Defining extremist deviancy down

Written by Fred Musante
Wednesday, 26 August 2009 13:55

I recently bought a new pair of glasses with progressive bifocal lenses. When I first put them on, the unfamiliar visual distortion was so disorienting it made me dizzy and even a little queasy.

Reflecting on that, I thought maybe that’s what is wrong with conservative Republicans and other kinds of right-wingers in America today. They see the Democrats control Congress, and the president is not only a Democrat but an African-American, with an African part that is really, recently African, and they think there’s something wrong with their glasses.

Well, I’m sorry to say that I now feel I was being far too generous to them. The fact is that no amount of social or political change justifies the kind of behavior we, the nation, have witnessed from those running the Republican Party and its wholly owned subsidiaries.

When did it become acceptable to show up for a public appearance by the President of the United States or a member of Congress brandishing a firearm and a threatening sign?

In the past two weeks, gun nuts did just that on several occasions, and leading Republican office-holders, leaders of conservative organizations with direct links to the Republican National Committee, and popular conservative political commentators and talk show hosts all found it completely acceptable.

This is an extreme version of what the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed “defining deviancy down.” In this case you could call it “defining extremist deviancy down.”

When President Obama held a town hall-style public appearance in New Hampshire, a gun weirdo showed up outside with a pistol strapped to his hip carrying a sign that said, “It is time to water the tree of liberty.”

The sign inscription is a take-off on a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Jefferson wrote that during the debate on ratifying the U.S. Constitution. Judging from their comments, today’s conservative Republicans still aren’t sure they support the Constitution. What are they holding out for?

The guy with the gun and the sign is, as I said, a gun weirdo, but that’s not the problem. A few days later, Meet the Press host David Gregory asked U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, if he was critical of the gun-toting protester. Gregory observed that Timothy McVeigh wore a T-shirt with the same quote by Jefferson on it when he blew up the Mura federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 innocent people from Oklahoma.

Coburn replied he was really concerned that Americans had lost confidence in their government.

To fully understand just how perverted Coburn is, you also have to know he is a practicing obstetrician (baby doctor) and a conservative Christian. He served six years in the U.S. House of Representatives and five years in the Senate. He was a congressman when McVeigh blew up the building. Yet he goes on national television and doesn’t see anything wrong with toting guns and threats around the President of the United States.

It was legal for the man to walk around with the gun on his hip outside the President’s town hall meeting, and the sign is constitutionally protected free speech. But the purpose for doing it wasn’t to demonstrate his first and second amendment rights. It was to oppose the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. We didn’t see the Right’s lunatic fringe brandishing firearms and threats when George W. Bush came to town.

National coverage of the gun weirdo at the Obama event inspired more gun weirdness a day or so later when the president attended a national VFW convention in Phoenix. This time the demonstrators carried assault rifles.

All of this takes place while politics grows increasingly rancorous. Disruptive demonstrations organized by Republican Party operatives employed by front organizations and promoted by Fox News and conservative radio talk shows make a mockery of the political process, and party leaders defend them as if they were actually spontaneous.

Demonstrators display signs depicting Obama and other Democrats as devils and Nazis. Then conservatives blame Democratic leaders for starting it if they complain. Remember a few years ago when Fox News had a cow because somebody compared George W. to Hitler?

Sarah Palin accuses Democrats of organizing “death panels” to forcibly euthanize disabled children and old people, which is an outrageous lie. But instead of criticizing her, former Republican national chairman Ed Gillespie compared it to U.S. Sen. Harry Reid’s opinion that disruptive demonstrators are “evil.”

FreedomWorks, an organization headed by Dick Armey, the former Republican House Majority Leader, dispatched the first gangs of demonstrators to disrupt Democrats’ town hall meetings. But when asked about it on Meet the Press, Armey disavowed having anything to do with it.

These are familiar tactics, reminiscent of the Clinton haters of the 1990s and the phony “Brooks Brothers riot” during the Florida recount in 2000. But brandishing guns and threatening signs at a public appearance by the president? That’s a new low. And when a U.S. senator blames the government for gun weirdo misbehavior, that’s the rock bottom.

I can see it all quite clearly, even with my new glasses.