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2 September, 2006
When people study history, especially the nasty parts, a natural thing to do is to compare those prior events to contemporary ones and identify parallels. Objective historians work hard to qualify these kinds of comparisons, while others are merely looking for whatever they can find to win the argument of the day. That's how, for example, stem cell medical research becomes a capital-H "Holocaust" in the mind of James Dobson.
The biggest reason people do this is because historical images are powerful. They amplify a new message with a common frame of reference that the audience can understand clearly. But when misapplied, they either make the speaker look ridiculous or dramatically escalate the vitriol over the issue in question. The latter is the desired outcome, of course, for people who knowingly distort the lessons of history for their own purposes.
In our lifetime, the ultimate historical invocation is and always will be "the Nazis." When one wants to conjure up images of total irredeemable evil, cue Nuremburg rally footage. The fact that the world has not faced a threat anything like Nazi Germany since they were defeated in 1945 means that the comparison is usually hyperbolic in nature. But that surer than hell doesn't stop people from irresponsibly making it.
Since the United States was attacked on September 11th, 2001, we have seen a steady escalation of comparative rhetoric to justify our actions around the world -- and at home -- in response to that attack. It's possible that "escalation" is not the best word, since on September 12, 2001 there were plenty of conservative pundits equating Islamist extremism with "the Nazis." Not long after 9/11, right-wing columnist Michelle Malkin offered up a defense of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II to justify the extrajudicial inprisonment of hundreds of "enemy combatants" by the United States government. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, radio host Michael Savage called for the arrest of antiwar protesters under the Sedition Act, unenforced in America since 1921.
While this kind of infammatory rhetoric was easy to find on the AM dial and conservative web sites, for a significant amount of time the Bush administration avoided using it. A few slip-ups like Bush's reference to the war on terror as a "crusade" in late 2001 notwithstanding, the administration generally kept the historical fearmongering out of their speeches -- relying instead on lies about the threat currently posed by Iraq and her ties to 9/11.
During the 2004 election season, the verbal attacks on those opposed to the administration's policies began to escalate. Dick Cheney famously told Americans that if they elected John Kerry, he was "concerned" that "we'll get hit again." Americans chose in 2004 not to replace their sitting President in the middle of a war, with statements like Cheney's deeply affecting their decision.
Since 2004, however, the situation has changed. The public has lost faith in the President's ability to win the wars he's started. The public understands now that much of what they were told to justify the invasion of Iraq was a lie, and that the war has not made us any safer. They see how the violence in Iraq is creating new radicals to endanger ourselves and our children. How we've given these radicals exactly what they need to justify the next 9/11 to their supporters. Above all a majority of Americans understand now that Iraq, as brutish and despotic as it was, had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on the United States.
These realizations have grown in 2006 into a massive backlash against the Bush administration and the Republican Party generally. The GOP, after 12 years of dominance, is facing the possibility of a major electoral defeat this November. The defeat they're looking at is not merely the statistically predictable second-term midterm election that often goes poorly for the sitting President's party. With a majority of Americans opposed to their foreign policies, and hurting under their domestic tinkle-down favoritism of a tiny percentage of the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else, it's not just a setback they face -- the Republican Party is facing its Whigification. Its destruction as we know it today, and eventual replacement with a new representative of conservatism in American politics.
And they know it.
With that in mind, a lot of things are easier to understand. Last month, President Bush for the first time began using the term "Islamic fascists" to describe America's enemies in the war on terror. Not widely noted in the press, this marked a major rhetorical escalation: one I submit is the product of a desperate realization that they are losing the hearts and minds of Americans. And again, they've been debunked right out of the gate: Bush worked up the courage to use those words in the wake of the halting of an "imminent terrorist attack" in Britain -- the "imminent" nature of which, it turns out, has been greatly exaggerated.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's speech in Salt Lake City this week marked the next logical step in this desperate escalation, invoking Neville Chamberlain and the asspeasement of Hitler in order to elevate decades of foreign policy mistakes above scrutiny. And if you don't agree 100% you're guilty of "moral or intellectual confusion."
It's a reactionary, closed-minded argument that will nevertheless work on many people -- people who already have been taught that the "majority of Americans" are morally or intellectually debased. This November, that majority of Americans will speak out at the polls; and I believe it will prove disastrous for the Republican Party, who led us to this ugly point in our history. What comes after will depend on those people who bought into the Republican wave of hyper-nationalist rhetoric and false historical parallels.
A year ago, I noted a post on Blogs for Bush where author Mark Noonan claimed that Republicans "are in a (thus far) non-violent civil war for the soul of the United States." I'm reminded of that post this morning, and wonder if he still thinks so. I'll bet he does, even more today than he did then. What will Mark Noonan do on November 8th if his belligerent mindset is repudiated by the voters? Will he start looking to rebuild like a defeated Whig in the 1850s, or will we see something else we've only read about in our history books?
Five years ago, nobody would have seriously entertained the notion of American politics degenerating into violent confrontation. To which I can only add this: we liberals aren't the ones who would make this unthinkable idea thinkable. And should such a nightmare ever come to pass, we won't be the ones historians will liken to the Nazis.
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