Bill Clinton's election in 1992 gave rise to the American "militia movement": hordes of overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men from suburban and rural areas who convinced themselves they were defending the American way of life from the "liberals" and "leftists" running the country by dressing up in military costumes on weekends, wobbling around together with guns, and play-acting the role of patriot-warriors. Those theater groups -- the cultural precursor to George Bush's prancing 2003 performance dressed in a fighter pilot outfit on Mission Accomplished Day -- spawned the decade of the so-called "Angry White Male," the movement behind the 1994 takeover of the U.S. Congress by Newt Gingrich and his band of federal-government-cursing, pseudo-revolutionary, play-acting tough guys.[More]See, sophisticated and urbane metrosexual Glenn Greenwald just can't fathom that the restoration has nothing at all to do with the neo con job. Or he can, but makes a living exploiting the charade.
He did get one thing right. We're not "very interested in bipartisanship and in transcending ideological divisions."
Been there, done that. Look what it got us.
[Via Daniel M]
8 comments:
I am so tired of hearing that we need to come together or look for the bipartisan solution, etc...
If you are a politician and you ran on a political ideology....why would you ever meet in the middle?? That just mixes your ideals with your enemy's.... A political hodge podge that does nothing for the people.
you know, just the other week gg actually had a thing or two critical to say about domestic surveillance and imperialism abroad.
guess he wasn't pulling in enough attention and ad revenue for salon?
time for all the puppies to jump into the new administration's lap.
shucks, did i say just the other week? i meant just before the obama inauguration. silly me.
And then he continues with the next paragraph:
"What was most remarkable about this allegedly "anti-government" movement was that -- with some isolated and principled exceptions -- it completely vanished upon the election of Republican George Bush, and it stayed invisible even as Bush presided over the most extreme and invasive expansion of federal government power in memory. Even as Bush seized and used all of the powers which that movement claimed in the 1990s to find so tyrannical and unconstitutional -- limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending -- they meekly submitted to all of it, even enthusiastically cheered it all on."
Which is exactly right. In fact, further along he expresses a sentiment that shouldn't be out of place here:
"There isn't even anything wrong or illegitimate with citizens organizing themselves into a movement that -- whether by design or effect -- is threatening to entrenched elites. If anything, we've had too little of that. In fact, it's only a complete lack of fear of a meek, passive and impotent citizenry on the part of political and financial rulers -- a certainty that there will be no consequences no matter what they do -- that could have given rise to the endless corruption, deceit, lawbreaking, destruction, and outright thievery of the last eight years."
I think it's pretty obvious that most of the people who are suddenly acting so outraged over the Obama administration and are just now rushing out to buy guns don't have the slightest concern for liberty. Heck, they don't even like liberty. They're just the American equivalent of British football hooligans, getting ready to riot because their team lost the big game. If they ever do actually use those guns, they won't be doing squat to promote liberty, they'll just be a bunch of petty vicious thugs throwing a temper tantrum because the wrong team won a meaningless contest.
I think Ken is exactly right - many folks were just fine with the PATRIOT Act when "their guy" was in power.
I don't think, though, that the Soccer Hooligan assessment is quite right. These latecomers to "I Love My Country but Fear My Government" aren't (I think) upset because their side lost. Instead, they have some blinders on that keep them from seeing that well-intentioned Republican Christians like themselves can violate their rights just as horribly as secular Socialists. They also forget that their team isn't always going to be in power.
I wonder if these newcomers will fade back into the woodwork if the Republicans win big in the 2010 elections....if we have that long.
"Respectabiggle said...
I wonder if these newcomers will fade back into the woodwork if the Republicans win big in the 2010 elections....if we have that long."
Nope, don't think we have that long, but then again, I am one of those Paranoids (the ones he did not really check out before slandering us) as I have been hollering for a long time. From Ruby Ridge all the way through Komarade Klinton's and GW's terms and not stopping with a foreigner from Kenya elected.
However, he blames it on Bush being elected and not once mentioning the Fibbie's and F-Tropp's infiltration of those militia's- those that did not go underground and the new ones...
The problem with Greenwald's article is that he identifies the Republican takeover in 1994 with the militia movement as if every single person who voted to keep his hunting rifle was some anti-government militant and therefore 99% of the militia movement, which was so huge because Clinton said so, were phonies and that apparently guys like Wayne Fincher don't exist. And he pretends that everyone buying guns today because of the recession and because of pending legislation are all joining militias. And he apparently bases this on some stuff he sees on Glenn Beck about some worst case scenarios based on the state of the world economy and Greenwald attributes it to some anti-Obama uprising that wouldn't exist if Bush were still president. Glenn Beck has been bugging out about these scenarios for over 2 years.
I am one pissed off white-appearing male who has been fucked with all he will stand.
Greenwald is disingenuous (polite-speak for liar). There were a great many of us who opposed the Patriot Act and the other political atrocities committed by both Clinton and Bush. But he dare not write about our commitment to liberty. So he must present it as anger over some "meaningless contest".
However, having said that. Some of his points are valid. Though he does ignore those same political atrocities perpetrated by more persons than just G.W. Bush. Bush's administration was not the beginning of these misdeeds, just a continuation of the trespasses already engaged in. That is not a rationalization or apology for Bush, some of the things he brought about are unforgivable, but he wasn't alone in those trespasses, nor was he the author of that movement.
When I see these simple minded sonsofbitches examine the entire picture of perfidy, perhaps then they will have some legitimacy. Until then they are just shills for one abuser over another.
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