Paranoia Strikes Deep -By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.

True, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, offered some mild criticism after the fact. But the operative word is “mild.” The signs were “inappropriate,” said his spokesman, and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as Rush Limbaugh, said Mr. Cantor, “conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”

What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

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But something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they’d get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.

Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1

Excellent read

and he hits the nail right on the head.

Should we be lock-steppers like those on the other side of the aisle we make fun of, or are we allowed to think and disagree?

I think this is thought provoking enough to be worth reading and thinking about and discussing.

, , , last week's farce on Capitol Hill was a convention of haters and bigots. To credit it with any more than that would be undue credit!

that they have the potential to cause some extremely ugly things to happen if we take them too lightly. This is why I hope this can get a fifth rec and be seen by more DUers. I think Krugman presents some ideas to at least consider ( their potential to cause extremely ugly things to happen). I don't think it's "crediting them " . I'm sure most Germans laughed off the Beer Hall Putsch " crowd too.

No doubt that this cannot simply be ignored. The Nuremberg rallies were populated by the German equivalent of beer-swilling, flag-waving, teabaggers! (And Glenn Beck is fast approaching the "Josef Goebbels Award" for propaganda, too!). I like Krugman, and have read several of his books. He irritates me at times though, because hje has a way of gutlessly pandering to the mainstream when his analysis clearly points to the Left. His support for Hillary over Obama did not endear him to me.

the Democratic party spinelessly allowed the republicans and their corporate media buddies to decide where the "center" was). But he does make sense usually... Didn't remember his support of Hillary, but not surprised I suppose. I actually was not a supporter of either her or Obama; they were my bottom two of the Democratic field ( HRC being at the bottom; I found aspects of her campaign repugnant). Have not read any of Krugman's books. Is there any specific one you'd recommend above the others ? ( especially for someone who is intellectually challenged when it comes to more than a basic level of economics, although I did understand pretty much everything Naomi Klein talked about in Shock Doctrine, so maybe I'm not quite as dumb as I think) BTW, in case your 21 posts means you're new, welcome... This place infuriates me so much sometimes that I consider bailing on it, but every time that happens, I'll communicate on these boards with people of such intelligence, humor and human decency, that I am able to put the idiocies I sometimes see too much of here to the side and decide that on balance, I'll continue to read ( and learn) and post here...:hi:

Okay, I understand your frustration. However, it's no better in other places. I have quite a lot more posts at www.revleft.com, where I use the same user name and avatar. RevLeft is very hard core left -- including communists and anarchists. I'm a bit too patient for them. I don't disagree with the need for radical change -- in fact, I am all for it. But I do worry about a bunch of Leftists who sit around claiming that "revolution" is the only answer, and then seem to be waiting on divine intervention for it to happen.

I come from the democratic left of Michael Harrington, Cornel West, Gloria Steinem, and Irving Howe. In other words, the Democratic Socialists of America. My ideas are radical, but I try to look for practical methods to put them into action. As to Obama, I plead guilty, I joined his campaign early, and I love the guy more than any American political leader since Robert Kennedy. I don't always agree with him though. I think we need to get out of Iraq faster, start getting out of Afghanistan before we suffer the same dilemma as the Soviets a generation ago -- and I think we need a fully socialized healthcare system, like Great Britain -- at the very least a single payer system like Canada.

But having survived Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes, I know that a center-left liberal like Obama can make this a much more livable place. So I will stick with him, but try to help move him to the Left whenever possible.

As to books by Krugman, I recommend "The Return of Depression Economics" and "Conscience of a Liberal." For a more in depth look at trends in capitalism, I recommend "The End of Work" and "The Age of Access" both by Jeremy Rifkin. I also highly recommend "The Work of Nations" by Robert Reich, and "The Age of Uncertainty" by John Kenneth Galbraith. "Biosphere Politics" by Jeremy Rifkin is another good one.

Finally, I most heartily recommend the following books by Michael Harrington:
1. Socialism (1972)
2. The Accidental Century (1965)
3. The Twilight of Capitalism (1976)
4. The Other America (1962)
5. The Politics at God's Funeral (1982)
6. The Next Left (1987)
7. Socialism: Past and Future (1989)

just pointing California out as a canary in a coal mine for the damage this fascist rump of a party could potentially do on a national scale if not watched and taken seriously as a threat.

...isn't nearly as associative of the Golden State as it is with the region in which Florida lies.

A look at the voting trends of the 2008 election, sentiments expressed since then in polls, participation in protests and other indicators, the Tea Party parallels the American South and its perspectives more than any other area of the nation. There are indeed Tea Baggers from every region, but the South will be their bedrock.

The role of paranoia in the history of the South is well covered and easily found.

as a warning sign as to what chaos and ungovernability can ensue from a relatively small group of people. Your points about Florida and the south in general being the incubator of the majority of this type of thinking ( using that term loosely) are true beyond a shadow of a doubt. Another thing, kind of a tangent ... but thank you for stating your disagreements with me in an intelligent, and thoughtful manner. That is something that has distressed me greatly to see missing from DU too often lately.

...I understood the point about political Balkanization of California. I was just making a corollary point that was also tied in with geographic trends.

The Tea Party might as well be called the Dixie Party and all it would take is one look at the history of the South over the last 150 years to realize that's a path that shouldn't even be entertained.

Even scarier.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6973052

Required reading.