Respect on the Playground

My 2nd favorite political blogger asks us to pay special attention to one particular passage at the end of Charles "I went to prison for Watergate and all I got was crazier" Colson's "Manhattan Declaration" (Tristero's comments below):

The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo-research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called "therapeutic cloning." This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and "voluntary" euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine oflebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life") were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of "liberty," "autonomy," and "choice."

Of course this is bullshit, anyone sane will agree, and the distortions and poor associations between different pseud0-facts make for incoherence, if you try to make actual sense of it. So what is this about? Why is this weird passage in the Christianist Manifesto?

Focus carefully on the style. Get it? No? Ok, let's spell it out. Check out what this passage contains:

The President and many in Congress...Industrial mass production...human...to be killed...assisted suicide..."voluntary" euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons...Eugenic...lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life")...the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave.

In other words, Colson and his cronies are saying Obama is Hitler and Democrats are Nazis. They're planning a Holocaust for Christians.

Disagree that that is the intent? Perhaps you think the gratuitous use of the German was just an accident, or mere intellectual posturing. Or that it's just a coincidence that the phrase "The President and many in Congress" occurs so close to "Industrial mass production" as well as the word "human" and the phrase "to be killed."

If you really think this is just some kind of random half-baked nonsense, just boiler-plate, then - and I mean this very sincerely - you don't know the first thing about how language works in modern American political discourse. And so, you will be satisfied with a liberal rhetoric that counters this disgusting demagoguery with something as unfocused and ineffective as spring rain and mushrooms. And nasty creeps like Colson, Donohue, and their ilk will continue to have regular access to sitting presidents.

"Spring rain and mushrooms" refers to a post from earlier this week in which Tristero ripped apart Marty Potek of the Southern Poverty Law Center for describing the vast resurgence of the militia movement since Obama's election as "mushrooms popping up after a spring rain."

Obviously, these right wingers know what they're doing. They know how to take horrible, un-American ideas and frame them in such a way that they are given airtime and serious debate by a credulous news media. But a big reason, maybe even the MAIN reason they have been so successful is that liberals simply refuse to play the game, instead preferring to believe that if we all just ignore the crazies, they'll go away, and we can get back to the good old days when nobody used mean language. Unfortunately, pretending not to hear it when somebody calls us unpatriotic pussies (or responding with language that makes us sound just like pussies) rarely seems to win the argument, especially when the media are the kids on the sideline going "oh snap, he's talking about your MOTHER!"

Just imagine what could be done if liberals were as skilled as the crazies at this kind of thing. Imagine if there were more than 1 or 2 congressmen who did stuff like this on a daily basis:

Grayson SCHOOLS this guy. And he does it without yelling or calling anybody a Nazi either, which should be quite instructive for sensitive types who think it's uncivil to raise your voice when engaging bigots.

And he makes it look easy, because it really is easy. It's easy because on so many issues (e.g. global warming, gay rights, health care, market regulations, immigration, tax policy, education, arts funding, abortion, war, abstinence education, faith healing, what's really in the U.S. Constitution), Republicans do not know the basic facts. A real liberal should never miss an opportunity to lay bare the stupidity and ignorance that underlies their beliefs.

And winning a fight or two might even make the rest of the playground take notice.