Republican Rx For Health Reform: Helter Skelter

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/23278

Republican Rx For Health Reform: Helter Skelter
by Larry Durstin | August 13, 2009



Bombarded by images of bug-eyed Town Hall-ers either screaming hysterically or filing zombie-like into public forums given by members of Congress, I found myself oddly diverted to the media coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Manson slayings, which many have characterized as the grisly consequence of the counterculture mindset born in the mid-1960s. And while doing so, I began imagining Charlie and his crew as surreal forerunners to what is going on now with the Republican Right in its steamy August assault on health care reform.

Perhaps this comparison strikes some as extreme, but upon closer examination it may not be as far-fetched as it seems, especially given that the tactics of the "Revolution on the Right," which reached high gear in the 1980s, were drawn very deliberately from those used by the Left on college campuses in the '60s. When Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed took the principles of the radical Young Americans for Freedom of the 1970s and blended them into the College Republicans in the early '80s, university campuses became the laboratories and breeding grounds for a similar kind of radicalism that was seen two decades earlier - yet one with a very different political ideology.

Bizarrely viewing themselves as societal victims and outcasts, these elitist right-wingers took dead aim at so-called liberal academia and the wider culture it purportedly nurtured. The College Republicans (CRs) borrowed heavily from the student Left's '60s' playbook. These "Reagan Youth" -- led by a 22-year-old Abramoff -- prided themselves on their ability to intimidate campus Leftists, whom they labeled Socialists and/or Communists. The CRs openly worshipped bullies and, like their '60 counterparts, constantly sloganeered about 'fighting for the Revolution," which they believed would result in a "quasi-military" triumph over liberalism. (There are even photos in one of the CRs annual reports of Abramoff using a bullhorn to rally his well-scrubbed troops and of the necktie-wearing Reed angrily clenching his fist in front of crisply attired, sign-waving college Republicans.) In their literature, these well-heeled "freedom fighters" promised to expose "12,000 Marxist professors" and in one "street theater" moment, built and destroyed a model of the Berlin Wall.

Well, we all know that it didn't take much time in the 1960s for there to be a splintering of lofty ideals that manifested itself politically in violent-leaning groups like the Weather Underground, which advocated the bombing of strategic targets, and culturally in mind-control cults, the most notoriously famous being the Manson Family, which became devoted to triggering a society-wide chaos and destruction known as "Helter Skelter."

Although the slashing and burning on the part of the Right has continued unabated for the past quarter century, with the arrival of the Obama presidency and its effort to reform health care, conservatism appears to have bottomed out in the persons of the Town Hall-ers and their apparent crusade to reduce public discourse into total nonsense. While Manson's grand scheme involved a race war and though it could be argued that Obama's skin color hints at a strong racial element mixed in with the Town Hall-ers, Tea Baggers, etc., I seriously doubt that if Hillary Clinton were president, their behavior would be much different or less fanatical. Besides, the critical issue now is how Obama and the Dems counter this frontal assault, something they certainly need to be better prepared for in the near future than they have been up until this point. (Think clueless Kerry being ambushed by the Swift Boaters.)

And so the Merry Prankster-like youthful stunts of Abramoff, Reed and their playful, squeaky clean Republican frat boys have devolved into the grim visages of the mostly middle-aged and beyond Town Hall-ers -- some of whom may have actually been CRs in the early '80s themselves -- shouting about death panels, brandishing swastikas, hanging effigies, painting Hitler mustaches on Obama's picture, lugging around mock tombstones and coffins, howling like banshees while calling down the wrath of Jehovah at the drop of a hat and, perhaps most strangely of all, toting phony birth certificates around in baggies, With cultish determination fueling their at-times animated, at-times catatonic countenances, these dutiful foot soldiers are turning out in staggering numbers all over the land, apparently to participate in what they believe to be the ultimate, chaotic battle for the soul of this country.

Now it may be a stretch to call this movement something as frightening as Helter Skelter, but if these folks start showing up with shaved heads and twisted crosses carved into their foreheads, it shouldn't come as a total shock.