Also, Republicans lead on the “generic ballot” by an unprecedented 10 points.

Source: Gallup.com

The last Gallup weekly generic ballot average before Labor Day underscores the fast-evolving conventional wisdom that the GOP is poised to make significant gains in this fall’s midterm congressional elections. Gallup’s generic ballot has historically proven an excellent predictor of the national vote for Congress, and the national vote in turn is an excellent predictor of House seats won and lost. Republicans’ presumed turnout advantage, combined with their current 10-point registered-voter lead, suggests the potential for a major “wave” election in which the Republicans gain a large number of seats from the Democrats and in the process take back control of the House.

Glenn Greenwald has a roundup of some of the reasons why. In general, we have a Democratic administration and Congress that steadfastly refuses to implement progressive policies. They are even plotting to roll back Social Security and Medicare.

As human creatures we experience the mythic – it is part of how we live and relate to one another.  We hear and trade stories of the past which both shape and express our understanding of the world.  As for example, I think every school child in America has heard the story about George Washington and the cherry tree.  It’s part of our American myhthos.  These myths serve mutliple purposes and are believed partly because they are consonant with who how we perceive their subjects but they also serve as moral instruction for us – want to be president you must be great from birth, you must be honest, humble . . . blah, blah blah.  Not for nothing, this tendency actually creates problems – if the leaders of the past were such great men, then our leaders today cannot possibly measure up.

In the 1960s, the US produced three mythic leaders – John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.  All three men were originally seen as liberal icons but they have moved into mainstream American mythology, they belong to all of us.  JFK and RFK seem to embody the same myth – the great leader cut down before his time of greatness, the myth of great hopes dashed.  For MLK the myth is different – his assassination seems to not figure much into the myth around him, rather he is remembered for the phrase “I have a dream” and a generalized perception that he wanted to unite all Americans.  Generally when we think of these figures, we think of them as “good guys.”  Conservatives have dedicated a huge amount of time and effort to create a similar mythology around Ronald Reagan.  They have been partly successful – among conservatives Reagan is regarded as one of the greatest presidents ever; the mainstream has yet to agree to that consensus (although Reagan is regarded generally positively); actual historians are less sanguine.  It’s probably ancillary but I think it’s interesting that Reagan’s greatness arises from the perception of his foreign policy successes while the Democratic leaders are regarded positively for their domestic policies.

I’ve written before about the sense of being part of something great when I walk into the state capitol in Utah.  When I’ve been in DC my response to seeing the capitol building or the other monuments is a flutter in my chest, a sense of being near to great things.  The iconography of American democracy is a combination of people and places and phrases that create a generalized “myth of America.”  It is a mythology that tells us we are the most free people ever, that we are the greatest nation on earth, that we are a shining city upon a hill and we must not hide our light under a bushel basket.  It is a myth of both greatness and exceptionalism, a myth of American uniqueness and American greatness are intertwined. 

For a while, there was a quote floating around the net that said something to the effect that “conservatives love America like a child loves its mother.”  For some of this I’m drawing on the work of thinkers like George Lakoff and Drew Westen.  American conservatives are, by and large, people who see the world in strict father terms.  From that perspective, myth plays an integral role in organizing society.  When the history channell used Howard Zinn’s books as the basis for The People Speak, a conservative reviewer at World Net Daily decried it as:

The History Channel’s airing of the “The People Speak” last night marks the public coming-out party of a movement that has been in place since last year to teach America’s schoolchildren a “social justice” brand of history that rails against war, oppression, capitalism and popular patriotism.

And then quoted Zinn himself in a section entitled A new approach to patriotism:

Zinn writes, “A high-school student recently confronted me: ‘I read in your book “A People’s History of the United States” about the massacres of Indians, the long history of racism, the persistence of poverty in the richest country in the world, the senseless wars. How can I keep from being thoroughly alienated and depressed?’

“It’s a question I’ve heard many times before,” Zinn writes. “Another question often put to me by students is: ‘Don’t we need our national idols? You are taking down all our national heroes – the Founding Fathers, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy.’ Granted, it is good to have historical figures we can admire and emulate. But why hold up as models the 55 rich white men who drafted the Constitution as a way of establishing a government that would protect the interests of their class – slaveholders, merchants, bondholders, land speculators?”

I read Zinn’s comment and it strikes me as eminently reasonable.  But for a great many Americans, his words are just this side of heresy.  If you believe the Constitution is a sacred document, then suggesting that the people who wrote it might not be eminently admirable is troubling. 

Interestingly, Zinn captures one aspect of the experience of the mythic – a willingness to take it appart, to examine myth to get at the facts underneath it.  His example of the person asking “But don’t we need these idols?” is a perfect example of another approach.

The “attack on popular patriotism” the conservative reviewer was bemoaning is problematic for him precisely because Howard Zinn’s approach to histroy is iconoclastic in the sense of smashing icons.  If you regard popular and patriotic myths as means of establishing boundaries and sustaining the social order, you will of course object to those who smash your historical icons.  You don’t know want to know, for example, that JFK was a serial adulterer or that Eisenhower spent the latter half of WWII shtupping his “secretary.”  You’d rather keep the myth intact even at the cost of factual truth.

All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report, “Pashtun Sexuality,” startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked – and repulsed.

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means “boy player.” The men like to boast about it.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/c/a/2010/08/28/INF21F2Q9H.DTL#ixzz0yDg3yy8W

So let’s review: American soldiers are dying in Afghanistan so Afghani men can rape boys. What a bunch of ignorant, ass-backwards, retrograde, worthless pieces of crap. Course while they’re raping boys at night they’re stoning gay folks during the day and while they’re at it, treating their women like crap. If they want to live in a Medieval wonderland maybe we should let them enjoy the full effect.  And when they’re dying of preventable diseases or can’t get antibiotics and their arms and legs are rotting off, maybe then someone could say to them, “This wouldn’t be happening if you’d like to join the modern world.  Maybe you could stop raping children while you’re at it.”

Minnie Lopez was a coworker. Dynamic, funny, all of five feet tall. She had worked, for some time, in an expensive salon. Well one night, she and her coworkers were invited out to a party at a club. They arrived and realized the club was in fact a rather extensive gay bar. Well one of her straight coworkers was unclear on the concept.

Well a leggy and attractive woman began chatting him up, he being quite drunk, began responding. They were talking, touching. Minnie, a few feet away, started laughing; she was sober enough to know a drag queen when she saw one.

Straight guy was massaging the leggy woman’s breast. Being a drag queen, it was a fake breast. At point, he fondled it too hard. It popped out. Without even batting an eye, the drag queen caught the flying boob and stuffed it back into her bra. Drunk straight guy said, “What was that?”

Drag queen: My breast.

Drunk straight guy: Huh?

Drag queen: That was my breast. But it’s back in place now.

Drunk Straight guy: Huh? How . . .

Drag Queen, pulling her breast back out of her bra: See, my breast.

Drunk straight guy: You’re a dude?

Drag queen: Not in these heels I’m not!

Minnie Lopez and the flying boob, everyone!

I forced myself to listen to Glenn Beck’s speechifying at Whitestock this past weekend.  Beck’s entire shtick is based on presenting a character who is earnest and earnestly distressed by what he perceives as the harmful direction of the nation he loves; everything about his style – his relatively unassuming attire, his sincere sounding delivery, even the addition of his slightly professorial eyeglasses is designed to create the impression of an honest, trustworthy figure.  Even in his interview with fellow Fox news propaganadist Chris Wallace, Beck portrayed himself as a humble, trustworthy, ethical man, someone who is just so pained by what he sees going wrong in America.  (Here’s a link to part of that interview.)  Watch Beck’s body language throughout the interview, listen to what he says.  He has created a persona that is (at least superficially) very humble and almost achinginly earnest:

Wallace: “Do you regret having called [Obama] a racist and saying he had a deep seated hatred for white people?”

Beck: “Of course I do. I don’t want to retract the, um … I want to amend that I think it is much more of a theological question, that he is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor-and-victim. ‘Racist,’ first of all, it shouldn’t have been said. It was poorly said. I have a big fat mouth sometimes and I say things. That’s just not the way people should behave. And it was not accurate. It is liberation theology that has shaped his world view.”

This single passage is illuminating.  Notice the circumlocutions in his language to avoid actually apologizing.  He brings up liberation theology and to say his understanding of it is incredibly shallow is an understatement but it’s also part of the persona – he’s someone who is just so distressed and he’s gone off and studied hard to understand what has gone wrong with America and as he studying more he’s learning more.  He used to think Obama was a racist now he understands he’s enamored of liberation theology.  He’s learned more and better from his studies and now he knows better.  Again and again, this narrative reappears from conservatives “At first I didn’t understand, then I went and read/studied and now I see . . .” 

For people who are suffering – who see the jobs disappearing, who see what they perceive as a world spinning out of control, who believe their deepest values have been displaced by something alien – Glenn Beck is a comforting figure.  His stylized delivery (reminiscent of a Mormon Fast and Testimony meaning) with his even tones and steady heartfelt gaze, his sensitive sounding voice, even his richly mocked crying jags, create the public persona of a man who is at his core trustworthy, someone who simply could not be lying.

His appeal to his audience makes sense when you see that aspect of it – even his periodic tirades come across as moral outrage, as the desperate anger of someone who sees the truth and is not being listened to; unlike El Rushbo or Bill O whose rantings can be scary, Beck’s tirades are comforting because they are about something. 

A sizable number of Americans are turned off by both the real and perceived corruption of our politics and political discourse.  They don’t like politicians who pander (even as they vote for them), they don’t like the seemingly endless parade of pols who say one thing but who obviously do another (and yet continue to vote for them).  Some Americans were actually shocked by Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct – “Presidents don’t act that way.”  These same folks saw the Bush administration’s corruption and scandals as the needful actions of a strong father figure.  Even as they accept Sarah Palin and her dysfunctional family, they yearn for a leader who actually lives out the values he/she proclaims and whose family actually looks like the model family they want for themselves. 

Beck offers an ethical public persona – he talks about his faith, he talks about ethics; even his risible chalk board routine is part of the shtick, he’s trying to communicate to his audience and this is a plain spoken way of doing it, no fancy computers graphics for him.  The chalkboard routine deliberately invokes a cultural metaphor that is comforting – the teacher at the chalkboard sharing their knowledge. 

Yes, I know and you know Glenn Beck is a shyster and charlatan.  He’s in this game to sell his books, his DVD’s, his various products and to laugh all the way to the bank.  He’s an honest and upfront grifter whose found an audience of willing dupes who are more than happy to shovel money into his pockets because they need one another.  His audience wants to believe, needs to believe, that there is honor, integrity, dignity in public life.  (There’s also a mythic aspect behind Whitestock that I’ll deal with later). 

Beck’s fans and the folks who showed up at his rally this weekend know they’re being taken for a ride and they are willing to go on that ride because they want the product their being sold.  They want to believe that there is still honor in public life.  There’s no real difference between Beck’s fans buying his “honor” and Justin Bieber’s screaming tweeners who believe he is singing about their lives and understands them.

h/t Scott Keyes at Think Progress, Talking Points Memo, Gawker, and Associated Press.

Incidentally, if anyone is serious about restoring the honor of America then how about calling for prosecutions of torturers and torture conspirators — as required by the U.N. Convention Against Torture?

More info: BuzzFeed: The Best Anti-Glenn Beck Signs At The Glenn Beck Rally

Maybe “Sagebrush Rebellion II” is losing momentum. At 1:00 pm, I counted no more than 300 people at the second “Take Back Utah” rally today at the State Capitol. The Salt Lake Tribune said there were 5,200 participants in an earlier ATV parade up State Street, but nearly all of them were gone by the time the politicians showed up to speak.

The complaint seemed to be how terribly unfair it is that Utah is blessed with millions of acres of uninhabitable but breathtakingly beautiful public lands. Governor Gary Herbert was the keynote speaker, complaining that there aren’t enough places to ride ATVs in Utah. Rep. Rob Bishop alleged that the Obama administration is plotting to proclaim more national monuments. A video from Rep. Jason Chaffetz seconded that suspicion. Congressional candidate Morgan Philpot also spoke briefly.

Lobbyist Don Peay told us of his preference to get rid of wild wolves in the West, before they eat all the game animals that hunters want to shoot (that’s his theory, anyway).

There were more speakers, but they all offered variations on the same theme: the federal government should not protect land but give it away — to state governments, to ranchers, to the mining industry, to the petroleum industry, to the timber industry, and to irresponsible off-roaders. That’s taking Utah back, all right — to the 19th Century.

More info:
Salt Lake Tribune: Thousands of off-road enthusiasts ride to the Capitol
Deseret News: 5,000 rally to ‘Take Back’ Utah’s public lands
KSL-TV: Thousands of outdoor enthusiasts set out to ‘Take Back Utah’

Related One Utah posts:
Back in the Sagebrush Again (August 8, 2009)
The Sagebrush Rebels Are Back Again (July 28, 2009)

Perhaps people believe Obama — who no longer belongs to a church — is a Muslim because of his 20-year association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s church publication honored the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan as a man who “truly epitomized greatness.”

Take a moment to think about.  People who believe Barack Obama is a muslim are justified in doing so because he attended a Christian church for 20 years.

Of course, that particular humdinger followed another one:

Perhaps people base their assumption about Obama’s religion on what they believe Islam says about the matter. In a New York Times op-ed, Edward Luttwak, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that Obama “chose to become a Christian.” But, Luttwak wrote: “As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.”

If you want an example of pre-modern thinking there it is.  People who believe Barack Obama is muslim based on this argument have embraced pre-modern thinking in its most absurd extreme.  Remind me why these people are being allowed to have any role at all in our public debate.

Glenn Beck is Not Martin Luther King, Jr.

On Saturday, Glenn Beck wants to “reclaim the civil rights movement” for right-wingers. Huh? The right was always against equality, and still is.

August 28th is an important day in American history. On that day, forty-seven years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream Speech” at the Lincoln Memorial. His message gave voice to the voiceless and his vision promoted a just, equal, diverse and compassionate country.

This year, a very different message is going to be spread from the very ground on which King once stood. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin will hold a rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

The racist, raging and hate-filled tenor of Beck, Palin and the Tea Party movement is in direct contrast to the noble vision of Dr. King. We cannot sit idly by and let King’s vision and legacy be hijacked for political purposes.

Dr. King once declared that “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

We will not be silent on this matter. Honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s struggle for a just and equal America.

It’s almost impossible to think of two well-known Americans who could be more opposite than Glenn Beck and Martin Luther King, Jr. Unlike the 1963 March on Washington, Beck’s event is a purely partisan affair (how did he get a National Park Service permit for a political event?) Unlike MLK, Beck says he won’t have a prepared speech. He says he’ll be channeling The Almighty. God speaks to Beck, Beck tells the people!

More info:
Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream” from American Rhetoric.

UPDATE: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) will also speak along with Beck and Sarah Palin at Saturday’s all-Republican “non-political” event. Which is technically being sponsored by a veterans’ charity to get around National Park Service rules.

UPDATE: JM Bell: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Glenn Beck – A Comparison

UPDATE: REPORT: Glenn Beck’s Philosophy Is Opposed To Everything Martin Luther King, Jr. Stood For

It’s difficult to find two people whose philosophies are so distinctly different than Glenn Beck and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While King fought for all people to be able to live a decent life, championed a compassionate version of Christianity that sought to create a better world, and established dialogue with those who disagreed with him, Beck shows little compassion for those worse off, has derided the social gospel, and has viciously smeared and attacked his political opponents. As Media Matters writes, “Martin Luther King would have been on Glenn Beck’s chalkboard.”

UPDATE: John Nichols: No, Glenn Beck Is Not a Civil Rights Icon