(MintPress) – In the days following the re-election of President Obama, Republicans have found themselves in an angry stupor from losing what most considered a slam dunk for them. On the White House’s “We the People” Initiative page, petitions have been filed for the secession of all 50 states from the Union. Hundreds of thousands of Americans, frustrated with the president’s victory, have signed their names on petitions on the White House’s website, in hopes of the Executive Branch hearing their pleas to allow them to exist away from a second Obama term.
Donald Trump, on Election Night, took to Twitter, calling for a revolution and decrying that America is not a democracy. Conservative Republicans have turned on their moderate brothers, calling them traitors and blaming them for Election Day pains. Most recently, the Congressional Republicans have stiffened their backs on filibuster reform, the impending fiscal cliff and budget reform against Democrats. In all, a sense of extremism is taking over the political dialogue in America.
The reality, however, is that this sense of political extremism has been with us for more than 12 years now. Since the impeachment hearings against President Bill Clinton in 1998-1999, the liberal and conservative caucuses of the government have been moving further and further apart, with the moderate center shrinking as a result.
From ever-increasing religious intolerance for non-Christians and outright, naked bigotry against Muslims to the cloaked racism that was exposed with the election of President Obama to attacks on reproductive and women’s health rights and the rise of the tea party, the conservative faction has increasingly moved toward a corporate-centered, diversity-devoid ideologue based on a broken, anachronistic worldview that still envisions the white male as the majority demographic.
In light of the Republicans’ loss Nov. 6, a reform of the party’s core philosophy is needed.
However, as most Republicans have embraced — in some fraction — the extremism of the party’s recent history, true reform may be fleeting, if not impossible. Most Republicans practice “small world politics,” or the politics of the world you can see and interact with regularly, which is fundamentally opposite to “whole world politics,” or the consideration of both local and global concerns.
Until small-world — or limited-perspective — politics can be abandoned for real world politics, Republicans may not be able to lead and represent this new, changing world without political trickery.
The rise of extremism in America
On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaida-backed terrorists targeted and attacked key areas in New York and the Washington D.C. area — including the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — using hijacked passenger jets. Since this happened, the nation has became noticeably more hostile toward Islam, despite the fact that major religious leaders in the Islamic community denounced the attacks.
This animosity toward Islam was best seen in November 2011, when the highly controversial Florida Family Association called for a boycott of the TLC show “All-American Muslim” — which retailer Lowe’s signed on to by pulling its ads from the show — because the television program showed Muslims as average, everyday Americans and not as “violent, fundamental Muslims.” The rise of the tea party and the increase anti-Islamic talk, such as the popular conservative blog Atlas Shrugs, also reflects this.
It is understandable that after a highly emotional episode as 9/11, there will be animosity toward those who did it. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, animosity against the Japanese pushed neutral America to declare war. However, the xenophobia the average Republican was feeling at the time was less focused and actually spilled onto Americans that happened to be Muslim. Instead of trying to heal wounds, the Bush administration capitalized on the confusion, using it to justify the war on Iraq, massive increases in defense spending, increased defense contractors appropriations, civil liberties violations and domestic spying and even as a backdrop for President Bush’s re-election. In doing this, the open wound caused by the 9/11 attacks calcified into permanent hate that pits American versus American. This hate-mongering is still used as a weapon; Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) has made her name cultivating the fears of “low information voters” and Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has saber-rattled her way to re-election on bogus calls of Democrat and governmental complacency.
However, this is nothing new. This country has yet to get over its history of racism, and most experts believe that America is still an overtly racist nation. While it is easy to point to obvious examples to disprove this argument (“Oprah’s black, and she’s a billionaire; Halle Berry is black, and she won the Oscar; Barack Obama is black, and he is president, etc.) — for the most part — most Republicans honestly believe that there is no discernable racism left in American society; but, what these are — in reality — are exceptions.
For the average African-American man, his take-home pay has grown in the last 20 years at a rate slower than any other ethnic group. There are more African-Americans, per capita, living in poverty than any other demographic group, and the imprisonment rate for African-Americans is the highest of any ethnicity — there are more black men in prison in 2012 then there were enslaved in 1850.
Yet, when asked if the black community still needs affirmative action or government assistance, most Republicans would say no. In the race of life, they noticed a few black runners that have been able to keep up with the pack; they have failed to notice the hoard that have abandoned the race because they are so far behind.
But, even in the considering of President Obama, Republicans have already showed their racist intentions and their political extremism. Rush Limbaugh, three days after the president took office, said on his radio show that he honestly wishes the president fails — without knowing the president’s policy or even political slant (the president, as a junior senator, only co-sponsored three pieces of legislation and voted according to the party line on most issues).
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) famously noted that it is the sole business of the Senate Republicans to do whatever they can to make the president a one-term president, and the House, under Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio), has became an obstructionist to all policies the president supports, even if they were initially Republican ideas.
The website Floating Sheep tracked and geocoded racially-charged tweets that were posted to Twitter about the president on Election Night. The website reported that, overwhelmingly, the most racist tweets came from red states, with Mississippi and Alabama leading the pack.
In August, a Lubbock County, Texas judge opined to Fox34:
“He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the (United Nations), and what is going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.
“Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops. I don’t want ’em in Lubbock County. OK. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here’. And the sheriff, I’ve already asked him, I said ‘you gonna back me’ he said, ‘yeah, I’ll back you’. Well, I don’t want a bunch of rookies back there. I want trained, equipped, seasoned veteran officers to back me.”
While some of this is arguably the flow of political discourse, to dismiss all of this as not being racist in tinge is being naive. From allegations of the president being “the angry black man” in the White House to attempts to justify racist actions against the president by calling him racist to the general lack of respect and consideration for the man who holds the highest post in the land, the president’s race has enflamed and emboldened racist behavior that, until the election of Barack Obama, were suppressed or overlooked. While the election and re-election of the president is promising for race relations, it has — in reality — driven the more extremist attitudes in the nation farther toward the fringe.
More dauntingly, the extremist mantra undertaken by the conservative right appears to have deeply religious roots, as well as ideological ones. The “war on women” is an excellent example of this. From 2010 to 2011, more than 2,050 bills were introduced and more than 224 bills were passed in state legislatures that directly affected women’s health and reproductive rights, including five states that banned abortion at or after 20 weeks, three that limited postviability abortion, one that required a visit to a Crisis Pregnancy Center before obtaining an abortion, two that required that inaccurate information about abortion risk be given, one that required counseling on fetal pain and one state that now requires abstinence before marriage. This restriction of rights on moral terms introduces a pseudo-state religion, as these new laws are based on Christian dogma. The creation of such ideological-biased laws and the establishment of anti-compromise factions, such as the tea party, created a “small world” mentality that has proven toxic to the political process.
“Small world” politics vs. “whole world” politics
We all have a small world viewpoint; we worry about our families and friends, we give to our churches, we volunteer at the local school. We patron our local businesses and may even take care of the poor in our neighborhood. This is a functional, natural extension of the old adage, “out of sight, out of mind”; we think about the things we see everyday.
But this doesn’t stop the rest of the world from being there. For every meal we enjoy, there is someone somewhere starving. For every extra moment we take to turn up the heat on the thermostat, there is someone somewhere freezing.
It is callous and unreasonable to imagine a nation full of unique points of view, interests and desires would be called upon to accept one group’s perspective at the expense of compromise or accommodation, but that is exactly what is happening with the conservative right.
Republicans, under the leadership of their conservative factions, have engaged in “small world” politics, or the consideration of the world they move in everyday as policy. Most Republicans live in rural, mostly white areas, so entitlement programs and funding for social services are not priorities. Most of the minority population lives in urban areas, so minority concerns are not pressing issues in small world politics, either; why would you care about fair access to voting places when everyone you know is white and has fair access? On top of that, why should you share your influence and say with someone you don’t know and who would — most likely — vote against you?
It is the temptation to be politically self-centered that ultimately drives extremism. Extremism starts with the simple concept that your vote matters more than anyone else’s. In accepting this, greater accommodations toward extremism is possible, such as political punditry, vote suppression and approving legislation for personal gain over the health and welfare of the state.
But one must argue an obvious question: Is extremism acceptable policy? It is arguable that one should argue for legislation that serves their personal interest.
However, the nature of politics is compromise. In an interview with FOX News, a former Alaska governor commented on the Republicans’ “cut, cap and balance” plan: “Evidently, there are enough members of Congress who are insisting that the debt ceiling will be raised. I don’t want to see it raised … So if it’s going to be raised, we’d better get something out of it.”
Huh?
In order to come up with legislation both sides can agree on, one side has to be bought off? This epitomizes partisanship. In such an environment, governance can not happen; you are left with a “do nothing” Congress: The outgoing Congress has the fewest number of public laws passed in the history of the nation (the previous record-holder — the 104th Congress — produced twice as many laws, despite a government shutdown lasting more than a month), the Senate hasn’t produced a stand-alone budget since 2009 and Congress as a whole has not passed a single stand-alone spending bill. Twelve executive departments have mandatory appropriation bills before the House, including the Defense and Justice Departments, with no clear indication any of the bills will make it into law.
This is unacceptable, and in part, is a cause for the Republicans’ defeat on Election Day. At a certain point, small world politics must be set aside. When we shut our eyes at night, the world does not disappear; there is more than just what you can see in this great, big world. We must embrace legislation that reflects this, and we must stop the saber-rattling.
In 1984, Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.), speaker of the House, took the floor in condemnation of his fellow Republicans using live television coverage to lambast Democrats as wasteful and unpatriotic:
“My personal opinion is this. You deliberately stood in that well before an empty House and challenged these people, and challenged their patriotism, and it is the lowest thing that I’ve ever seen in my 32 years in Congress!”
A Republican moved to have the speaker’s words stricken.