Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
66Since I know people who proudly proclaim to be a member of it, it would seem logical to assume that the vast right wing conspiracy exists. Then again, I also know people who will -under certain provocation- insist that they worship a flying spaghetti monster, so maybe not. In fact, I'm sure the people who proclaim to be members of the conspiracy are not members of the conspiracy. They only think they're members, and that is the vast right wing conspiracy.
When Bill Clinton seemed to confirm his belief in a vast right wing conspiracy this past Sunday, it of course set off the ridicule of the right wingers. Pat Robertson noted that his fellow right wing non-conspirators couldn't even organize a baseball game. Of course the father of the Christian Coalition was being falsely modest.
Adam Neiman of Huffington Post offered varying definitions of the word conspiracy, but I won't quibble over interpretations. That said, he did describe what is happening in our land right now.
'Conspiracy in the grand historical sense involves large themes and historical narratives into which individuals fit their own personal narratives and plot lines and act accordingly. This sort of "Conspiracy" is far too vast to be orchestrated. It's an improvisational piece. And when certain music starts to play, when a particular drum begins to beat...'
People respond in ways that are fairly predictable. That predictibility is what makes the conspiracy theory plausible.
In a situation wherein certain powerful and monied individuals hear the band begin to play a song they don't like, they will demand that the music be stopped. Generally speaking these people know how to fight dirty, with other peoples' hands. A less than prickly conscience and an understanding of the predictibility of human nature is how they likely got where they are in the first place.
So they order a drum beat, which sends a message loud and clear to certain other powerful people whose privileged positions depend upon the monied orchestrators. They in turn start to conduct a change in the melody.
When the Lynyrd Skynyrd song Sweet Home Alabama comes on the radio a great many of the listeners upon hearing those familiar and intrinsically southern opening chords will reach to turn up the volume. It's not a conspiracy thing, but the song directs them to 'turn it up', they know the song directs them to do it, they like the song, and so they obey. It's predictable.
It's equally predictable that if certain terms are spoken, certain segments of the population will react in a fairly specific manner. If proposed legislation is described as a government takeover, a certain segment of the population will believe you -whether it's a fair description or not- and become rather indignant about it. If they can be convinced -and a certain segment of the population is fairly easy to convince- that free market enterprise is being squashed, certain people will become alarmed. If congressmen -and congresswomen, other political leaders, Christian preachers and even the news channels are saying that American ways and American freedoms are being demolished, a certain segment of American people are going to feel that an uprising is called for.
If in the above scenario there is a conspiracy, then that conspiracy would be successfully carried out when so much public resistance resulted in the demise of the proposed legislation which threatened the decadent lifestyles of the orchestrators. It's true of course that not all the players would be aware of any conspiracy, perhaps noone at all ever spoke of any conspiracy. The orchestrators simply said change that tune and the conductors complied. A vigorous wave towards the brass section, an up-tempo prodding of the woodwinds, and a repeated pulling at the strings would change the whole tone of the symphony. It might not be harmonic of course, but we must all play to our sponsors.
Even better however, when the conductors are tone deaf. If it should turn out that the orchestrators less than perfect taste in music actually coincides in some way with the taste of the conductor, so that money and power find themselves seeking the same means to not necessarily the same ends, that would provide for a happy meeting of the minds, if not necessarily a common goal and a conspiracy pact.
The health insurance industry does not want an affordable health insurance option, and Republicans do not want President Obama and the Democrats to succeed. The health insurance industry wants meaningful reform stopped, and the Republicans want Obama out. Mind you, I'm not saying there is a vast right wing conspiracy going on, but these guys have goals that coincide, and they are definitely working together.
Stop reform and make the Democrats look bad. If Republicans can do that, they will be rewarded by the insurance industry, as well as by misled and deceived voters.
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Lesser self-proclaimed members of the vast right wing conspiracy -who aren't even in on the conspiracy- will lose no matter what happens. There is no government takeover being proposed, there is no threat to free market enterprise, and American freedoms and ideals are not being torn asunder by any communists, so they needn't worry about that. But if the 'non-conspirators' of the vast right wing conspiracy succeed in their common goal, it will hurt all of the lower and middle classes.
If these plans to stop effective health care reform from taking place and to run the Democrats out of office do not succeed, the lesser nonmembers of the nonexistant vast right wing conspiracy will still lose. Because that isn't what they really want anyway, and what they really want is not attainable.
America is not a Christian nation. The small minority who thinks it should be are greatly outnumbered by reasonable people of all creeds and colors. We will not be ruled by various interpretations of the Bible. Homosexual rights will prevail and America will be a better place because of it. Womens' rights will not be taken away, and equal pay for equal work will become a reality, as will more generous maternity leave provisions. Minorities will not be oppressed and nonbelievers will not be suppressed. You cannot deny our rights as members of the American society.
The base of the vast right wing conspiracy has been fighting a losing battle along, and their leaders know it. That is the vast right wing conspiracy. (shh, don't tell anyone. it's a secret.)
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Thanks Ralph, and not just for your kind words. What you said prompted me to reread it, and I realized the horrible formatting mistake I made. So double thanks!
Con spiracy.
Con means "with", spire comes from the same root (spirare) as "breath" (think respire, inspire).
The teabaggers and the Republicans are breathing together with the big corporations... even notice how your breathing affects your emotions? How it's hard to calm down and breath deeply when you're angry, and how it's hard to be angry when you're breathing deeply?
Everyone take a deep breath!
Great hub. It's true - conspiracies happen without some hidden group of illuminati.
Things considered - a well stated case, though we disagree with much of political debates I join in your second to the last paragraph that the vision I continue to work towards is a free society that guarantees equal opportunity though not necessarily an equal result. Thanks for a great hub!!
Love this hub - as usual you are right on the money! I agree there are those consciously orchestrating the conspiracy (great metaphor) and those who are unaware of the conspiracy but become pawns in the process, even as it works to hurt them. They hear the buzz words that get them to turn up the volume, hear their trusted neo-con leaders ranting and raving about socialism, and are off and running into a brick wall.
William, great point. They're breathing foul air. Interesting way of putting it. The etymology doesn't indicate a co-planning, just 'breathing together'.
Thanks for the great comment.
Hmrjmr, no, I agree we cannot guarantee equal results, and each person has to determine their own reality as much as is within their ability to do so. All we can do is create an environment where each person has as much equal access to opportunity to fulfill their own happiness as is possible, without -of course- stepping on anyone else's rights in the process.
Thanks for your comments, Hmr.
kartika, They still try to use religion to control society. For a certain segment of the population, it still works.
"off and running into a brick wall", yep. Pretty much describes it.
Thanks for commenting, did I tell you I loved your last hub? The one on love? What you wrote is what I try to teach to my children. Great stuff, well done, and I look forward to your next.
‘The People’ might be advised, at every opportunity, that they ‘pay the piper’ (tax), so they should ‘call the tune’.
Awesome hub as usual. Thank you! I've noticed a more civil attitude around HP recently. Either the owners of the site have slapped the back of some hands, or people have had enough of all the ugly theater, or both. I do think lots of folks are tired of being jerked around and watching the government accomplish nothing on our behalf. You nailed it.
I knew those wild eyed southern boys were at the bottom of this. Whatever happened to that even-handed moderate, Barbara Streisand?
BY THERESA HOWARD
USA TODAY
NEW YORK — As the real world grows more tolerant of differences, the virtual world grows with hatred.
Complaints against groups on social networking sites that call for threats, violence and hatred toward people who are Jewish, black, gay or have disabilities are on the rise even as Americans celebrate the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the country rallies around its first black president, and gay marriage is legalized in some states.
An application on Facebook asks people to answer a quiz so they can see what "famous retard" they are most like. A Maryland police officer hosts a site with more than 100,000 members that tells people to "Stop breaking the law, retard." In July, a YouTube video hosted by "ExecutetheGays1" provided graphic suggestions about how to kill homosexuals. The site was taken down after five days.
The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate speech on the Web, says complaints are up this year more than 200% through July, to 1,512 complaints."This whole era of cyberhate is one of the biggest challenges we face," says Deborah Lauter, civil rights director of the league. "We've gotten to a place where we made it unacceptable for haters to hate in the public space." So they turn to the Web, where they can be anonymous.
An offensive word all over the web
Hannah Jacobs, 53, a New York mother of two, didn't know there was so much hatred on the Web about children with disabilities until a recent dinner, when a man sitting next to her used the word "retard."
"I felt like I was kicked in the stomach," says Jacobs, a former vice president for Christie's auction house. She quit her job 10 years ago when she and her husband confirmed that their daughter, Molly, 12, was cognitively impaired. "I went home and Googled the word."
She found hundreds of user groups with the word in it, especially on Facebook. So she started her own group challenging Facebook to "stop mocking people with disabilities." It now has 28,000 members.
Jacobs spends about 20 hours a week combing the Web for such sites. When she finds them, she tries to contact the organizers to ask them to take the site down or change the name. Her group members write letters to government officials and to media companies that operate the sites.
"It takes a lot of work," Jacobs says. "The goal is that once these groups are reported that Facebook take them down. I try to make the world a better place for Molly."
But making the virtual world better is a challenge. Facebook takes a long time to respond, and hundreds of groups with the word "retard" remain, she says.
But is it 'hate speech'?
Facebook sees it differently. Spokesman Simon Axter says complaints about nudity, pornography and harassing personal messages are responded to in 24 hours, but other sites require more scrutiny, and use of the word "retard" isn't considered hate speech. "Our team has had a lot of discussion about ... what is hate speech and where Facebook should be drawing the line," he says. "The mere use of the word 'retard' is not a violation of terms of use."
And it's not a violation for YouTube or Google. But YouTube has created an online safety center in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League; it explains the effect of hate speech and lets people flag offending sites and videos.
"We don't permit hate speech," says Scott Rubin, head of global communications and public affairs for Google and YouTube. "What we mean by hate speech is that it attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status and sexual orientation or gender identity."
Though sites may include offensive words, content is considered hate speech only if comments or videos target a person simply because of his or her membership in a certain group. "There are 20 hours of video uploaded to our site every minute. We don't prescreen," Rubin says. "Instead, we count on our community to know the guidelines and to flag videos that they believe violate guidelines."
In the end, positive speech is the best way to drown out hate speech, says free-speech expert Adam Thierer.
"When advocacy groups work together and use the new technology at their disposal, they have a way of signaling out bad speech and bad ideas," says Thierer, a senior fellow with the Progress and Freedom Foundation. "The Internet is a cultural bazaar. It's the place to find the best and worst of all human elements on display."
Contact MARK W. SMITH: msmith@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @markdubya or follow a feed of blog updates at @browserblog.
amilar, sure we pay tax, but the corporations pay the mass of the campaign funds, lol.
Thanks for reading.
pam, if hp has gotten better lately, it must have been really bad before.
In truth for the most part it just seems to be a handful of people, at least one or two of which lie so openly and hatefully that you'd think they were trained at the beck school of sincerest dishonesty. Predictably enough, they seem to get the loudest cheers.
Thanks for commenting.
nicomp I live in the south. We ain't real big on barbara streisand. And I meant no slur really on skynyrd. Truly, I love southern rock. And when I hear those intrinsically southern opening chords of Sweet Home Alabama, I automatically reach for the control to 'turn it up'.
Thanks for reading, nicomp, and for your comment.
"In the end, positive speech is the best way to drown out hate speech, says free-speech expert Adam Thierer."
Keep talking, Ralph!
As I said many times, you're such a diplomant! I just have to call it like a see it. The insurance companies pay their Goons(like Pgrundy says), the goons blow their dog whistles,(Kill Grandma=socialism=flag=Bible) and the Stupid Dogs start to bark and scream and cry.
Great Hub and fantastic use of metaphor, TC.
And to be fair concerning nocomp's comment: have you seen the picture of Joe Wilson when he called the President a liar? He was certainly wild-eyed, and as he represents a portion of South Carolina, would qualify as a Southern boy. Being from Texas, I can assure you that we also have our our own wild-eyed conspirators and non-conspirators alike.
Regardless, keep up the good work!
I don't listen to music much anymore, especially on commercial radio stations and what other kind are there?
If I happen to be listening for whatever reason and "Sweet Home..." comes on, I change the station. The lyrics are openly racist, extreme right arrogance.
You are a great wordsmith TC. The best part is that your words are always to the point, concise and correct. Yours is an informed and honest voice cutting through the white noise of memes and propaganda that attempt to drown out any voice of reason.
Thank you.
"America is not a Christian nation. The small minority who thinks it should be are greatly outnumbered by reasonable people of all creeds and colors."
Beware....many people have underestimated extremism and wondered what happened when they were put behind razor wire.
It's a free society that we are working towards......... Is there anything else to say?
CW Baby, I gotta disagree with you on this one. It is very much my opinion that the song was not written with an racist intentions, sentiments or intended to have a racist slant or theme. I do believe that if one wished to interpret the lyrics that way, it's possible, and I know that many choose to, but I don't believe Van Zant or the other Skynyrd members were racist or the song was intended to be that way.
I'm not oblivious to the racism or the preference to be insensitive to racism that certain southerners will exhibit. I am very much against the use of the 'rebel flag', or the confederate battle flag as it was in, on or around state buildings and such. I know some maintain that it isn't racist, but they are insensitive to the symbolism it exudes, and perhaps some are purposely insensitive. Skynyrd always maintained that the use of the flag in their imaging was something their label did, and never a conscious choice on their part.
The flag is an unfortunate symbol of the south, unfortunate because of it's original use. Because of where it came from, a war that was essentially waged to protect the system of slavery, we need to let it go, and the compromises that some of our states have made by merely utilizing a less well known version of a confederate flag isn't good enough. But understand, that the protection of slavery and racist sentiment isn't the only thing that the confederate flag symbolizes for us, and isn't what was intended by Skynyrd's label, or thought of by Skynyrd when they failed to throw it off. I hate to say this, but the love/hate relationship with the confederate flag that sane southerners such as myself hold, and indeed southern pride and attachment in itself that doesn't stem from racist prejudices, is something that is going to be hard for anyone not raised in the south to understand.
Personally, I have always known that Van Zant wasn't racist, because he was an intelligent southerner with a great deal of 'soul', as is obvious by his music. Curtis Loew -another Skynyrd song some try to claim is racist- is to me a great example of the depth of Van Zant's heart and human understanding.
The controversy is one of those questions that can't ever be settled. The song could be interpretted either way if one so chooses, and although Skynyrd has denied the racist interpretations, people can choose to believe they lied.
Skynyrd has said that the song was written as a tongue in cheek way to say to Neil Young to mind his own business and stfu, so to speak. Young's songs written derogatorily about the south from his Canadian viewpoint weren't appreciated, and probably weren't helpful.
It's like this, the south has had a not always glorious history. Southern liberals are trying to change that. Change has to come from the inside. The north did its part, and that was all good. We need to do the rest on our own. Northerners have their own problems to deal with, and their own history of racism as well, and Canadians have nothing to do with it. It's like my kids. We live in a rural area and though my three children attend three different schools, they all ride the same bus. My son picks on his younger sisters all the time. But he's also fiercely protective and doesn't let anyone else get away with it.
We'll take the ridicule, the redneck and hillbilly jokes coming from northerners to a certain extent. But serious outside criticism is rather counter-productive. All it tends to do is rile up the haters. You can't regulate sentiment. They're dying off, slowly but surely, and their numbers are steadily decreasing all the time.
The south -like any other region in the world- has alot of good in it. We don't really appreciate the world at large focusing constantly on our less than perfect history. That's what Sweet Home Alabama was about.
Maybe another day I'll go through the controversial lyrics, but i don't have time now, since instead I rambled on and on instead. I maintain though that the lyrics are not racist unless someone wishes them to be so, and Skynyrd didn't intend for them to be racist. When I say 'unless someone wishes them to be so' I am not referring to you or anyone else who has considered the song to be racist. Not everyone would be interested enough to have ever looked seriously into it.
Love you CW, and hate disagreeing with you, but as a southerner I kind of have to on this. I am not oblivious to the shortcomings of the south, and often criticize it myself, and will heartily agree when the criticism is deserved. But there's more to the south than old racism, and that was all Sweet Home Alabama was trying to say.
South, North, East, West, it's everywhere. More obvious in some places than others but ubiquitous nonetheless.
We can always agree to disagree TC. That's one reason I'm your fan. I know that on the rare occasions that we do, it will simply be put aside and forgotten. It has no impact on my respect and admiration for you.
Some things are simply more subjective than others. In this case, I think the interpretation of a lyric falls into that category.
Not worth debate and certainly not conflict.
Ralph Deeds says:
6 months ago
Outstanding! I'm going to put a link to this Hub on my local newspaper's discussion forum.