Sinclair
Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here and
Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America
tell tales that seem impossible, demagogues being elected President of the
United States and the violent consequences, minorities being persecuted,
hunted, fanaticism and mass hatreds abounding. It’s an old formula – stir fear among the
populace and then promise to protect them.
Donald Trump showed his cards last night and got his South Carolina
audience worked up into almost an evangelistic state. His message is simple: Muslims in America are
dangerous and he’ll protect us, classic demagoguery – “a person who appeals to
the emotions and prejudices of people in order to advance his own political
ends.”
Trump
has stirred a dangerous pot, just what ISIS wants. If one was a conspiracist, perhaps it could
be said that he is merely a Trojan horse for Ted Cruz, who independently stated: “We will utterly destroy ISIS. We will carpet
bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re
going to find out.” If Trump drops out,
Cruz will inherit the far right fringe of the Republican Party. Was that the “plan” all along? Does Cruz know
that carpet bombing usually implies leveling an area, civilians and all? It sounds more like revenge than a strategy,
something to make his followers “feel good.”
Unfortunately,
the horror in San Bernardino has fed into all of this, “legitimizing” such dangerous
rhetoric and escalating it to personal attacks on President Obama (who now has low
polling numbers about keeping America “safe,” the exact inverse of what those
numbers were after bin Laden was nailed) - and subsequent accusations that any
call for stronger gun control laws is merely politicizing the San Bernardino tragedy.
But
such calls have gone on for years with fierce Republican and NRA opposition. I do not naively believe that better gun
control laws and enforcement would magically eliminate such tragedies,
especially in the short term. But I do
believe that the Second Amendment, which was written in the days of musket
rifles and flintlock pistols, needs serious updating.
At
that time, we needed an armed militia and also the founding fathers believed
that an armed citizenry would be deterrent to the rise of a despotic
government. The world has changed since
then, weapons of war unimaginable to our forefathers, and, now, mostly in the
hands of the military and law enforcement.
To make some of the same weapons legitimately available to the citizenry
no longer serves the purpose of protecting us from a despotic government as the
military will always have superior weaponry (is an AK-15 adequate protection
against a tank?). The proliferation of automatic weapons just further endangers
us all, giving us a false sense of security by just having one in our closet.
No,
this is a country of laws and checks and balances and we have to depend on our
tried-and-true institutions as well as the much maligned (by Trump in particular)
fourth estate to keep our government transparent and trustworthy. If some
fringe element threatens us in our homes and public places, we need better
intelligence to prevent it and rapid response law enforcement to protect us.
Fully
automatic weapons (ones that operate as a machine gun) need to be banned, and guns
should be registered just like a car, an equally dangerous thing. That means getting a license, passing a rigorous
background check and license renewals (a gun owner having to report if it is
sold, just like a car). Guns for self
defense, hunting and target practicing are understandable but how can one argue
that an automatic weapon is needed?
Certainly not for hunting (where is the sport in that?). Do we really want our neighbors to be totting
an automatic weapon citing Florida’s ambiguous “stand your ground” law as a
justification?
Will
that keep guns out of the hands of the “bad guys” as the Republicans like to
call them? No, but it’s a start and of
course the devil is in the details of how such gun control is
administered. Senseless to get further
into it here – I’m merely expounding an opinion.
Getting
back to the demagoguery of Trump’s speech reminded me of a piece I wrote during
the last Presidential primaries. I
concluded it with a description of the movie A Face in the Crowd and it seems to be even more apropos to this Republican
primary, so I’ll repeat what I said then….
A bit of serendipity led me to watch
the 1957 classic A Face in the Crowd
on Turner Classic Movies. Directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg,
it depicts Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a drifter who is found in a jail by
Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal), who she enlists to sing and talk on a local
Arkansas radio station, he ultimately rising to the pinnacle of media
demagoguery. He is nicknamed
"Lonesome" Rhodes by Marcia, and she goes on the journey with him
from obscurity to fame to fall.
The relevancy of this film, made
more than fifty years ago, to today is striking. Lonesome is drawn into the political arena,
and is brought in to help transform the film's Senator Worthington Fuller into
a Presidential candidate. Lonesome
instinctively and sardonically understands the manipulative power of language
and media.
When he first meets the Senator, he
advises him to abandon his stiff personality and give himself over to
Lonesome's control: "...Your problem is getting the voters to listen to you. Getting
them to like you enough to listen to you. We've got to face it, politics have
entered a new stage, television. Instead of long-winded debates, the people
want slogans. 'Time for a change' 'The mess in Washington' 'More bang for a
buck'. Punch-lines and glamour....We've got to find a
million buyers for the product 'Worthington Fuller'....Respect? Did you
ever hear of anyone buying any product beer, hair rinse, tissue, because they
respect it? You've got to be loved, man. Loved....Senator, I'm a professional.
I look at the image on that screen same as at a performer on my show. And I
have to say...you'll never get over to my audience not to the millions of
people who welcome me into their living rooms each week. And if I wouldn't buy
him, do you realize what that means? If I wouldn't buy him, the people of this
country aren't ready to buy him for that big job on Pennsylvania Avenue....I'm
an influence, a wielder of opinion...a force. A force."
To Marcia he says :"This whole country's just like my
flock of sheep!....Rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins,
pea-pickers - everybody that's got to jump when somebody else blows the
whistle. They don't know it yet, but they're all gonna be 'Fighters for
Fuller'. They're mine! I own 'em! They think like I do. Only they're even more
stupid than I am, so I gotta think for 'em. Marcia, you just wait and see. I'm
gonna be the power behind the president - and you'll be the power behind
me."
An actor on Rhodes' show asks him
about Senator Fuller: "You really
sell that stiff as a man among men?" Lonesome Rhodes replies: "Those morons out there? Shucks, I
could take chicken fertilizer and sell it to them as caviar. I could make them
eat dog food and think it was steak. Sure, I got 'em like this... You know what
the public's like? A cage of Guinea Pigs. Good Night you stupid idiots. Good
Night, you miserable slobs. They're a lot of trained seals. I toss them a dead
fish and they'll flap their flippers."
