The Manchurian Electorate.
John D. asks in a thread below:
It's an interesting question: Why did the knuckle draggers hate Clinton so much? As Drifty points out, he was essentially a moderate Republican who did everything they could have possibly wanted. Whenever they screeched "Jump!" at him, his only response was to ask "How high?" And the hate wasn't faked, either; they truly despised him with a passion that can only be accurately described as psychotic, especially when you consider how demonstrably conservative the man was.
Rehctaw theorizes in the same thread:
...Why they hated him was that his success did not ONLY benefit the right and those who are on the right's list of primary, mainline beneficiaries.
(Rehctaw also writes vivid, explody paragraphs like this:
...over here, which is why you should really drop by and sit a spell when you can.)
America's sin-eating demands national blinders, rationalization skills straight out of Compton, copious quantities of alcohol, mind-boggling special effects, Jedi mind-trick suspension of critical thinking and K's Neuralizer flashy thing.
...
There is something to what Rehctaw says (this notion that some people will never be able to enjoy Heaven unless they can also hear the screams of the tormented beneath them in Hell is something we understand quite well in Chicago. Here we call it "The Cubs/Sox cross-town rivalry") but I think a big piece of it is even simpler than that.
These people are hard-wired, burned-on-the-fucking-motherboard authoritarians who have all the behavioral and psychological range-of-motion of trained seals. What is genuinely dangerous about the Right is not their professed ideology (a shoebox-full of elitist abstractions about markets and men that has as little to do with human nature as 11th dimensional geometries have to do with getting me from here to the laundromat) or even their actual ideology (which,as Molly Ivins famously said about Pat Buchanan’s RNC speech in 1998, ‘... probably sounded better in the original German’).
No, what makes them so creepy is the depth and thoroughness of their brainwashing.
Compared to Conservatism, cigarettes are a mild and easily given-up leisure activity. They constitute a Manchurian Electorate: a 40-million-strong Confederate sleeper cell that can be flicked off and on like a switch, and whose furies and adulation can be modulated like burners on a camp stove.
Remember the 90s? When the half the country just lost its fucking mind under a feculent avalanche of Vince Foster murder and Clinton drug deal rumors whipped up by the puppets and pulpits of the Right?
Remember militias and black helicopter hysteria?
Remember the relentless, coordinated battle cry of “Government is evil and out to kill you” coming out of both the Republican Congress and Republican Hate radio 24/7/365?
Remember Tim McVeigh and Eric Rudolph?
The Pig People hated Bill Clinton simply because Right wing radicals whose path to the One Party Christopath Rule was being blocked by Bill Clinton told them to hate Bill Clinton.
Because Bill Clinton was in their way.
From the Bill Clinton interview with Rolling Stone from October, 2000.
THE STRUGGLE WITH NEWT GINGRICH
…
[Newt] was very candid with me about his political objectives. And he, in turn, from time to time, would get in trouble with the right wing of his own caucus, because they said I could talk him into too much.
On the other hand, as I told you, when he did things like blaming every bad thing that happened in America on Democrats, the 1960s and all that I thought it was highly destructive.
How did it make you feel personally?
At some point, probably around 1996, I got to the point where I no longer had personal feelings about those things - like the Whitewater investigation and the travel office investigation. Newt was smart. He knew there was nothing in any of that stuff. It was all politics to him; it was about power.
But he really did believe that the object of politics was to destroy your opponent. He ran former Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright out of Congress on account of that. And he had an enormous amount of success. He won the Congress basically by having a take-no-prisoners, be-against-everything approach.
Didn't he tell you once on the phone that he was planning to lead a revolution against you?
He thought he was leading a revolution, and I was in the way. … He thought that he could create, for the rest of my presidency, almost a parliamentary system, where he'd be the prime minister and make the policy, and I'd be in charge of foreign policy, and he'd help me.
How'd you develop your strategy for dealing with Newt - waiting him out, then outflanking him?
…
It's easier for the Republicans to be against everything than the Democrats, because people view us as the party of affirmative government. I believed in balancing the budget. I just didn't want to do it the way they wanted to.
What's the bottom line on Newt? If you were a historian, what would you say about Gingrich?
That he was immensely successful in consolidating the power of the Republican Party in its right wing and then winning the Congress, winning the historic struggle for Congress in 1994, by opposing me right down the line.
…
REFLECTIONS ON IMPEACHMENT
In the history books, it will say, of course, that you were the second president ever to be impeached. How does that make you feel? Will it cloud your real accomplishments?
The history books will also record, I think, that both impeachments were wrong. And that's why they failed. And I'm just grateful that, unlike Andrew Johnson, I was less embittered by it, and I had more support, from the public and in the Congress, and so I was able to resume my duties and actually get a lot done for the American people in the aftermath.
…
What do you think of Ken Starr now?
I think he did what he was hired to do.
You told me you never really met him and had no ill feelings.
I met him once, when he interviewed me. But he was hired to keep the inquiry going past the '96 election and to do whatever damage he could. That's why he was put in, and he did what they asked him to do.
What's your take on Representative Henry Hyde -who was supposed to be Mr. Reasonable, and then went and seemingly defied the will of the people after the '98 elections?
He did what he was hired to do, too. The right wing was in control of the Congress, and they thought they had paid in the 1998 elections when they nearly lost the House. They thought they had a free shot to put a hit on me, and so they did. I don't think it's complicated.
They stayed with their right wing, and they thought they would pay no price in 2000. They thought, whatever happened, it would all be over by then. They thought they could put a black mark on me in history, and that was really important to them. They were really angry they got beat, they were angry.
…
One of the purely tactical virtues of the Obama candidacy was that it temporarily but measurably screwed up the GOP plans and timetables for 2008.
The Republican’s wanted to run against Senator Clinton so bad they could barely stand upright for fear of showing the world their rage-stoked political priapism. They wanted to run against her because they thought they were ready for her. Because for eight years they’d been preparing their own Clinton Atlantic Wall, with every road and keyword mined and every ancient scar and scandal zeroed in like so many Normandy hedgerows.
Hehehe.
Too bad, fuckers.
20 comments:
Again, and not to quibble, -your autopsy covers it nicely in the Cubs/Sox zealotry- the whole Clinton thing transcended the usual piqued disdain Rs held for the opposition.
It was a deeply personal, deeply sinewed hatred of one man, one voice and one specific time spun seemingly out of whole cloth. Loathing doesn't come close.
Even the right's hatred of FDR had limits. With Clinton it was a primal hatred with extreme prejudice. It wasn't strictly political. It was epic, it was over-the-top extremism usually reserved for berserkers, blood feuds or suicide bombers.
With the Clintons functionally de-throned, that vein still flows through the party of destruction, simmering ominously with the threat of eruption on command.
and thanks for the plug.
You're still the man.
I've been thinking for some time now that the Republicans will try to do to Obama what Clinton says they tried to do to him; namely, form a shadow government like you see in a parliamentary system. All the crazy hoo-hah about voter fraud is gonna lead the Republican noise machine to insist that Obama is an illegitimate president. They'll carry on as if McCain is the real president, and try to ignore or undermine Obama at all cost.
how do you DO that photoshop thingy? My gawd, dg. My gawd.
It was a deeply personal, deeply sinewed hatred of one man, one voice and one specific time spun seemingly out of whole cloth.
And let us not forget, deeply profitable for the spinners. The right will be getting royalty payments on Clinton-hate until 2030 or until he's dead, whichever comes sooner.
Since you're a Poe fan, I might as well add this analogy:
Clinton is to the right-wing as Fortunato is to Montresor.
Edgar Allen Poe correctly identified this vicious streak in the American character many, many years ago: introverted and thus non-empirical, obsessed with revenge upon enemies who don't actually care about you, a melodramatic sense of self-importance, an absolute disconnect from human feeling right up until the moment you kill someone, a meticulous ability to plan, and on and on.
And now it has largely coalesced into a political movement. Amazingly, the story completely prefigures Nixon by 123 years.
Not sure if the right wingers can do to BHO what they did to WJC. To state the utterly obvious, things are different now. There's nothing like watching 30% of your retirement savings go "Poof!" in a Paulson Minute to focus even the most addled of minds. Not saying BHO will get a holiday, just that the electorate may be less patient with Republican bullshit. That said, I also don't think BHO has much time to act and show results, either.
The fact that Newt thinks he will run for president in 2012 is rather cheerful, though. Definitely looking forward to the Mittens/Simple Sarah/Rudy/Newtie Follies.
I think tw33z is correct. The right-wing propaganda industry will adapt quickly enough to an Obama presidency if he wins.
The discontent which that industry needs will arise quickly enough once the swing voters--who will be critical to Obama's victory if he wins--realize that Obama will not be allowed to end the wars, even if he wants to do that.
Neither will he be allowed to pursue any agenda that redistributes significant wealth to the common citizens of the USA, even if he wants to do that. Wall Street firms are his biggest contributors. Wall Street OWNS his bony ass.
As the swing voters realize they have simply exchanged one set of sneering elitists for a different set of sneering elitists, and their main reasons for voting for Obama go unfulfilled, even as they grow disgusted with the "Chicago Way" of doing things, their minds will fall open to the propagandists.
Obama's history suggests he can only win when he can suppress or remove his opposition in one way or another, hence the "get in their faces" intimidation campaign.
Despite the fears of some of my new acquaintances over on the Obamaskeptical blogs, he will not be able to do that with the GOP and its financial backers.
I find the fears of an Obama dictatorship amusing, as such a dictatorship would have to be enforced by the police and military--and those institutions are largely composed of members of the "bitter" white working-class. Anyone who fears those folks would stolidly shoot down their own kind on the orders of a Whole Foods Nation snob wields an Imagination Fu stronger than mine.
Castro 2.0? Naaah, Carter 2.0!
I suspect that in the long run, an Obama victory will be a splendid thing for the GOP.
So maybe the question to ask is this: How does BHO kneecap the GOP and the media before they get on his case?
The way to figure out whether the right likes something or not is very simple. Do the right guys get rich?
Hey, Driftglass, thanks for quoting me. What a surprise, I am not worthy, etc. Heh, heh.
"So maybe the question to ask is this: How does BHO kneecap the GOP and the media before they get on his case?"
But this assumes he'll want to, which is something we can't just automatically take for granted. The excerpts from the Clinton interview quoted here brought to my mind an earlier audience that Slick Willy granted to Rolling Stone, shortly after he first became President. Does anyone else remember this piece? Towards the end of that interview, Clinton very suddenly and abruptly (and totally out of left field) began railing against "liberals"...an early indication of his DLC-brand "bipartisan" bullshit, which he peddled non-stop for years and fully in the face of the worst kind of Rethug abuse, long after it was evident the GOP wanted nothing to do with "compromise" or "reaching across the aisle" or any other such "Aw, gee, fellahs, can't we all just be friends?" weasle words.
I obviously pretty much agree with everything Drifty has to say on the subject, not least this passage summarizing it all...
"The Pig People hated Bill Clinton simply because Right wing radicals whose path to the One Party Christopath Rule was being blocked by Bill Clinton told them to hate Bill Clinton."
The one quibble I have here is with Clinton "blocking" anything. He was no impediment to the scum at all...but they could pretend he was, which must have been immemsely gratifying to them. In Clinton, the vermin had everything they could have possibly wanted: A handmaiden to the corporations and a neocon that they could still playact was some dreadfully oppresive enemy, merely by virtue of his technically being a Demcorat. I remember one exchange I had with a particularly stupid wingnut back in the day, in which the gormless bastard accused me of being an apologist for the Clintons literally 2 posts or so after I'd said this (and I quote): "Bill Clinton is little more than pond scum on the agenda of the Multinational Corporations". Yep, I was nothing more than a bad ol' Dem Party hack, eh?
I truly don't believe Hillary Clinton would have won election against John McCain. It was vitally important that Barack Obama become the party standard bearer, and the Republicans did not expect it or have any plan to run against him.
US Blues--Obama won't be able to do that. The main reason he is leading now is that most of the Corporate Media are giving Obama the same kind of idolatry they gave Dubya in 2000 and 2004. For some reason or reasons, most of the owners of the Corporate Media have decided they want Obama, so they have ordered their talking heads and typing hands to push Obama. The CM rivals Wall Street as Obama's mightiest constituents. The Corporate Media will have brought Obama into the White House if he wins--and if he turns on them, the CM can take him out of the White House.
In a side note, I now see that Rove--and Atwater before him--were never the Luthoresque evil geniuses that I sometimes thought they were. The real reason for the Bush Sr. and Jr. victories in 1988, 2000, and 2004 was Corporate Media bias. [Fraud probably played a major role in the latter two "victories" as well.]
If Obama can restore real Media Fairness, he'll put a spoke in the Conservative bandwagon/locomotive (emphasis on LOCO).
But the cons are already fighting against that, arent they, warning that OBH will stifle Rush's "Freedom of Speech". With a Dem Congress and a popular Dem president, it will be interesting.
One reason the Clinton haters were so personal in their invective was that there really was no policy disagreement. He governed as a moderate Republican. Without a policy dispute, the only thing to go after him on were, well, personal matters.
Kathy--Obama, if he wins, will know that he will need the Corporate Media in his corner again if he wants a second term. Hence, he will not want to anger the Media Lords by imposing any significant burdens on how they run their businesses, so any "fairness" reforms will be toothless.
The USA of 2012 will look very, very much like the USA of 2008. The political system of the USA was designed carefully to forbid rapid, sweeping changes.
If Obama is lucky, he'll be Bill Clinton 2.0; if unlucky, he'll be Jimmy Carter 2.0. Selah.
One more data point. Last week I attended an international conference where one of the 'headline' speakers was a US pundit/economist who put forward the following talking points:
1) It was the Asian's fault interest rates were so low - their savings pushed Wall Street into bad assets in a search for yield. The sub-prime crisis was Clinton's(!) fault because he pushed for low-income housing loans.
2) Paulson gave the election to BHO when he let Lehmans fail. Only Bin Laden can save McCain now. (Yes, he said this, to an audience containing a significant number of Muslims including the ex. PM of Pakistan.)
3) But it will be a one-term Democratic presidency because a deep and long recession is baked in; which BHO will make worse by raising taxes (ie. letting the Bush cuts expire) and rolling back free trade agreements.
4) The real danger to Republicans (and the free world, presumably) is not having enough Senate seats to filibuster every bill.
I was stunned, but this spin is what is now holding the Republican hard-right together. They have given up on this election, but hope to stall any progress and pin all the blame for the results of the Bush years on Obama.
NO, it will NOT be a one term Democratic presidency, peedee! Mister Obama will have a Democratic Congress to work with for his FIRST 4 years. The Progressive agenda for America and the Planet will be carried forward and further afield than any can imagine!
Mr. Natural--The rich own the Democrats, including your Plastic Jesus himself, just like they own the Elephascists.
How will they carry forward a "progressive" agenda, which, by definition, would hurt their owners, the rich? Also, lest we forget, at that level, most of the politicians themselves are rich. Why would they carry out an agenda that would hurt their OWN portfolios?
Do you also still believe in Santa Claus?
Forget Blue states. America is Beige. Like those pestel revolutions in Yougreen and Tealand. We must take to the streets with people power and keep them from steeling the election again. The party of Timothy McVeigh and Pat Bucannon inflicts terrorism like Waco and Rudy Ridge. What is wrong with a few thousand Jews dead on 9/11 when so many slaves got genocide. The Greek Benaki Louisiana shipping and the Lehman Alabama finance brought them over from the Lords of Hartum.
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