Know Thine Enemy

Now, know that I truly do understand who this nation's enemies are.

It's clear that any person or group that truly threatens - not merely offends - the values that makes (made?) this nation a world leader in the concepts of "freedom, justice and liberty" as enshrined in our Constitution would be considered an enemy.

To be clear: We're not talking about laissez-faire "economic freedom" at the expense of a functioning government, vigilante justice at the expense of the rule of law, nor any personal "liberty" that ignores basic civil and/or human rights.

And let's be consistent. These concepts of "freedom, justice and liberty" can be just as imperiled from within as they are from external forces. --You might say that the lack of any proven threat from Iraq to the U.S. is merely one of the reasons I opposed the Iraq War from the outset...well, that, and the fact that it was obvious to anyone paying attention that the threat lay elsewhere.

And while that threat regroups in the mountainous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, another threat to our collective values has slowly gained prominence from within: The threat of contrived masculinity.

Glenn Greenwald has concisely articulated this thought, which has percolated in my mind for far too long without finding its voice to be effectively communicated:

[The current, extremist conservative movement] is a cult of contrived masculinity whereby people dress up as male archtypes like cowboys, ranchers, and tough guys even though they are nothing of the kind -- or prance around as Churchillian warriors because they write from a safe and protected distance about how great war is -- and in the process become triumphant heroes and masculine powerful icons and strong leaders. They and their followers triumph over the weak, effete, humiliated Enemy, and thereby become powerful and exceptional and safe.

[snip]

John Dean and Bob Altemeyer have both documented this dynamic as clearly and convincingly as can be. People who feel weak and vulnerable crave strong leaders to protect them and to enable them to feel powerful. And those same people crave being part of a political movement that gives them those sensations of power, strength, triumph and bravery -- and they need a strong, powerful, masculine Leader to enable those feelings. And they will devote absolute loyalty to any political movement which can provide them with that.

That is just the basic dynamic of garden-variety authoritarianism, and it is what the right-wing, pro-Bush political movement is at its core -- far, far more than it is a set of political beliefs or geopolitical objectives or moral agendas. All of it -- the obsessions with glorious "Victory" in an endless string of wars, vesting more and more power in an all-dominant centralized Leader, the forced submission of any country or leader which does not submit to the Leader's Will, the unquestioning Manichean certainties, and especially the endless stigmatization of the whole array of Enemies as decadent, depraved and weak -- it's just base cultural tribalism geared towards making the followers feel powerful and strong and safe.

The saddest irony is that if these folks truly had their way, we would indeed be living in a country not unlike the USSR or North Korea. Their leading pundits like to crow loudly about "liberal treason," but fail to understand (or, rather, choose to misunderstand) that liberals want nothing more than to restore the very things that have made and may continue to make this country great (see: "values" remarks above). No more is this sick irony revealed than in their own rhetoric:

On the March 5 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, which aired at 6 p.m. ET...[Michael] Savage lashed out at "[t]hose scum-sucking vermin. Those left-wing rats" who he claimed "won't be happy until we're all on prayer rugs waiting to have our heads cut off." He continued: "You ought to be happy, you liberal SOBs, that I am only a talk-show host. You ought to thank God that I have no avariciousness [sic] in my soul. You ought to thank God that I'm not power mad like you liberals, because if I ever ran for office, I can guarantee you, you wouldn't be in business too long. I can guarantee you you'd be arrested for sedition within six months of my taking power. I'd have you people licking lead paint, what you did to this country."

So much for American diversity and freedom of thought, should Savage ever be "taking power." This is one of their top-3(!) commentators! No leading liberal commentator or pundit is spewing such accusations or threats.

I find it remarkable that some right-wing commentators like to maintain that the "adults are back in charge" after the scandals of the Clinton era. Again, the irony is sadly lost on today's extremist conservative movement that the actions of its Administration and its leading pundits are more akin to an adolescent with an exaggerated inferiority complex. Their actions certainly do not demonstrate any semblance of true strength.

And *that*, as anyone who has gone through puberty knows, is the true enemy within.