The Shutdown Party: Our view - (USA Today Editorial)

USA Today editorial position - October 1st, 2013

The Shutdown Party: Our view:

As the government shutdown loomed, many Americans did what comes naturally in matters regarding Washington: They ignored it.Now that the shutdown has happened, many people are inclined toward a second default position: Blame everyone.

Both positions fit the dismally low view that Americans have of government in general, and Congress in particular.

In this case, however, the "they're all bums" reaction is off-base. This shutdown, the first in 17 years, isn't the result of two parties acting equally irresponsibly. It is the product of an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, controlled by a disaffected base that demands legislative hostage-taking in an effort to get what it has not been able to attain by the usual means: winning elections.

Call it the Tea Party shutdown. The group will wear the badge proudly. 

Pressed by this uncompromising fringe, Republicans leaders in the House are making demands that are both preposterous and largely unrelated to budgetary matters in return for keeping government running. Most absurdly, they want President Obama to undermine the health care law that he ran on in 2008 and 2012, and now considers his signature domestic accomplishment. 

No president of either party could accept that kind of badgering. No president should.

 (emphasis mine)

'via Blog this'

Who is Saul Alinsky, and why is Newt Gingrich so obsessed with him? - CSMonitor.com

From the CS Monitor: "Newt Gingrich keeps likening President Obama to radical community organizer Saul Alinsky. But Gingrich seems to have adopted Alinsky's tactics himself, as has the tea party. Mainstream Republicans aren't happy."

“The Tea Party comes from the same sense of outrage that the elites, as Gingrich calls them, are running the country,” Dick Simpson, a University of Illinois at Chicago political scientist and former Chicago alderman, told Bloomberg News. “The Tea Party has understood how to mobilize their anger and turn it to political results, which is the underlying motif of Alinsky.”

Alinsky, Simpson says, was “a master community organizer who attempted to organize people without power, people that today we’d call the 99 percent, by using the strength of numbers to overcome clout and wealth.”

FreedomWorks, the tea party group headed by former Republican House Leader Dick Armey, gives copies of “Rules for Radicals” to its leaders. “His tactics when it comes to grass-roots organizing are incredibly effective,” FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon told the Wall Street Journal. Tea Partyers aggressively confronting lawmakers at town hall meetings is straight from Alinsky’s playbook.

Who is Saul Alinsky, and why is Newt Gingrich so obsessed with him? - CSMonitor.com

GO(tea)P

http://www.nationalconfidential.com/20111012/democrats-plan-war-on-tea-party-economics/

Democrats are circulating a memo in which they make it clear they plan to brand the GOP as the party of “Tea Party economics” in the months ahead. The memo makes the case that the unpopularity of the Tea Party skyrocketed after the debt ceiling fight, and that America risks a “Tea Party recession” if the GOP continues to obstruct jobs bills from the President and other Democrats.

The Democratic memo argues that “Tea Party economics” are hurting the economic recovery, citing economists from the left and right who have supported solutions like tax cuts, revenue raisers, and jobs bills that Tea Party-influenced Republicans have rejected.

Well, duh!!!

President Obama as rhetorical devil of the Tea Party . . .

This billboard recently covered up by the Tea Party movement makes an important point for our case here:

Hoffer makes clear that a mass movement of "true believers" must have a clear anti-thesis to create the essential identity of the movement. He states, "Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil."

I still maintain that being "anti-Obama" is the primary rhetorical identification of the Tea Party movement, and it has been since day one. Although certainly there are racist elements and members of the Tea Party movement, the identification is not necessarily racist per se, but it IS essentially primarily and anti-Obama. Thoughts?

Ephphatha Poetry: "Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" - Tim Wise

Ephphatha Poetry: "Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" - Tim Wise

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This blog post by Tim Wise is SO powerful! Not only does he help us to think more clearly about the Tea Party movements, but it also helps us to think about the reality of "white privilege" in a way that is undeniable.

I remember reading Peggy McIntosh's classic article, "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies," in college and being completely blown away by the experience of having been changed forever by a new way of seeing things. Using what Kenneth Burke called "perspective by incongruity," this new way of seeing was perhaps one of the most powerful motivators for me to study and understand and champion diversity and communication in my doctorate and career.

I wonder if Mr. Wise's post will do the same for a new generation of students . . . if nothing else, he has provided a powerful way to think about and talk about what's happening in this country today. It will be interesting to see what comes of this in the weeks ahead.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Former POTUS Bill Clinton on radical anti-government rhetoric . . .

Bill Clinton looking back at the rhetorical climate of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to compare and contrast with 2010 Tea Parties.

Interesting but seemingly rare example of someone on the left explicitly countering RW rhetoric with a direct argument rather than mockery or silence.

In an interview with the New York Times on Friday, Clinton warned of the affect that angry political rhetoric might have on antigovernment radicals like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; he pointed to Rep. Michele Bachmann calling the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress "the gangster government" at a tax day Tea Party rally on Thursday.

"They are not gangsters," Clinton told the newspaper. "They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do."

Clinton said that demonizing the government with incendiary language can have effects beyond just rallying a crowd.

I have trouble seeing the Tea Party as a social movement as long as there are so many anti-government radicals associated with it. Defining our democratically elected government as anti-American or making a false analogy with Britain''s King George is damaging our ability to find any common ground. To limit "American" to those on the right - or to identify the right in anti-thesis to the "un-American" left = is to spur a fanatical patriotism for many radical conservatives who may ultimately choose to take violent action against this supposedly "un-American" and uber-liberal government.

There is perhaps a fine rhetorical line between advocacy for better ideas and conditions to help groups and the kind of propaganda that merely seeks to demonize and destroy groups. I think as long as the Tea Party crafts and performs a political identity from what they are against rather than what they are for, and as long as their anti-thetical demon is this administration and government, then citizens will have to be extra alert to the possibility of hyperbolic rhetoric gone too far awry - and be prepared to speak more directly and firmly in return about common grounds and "American" values in the United States.

There can be no mere difference of opinion on this issue it seems to me. To turn Americans against one another by demarcating an "us" and a "them" and to refuse to share our common grounds as Americans is to open ourselves to civil warfare - be it verbally punishing or physically violent.

I think that rhetorical state of affairs in the United States today is unacceptable in light of our history and traditions - and the efforts of the Founding Fathers to provide us all with a SHARED democratic republic - and an enduring plan of harmony and unity - liberty and responsibility - reason and real debate. And any useful debate on the policies and future of the United States must begin at least with the common ground and understanding that we are ALL Americans. As such we have a right and a responsibility to pay attention to our government, but to portray the democratically elected government as un-American is outside the frame of useful or rational debate. It hurts us all.

Summary - Eric Hoffer "The True Believer" (1951)

Pasted below is the summary handout I've used in my rhetoric classes to begin the discussions of Eric Hoffer's work on True Believers and Mass Movements. I invite you to read through it and see if you think any of these characteristics apply to popular Conservative Talk Radio/Fox News personalities (aka "wingnuts") and/or the Tea Party movements we have witnessed since Barack Obama became President of the United States. Note particularly Hoffer's key insights at the end - and the essential insight that a mass movement need not have a god, but it MUST have a devil. It is this rhetorical anti-thesis that creates their primary identification as a group. "We are who we are because we are not THAT."

For Hitler's Nazi Germany, they were who they were because they were not Jewish (or any other non-Aryan group). Hitler himself remarked that if the Jews had not existed, he would have had to invent them (to be the devil) for the Nazi identity.

So . . .I wonder: who would Tea Partiers be if there was no Barack Obama?

My friend Genma related her experiences at the convention to me last night...and she was simply amazed that the group was so tightly focused on Obama as the (un-American, un-Christian) devil.

Indeed, this morning the keynote address at the convention is titled: "A comparison of the current administration to Marxist dictators of Latin America." (Okay, I'm stumped. Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama is like a Marxist dictator because . . . ???)

Note the determination to associate President Obama with anything "un-American" . . . birthers say he isn't American outright. Others simply keep calling him a "socialist" while still others refuse to believe the man is a Christian. This repeated mantra of "un-American Obama" serves a clear purpose in the identity (and motivation and fervor) of the movement.

I'll leave it to @coviner to tell you about what he found in his ideograph research and the connection between popular Conservative pundits and these movements and the rhetorical motivation that works to fuel this association and fanatical opposition to the President.

_____________________________________________________________

COMM 4650 – Long

Hoffer, E. (1951). The true believer: Thoughts on the nature of mass movements. New York: Harper and Row.

Definition: The true believer = “. . . the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause” (p. xii)

Rationale:

“It is necessary for most of us these days to have some insight into the motives and responses of the true believer. For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping up the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities. (p. xiii)

“The assumption that mass movements have many traits in common does not imply that all movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. The book passes no judgments, and expresses no preferences. It merely tries to explain…(p. xiii)

Hypotheses:

“Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.” (p. xii)

“ . . . a mass movement . . . appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.” (p. 12)

Potential Followers and ‘True Believers’ = The Disaffected

“Though the disaffected are found in all walks of life, they are most frequent in the following categories: a) the poor, b) misfits, c) outcasts, d) minorities, e) adolescent youth, f) the ambitious, g) those in the grip of some vice or obsession, h) the impotent (in body or mind), i) the inordinately selfish, j) the bored, k) the sinners.” (p. 25)

Content vs. Form:

“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves – and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.” (p. 41)

Preface: Part III - United Action and Self-Sacrifice (pp. 58-61)

When we ascribe the success of a movement to it faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, and ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature of mass movements unless it is recognized that their chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice. To know the processes by which such a facility is engendered Is to grasp the inner logic of most of the characteristics attitudes and practices of an active mass movement.

“The reader is expected to quarrel with much that is said in this part of the book….this is not an authoritative textbook. It is a book of thoughts, and it does not shy away from half-truths so long as they seem to hint at a new approach and help to formulate new questions. ‘To illustrate a principle,’ says Bagehot, ‘you must exaggerate much and you must omit much.” (pp. 60).

Factors promoting self-sacrifice (pp. 62-90):

1. identification with a collective whole (44-46)

2. make-believe (47)

3. deprecation of the present (48-55)

4. “things which are not” -

5. doctrine – not meaning but certitude (58-59)

6. fanaticism (60-63)

“What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as the decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come form the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more – and there is. By expiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation….(p75)

“The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude…presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth. If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine….simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer.” (pp. 80-81).

“The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual sources – our of his rejected self – but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. The passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the sources of all virtue and strength….He sacrifices his life to prove his worth.” (p. 85)

“The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to reason or his moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause.” (p. 85).

Mass Movements vs. Armies (p. 88-90).

Unifying agents (pp. 91 – 128):

1. hatred

2. imitation

3. persuasion and coercion

4. leadership

5. action

6. suspicion

Key insights/Summary from The True Believer (P. Bsumek, James Madison University, 2000)

• 1. We may be godless, but we are not irreligious.

• 2. Mass organizations appeal to us through appeals of self- advancement.

• 3. Mass movements offer and in fact require self-renunciation.

• 4. The logical content of the message is irrelevant.

• 5. A mass movement should have a god, but it must have a devil. (p.91)

• Characteristics of a devil:

• Devil is ugly.

• Devil is powerful

• Devil is strangely attractive

• Devil is omnipresent

• 6. If you want to stop a movement, you cannot argue against it logically.

• 7. Movements offer freedom, but only deliver brotherhood.

• 8. Proselytizing as a sign of doubt not of truth.

"We need to read Eric Hoffer . . . "

This particular rhetorical criticism project began April 15th, 2009 - the day I was late to my rhetoric class because I was fascinated watching the tea party protests on the noonday local news in Nashville. I was also following blogger Oliver Willis as he began live tweeting from one in Washington, DC. And all I could think about this rhetorical phenomenon as I drove to class was: "we need to read Eric Hoffer."

I began reading and discussing Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" with my rhetoric classes in the Fall of 2001. After 9/11, we spent a great deal of time talking and making sense. And one thing that just didn't make sense was the fanatical nature of Al-Qaeda. It also seemed to me that we needed to be mindful of our own nationalism; that our collective bonding in the face of such horror must not deterioriate into blind fanatical rhetoric and behavior of our own. So, because it helped us make sense of this rhetoric of our time, we would read Eric Hoffer's classic analysis of fanatical social movements at the end of every semester through the spring of 2004.

I've since changed Universities, and I've been teaching other courses since then, so I didn't include Hoffer in my course syllabus when I was assigned to teach a rhetoric course again last spring. It simply didn't seem as necessary to consider his work that winter because fanaticism per se was not so much in the public eye then. Mostly it was celebration and exultation following the election of Mr. Barack Obama as POTUS. And President Obama's rhetoric is not True Believer/fanatic rhetoric. It may be many things, but it is not that. So, I edited Hoffer readings and discussions out of my syllabus in favor of trying some different learning activities that are currently more in vogue with educators (i.e. group projects).

But then came Rush "I hope he fails" Limbaugh . . . and the army of True Believers that followed him. They had a very clear fanatical "devil" = any and all things un-American. And that's fine as far as it goes - I am pretty passionately patriotic, too. But they weren't standing up for American values, they were standing against a very specific un-American devil = the President of the United States, Barack Obama (and his leagues of evil liberal minions).

Jon Stewart captured and confronted the spirit of this developing rhetorical community quite well when he said on the April 7th Daily Show episode "Baracknphobia": "I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing...See, when the guy you disagree with gets elected, he's prob going to do things you disagree with...That's not tyranny, that's Democracy. See, now you're in the MINORITY. It's supposed to taste like a shit taco."


This demonization rhetoric characteristic of True Believer movements intensified throughout the spring, reaching it's first peak and public organization with the Tea Party protests on April 15th, once again prompting a "perspective by incongruity" from Jon Stewart on "Tea Party Tyranny".

To make the President of the United States and the US Government into an Un-American rhetorical devil like this is the hallmark of True Believers and Mass Movements, ala Eric Hoffer. And it was this rhetoric - this increasingly vehement, vitriolic, vengeful and intensely political action - toward our constitutionally elected leaders in the spring of 2009 - that made me throw out the vogue but bland course syllabus and start seriously discussing rhetorical current events with my students again. We voted to scrap the group projects and read Eric Hoffer and take a closer, academic look at this rising mass movement against the POTUS and US Government as our real time rhetorical criticism for the remainder of the semester.

My co-blogger, @coviner, was one of those students - and he has done great research on this topic with me since then, culminating in two conference papers that have used the tools of rhetorical criticism to dispassionately and academically investigate this rhetoric. He began by analyzing popular Conservative pundits, and then turned his attention to the tea parties and other rising true believer voices. His analysis of their ideographs and my application of Hoffer's ideas to this rhetorical discourse community form the core of our ongoing rhetorical criticism project seeking to understand the new social movements that have grown since the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

As luck would have it, the first Tea Party Nation convention is being held in Nashville, and we have the opportunity to study some of the discourse first hand. Thanks to our generous and adventurous assistant Dean of Liberal Arts, and the University mission to support student-faculty scholarship, we have two tickets to their dinner, to enrich and extend the rhetorical analysis we've established this far. We'll share that experience here - as well as some other insights from our ongoing rhetorical criticism project. We invite and welcome your thoughts and ideas, too.

Next up . . . a summary of Eric Hoffer's theories of True Believers and Mass Movements as a method for rhetorical criticism.