The Left and the Right Come Together Under the Big Looney Tent.
America needs a bad guy. This nation seems to thrive under the
fear of the Great Big Evil OTHER, the scary boogeyman, the foreign
monster under our collective bed. Since the creation of the United
States, we've had a super-villian to loathe. We're good at it
-- it's our national pastime. First it was the English, then the
Spanish, then the European immigrants, then the Germans (twice),
then the Asians, and then the Russians. American citizens used
to be so gifted at spewing vitriol at a cartoonish, amorphous
personification of a perceived threat to our way of life. As a
child steeped in anti-communist teachings during the Reagan era,
I believed that the devilish Russkies were building replicas of
Anytown U.S.A. in Moscow to learn how to infiltrate and subvert
our Christian land. Oh, how I loved to hate them. These nationalistic
fears, most of which were not based in reality, galvinized Americans
into one giant mass of togetherness under the banner of common
paranoia.
But somewhere along the line, we lost our bad guys. Communism
fell, leaving Russia a morass of closed grocery markets and fragmented
politics, and the world's superpowers suddenly played nice with
other. Overall, peace broke out, leaving the U.S. without a true
threat to its shores. In order to fill the void, it looks like
Americans have begun to do a little navel gazing. Although we've
always been a tad paranoid toward our own national leaders, there
has been a recent surge in the fears about our government. Groups
of frightened citizens have sprung up around the country, holding
forth about black helicopters, the New World Order, concentration
camps for good Christians, and how the UPC barcode is the Mark
of the Beast.
The right and left wings of politics are usually portrayed in
the media as polar opposites. A George Will-type might discuss
why we need less governmental restrictions, while his Michael
Kinsley-esque counterpart politely disagrees. We see them sitting
on facing each other on television, reinforcing their own political
distance. We are taught that the right and left never crossover
into each other's turf. Yet, the farther into the extremes of
politics each wing reaches, the more the core beliefs become the
same. People often assume that the far right wing has a monopoly
on loopy paranoia, but the far left is just as crazed on conspiracy
theories and tales of the Illuminati. Both groups eventually meet
on common ideological ground, although they would be loathe to
admit this similarity.
When George Bush hailed the coming of his New World Order, he
had no idea of the wake it left in the pond of conspiracists.
In those three words, Bush created an amorphous, scary, cloaked
villian that hid behind closed government doors and banker's meetings.
We can't see this arch-nemesis of freedom and justice, so we attack.
This phrase lit the flames of fear in the minds of many Americans
on both ends of the political spectrum who were already afraid
of a one-world government. The militia groups were the first to
leap on Bush's speech as a death knoll for the American way of
life. Decked out in military costumes, these yahoos feed off a
powerful strain of good ol' fashioned paranoia that grows exponentially
each time G. Gordon Liddy airs another one of his "The-only-good-FBI-agent-is-a-dead-FBI-agent"
rants on the air.
The most publicized of these groups is the Michigan Militia, a
loose confederation of frustrated businessmen, ex-soldiers, and
heavily armed gun nuts who were most likely fed a diet of lead-based
paint as children. In their mission statement, they claim to "end
world government and reinstate the sovereignty <sic> of the American
individual." This statement is not so loony when taken out of
context, but their beliefs continue into refusal to pay taxes,
based on the tenent that the government has no constitutional
right to collect monies from its citizens. Yet, these are the
same people who receive government subsudies, drive on public
roads, and use federal courts to resolve their issues. Isn't it
ironic, as Ms. Morrisette is wont to say?
The extreme left also harbors the same fear of Evil Government.
One-worlders are just as much the shrouded devil with far left-wingers
as they are with far right-wingers. Many radical leftists are
quite frightened of the "New World Order." The recent FBI "standoff"
with the Montana Freeman (my, how times have changed with federal
agents in the post-Waco years, hmmm? "Please come out, psycho
ranchers...pretty please with sugar?") has attracted random left-wing
supporters who share the Freeman's brand of skittish fear of a
national government. Media coverage of the Montana staredown highlighted
the occasional extreme leftist who praised the inbred families
for their refusal to pay their taxes and buckle underneath the
strong arm of the nasty government. During last year's national
debate over NAFTA, Lenora Falani, perennial candidate for the
left-wing organization Peace and Freedom Party, virulently opposed
the free-trade agreement on the grounds that it would create a
one-world government that would have absolute control over its
citizens. For months, she echoed the same sentiments that have
voiced by the extreme right -- that free trade with other nations
would ultimately serve to allow the World Bank (another favorite
shadowy group of dubious power favored by conspiracists) to rise
in power and crush the rights of individuals.
There also exists an interesting twist in the paranoid beliefs
to which both sides prescribe. A Luddite fear of technology seems
to pervade these conspiracist groups , leaving them to believe
any advancement in computers signals the end of American freedom.
The extreme Christian right has been outspoken against technology
for some time. The program, "This Week in Bible Prophecy," has
been spewing anti-technology diatribes througout its ten years
of broadcasting. Hosted by two rabid conspiracists, the show's
basic premise is that technology is essential to the running of
a one world government, which they have explained to be a BAD
THING. On episode #195, entitled "Extra Final Warning," the commentator
states, "I believe that all governments are establishing a main
data base...(it) will have a person's profile and characteristics,
and if the person does something wrong, they can go back to this
data base and fingerprint the individual." This is then used as
justification for refusal to get a social security number, a driver's
license, an ATM card, or a credit card. Granted, technology does
create a depersonalized society, but these folks turn this idea
into a conspiracist theory where an FBI agent dressed in black
is receiving all the personal data at Quantico, preparing to send
any individual to government-sponsored concentration camps.
This odd logic was also at the heart of the Unabomber's beliefs.
Good ol' Teddy Kacznyski (sp?) inexplicably reasoned that a technology-reliant
world was one in which THE MAN would come out and grab you while
fast asleep in your bed. In his rambling manifesto, he states,
" ". This sort of warped thinking breeds the same kind of paranoia
that X-Files staff writers could only dream to incorporate into
the show.
As the millenium comes to a close, you can bet that this base
logic will become more and more popular throughout small pockets
of America, as the passing of such arbitrary time demarcations
foments a kind of general irrational fear. As this fearful dialogue
receives increasing amounts of media airtime, unwarranted paranoia
about the black helicopters may become mainstreamed, staining
our natioal consciousness and keeping us from meaningful discussion
about the true state of our country. Viewing from the political
middle, it's interesting to listen to these seemingly disparate
groups spout identical paranoid rants. But if this line of thinking
takes over as the norm, America may never get the chance to really
look at herself in the mirror.