Here’s some stuff I’ve been meaning to post for a while…. It’s political, yes, but it’s as much sociological as anything else. Despite my natural assumption of some sort of symmetry in motives and tactics between the political left and right, it doesn’t seem to work that way in practice, and as a former student of social psychology I find that fascinating.

From The Nation, an article titled “The New Right-Wing Smear Machine.” This is not about the so-called “right wing noise machine,” which is undeniably a real force in the country’s political discourse. As author Christopher Hays points out, that particular vehicle has a hierarchical structure (top down) and tends to use broadcast media (O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Drudge, et al.). Instead, Hays is talking about forwarded emails—we’ve all gotten them—which take on a life of their own. That’s what is so fascinating about them: these emails are passed around sometimes for years; sometimes the characters change according to the devil of the moment, as in the way emails from 2000 scourging Al Gore were recycled in 2004 demonizing John Kerry.

The vast majority of these emails support a right-wing view. Why? The author speculates that “For conservatives, these e-mails neatly reinforce preconceptions, bending the facts of the world in line with their ideological framework: liberals, immigrants, hippies and celebrities are always the enemy; soldiers and conservatives, the besieged heroes. The stories of the former's perfidy and the latter's heroism are, of course, never told by the liberal media. So it's left to the conservative underground to get the truth out.” I don’t know, but it’s an interesting phenomenon in any case.

If that’s not geeky and academic enough for you, here’s a real doozy: A Fascist Philosopher Helps Us Understand Contemporary Politics. It’s probably not for the casual web reader, but it goes deep into the soul of the Republican Party and why that body is the way it is. The article is about one Carl Schmitt, whose most important book was called The Concept of the Political, published in 1932.

I know, I know. But while it may seem like ancient history, Schmitt was once associated with Leo Strauss, generally considered to be the guru of all things neoconservative, especially the Bush administration. Oddly, though Schmitt joined the Nazi Party the next year, his reputation remained relatively unscathed and even more oddly, many of his ideas have been embraced by thinkers on the left as well as the right—though not the same ideas, and their interpretations are vastly different. Still, if you have any interest in the philosophical underpinnings of political thought, this is a really interesting read.

Finally, though I meant to link to this several weeks ago, it continues to be relevant. Maybe even more relevant than back then: The Huckabee Panic. It is amazing to see the leading right wiing pundits and leaders fall all over themselves to condemn the clear winner of Iowa’s Republican caucuses. Once again, it comes down to sociology. The article quotes a Kevin Drum post as follows:

But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He’s the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn’t just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff.

My sense of gleeful schadenfreude is tempered by the fear that Huckabee could actually get somewhere in the nomination process. It’s not just that he would tear down what little remains of the wall between church and state, or the fact that he is a blithering idiot on any subject outside the borders of the US, but he’s right up there with Romney and Giuliani when it comes to the furthering of unchecked executive power and shredding the Constitution.

Incidentally, did you know that Privacy International has downgraded the US from an “Extensive Surveillance Society” to an “Endemic Surveillance Society?” That puts us in the same league with Russia and China. But then, I suspect that’s the subject for another post….

Have a good week, everyone!