Matt Taibbi suggests why it is that so many people are so angry, and I agree with him. His theory is this: there are genuine local issues that have people riled up — Arizona has a genuine immigration problem, and when the New Jersey state supreme court ruled in favor of a Central American drunk driver because cops didn’t explain the consequences of refusing a breathalyzer in his native Spanish, well. C’mon. These issues, and many others like them, years ago would have caused a local uproar, which is entirely appropriate.
But now there is 24-hour partisan news.
Now, the slightest misstep on either side of the debate is blown up into a massive national conspiracy.
While Arizona really does have issues, it is simply not the case that a brown-skinned menace is sweeping northwards in any organized way. It’s not the case that Al-Qaida is building a mosque near Ground Zero to celebrate “conquering” the area; it’s just a bunch of Muslim-Americans who want a community center in Lower Manhattan.
The result of all this is really bad. Others have pointed out that our national airwaves right now bear a striking resemblance to the notorious Radio Rwanda broadcasts that “warned” Hutus that they were about to be attacked and killed by Tutsis (resulting, predictably, in the wholesale slaughter of Hutus by Tutsis acting in “self-defense”), and I agree. Let’s look at a few egregious examples:
On July 12, Glenn Beck suggested that the Obama administration was planning a race war. Note that he didn’t imply that. I’m being a little kind when I say he “suggested” it, in fact. What he did was say it outright: “”They (the Obama administration) want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are going to poke, and poke, and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it.” He also said that “we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, ‘Kill all white babies.’”
CNN contributor Erick Erickson picked up the ball with this gem: “Republican candidates nationwide should seize on this issue. The Democrats are giving a pass to radicals who advocate killing white kids in the name of racial justice and who try to block voters from the polls.”
Not really a bunch of wiggle room in there, is there?
If we now mix in a healthy helping of anti-Muslim rhetoric, some “the Mexicans are coming” here and there, and let’s not forget to add a dash of anti-gay sloganeering, we end up with the unsavory stew we face right now.
The shame of it is that it obscures. It shields good folks from understanding what has really been ailing them: crooks on Wall Street blew up our economy, and because we’ve been so distracted with the nonsense above, we’ve still not brought them to justice (nor have we fixed what made it happen in the first place).
We’re being duped, folks.
