The unbearable lightness of being Obama/updated/corrected

Perhaps I am alone in feeling that Obama’s speech in Tucson was an insult to the dead and wounded, and a cop-out on his duty the American people.

I believe Barack Obama owed us some truth. The violent rhetoric on the right–and some on the left– has been building because our presidents have not given us truth.

Reagan needed to tell us the truth that America was in relative economic decline… not because we had failed, but because we had succeeded in reviving Europe and Japan from the devastation of World War II. He needed to tell us the truth that we were too reliant on warfare and not reliant enough on getting our allies to defend themselves. Instead, he got us deep in debt while creating the illusion of prosperity. The losers– blue collar workers and farmers– were made to feel like human garbage. He revived the culture wars: from partially criminalizing abortion to the claiming that AIDS was God’s judgment on gays, the embers of modern-day right-wing radicalism were stoked into an open flame then.

Bush the Slightly Greater needed to tell us the truth that Reagan’s tax cuts had been reckless and that the culture wars were wrong. As an member of the ultra-wealthy, he needed to tell his fellow aristocrats that their selfishness was sapping America’s strength. As a traditional Republican, it was his duty to stand against the racial hatred that the Willie Horton ad represented. The hapless Bush reaped the consequences of the debt and anger that had been Reagan’s gift to the nation in a recession that ravaged New England and California and in violent explosions like those at Waco and Ruby Ridge. It was on Bush’s watch that the first mainstreamed demagogue since Father Coughlin, Rush Limbaugh, came into his own. From his success, demagogues multiplied.

Clinton told us a little truth, namely that we had neglected the poor and that the wealthy needed to step up to the plate. But he never confronted the danger of the corporate state or the radicalism of those it brought to power in 1994. And so demagoguery became the norm, with the use of lies and hate to stir up both the losers of the class war (and, paradoxically, the winners who feared becoming losers) almost consuming Clinton. He left the nation financially more secure, but political less secure than he found it.

Bush the Lesser… well. He owed it to the American people to concede gracefully in 2000. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the memory of his deeds deserves to be erased, but instead he will be long remembered for all the evil he did. To enumerate the debts he left unpaid would take many posts. He left a generation of wounded veterans, many of whom struggle with adapting to civilian society. He left the nation’s finances in disarray, and its reputation in filthy rags. But worst, he left the wealthy and powerful with a sense of impunity, that no matter how badly they screwed up, they were immune to the consequences. He left many right-wing radicals with the conviction that liberals were traitors to be murdered at will (see Swopa’s mall anecdote for an example of this).

In that historical consequence, Obama has to screw up pretty badly to warrant a mention. But he achieved it. Yes, he eulogized the dead and wounded, as he should have. He eulogized those who stopped Jared Loughner, as he should have; one wishes that he had mentioned by name the three men who counterattacked but, like real heroes, they have not put themselves forward. But what are his prescriptions? Bromides:

…at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -– at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do -– it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.
…
We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future. (Applause.) But what we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other.
…
Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.
….
We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we’re doing right by our children, or our community, whether our priorities are in order.

We recognize our own mortality…that process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions –- that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires.
…
we commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of [Christina Green’s] gentle, happy spirit.

I think I heard Barack Obama’s speech when I was a toddler. It went something like, “Turn that frown… upside down!”

What good will come out of these murders and woundings? If nothing, then the victims died and suffered for nothing.

Obama’s speech gives little hope that anything good will emerge. There is no real prescription for what we, as a nation, are supposed to do. Reflect. Don’t assign blame. Be nice.

This is not leadership. Leadership has to start from truth. The truth is that demagogues, almost all of whom are on the right, have created an atmosphere conducive to violence. It’s not the rest of us who need to shut up. It’s them. Barack Obama owed it to the nation to say so.

He also owed us guidance on the way forward. With all of the domestic intelligence gathering, restrictions on movement such as the No Fly List, and planting of agent provocateurs, we all but live in a police state. A nice police state, but still. With all this, they couldn’t stop the assassination of a federal judge and the near-assassination of a congresswoman. It seems clear that what’s needed are more mental health facilities and less-lethal weapons. Perhaps we’ll get the latter, but I am not betting on it. We need a more equal society, one with opportunity for everyone… even people with mental illness. And above all, we need to end the wars. As in Vietnam, the longer it went on, the more restive and violent the society became.

When he delivers the State of the Union, I would like to hear the words: “The State of the Union has been better.” Just a little bit of truth.
______________________________
Update: AP Has finally got around to covering James Eric Fuller, a veteran who supported Gabrielle Giffords and shouted at the head of the local tea party, “You’re dead”. He was one of those shot. Now the local tea party head, Trent Humphries, says he is worried about Fuller’s statement and a half-dozen angry e-mails he got. He wonders whether there might be a lot of other people who are as angry and as emotionally labile as Fuller.

Well, welcome to Reality 101, Mr. Humphries. Violence cuts both ways, so you have a stake in lowering the volume. There are plenty of people on the left who are angry about being subjected to verbal abuse and even threats. Not all of them are well-hinged. So, beware of what demons you call forth. Demons respect no political party and no ideology. They destroy everything they can reach.

This is why Obama owed America–not just the left–the truth…because he’s the one voice that can cut through the clutter and warn America what a dangerous road it is on.
_______________________________
Footnote. Even though I have seen evidence that Jared Loughner registered as a Republican[Correction, 1/17: Having investigated, I find no credible evidence that Loughner was a registered Republican; he registered as an independent] I have been cautious in assigning blame for this shooting to one political party. I doubt that a straight line can be drawn between this particular assassination and any particular demagogue– even though, as Media Matters has amply documented, in many cases of violence, it’s clear that the killers were inspired by a Glenn Beck or a Bill O’Reilly.

But there is no need to draw a straight line, when rhetoric encouraging violence is a cloud engulfing this country. Everyone knows there is only one political party that has demagogues on radio and TV 24 hours a day using reckless, scapegoating language. There certainly are left-wingers who say things that make me cringe, including a couple of radio talk show hosts I could name (but won’t, since their audiences are insignificant). Indeed, I thought long and hard before using the harsh label “Republicans as cancer” to tag posts: you can see the incident that brought me to that rhetorical pitch here. At some point, political conflict turns into Abaddon, mindless destruction. The Republican Party has indeed embraced such tactics.

[Added: The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has compiled a list of insurrectionism in the last 2 1/2 years. Jim Naureckas of FAIR has boiled it down to cases of actual violence. There is exactly one radical environmentalist on the list.]

And the history of association of the right with violence is also clear. Post-Civil War, violence as a political tool was almost exclusively the tool of the Ku Klux Klan and of corporations. In the early 20th century, there was some violence by left-wing radicals, including the assassination of President McKinley. And during the Great Depression, there was violence by some radicalized workers. There were also some violence by African Americans, such as the 1943 Detroit riot. But until the war, the major sources of political violence continued to be right-wing sources, such as the Klan and corporations.

Post-war, Klan violence continued, but gradually declined. In the 1960s-early 1970s, there were violent riots in many American cities, stoked by impatience at delivering on the promises of equality. There was a smattering of left-wing violence, most notably the Weathermen and the Symbionese Liberation Army; if one wants to think of Mayor Daley as a left-winger, count him as well. Sara Jane Moore was probably motivated by left-wing hate. But there was also right-wing violence, especially attacks on peaceful demonstrators. The murder of Martin Luther King was surely of right-wing inspiration. Indeed, most of the violence of the 1960s seems more due to the prolonged effects of war than anything else. Assassins like Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald, Squeaky Fromme and John Hinckley, Jr. are enigmas.

But from the mid-1970s on, violence was not just disproportionately from the right, it was all but exclusively from the right. One can find exceptions among radical environmentalists and animal rights activists, but the ledger is clear. Left-wing violence has never been pervasive enough to silence political debate. Yet right-wing violence has, for long periods of time, frightened people into silence. That was the whole point of the Klan. It’s the whole point of the demagogues of today.