The 1969 Game: Days of Rage

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 32 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

When a political thesis is overthrown, when a generation's assumptions about political right or wrong cease to be the majority view,  the inevitable result is rage.

That's what is happening at the "town hall" meetings over health care. It's not just that activists are feeding their people lies. It's that people are acting on those lies, with a virulence and potential for violence that threatens our democracy.

The shoe was on the other foot, in my lifetime.

The year was 1969. The subject was Vietnam.The 1968 election had settled this question. The war was a "Cold War activity," as Robert McNamara said, and surrender was not an option. But those who opposed the war (and it was a stupid war) could not accept the peoples' verdict, resulting in a series of protests climaxing in the notorious "days of rage" protests organized by the Weathermen.

The turning point in the larger battle had already occurred. That turning point was November, 1968, when between them Richard Nixon and George Wallace drew 58% of the popular vote.

What the Days of Rage did was create a reaction within the larger society, one of rejection. Not only was opposition to the war afterward discredited, but so were war opponents. For a generation to come, Republicans could win office easily by referring even obliquely to those days, by waving the "hippie" flag.

For better or worse, Barack Obama today is in the position  Richard Nixon was in then, and the problems of our time are Vietnam. Health care is Vietnam. Climate change is Vietnam. The deficit and the economy are Vietnam.

The issues themselves are not important. What is important is the attitude. And that attitude, on the part of the organized Right, is just what the left felt 40 years ago, that no debate is possible, that the other side is illegitimate, that we are unAmerican. That the American people, the majority of Americans, are somehow a threat to the American way of life.

It's nonsense. Today's Haties are in the end just like yesterday's Hippies. Given the passage of time I wonder sometimes whether some aren't the same people.

What Democrats must do to these protesters, then, is what Nixon did to the Weathermen. Discredit their leaders, discredit all who participate with them, personally discredit all those who repeat their nonsense, and so discredit the movement.

In some ways this should be easy. The movement is thoroughly discreditable. They are telling outright lies about the President and his policies. Many of these people are also racists, they are profoundly anti-democratic (small d), and some have already turned to violence. They are proving an essential thesis, that the opposite of government is not freedom, but anarchy, and this message needs to be hammered home.

Unfortunately, the President is unaware of this and thus trying to play a game that is far too subtle. The Obama Thesis of Consensus requires bipartisanship, so he continues to reach out to Republicans, no matter how many times his overtures are slapped away. The hope is that a Republican Civil War will break out, and between conservative activists and those Republicans who believe in power, between absolutists and those who support truly limited government.

There are some signs of success.  Robert McDonnell in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey are not seen as absolutists. They accept the proposition that the two parties must work together. They were campaigning as reformers, not seeking to overthrow the Obama Thesis so much as to lean against it, and develop an AntiThesis to it. 

If they're to be beaten, and I don't know if they can be, it will be identifying them in the public mind with the extremists inside their coalitions, by forcing them to choose sides. Tie them to the health care liars, tie them to the most extreme of the gun nuts, hang Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin around their necks. It may not work, but it's the only game in town.

This Civil War from the right is only going to escalate. What we are seeing right now is going to turn into mass violence. What we have seen so far has been sporadic violence — individual gun nuts acting-out in berserker fashion. This can be dismissed by those whose violent rhetoric instigated the action as the acts of a few crazies.

Even with a thesis of consensus, there are people and views that must lie outside it. This has always been true. The task for the President is to define what is inside the consensus — that kinds of dissent are legitimate and helpful — versus what lies outside it and must therefore be rejected by everyone who seeks political legitimacy.

As the violence escalates, as we see real terrorism in America, as we saw from the left 40 years ago, the President and his party need to take a firm stand on behalf of order. This is why, I'm convinced,  the President has not torn down the security edifice put in place by the Bush Administration. Despite private misgivings, I think Democrats are going to see such precautions as necessary, once the violence comes to them, once the war of our time comes home.

My point today is that it will, that it is in the process of doing so. You can't feed millions of people lies and dreams of violence, then think no one is going to act on that. At the same time you can't incite a riot and then claim you had nothing to do with what results.

Connections between violent rhetoric and action, between the disorder of the far right and the order we must maintain, must be made. They need to be made by our leaders in Washington, and they need to be made by the Netroots as well.