The idea that elected officiasl are not legitimate holders of their elected office can come from concerns about the fairness of the election or about the officials themselves. It's often mixed up in the believers' heads. Obama was elected by fraud, he's not a natural-born American, or (more likely) no one with his political philosophy should ever be elected, in these people's minds.
Graphic: xark.typedpad.com
So Obama is treated like a usurper. But Clinton was also treated like a usurper, and there's no doubt that he was a natural-born American. I think the concerns about fraud and Obama's citizenship are just smokescreens for the real reason people don't want him as president--that they don't want someone with his politics in the White House. Therefore, any Democratic president is going to get this treatment--the constant complaints, the attacks on his legitimacy, the insults like "traitor," and the calls for impeachment.
Clinton got it too, and it was surprising in its virulence at the time. Hillary called it a "vast rightwing conspiracy," but it actually became normal operating procedure for Clinton's GOP opponents. The machinery hasn't ever stopped. Now Obama is the target, along with his senior staff, particularly Eric Holder for some reason.
Bear in mind that there can easily be an unending series of complaints about any official since none of us is perfect or all-powerful or able to accomplish every single thing within our purview. I think the Obama administration has been relatively clean, which is why Operation Fast and Furious is still such an item of anger for the right. It's the biggest club with which to beat the administration, and it isn't that big (in my opinion), especially since it began under President Bush in 2006.
I wonder about this sense that any Democratic president is a usurper. It can feel that the president doesn't have much support if you live in a deep-red state or receive your political information in a partisan echo chamber. Many people, on the right, left, or middle, think that they are actually in the majority, or would be if only:
- The media wasn't so biased.
- The media would get the truth out.
- Voting fraud was eliminated.
- Stupid voters weren't allowed to vote.
- Freeloaders weren't allowed to vote.
- Immigration laws were enforced.
The echo chamber of media and the people around you can certainly reinforce that idea, and Fox News and other right-wing outlets do plenty of conscious reinforcement. But I think there's more. There's a kind of resentment at work. It's resentment of elites, particularly in non-conservative media and in academia, who have used their power to stifle. Many people fell stifled, belittled, and embattled. It's no wonder they want to take the country back. That's how anyone feels when they're shouted down, or just perceives that kind of treatment. So they turn their resentment on these elites and their allies, the Democrats.
I don't have a quick solution to this. But I want to remind people that civil discourse and true listening are lacking, and we see the outcome in this situation and probably thousands of others.
Not a bullseye for this topic, but a great graphic
from
rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/tag/paul-street
Extras:
Type "most Americans want" into Google to see what phrases come up in auto-complete.
Please excuse typos in this post. Blogger lost it and I had to retype it from the preview page in the Firefox history. Freak accident, but only electrons were harmed.
1 comment:
Maybe it has to do with a sense of tremendous disappointment in the world, a kind of festering grievance with history. Many Americans, especially white Americans, especially conservative Americans, feel that the world is not what they were promised. They were promised an American Century, a world in which the economic and cultural trend lines of about 1959 would continue for a good three or four generations. Thus there would be security and near guaranteed prosperity for anyone willing to work, society would proudly and overwhelmingly proclaim the familial and moral values of the white middle class of the post-war era, and the world would gradually absorb the American model.
Instead came riots and racial upheaval, social protest and political discord, an economy that does not treasure their skills or values, and a world that has seen the American model and often found it unattractive and inferior. Where is the world they were promised, where is the world they believed in? This is not the American Century of which they dreamed. These politicians are not the leaders they envisaged. These values are not the ones that were supposed to conquer the world.
Where are my flying cars? A comic complaint, but more real than we imagine. Where are the clear, glorious victories of American arms? Where are the huddled nations looking with awe and envy at their country, longing to emulate it? Where are the employers ready to embrace hard work and reward it with honor and lifelong security like that of a second family? Where are the safe, kindly communities where no one needed formal welfare for no one was systematically disadvantaged? Where are the doors that are never locked and the physicians that do not know how to perform abortions for surely no one would desire such a thing?
Who has denied them these things? What demon warped the world into this mocking, hurtful travesty? Why do they fear, they who were promised generations of wealth and honor, they who were destined to rule the earth from a kingdom of wonders? Now a black man with a foreign name claims to be President, and the sounds of Spanish grow louder. Now the verities in which they believed are challenged and ridiculed by the keepers of knowledge, and Europeans and Asians regard American institutions with barely-concealed sneers. Now the kindly employers are long vanished, and hard workers are a dime a dozen.
What's not to be angry about?
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