The Political Wars: Crazy Right vs Crazy Left in the US

Here is an excellent piece in Salon magazine by Glenn Greenwald pointing out how a left-leaning magazine has taken the same role that right-leaning media like Fox "news": character assassination. The supposed "investigative" piece imputes political motives to everything and never considers any more innocent interpretation. This drives the political divide in the US. Each side gets more crazy with every attack. Nutty.

Here's a bit from the article:

One long-standing -- and justifiable -- progressive grievance is that whenever ordinary Americans allow their personal plight to enter the public sphere in a way that advances a liberal political goal, they are gratuitously probed and personally smeared by the Right. The most illustrative example is the Frost family, who allowed their 12-year-old son Graeme to deliver a moving radio address explaining the benefits he received from the CHIP program when he was in a serious car accident, only to be promptly stalked and smeared by Michelle Malkin, among others. Today, The Nation -- a magazine which generally offers very good journalism -- subjects John Tyner to similar treatment, with such a shoddy, fact-free, and reckless hit piece (by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine) that I'm genuinely surprised its editors published it. Beyond the inherent benefit of correcting the record, this particular article is suffused with all sorts of toxic though common premises that make it worth examining in detail.

The article is headlined "TSAstroturf: The Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians Behind the TSA Scandal," and is devoted to the claim that those objecting to the new TSA procedures -- such as Tyner -- are not what they claim to be. Rather, they are Koch-controlled plants deliberately provoking and manufacturing a scandal -- because, after all, what real American in their right mind would do anything other than meekly submit with gratitude and appreciation to these procedures?

Go read the whole article to see how Greenwald analyzes it.

These two paragraphs -- the heart of the case against Tyner -- are insidious. By their own admission, this is "all [they] know" about Tyner: he has failed to swear his loyalty to one of the two major political parties, a grievous sin worthy of deep suspicion. He refuses -- correctly -- to view TSA extremism as the by-product of either party. Worse, he doesn't believe in voting -- a fringe and radical position in which he's joined by merely half of the entire American citizenry (65% in midterm years), 130 million voting-age Americans who -- surveying the choices -- also apparently see no reason to bother voting. What kind of strange person would fail to find great inspiration from one of America's two Great Political Parties or refuse to see the world exclusively through a Democrat v. GOP prism? More suspiciously still, he went to "private Christian schools" as a child and resides in a community that has a lot of Republicans in it; why, his neighborhood is even near a Marine base! This is clearly no "ordinary guy."

As for his standing accused by The Nation of suspicion on the grounds of his avowed libertarianism, consider what he wrote several weeks before the TSA incident. In a post responding to this question -- "When’s the last time you were seriously inconvenienced or injured by something that big government did?" -- Tyner wrote:

Gay rights [infringements], TSA body scanners, highway checkpoints, the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretaps, extra-judicial assassinations, indefinite detentions, inflation, etc. Don't tell me that (some of) these don't affect me. When one person's rights are trampled, everybody's are, and that's just at the federal level.

What a right-wing monster!

Glenn Greenwald does an excellent job of showing how innuendo and "facts" without context can create politically "coloured" impressions.

The sad fact is that while political parties are useful for galvanizing civic participation and for crystalizing political agendas, they also have a poisonous side when they become over-zealous and seek to divide a people and create "enemies".

There is of necessity a fine line to walk. Using a political perspective to frame your analysis of the world around you can be a very effective tool. It helps prepare you to interpret events and find meanings that would otherwise be cryptic. On the other hand, it can create political paranoia and foster hysterical hatreds and bias. Like most things in life: politics is a two-edged sword. It is both good and bad. It is useful and dangerous. It is necessary but distracting.