Over at AlterNet, Mark Ames reports on his forays into the right-wing mediasphere, commenting on the curiously conciliatory tone coming from neoconservatives who defamed Obama in the most nasty way during the election, people who called liberals traitors, etc. The Bill Kristols and Brit Humes and Karl Roves and John McCains of the world who spent months whipping up a frenzy among certain segments of the American public have called for reconciliation and even civility in the wake of Obama’s victory. But foot soldiers of the right are confused about this new koombaya attitude on the part of their cynical leaders:
Like the much more numerous Freepers, the mob at Pajamas Media is outraged because they have been betrayed. It’s not just that the liberals betrayed them, but that the leaders they’d followed — Fox News, right-wing bloggers, and the Republican elite who have been mobilizing their pitchfork fury — now find their savagery a liability, and they’re abandoning them. It’s the fury of having been played for a sucker — and the “real American” mob has been played for the biggest sucker in American history, as is clear from their sense of abandonment.
It is an incredible spectacle to behold: the Republican elite abandoning a 20-year narrative at the snap of a finger just to make sure that it is positioned well in the new Obama dynamic. The Republican elite has clearly decided that the “Real America” mob it had exploited had become a liability, but still it’s amazing how seamlessly and quickly it can throw its own audience overboard.
Ames is far too sanguine about this state of affairs, as are people like Olbermann, whose post-election show was dedicated to gleefully calling O’Reilly, Kristol, and Limbaugh losers. Fair enough. One can’t blame people who hated the Bush years for taking a day or two to celebrate, but by calling the extreme right in the country a bunch of “losers” who are “insignificant,” they perfectly feed into the narrative of resentment and fury and isolation and despair people like Limbaugh cultivate among their listeners. The true believers, the ditto-heads, who were booing at McCain’s attempt at a civil concession speech, are running to buy up guns, afraid that Obama is going to make owning guns illegal, occasionally (as Ames mentions) talking in their online forums about the need to prepare for the inevitable conversion of America into a totalitarian socialist state.
There were a lot of people out there who believed the vile propaganda places like Fox News and the National Review were spewing during the election (and over the last eight years). Now that these cynical conservative establishment sycophants turn around, and put on a friendly face, celebrating America’s final victory over racism, declaring (as Bill Bennett did on CNN) that no black person can ever claim to be afflicted by racism ever again, kowtowing before the new establishment power like sniveling cowards, they will find that their followers — who I suspect are often sincere, if misguided people — are not going to turn on a dime at their command. More likely, they’ll feel more isolated, resentful, and furious than ever.
Those of us who are on the left need to reach out to these people, I think. I don’t know how, but their fears need to be addressed and assuaged. We may think their beliefs are wrong, but we need to take them seriously. If we don’t, when a true-believing demagogue next arises to stoke their rage, they will be much better armed than they were even just a week ago.