Intransigent Demagogues

When I was 14, my teacher Mr. Braun required us to read Us and Them: A History of Intolerance in America. This book and its title made me acutely aware of the dangers of an us vs. them mentality. It made me pay attention to those pronouns and how people use them in conversation.

I once saw Thomas Friedman speak at SMU and chatted with him. I think I irritated him with questions, but I was young, naïve, and fascinated with him, his writing, activism, travels and view of the world.

“Where did the ‘we’ go?” is the title of his op-ed piece in today’s New York Times. He compares our divided political times to the “ugly mood in Israel” in 1995, when he was there to interview Minister Yitzhak Rabin, shortly before he was assassinated.

I like that Friedman pays attention to these pronouns as well. The disappearance of ‘we’ in our politics is deeply scary.

Friedman talks about “our poisonous political environment” where “something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into deliegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assignation.”

In the Us and Them book mentioned above, walks the reader through American history where environments of unchecked hate made unspeakable atrocities possible.

Today I also came across this video from yesterday when Bette Midler speaks of Glenn Beck.

"I've never had a laugh from Glenn Beck," she says. "I find him terrifying... he's like an old school demagogue and it's really frightening. If you look around the world and what this kind of behavior has done, like in Rwanda, where the demagogues got on the radio and fermented all that hate...."

demagogy: "a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears and expectations of the public- typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes."

Now I have actually been to Rwanda and around the time Friedman was in Israel, Midler is right, the hate spued on the Rwandan radio was relentless. It was an environment of accepted hate and 'jokes' about killing, like the American comments in the links lised below, were common. That environment exploded. A political assassination spurned people to atrocities against neighbors, families, children. Slaughters occurred in Christian Churches, Schools, homes. Because people were SO blinded by hate.

In the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center, they played radio exerts of these demagogues. When intransigent people have microphones. It makes their position seem legitimate.

intransigent: (uncompromising) characterized by a refusal to compromise or to abandon an extreme position or attitude

Friedman concludes his article by wondering if "we can seriously discuss serious issues any longer and make decisions on the basis of the national interest."

"We can't change this overnight," he writes, "but what we can change, and must change, is people crossing the line between criticizing the president and tacitly encouraging the unthinkable and the unforgivable."

To leave you with:

a Daily Beast article and video from April '09 that talks about the militia movement against Obama in America.

(added)

Rolling Stone article from October issue- The Lie Machine, by Tim Dickinson.

-- very good and well researched article. also the graphic which I will scan later if i can; mentions 'Missouri high school bans marching band t-shirt for promoting evolution (the graphic of the shirt shows an ape to a human evolution chart with each monkey/caveman playing an instrument.

--- also mentions that "the GOP candidate for governor of Idaho (Rex Rammell) jokes about a hunting permit to shoot Obama" and even worse is his apology which I found when checking the veracity of that threat