Well, the cultural studies class of 2019 have got their thesis topic sorted out, with the rise and rise of the “birther” controversy in the US. For those not immersed in the wilder realms of political psycho-pathology, the birthers are a lunatic fringe of the US Republican lunatic mainstream, who continue to believe that Barack Obama was not born in the US, and is not therefore eligible to be President.
They’ve been agitating for more than a year and a half now, back from when it seemed at least possible, though highly unlikely that Obama had been born somewhere else — and the release of a Hawaiian birth certificate, announcements in Hawaiian papers, and the absence of any evidence to support a contrary scenario has not stopped them.
This week they thought they’d hit the motherlode — an actual Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Hussein Jr. Sadly it turned out to be not only a forgery, but quite possible a gotcha hoax — the form taken from an online posting of a South Australian certificate, of all things, the names of the registrar etc changed to be that of a popular US cleaning product.
Every movement gets its alfoil hat brigade — what matters is how you deal with them. “Nothing to the right (or left) of me,” the old adage, de facto means, shoot the crazies. This the US Right has signally failed to do, with blustering nativist CNN host Lou Dobbs, defending their “right to speak”.
Since this was not in question, the effect of the remark was simply to attach the birthers to the side of the right, like barnacles on a ketch. Karl Rove, confronted the Kenyan certificate said “it is almost certainly a forgery.”
And that whacky rodomontade, the National Review’s Corner blog, still entertains the occasional fringe-dweller willing to mumble that maybe there’s something in this, needs examination etc etc …
But it’s easy to see why the US Right can’t perform this most basic of political functions — the line between fantasy and reality has been so blurred on so many other issues, that it’s impossible to implement when it’s really needed. After all, one of the big books for the right in 2008 was Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg, which took the undoubtedly true observation that elements drawn into fascism — a celebration of nature, the organic etc etc — also pop up on the left, to thereby argue that fascism was entirely a left-wing movement.
Which left him arguing that while the Iraq war (“my God is bigger than their God”) could not be described as fascist, the Whole Foods supermarket chain could be.
When people like this are your intellectual leaders — Goldberg, the son of the woman who released the Monica Lewinsky tapes in the 90s, is online editor of Nation Review — the withdrawal from the reality-based community is complete. Thus, at the beginning of the Obama administration, Goldberg and others were debating whether it was more effective politically to describe Obama as a socialist, a communist, or a fascist (it’s a trick question).
The bizarre “tea-parties” movement — protesting at, um, a legitimately elected representative government imposing taxation — has now fluttered and died, despite its initial bankrolling by FOX News, with a little of that two billion that Rupert just lost.
And on it goes. That the right can no longer draw a border between the merely extreme and the insane is a sign that clinical paranoia has taken over as the house style — the moment at which the outside world is reorganised to match the mental picture of it, rather than v-v.
The birthers cannot accept that a black man is President — it’s a category error, so their mind finds a way to believe he isn’t. That’s obvious, but the more subtle form is that the right cannot accept that the US people chose a moderately left-liberal government, so they have to define it as a fascist coup.
The bad craziness explains one single fact about American political life — even though Obama’s ratings are going down, as difficult decisions and messy compromise take their toll, those of the Republicans aren’t going up.
Which is why we managed to smuggle in a Communist Luo tribesman right under their noses…
This reminds me of the attempts by the lunatic Left mainstream, of which Guy is a founding member, during the Bush vs Kerry campaign, to prove Bush’s national Guard service record had been falsified, led by senior journalist, Dan Rather.
That very ‘experienced’ journalist, in the best traditions of Rundle et al, produced a document which went to air on Rather’s 60 minutes programme for CBS ( no , not Fox! ) purporting to “prove’ that Bush was a liar.
What was the end result? Some bloggers ( terrible when the Left lose central control. That’s why they love everything centralised !) quickly demonstrated that the CBS team were using forgerd documents. Oh My!
Rather, and 3-4 other senior CBS executives, got the flick. Sic transit gloria mundi.
All that remains is for these idiots to be uploaded into their own virtual universe where they can make stuff up until the end of time. Or something.
“Moderately left-liberal government”? I suppose it depends on where in the political spectrum you begin. In European eyes even “left-liberal” American congresspersons are somewhere to the right of most European conservative parliamentarians.
After eight months of an Obama administration the labelling is irrelevant anyway. Apart from some slight changes of tone the administration’s foreign policies are the same as Bush: an imperialist crusade based on notions of American exceptionalism and their belief that they have a God-given right to control the world’s resources and remove those governments with the temerity to disagree.
As Gore Vidal remarked, one property party with two right wings.
John James: You need to check your facts. Bush was a war dodger who spent most of his military service (nominally with the Texas Air National Guard) AWOL. The fact that Rather got set up with a forged document does not detract from the central truth, that Bush didn’t even carry out the tasks his family connections got him. The forged document became a typical distraction from the real issues, but then that is a common ploy of the US media.
James, sound like CBS could use you! You certainly seem that sort of guy, apologising for every despot, thug and Islamist that confronts the United States.