The Conservatives' Totalitarian Temptation

Jean Francois Revel wrote the book of the same title to characterize the Left's embrace of totalitarian regimes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But it could well apply today to the conservative movements' almost instant hatred of America after the election of Barack Obama. Marc Ambinder asks in The Atlantic "Have Conservatives Gone Mad?" Others in the blogophere has written about the "epistemic closure" of the conservative mind.

With Arizona adopting Juan Crow laws and a state like Minnesota contemplating using the tenth amendment to stop any federal regulations they don't agree with, one has to ask what is possessing these people? I believe the election of Barack Obama and the economic collapse of the country because of George W have triggered the same reaction among conservatives as the Versailles treaty did with the Germans prior to the rise of Hitler. Instead of Karl Rove's 40-year Reich, they are faced with years in the wilderness--at least from obtaining control over the executive branch of the American government. As Thomas Franks and others have documented, conservatives felt they had finally vanquished the primary enemy of the United States--its government by seizing control of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The loss of all this as well as the dramatic signs of their policy failures have sent the conservative nomenklatura reeling.

So what we have are emotional reactions to being deprived of authority and power. Instead, they take comfort in their publishing houses, newspapers, radio shows and Dubai-based Fox News to validate their worth and their rightness. So you naturally go back to your roots, the perpetual war against the Left and the 1960s. You are what you are not. And here they take comfort in the disenfrancisement of the religious right from power also and find their common allies in the war against the secular Left, which includes the entire Democratic Party,the universities, lawyers, scientists and the entertainment industry. The only option here is to avoid the federal government and to hark back to the states' rights days against civil rights.

Instead of Jeremiah Wright saying the "Chickens have come home to roost.", conservatives are adopting Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell's belief that God is punishing us for our secular culture. Instead of "U.S.A!, U.S.A!", we are being told that we all have the wrong idea about the whole premise of the American society. We are now an occupied country led by an "other", a man of unknown origin who may or may not have known Leftists and who is half-black, the creation of miscegeneration, once a criminal offense. Instead of "the best years are ahead of us", the cry is now "we want our country back". The American Indians have responded with great humor--"You have a long line ahead of you."

So far no one has stepped forth and claimed responsibility for the catastrophe left behind by the most conservative--in terms of personnel--administration in history. Conservatives have instantly rediscovered the constitution, which George W said was "just a piece of paper". What is most troubling for our political future is that they are doubling down--enforcing party discipline against any one who deviates from their rules and advocates compromise with the current Administration. The Republican governors just held their meeting and embraced Guy Fawkes and his terrorist attacks on the monarchy. They have refused to call off the dogs on the threats of violence against elected officials and claim teabagger mobs at townhall meetings represent the will of the people, a very unlike conservative embrace of Jacobinism.

Someone referred to this period as one of "no truth" politics. Through their own institutions, conservatives now have embraced anti-science, jumping on the anti-Climate Change bandwagon. Interestingly enough, their leading megaphone--Rupert Murdoch--said that if something isn't done soon about climate change it will be catastrophic. I believe their refusal to accept twenty years of science is simply because Al Gore, their adversary has promoted climate change science. I believe it has nothing with any real intellectual doubts or criticism. Anything that might lead to government intervention is anathema and heretical.

I have been searching the last few months for any recent conservative viewson the common good and the public interest but have come up with nothing. The reason is simply that conservatism has become an ideology and not an attitude. Citing Gallup polls that conservatives are the plurality in this country, they seek hegemonic control over the political economy and brook no dissidents. If they can't have their way, then the only alternative is to tear the whole place down.

They have simply become anti-American. The Hate America Firsters. Some of them know better. Doug Brooks of the New York Times knows that Barack Obama is the classic story of the American dream coming true and a validation of our basic ideals and values. But for others, just change those dreams, change our ideals and values. The great revisionists at work on our textbooks and destroyers of our public educational system. There is no point for America to be a leader in the world unless it's totally ours. We are to be feared and respected and our citizens are to live in fear. As Dick Cheney summed it up, "As a major superpower reality is what we say it is."

The conservative ideal seems to be Brezhnev's Soviet Union but with a little more free enterprise--an overwhelming military power with a blue ocean navy. Air Craft Carrier America--a $1.2 trillion military/terrorist complex--without a basic social welfare system for its citizens. And how did they get there? Almost all the leading "intellectuals" and "voices" on the right have vitrually no military experience so why the recent embrace of war?I believe in some ways it goes back to Ollie North and the great little money-making enterprise they created out of him. The other is an embrace of macho authoritarianism, which has psychosexual roots.

The ultimate conservative project is destructive. They want to destroy the whole American system and replace it with their own. They have created institutions and media vehicles to re-enforce their alternative reality, a parallel universe that is removed from the everyday lives of the American citizen. In the field of science, they have changed the George Marshall Institute and embraced the Discovery Institute to practice their version of Lysenkoism, deliberately embracing the Religious Right's creationism and anti-evolutionary beliefs. The public sector must be totally privatized and politically controlled by movement members. It's no mistake that House Republicans claimed their heroes were the Taliban. In this way, they can marry their financial backers, large corporate interests, with their religious right companions.

Where did they go so horribly wrong? I believe the key moment was on Bill Buckley's Firing Line when a drunk Jack Kerouac said," I'm one of you." and Bill didn't embrace him.

To be continued.