski usually was affable and kind, but grew angry recently over fears Obama would outlaw guns. He said Poplawski owned a bullet-proof vest, an AK-47 assault rifle and at least seven other weapons, but obtained the firearms legally.
Tea Party favorite, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) is a notable for spreading outlandish conspiracy theories. She claimed in the Summer of 2009 that the Obama Administration would use the 2010 Census information for nefarious purposes. She insisted ACORN — a group demonized by the far-right — would be the ones collecting and disseminating the information.
In this footage, Glenn Beck reveals that he fears the Census information will be used to deny gun permits to American citizens, and then Bachmann (his guest) one-ups his allegation, by stating “Here’s the other thing that will happen”, and then explains that the United States government will use the information to put Americans into internment camps, much like they did to Japanese Americans during the second world war.
Bachmann had earlier told Chris Matthews that there was a serious problem with anti-American members of Congress (referring to Democrats), which she said necessitated an investigation by the US media.
Not to be outdone by her fellow Tea Partiers, Sarah Palin — when health care reform was being debated in August of 2009 — spread the fear of death panels amongst her low-information supporters:
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.”
There was no such provision in the bill, as was quickly pointed out by FactCheck.org. Palin made it up. But other ‘conservatives’ (including GOP leaders and politicians), Fox News, and right-wing radio would not let facts deter them from energizing their base. They began repeating Palin’s lie as a proven fact, over and over again.
These same voices on the Right also began to call the proposed health care reform bill “Socialized Medicine” and a “Government Takeover”. This was despite the fact that a single payer system was NEVER ever on the table, and neither Obama, nor any leader in Congress, had ever proposed government employed health care providers (the end result of a ‘government takeover’). Private ‘For profit’ health care was always, unfortunately, to be the end game in all the health care reform proposals.
However, the ‘death panels’ and ‘government takeover’ lies incited a huge violent frenzy amongst Tea Party thugs, who stormed Town Hall Meetings shouting over all discussions, and intimidating Representatives and their supporters.
All this fanatical behavior (based entirely on lies) lead fact checker Politifact.org to award Sarah Palin’s ‘death panel’ statement as “Lie of the Year”:
“Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest,” writes Politifact.com, the non-partisan, Pulitzer Prize-winning site run by the St. Petersburg Times. Palin’s “assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings.”
For those who might have been wondering, the runner-up for “Lie of the Year” went to Glenn Beck — also instrumental in spreading Palin’s ‘death panel’ lie — for claiming “that John Holdren, a science adviser to President Barack Obama, proposed forcing abortions and sterilants on the U.S. population”.
Third place for Politifact.org’s “Lie of the Year” was “a claim [made] by conspiracy theorist Orly Taitz that Obama was born in Kenya” and therefore ineligible to be President of the United States. Her lie launched an entire “Birther” movement which is hugely popular within the Tea Party set. Here’s a clip of an audience of wing-nut Birthers literally domineering a Democratic representative’s Town Hall meeting.
One common element amongst all these egregious lies by the far right — used to drum up support for what would otherwise be unpopular positions — is that they are conspiratorial in nature. They are based on an underlying fear that those in government — namely, anyone left of center, who disagrees with their inflexible ideology — are illegitimate, have stolen ‘their’ government, and are out to take away rights that they believe are accorded to them by the Constitution.
These conspiracies provoke fear, anxiety and fury, which ultimately creates an extremely toxic political environment. Though it may be the perfect recipe for energizing the right-wing base, it also unfortunately can unleash violence from mentally unstable, hyper-paranoid, gun-owning individuals — ironically, those most likely to buy into fantastical Tea Party conspiracy theories.
And at the same time these propagandists stoke their supporters’ fury with blatant lies, they simultaneously use gun-rhetoric, gun-imagery, and make veiled threats towards their perceived ‘enemies’ at every possible opportunity.
TeaParty.org founder, Dale Robertson, who helped start the Tea Party movement nearly two years ago in Houston had this warning for Republican leaders in January 2010:
“We are turning our guns on anyone who doesn’t support constitutional conservative candidates”
Sarah Palin’s local newspaper, The Anchorage Daily, along with many prominent voices in the media have been voicing concerns about Sarah Palin’s gun-rhetoric for as long as she’s been on the national stage:
“RELOAD!” Sarah Palin shouted at right-wing supporters via Twitter on Tuesday after President Obama signed the House health care bill. On her Facebook page, she posted a U.S. map with crosshair targets in states where she’s planning to campaign against moderate Democrats who voted in favor of the health insurance overhaul. “We’ll aim for these races,” she wrote, in the “first salvo” leading up to the midterm elections. […]
Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle also leaned heavily on gun-rhetoric when running against Harry Reid. She hinted at the possibility for gun violence in the event she didn’t win the election:
In an interview she gave with conservative talk show host Bill Manders earlier in the campaign, Angle conspicuously floated, once again, “Second Amendment remedies” to deal not just with the supposedly ever-growing “tyrannical” U.S. government, but to replace her now general election opponent: Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Huffington Post is now reporting that firearms manufacturer, Palmetto State Armory, has commemorated “Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) health care reform-era “you lie” interruption of President Obama by engraving “You Lie” on a new, limited edition line of assault rifle components. You couldn’t make this stuff up!
Essentially, these right-wing voices provide a litany of lies which prey upon their followers’ deepest fears, and then they use gun-rhetoric and gun-imagery as if to suggest a violent course of action might be required in ‘getting their country back’.
After falsely screaming ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater for two years now, is it any wonder that when a Democratic Congressperson gets shot in the head by someone who comes across as delusional, as fixated on the written word of the constitution, and as emotionally invested in conspiracies, that the entire country would naturally assume he’s just another wing-nut Tea Bagger, and blame those same right-wing personalities — the ones who push the lies and conspiracies and use gun-rhetoric — for having likely incited his shooting rampage?
Fox News President Roger Ailes, more or less, conceded this point when he admitted to asking those at the Fox News network to “tone it down” in the wake of the Arizona shootings:
“I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually,” the Fox News president said. “You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that.”
Karl Rove On Obama Extending Bush Tax Cuts: We’re All Supply-Siders Now!
The new tax cut bill, signed into law Friday by President Barack Obama, will surely come back to haunt him in his 2012 reelection campaign. His quick capitulation to the Republicans, and aggressive advocacy for this fiscally irresponsible bill helps to further erode his credibility to one-time supporters.
First came his health care ‘reform’ bill — a backroom giveaway to BigPharma and the health insurance industry. Then came his watered-down financial reform plan, his escalation in Afghanistan, his refusal to close Guantanamo Bay, his green-lighting the assassinations of American citizens abroad without trial, his complicity in shielding Bush war crimes, etc. etc.
Extending George W. Bush’s destructive ‘supply side’ tax policies only solidifies this President’s reputation as one who has no core principles to speak of.
Candidate Obama promised his supporters repeatedly that he would end, once and for all, the deep tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. To extend these tax cuts at a time when we are engaged in two wars, and with deficits skyrocketing, poses a serious threat to our country’s fiscal health.
Moody’s recently threatened to downgrade the United State’s AAA credit rating if this tax bill was signed into law. The effects of a credit downgrade during a deep recession could be quite significant:
For the United States, a loss of the top Aaa rating, reduce the appeal of U.S. Treasuries, which currently rank as among the world’s safest investments.
“From a credit perspective, the negative effects on government finance are likely to outweigh the positive effects of higher economic growth,” Moody’s analyst Steven Hess said in a report sent late on Sunday.
After Obama announced his plan, Treasury prices fell sharply in volatile trade last week and yields have hit a six-month high, in part due to concerns over the effect the package will have on government debt levels.
If the bill becomes law, it will “adversely affect the federal government budget deficit and debt level,” Moody’s said.
Moody’s believes this tax bill will add an additional $700 to $900 billion in new national debt. A downgrade in the US credit rating could push interest rates upwards, thereby prolonging this deepest of all recessions.
The President never even attempted to make a compelling case to the American people for Keynesian economic principles — the ones he ran on; the ones he was elected on — but instead cowardly embraced the failed trickle down policies that helped to create much of our country’s problems: including runaway debt, and redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the highest earners over the last 30 years. His Democratic party still controls the Presidency and both Houses of Congress, and yet he is too timid to use the bully pulpit to promote any progressive policies.
The irony is, he will personally wear the new debt this bill creates around his neck like a noose. And the blame for it will be leveled by the very Republicans to whom he capitulated. After all, they were blaming him for Bush’s debt just ONE MONTH after he was sworn in as President.
The Republicans will shamelessly pick up where they left off a month ago: screaming that Obama has created runway deficits, and pointing out the urgency for government spending cuts.
Having caved in on extending Bush’s tax cuts for the richest 2%, he will be forced to offset the new debt by cutting important programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In addition, new government spending cuts will ‘trickle down’ to impact state budgets, in the form of more layoffs for school teachers and police officers.
Instead of writing the epitaph on Bush’s failed ‘trickle down’ economic policies, Obama has instead resurrected them from the grave.
So we as a country — governed by a Democratic President — will continue to endure a deepening divide between the rich and the poor, and will continue to watch our national debt escalate in a way that won’t create a single job, but will only threaten our country’s most cherished social programs.
Karl Rove is jumping for joy over this turn of events. After the signing of the bill, he jubilantly Tweeted:
Judging by remarks from Geithner, Hoyer & others celebrating Bush tax cut extension; we’re all supply-siders now!
Perhaps Obama should tap Rove to run his 2012 Presidential Campaign. They appear to be on the same page on just about every issue.
Health Insurers: Without Individual Mandate, We’ll Jack Up Your Rates!
Yesterday a Federal District Court in Virginia struck down the individual mandate part of President Obama’s new health care program. I was admittedly thrilled-to-pieces to hear the news!
With no cost controls to speak of, this bill was essentially a giveaway to the health insurance industry. Seriously, it’s obscene that Obama would break his campaign promise and mandate that every citizen in the United States purchase these unaffordable, high-deductible, crappy health insurance policies from for-profit companies. The health insurance industry has a long track record for price-gauging patients and businesses based on little more than exaggerated justifications.
Yesterday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had this to say about the necessity for the mandate:
So, again, we disagree with the ruling. Obviously the individual responsibility portions of the Affordable Care Act are the basis and the foundation for examining and doing away with insurance company discrimination on behalf of preexisting conditions. Obviously, without an individual responsibility portion in the law, you could not find yourself dealing with preexisting conditions because the only people that would likely get involved in purchasing health care would be the very sick. And obviously, that would be enormously expensive.
So there we have it. The White House, in their attempt to defend the individual mandate, is also giving the health insurance industry an opportunity to justify jacking up prices should the individual mandate part of the health care bill remain stricken by the higher courts.
And wouldn’t you know it, hearing these White House statements — like Mozart to their ears — the health insurance industry has enthusiastically jumped the bandwagon on the White House’s framing of the argument:
A federal judge’s ruling striking down a health-law mandate that all Americans buy insurance would cause “skyrocketing costs” if affirmed by higher courts, says a group that represents health plans in Washington.
Eliminating the mandate undercuts insurers’ ability under the law to guarantee coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and to lower cost for those who can’t afford to buy plans, said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the Washington lobby group, America’s Health Insurance Plans.
As if they weren’t planning on jacking up prices anyway.
Now just imagine if the public option had been included as part of the health care reconciliation bill. A decent affordable health care option, administered by the ‘not-for-profit’ government, would be an incentive, in itself, to ensure that most Americans would voluntarily purchase health insurance. An individual mandate would have been unnecessary.
To quote Candidate Obama during his 2008 Presidential campaign:
“If a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house. The reason they don’t have a house is they don’t have the money.”
Well said, Candidate Obama! That’s the — err — “change” I … voted … for …
The World Moves To Action: ‘Israel Must End Its Illegal Occupation!’
After having cringed through the most recent installment of the Middle East Peace ‘negotiations’, where the Netanyahu government publicly ‘castrated’ US President Barack Obama, the rest of the world appears to have had enough. Incoming US Majority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), recently promised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he and his fellow Republicans would […]
Ralph Nader: President Obama Will Be Primaried
Though he hasn’t ruled out a 2012 run himself, Ralph Nader reveals to The Hill that he’d prefer to have a fresh new face to challenge the Democratic President from the Left: “… it’s time for someone else to continue. I’ve done it so many times. When I go around the country, I’m telling people […]
In India: Obama Flip-Flops On Outsourcing American Jobs
It appears President Obama has two contradicting messages with regards to outsourcing American jobs overseas. The one he chooses to voice apparently depends on whether he’s speaking here at home or to an overseas audience, and whether his statements are made before or after an election. Here’s a video clip of the President, in May […]
Watch: How Obama Lost His Grass Roots Supporters – In A Nutshell
Here is a CAN’T MISS discussion between Dylan Ratigan, Glenn Greenwald and Cenk Uygur on the contentious divisions which now exist between Progressives and the President (and the Democratic Party). The three identify Obama’s ultimate betrayal — which underlies a series of more easily identifiable ones, including his deliberate undermining of meaningful health care reform, […]
The Most Effective Way To Protest At The Ballot Box
Are you disgusted with the Democrats, and their cynical attempts at impeding the very ‘change’ they promised us in 2008? We ushered them in with a clear mandate to make good on their promises, and once given complete control of the government, they’ve taken every opportunity to legislate the status-quo — all under the guise […]
The Reagan Legacy
Andrew Levine reflects on Ronald Reagan’s legacy, and how — to this very day — it continues to derail sensible policies: The most enthusiastic Reaganites today are radical, nationalist, racist and xenophobic; just like the fascists of old. And because Democrats lack the courage and conviction to stop them, they drag our politics rightward, regardless […]
Is Obama’s Health Care ‘Reform’ Plan Destined For Massachusetts’ Results?
Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post highlights the similarities between Obama’s and Massachusetts’ health care plans — specifically, the fact neither did a thing to reign in costs — and Samuelson forewarns that the nation’s plan will likely suffer the same fate as the Bay State’s: If you want a preview of President Obama’s […]
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