"Suddenly, they were in control"

Watching the people who gathered in Washington, D.C., ostensibly to protest lowering the number of people who die every year from lack of adequate health care was instructive. The proliferation of signs like "We came unarmed ..... This Time" and "If Brown can't kill the bill, a Browning can" (complete with the outline of a pistol) and "Bury the bill with Obama" etc., says a lot.

Steele, Boehner, and their crowd claim that the people who gathered to throw stones and spit and use words that most of us would like to think we've outgrown are somehow Patriots. But Patriotism is the love of one's nation. How can you claim to love a country where you clearly hate half its population? How can you claim to love a country when you are unwilling to accept the result of its open elections? How can you claim to love a country when you are happy to condemn a third of its people to an early death in order to save yourself a few pennies on the dollar? How can you claim to love a country when you have spent a year spreading libelous and scandalous lies about its leadership even though you know better?

When I lived in Germany and Italy, I had the opportunity to talk with people who were young adults when the Nazis and the Fascists came to power. I also spent a lot of time in Austria, in similar conversations. Unanimously, these people remembered the appeals to patriotism, to nationalism, to traditional values. They remembered the way "the foreigners among us" were made scapegoats. They remembered how the national flags at rallies gradually gave way to party flags and flags from the nation's past. "Nobody told us Mussolini would lead us into a war. We heard the speeches about restoring our greatness. We heard the speeches about rooting out the people who would make us a weak nation."

"Hitler and his party didn't talk about war, or about the Gypsies or the Catholics, or the Jews: not at first. They talked about the glories of Germany that had been destroyed by the Socialists and the Communists, and the Anarchists, and the Marxists. They 'proved' to us these people were not trying to make us all equal -- they were trying to drag true, patriotic Germans down to their level. And we nodded, and we thought they might have a point, and suddenly, they were in control."

I've spent time over the past few days downloading Some of Lani Riefenstahl's films. Triumph of the Will is the most obvious, particularly the part where Hitler calls for "One country, One people, One language, One Spirit." But there are others that evoke the same zeitgeist. Frankly, some of the images would fit right in to the Glenn Beck view of "restoring our shared values."

The members of the Republic Party are not Nazis, neither are the Teabaggers who gather to scream and tell the same tales to each other, and repeat the same, discredited charges about the President, and the Congress, and the Constitution. But their tactics are quite similar. When Republic Party Representatives wave those banners from the terrace of the Capitol Building, and cheer as abusive, potentially violent demonstrators are led from the House Gallery, they are giving approval an legitimacy to the thugs. And there is a point beyond which the thugs are beyond control. There is a point where bricks through office windows and screaming abuse, and spitting turn into something more violent.

There was no real tradition of massive public violence in many of the countries where this kind of movement has taken hold. As the United States is arguably the most violent nation in the world, the distance from shouting "Kill the Bill and the Kenyan, Too" to making a serious attempt is very short.

We have had the foreign conservative group Al Qaeda attack buildings with bombs and aircraft. We have had native-born individuals who espouse conservative principles attack buildings with bombs and guns and trucks, and, most recently, with aircraft.

 Conservative leaders tell people not to participate in something as innocuous as a census because it is an evil plot. They evoke the treatment of Asian-Americans in the U.S. during WW II and claim it had something with the preceding census. They even have the gall to drag out their favorite word: Unconstitutional. The census is, in point of fact MANDATED by the Constitution (Article I, Section 2). It has been more than a simple head count since the start of the Twentieth Century. But Michelle Bachmann says it's unconstitutional, and  Rush Limbaugh says it's unconstitutional, and Glenn Beck says it's part of a plot to take over America. So census offices in three states have been vandalized and trashed. Census workers over the past 12 months have been killed or beaten for being part of that particular "Government Plot." And the people who do these things are Patriots?

Goebbles said "Tell a lie big enough, often enough, and it becomes the truth." We have had elected officials and the unelected leaders of American Conservatism "warn" about death panels, and unlimited funding for abortion, and cuts in Medicare/Medicaid services for months, and these obvious lies have become such a part of the discussion that they are included in debate as "common knowledge."

Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into convincing a minority of the American people that they are, and of a right ought to be, the keepers of The Truth. As such, they have the right and obligation to use all means necessary to inflict their will upon the majority. But what happens when the cause of the moment goes away? Not health care, not any of the "birther" or "deather" or "truther" talking points. Anybody who looks at the signs, hears the speeches, talks to the people knows it's all about xenophobia.

They have been told their President is an outsider: someone not of our tribe. We have had Presidents who were drunks, thieves, womanizers, and (to be diplomatic) not very bright. All of them had their supporters, and surprisingly few detractors. The Tea Baggers seem to revere the worst of them. But the man who put his hand on the Bible and swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution has a strange name, dark skin, parents of different ethnicities, is a Constitutional scholar of obvious intelligence and erudition, and, oh yeah, did I mention his skin?

So these people, who set a record for threats against The President and The First Family back before the election, will be with us as long as this man and his family are in the White House. If their power keeps increasing on the Conservative side of the political spectrum, the next election is likely to be even more acrimonious, even more divisive than the last. And then?

It's too late to make this long posting short, so let me finish with a film reference. In "Cabaret", the male leads are sitting in a beer garden when a group of clean-cut young people come in and start into a song: "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." The camera stays tight on the face and shoulders of the lead singer, cutting to smiling and nodding patrons. The first verse is something like:

The sun on the meadow is summery warm
The stag in the forest runs free
But gathered together to greet the storm
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

[The song goes on for a couple more verses, then, as the shot expands to include the singer's Hitler Youth uniform, he sings:]

Now Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign
Your children have waited to see
The morning will come when the world is mine
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

[He raises his arm in the salute as the patrons join in the song, and then in the salute]

Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs to me!

One lead turns to the other and asks: "Do you still think you can control them?"