Just when you think things might actually get better in American politics, you run into the most incredibly stupid “debate” you’ve heard in years.
Sigh.
We’re referring, of course, to the debate — actually, more like a B.S. storm — about the supposedly terrifying prospect of Guantanamo prisoners being shifted to prisons in the United States.
Republican politicians and pundits’ rhetoric was over the top, to the point of insanity, such as House Minority Leader John Boehner who was no doubt peeing in his pants as he wrote that “importing the [Gitmo prisoners] would be a strategic mistake and an incredible risk,” or Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., who wailed, “The American people don’t want these men walking the streets of America’s neighborhoods!”
Well, no, senator, you’re right, no one wants them “walking the streets of America,” but that’s OK since the Guantanamo guys WOULD BE IN AMERICAN PRISONS. You know? Like the 347 convicted terrorists who are already being held in U.S. prisons? It must really make the thousands of people in law enforcement and corrections proud to know that members of Congress think they’re so incompetent that they would probably handle terrorist suspects the same way Andy and Barney treated Otis the drunk.
It’s useful, also, to remember that many of the Guantanamo prisoners aren’t even actual terrorists, but were “sold” to U.S. forces by vengeful personal enemies, as repeated reports have shown. As a friend put it last week, “I can’t understand being so terrified of some goat-herder who’d be afraid of an iPhone, much less a bomb. Plus, it’s not like America is crawling with escaped prisoners.”
Indeed, as Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., noted, not even one prisoner has ever escaped from a federal “Supermax” prison; and even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., before voting with the scaredy-cat crowd, said, “The idea that we cannot find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the United States is not rational.”
The biggest problem, of course, is that reason doesn’t have much to do with the Gitmo debate. As if to prove the point, Democrats allowed themselves to be steamrolled by the GOP’s fear-mongering, freaked out over the prospect of scared constituents storming their offices, and joined Republicans in the 90-6 vote rejecting Obama’s request for money to close Guantanamo. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader other Democrats love to hate, said he didn’t want the prisoners to be released here, and, when he was reminded that they would be imprisoned, replied, “Well, you have to release them to imprison them.” Huh?!
The sad thing, in terms of our national discourse, is that this kind of fear mongering isn’t all that surprising. Conservatives have long had a seeming addiction to fear and have used it to scare other Americans into supporting their viewpoint. As Salon.com commentator Glenn Greenwald rightly asked last week, “Is there anything the Right doesn’t fear?”
Greenwald accurately pointed out the three steps “that typically lead to America’s national security policies.” Step 1. Super-tough-guy conservatives “project some frightened, adolescent, neurotic fantasy onto the world”; 2. Democratic “leaders” cave in to the fear mongering in order to appear as “Serious and Tough” as the Republicans; and 3. Journalists depict conservatives’ fears as serious arguments, and suddenly Democrats are in trouble if they’re not as scared as Republicans. (or, as Greenwald summed up Sean Hannity’s argument, “Harry Reid isn’t as scared of this as I am, which shows that he’s weak.”) To anyone with a degree of balance and, to reiterate, sanity, it is simply astounding that this kind of goofball illogic seems to make sense to a lot of people.
The sudden spurt of paranoid fantasies from conservatives over the Guantanamo prisoners is just a continuation of the unhinged rhetoric we’ve heard from these wusses ever since 9-11. By now, fear and dread have become a natural reaction for the right, an emotional tic of sorts — to the point that their speeches and strategies are one and the same thing: I’m Scared To Death And You Should Be Too! It says a lot, and nothing much that’s good, about the current state of U.S. politics and culture that we don’t even think it’s odd anymore when Republican leaders routinely spin horrendous scenarios of homeland destruction, as if America was surrounded by millions of jacked-up Muslims with nuclear bombs in their pockets. Many conservatives are evidently in such a state of fear, even disagreements with Obama’s domestic policies can’t be debated rationally anymore; instead, we get bug-eyed, melodramatic rants that Obama wants to turn the United States into a socialist dictatorship! Run for the hills!
Sometimes I feel people like Hannity and Boehner and that whole ultra-right crowd simply watch too many action movies and episodes of 24, overdosing on fantasies, and carrying them into the public sphere.
Exaggerated fear of enemies is how some people get through the day. Many of those people have been diagnosed as paranoids; the rest are half-assed conservatives who seem to think their fear is a form of patriotism, when it’s actually the opposite.
If Republicans want to know why they’re wandering in the political wilderness these days, maybe they should consider the possibility that Americans are tired of politicians whose only approach is to scare the hell out of everybody.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 2, 2009.
