Crisis Addiction and the New American Right

The thread title sort of says it all. From this Sequester edition of the endless political hair-on-fire crisis machine, to the end-of-days-every-other-day, AntiChrist-whack-a-mole mentality of the American Evangelical community, to the Al Qaeda under every rock hysteria of the Bush/Cheney regime, to the lock-n-load, birther Manchurian Candidate end-of-America-as-we-know-it Obama hating Tea Party, it seems that the only thing the entire conflagration ever actually strives to accomplish is feeding the rightwing's junkie fix for crisis.

I expect tons of locked caps, since this is what these folks (here and elsewhere) do in response to literally everything, but I kinda hope that someone here takes the moment to notice just how accurate this quick (and yes, broad-brush) assessment is, as it pertains to the "new conservatism" that's emerged in this society since the turn of the century. It's all heroes and villains with this crowd, as the rest of us look around to try and understand why everything has to end up being a crisis - and even more, why so many of the folks who label themselves "registered conservatives" (which is odd, since I didn't know that conservatism is a political party, or that there actually is a Conservative Party that puts up national candidates, and has a registration process, but I digress...) seem to come so "alive" when everything in this nation is suddenly going straight to hell on an express train.

This psychology of crisis addiction....I think it might explain a lot about why our politics has gotten so completely childish and dysfunctional.

I seem to remember LBJ manufacturing a crisis in Vietnam.

Or do you overlook that one?

I got a bunch more if your ready to play however.

Originally posted by Hopechest
I seem to remember LBJ manufacturing a crisis in Vietnam.

Or do you overlook that one?

I got a bunch more if your ready to play however.

If LBJ was f*cking us all right now, then that'd be relevant. Besides, LBJ and most of his conservative southern base was Democrat back then - Dixiecrats, is what they were called. They all switched parties when Nixon implemented his "Southern Strategy", so we're talking about the same people. Those folks and their crisis addicted kids are "card carrying" conservatives now,

Nice try, though. If I didn't know my ass from 3rd base, you might've had me there.

Oh, and we're not talking GOP versus DNC, since the GOP is at war with itself over this crisis addiction thing. We're discussing the rightwing versus the rest of us in this society. Nowhere in the OP is there any reference to political party, since the Blue Dog Democrats have generally indulged the hysteria and have given much of it a tacit nod that the media has translated into bipartisan fear and loathing.

reply to post by NorEaster


Indeed. A "black and white" view of a nation of grays. I remember thinking the same thing when I heard Bush utter, "You're wither with us or you're against us". This leaves no room for THINKING (there's your caps). No middle ground or shades of gray, Just an inclination to cleave to one's chosen ideology and hold on tight, taking sides against each other.

How can you divide a nation, when it's full of thinking people with positions of gray? You can't.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Indeed. A "black and white" view of a nation of grays. I remember thinking the same thing when I heard Bush utter, "You're wither with us or you're against us". This leaves no room for THINKING (there's your caps). No middle ground or shades of gray, Just an inclination to cleave to one's chosen ideology and hold on tight, taking sides against each other.

How can you divide a nation, when it's full of thinking people with positions of gray? You can't.

Invites the best drama into just about everything. I wonder how the ultra-conservative working class ever gets anything done if they're in such profound anxiety all the time? It must be exhausting.

Interesting post, but I wonder what makes your crisis list? Global warming, spotted owls, fossil fuel and not enough recycling? We all have crises, some peoples are just more important than others

reply to post by NorEaster


Marketing 101 at its finest.

Besides, if we weren't kept running around in hysterical fear and convinced we were doing The Right Thing(tm) we might stop to *gasp* question it and take things at face value.

I've known people who seemed addicted to crisis, or at least crisis lingered around them like the cloud of dust cycling around the dirty kid in Charlie Brown. They did indeed see things that weren't there, expressed their thoughts about it, and attempted to hook others on their addiction. 99% of the time their insights were over-exaggerated or simply untrue.

I do see this on the political right, where every issue acquires some sort of bogey-man to stand in its place.

I will take a wild, perhaps silly guess, and wager that this is the evolutionary result of thousands of years of feeding Christianity to the illiterate masses through imagery instead of words.

It's a tactic of control. Fear and wonder are powerful tools.

These human livestock "farmers" create crisis and engineer threats so that the herds will cling to their farmers for protection.

There is nothing released to the general public that has not been analyzed 7 ways to Sunday to generate a predetermined response in the herds. It's rather easy to do when something like 5 mega corporations own nearly all media outlets and information sources. (As a side note, this is also why true journalism has become extinct).

They tell the people exactly what they want them to know and put a little op/ed spin on it to get the reaction they want.

I'm sorry, I do not fear the sequestration monster...my complaint is it does not do enough to address the issue of massive and insane deficit spending...

Just my opinion though...

Originally posted by onthedownlow
Interesting post, but I wonder what makes your crisis list? Global warming, spotted owls, fossil fuel and not enough recycling? We all have crises, some peoples are just more important than others

It's the manufactured crisis. Yes, there are important issues, but the "War on Terror" has been roundly proven to have been a top-down crisis construct (think about all the car bombings in the US that occurred since Al Qaeda declared war on us - some terror threat they turned out to be), and there there the inane "emergencies" (like Terry Schiavo and her feeding tube crisis - which forced an emergency session of Congress) that littered the years of a Bush-led Conservative majority in both houses of Congress, as opposed to the real emergencies (like Katrina) and that blown well in the Gulf (was that 2010?...I forget) and how the conservative right (and their hired bomb-throwers) treated the manufactured emergencies as opposed to the emergencies that were imposed by nature or business practices or decades of infrastructure neglect. There's a difference

I think that most folks have a pretty good idea what I'm referring to ere - even if you're struggling with it.

Sadly, you bring up a very good point.

It does seem that the Neoconservative branch of the Republican party/Conservative ideology does capitalize off of crisis (while they repeatedly bring up Rahm Emmanuel and his "never let a crisis go to waste" comment).

That's because many of their actions require an emotional, knee-jerk reaction-type of response to garner support for what they want to do. Logic is often tossed aside in favor of the instant outrage they need for their ideas to seem halfway decent.

I used to be a huge Limbaugh fan a few years ago and he always said that the Liberal Left were the people that made decisions based on emotion, yet that was just a decoy to take away attention from them......while they were using emotion to dictate policy.

Misdirection.....that's all it is.

reply to post by NorEaster


Truthfully, I have found this Admin to be more in crisis mode more than any previous Admin. Especially when it comes to the domestic agenda.

They are just clueless when it comes to Foreign policy.

On the fiscal scale, both sides seem to just keep kicking the can down the road.

That has now ended, thankfully. The sequestration will take effect and they will have to finally address it. But then again, they're politicians, so I'm not holding my breath.

But since we are using a “Broad-Brush” approach, I could say pretty much the same thing as you but substituting Liberal/Democrat/MoveOn, etc, etc. Of course my brush would have tar with a liberal sprinkling of feathers as well.

But my broad brush is actually larger than yours as I believe that ALL sides are responsible for these real and made up crisis’s.

It's all part of the plan as far as I'm concerned.[

Originally posted by Jeremiah65

I'm sorry, I do not fear the sequestration monster...my complaint is it does not do enough to address the issue of massive and insane deficit spending...

Did you know that only 6% of the American public realizes that the US debt has fallen for three straight years, and will fall again this year regardless of the sequestration monster (which, isn't really all that much of a monster, since it's not even a trillion dollars worth of cuts). Interesting factoid, at any rate. The debt rose under Bush (two wars off-the-budget-books, two enormous tax cuts, and an unfunded medicare expansion) and has since fallen under Obama.

Don't believe me, look it up.

reply to post by sheepslayer247


I would say that both side use that tactic very effectively. It is very hard to push a rational persons buttons, but all to easy tp push a emotional one.

We all can't be Vulcans.

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by onthedownlow
Interesting post, but I wonder what makes your crisis list? Global warming, spotted owls, fossil fuel and not enough recycling? We all have crises, some peoples are just more important than others

It's the manufactured crisis. Yes, there are important issues, but the "War on Terror" has been roundly proven to have been a top-down crisis construct (think about all the car bombings in the US that occurred since Al Qaeda declared war on us - some terror threat they turned out to be), and there there the inane "emergencies" (like Terry Schiavo and her feeding tube crisis - which forced an emergency session of Congress) that littered the years of a Bush-led Conservative majority in both houses of Congress, as opposed to the real emergencies (like Katrina) and that blown well in the Gulf (was that 2010?...I forget) and how the conservative right (and their hired bomb-throwers) treated the manufactured emergencies as opposed to the emergencies that were imposed by nature or business practices or decades of infrastructure neglect. There's a difference

I think that most folks have a pretty good idea what I'm referring to ere - even if you're struggling with it.

Katrina wasn't manufactured? It seems that your view point is slightly jaded by your vantage point, thats all that I'm saying. But go ahead and hurl insults, its obvious that one so obviously refined as yourself has a completely unbiased view of the world.

Edit: Blown well in the Gulf?

Originally posted by TDawgRex
reply to post by sheepslayer247

 

I would say that both side use that tactic very effectively. It is very hard to push a rational persons buttons, but all to easy tp push a emotional one.

We all can't be Vulcans.

I can agree. Both sides to take advantage, but the Democrats are horrible at it!

As I have written about before, the Neocons exploit everything they can. Including religion, finances, employment, taxes, 2nd amendment, and on and on and on.......

When it comes to propaganda and sterilization of their followers, the Left are weak compared to the Right Wing Machine.

reply to post by NorEaster


The GOP has less than four years to make the monsters scarier and a future under liberals look bleak if not out and out dangerous

They'll undermine a recovery every chance they get and sabotage whatever else they have to to make their party and the next candidate look like a savior

Yeah - I know - that's a little heavy on the drama :-) But we have the past four years to go by...

It will be up to the moderate conservatives to make a real difference - in recent history they just stood by and stared blankly through it all

Originally posted by TDawgRex
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Truthfully, I have found this Admin to be more in crisis mode more than any previous Admin. Especially when it comes to the domestic agenda.

And you don't see the activities of the right as pushing these crises? Like this sequestration thingy, or the debt-ceiling/bond-rate-drop thingy, or the healthcare freakout...to name only a few. I can't force you to understand what's going on around you. You've got some responsibility as well.

They are just clueless when it comes to Foreign policy.

Like the Bengazi crisis that - while 4 State Dept did die as a result of an attack on what wasn't an actual embassy, but an intelligence outpost (very different levels of security assigned to this sort of thing) - and how the rightwing has searched through 10s of thousands of provided State Dept documents for a smoking gun that they can't even describe what it'd look like if they found it, settling at last on declaring a crisis over what the Ambassador to the UN (not to Libya or any Middle Eastern nation) said to a talkshow host on Sunday morning, as if she'd lied to a congressional oversight committee. That kind of cluelessness?

On the fiscal scale, both sides seem to just keep kicking the can down the road.

And yet the debt has fallen considerably since the spring of 2010. Just sayin.

You kids play amongst yourselves. I'll be back later.

Originally posted by sheepslayer247

Both sides to take advantage, but the Democrats are horrible at it!

On that, I would have to disagree based upon recent history. The RePubs will bring up a boogieman and then other RePubs will start to counter it. Didn't Eric Cantor say that there was going to be a RePub revolution within their ranks?

I Say GOOD! Bring it on as that party needs some serious cleaning.

But the Dems will focus on two or three boogiemen and stay united for the most part in their talking points. That is more effective. So they are quite good at it as they keep to the KISS principle. They also effectively ignore/cover-up any real scandal.