PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1

With Barack Obama, courage seemed to be victorious over fear. This impression fades the more rightwing conservatives resist reforms

By Lotta Suter

[This article published in the journal Freitag 8/27/2009 is translated
from the German on the Internet,
www.freitag.de/wochenthema/0935- ... otta+suter.]

When the Jewish congressperson Barney Frank from Massachusetts was recently
Compared to a Nazi at a public meeting for health reform by a woman in the
hall he abandoned the dialogue: “Madame, I’d rather have a discussion
with a dining room table than with you.” Frank tried to draw a line
between debate and demagogy, between healthy skepticism and obsessive
pathological panic, a panic now fomented and redirected by the republican
side.

Certainly, the most sensational excesses of paranoia, the loaded guns of
fanatical reform opponents, their comparisons of Obama with Hitler or Pol
Pot and occasional heckling like “Death to Obama, Michele and their
stupid children” are blown up by the media. Which of the big television
stations, for example, reported that on the other side of the political spectrum the activists of Organize for America (OFA) organized over 11,000 meetings and
millions of signatures in favor of health reform in only ten weeks?

AMERICA’S ENEMIES

Since time immemorial, the US has been a land of hope and a spawning
ground for paranoid fears. America has offered shelter from political or
religious persecution to millions of people. This may not be forgotten.
But in building and defending its identity as the “shining city on the
hill,” the young nation mercilessly persecuted again and again alleged
troublemakers, inner and outer enemies. In the ending 18th century, Free
Masons were stylized as Public Enemy No. 1. Decades later, many
Americans believed Catholics were planning the great coup on command of
the pope. At the beginning of the 20th century, the takeover of the US
by Jewish bankers from Europe and from Wall Street was feared. From
resistance against an imagined “Bolshevik conspiracy” in big US cities
around 1918, it was only a small step to McCarthy’s witch-hunt on
“Un-American activities” in the 1950es..

The sixties made more room for hope again. The civil rights movement and
Martin Luther King, an active left, feminists, opponents of the Vietnam
War – all demanded the great ideals of the republic and longed for an
open society with equal rights for all. The social-political
uprising was passionate - but so were the relapses and repercussions that followed.

Fear reigned after the oil crisis of the seventies and the defeat in
Vietnam. Right-wing conservatives gained strength and the arrest of
disagreeable fellow-citizens rose to an all-time high. President Ronald
Reagan expanded the catalogue of America’s potential enemies with an
essential category: the state itself or – as he called it – “Big
Government” and a troublesome policy that detracts from the free market.
This ideological theme of neoliberalism influenced all presidents,
democrats and republicans alike. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, the
security state dominated completely – “America’s dark side,” as
vice-president Dick Cheney called it. The politics of fear brought the
nation to the edge of political and economic ruin.

DANGER FOR PROMISED LAND

Barack Obama essentially owed his election victory to the chance for a
way out from this hopeless situation. He embodied an indefatigable hope
- the bright side of American history. However he encounters the
well-known trappings of US government policy since he wants to use this newly won
trust in pushing for the health reform. In the nineties, his democratic
predecessor Bill Clinton was reproached for both too little activity toward the outer
and inner enemies and at the same time too much energy in domestic and social policy.
The right-wing politicians now try to repeat their strategy from that time.

The subject of health care is well suited for the manipulation of fears. All
People - or most people - have a deeply entrenched fear of sicknesses
and death. This fear can be re-channeled or – as a synergy effect –
connected with a deeply seated fear of the government that is widespread in the
US since time immemorial. An armed opponent of health reform in Portsmouth, New Hampshire wrote on his poster, that it is time for the tree of freedom to be
watered again with the blood of tyrants. This quotation of the founding father Thomas Jefferson adorned also the t-shirt of the bomb planter Timothy McVeigh when he blew up a government building with 168 persons trapped inside in Oklahoma City in 1995.

This does not necessarily mean bombs will flare up in the US any tine soon. But the readiness for violence of these alarmed citizens is irresponsible and dangerous. But dangerous is also the fomenting of this fear by parts of the establishment, which seeks to defend the status quo by all means. The journalist and film director Frank Schaeffer who was a co-builder of the right-wing conservative evangelical movement more than 30 years
ago and now supports the Obama administration knows many of the politicians personally who are involved in the current hate campaign. “They can't compute that their conservative revolution is dead,” Schaeffer writes on AlterNet. “They can't reconcile their idea of themselves with the fact that white men like them don't run the country any more -- and never will again.“ Right-wing conservative America sees the Promised Land threatened by a black president, as earlier generations regarded Free Masons, Catholics, Jews or socialists as a life threatening danger.

Barack Obama whose US citizenship is doggedly disputed by the right-wing
despite existing official documents is the ideal foreigner. He is the other, on whom all
hatred can be projected. The rulers of economy and politics know how
to exploit this human weakness. Ex-vice president candidate Sarah Palin for example suggested to her conservative base the democrats’ health reform wanted to kill
her mentally challenged son. Such allegations can only be countered with
truth, says Obama. He reacts with expertise, composure and readiness for
compromise. But is this enough? Don’t we also need enthusiasm and strong political ideals that oppose an egoistic society of ownership.

Recently the president at a press conference unmasked the most common
lies about health reform very eloquently, the existence of death-panels
and the fairy-tale of forced nationalization of the whole public health
system. He even found it necessary to emphasize: his plans neither
provide treatment of undocumented immigrants nor finance abortions. He
did not mention that an adequate medical care for every person
has long been a accepted in the catalog of human rights. Any health care reform – especially in a democratic society – should live up to this high goal.
>
> BACKGROUND
>
> OBAMA’S REFORM WORK
>
> Disarmament
>
> On April 5, the US president in a speech in Prague proposed a
> “zero-option” for all nuclear weapons. In the negotiations with Russia
> on a successor START-treaty – that will end in 2009 – Obama wants to
> limit the arsenal on both sides to 6000 warheads and 1600 strategic
> booster rockets. This imitative can lead out of the blockades of the
> Bush era.
>
> Middle East
>
> On June 4, Obama in his Cairo speech sought a new beginning in relations
> between the US and the Muslim world. His country fights terror, al-Qaida
> and the Taliban, not Muslims. Obama declared the situation of
> Palestinians as “intolerable,” championed a Palestinian state and urged
> an end to Israeli settlement construction. At the end of July, Israel’s
> government must stop building new camps in the West Bank.
>
> Financial Markets
>
> On June 17, the White House presented a package of measures to control
> the US financial markets. An early warning system for risks in the
> financial sector (Oversight Control) as a vital authority alongside the
> US Federal Reserve and a consumer protection agency that protects
> private customers in the securities trade are new. Both houses of the US
> Congress must still approve these and other changes.
>
> Climate Protection
>
> On June 26, the House of Representatives passed a law on the environment
> and climate protection that earmarks a 17-percent reduction of emissions
> of greenhouse gases by 2020 and 80-percent by 2050 (the total volume of
> US emissions in 2005 is the standard of comparison). The promotion of
> renewable energy and the obligation to energy-saving building
> technologies are ordered. This law also needs the Senate’s approval.