Ebert on the far-right lunatic fringe

It’s yet another blog entry from our favorite film critic that not only hits the nail right on the head, but hard enough to splinter the wood around it into oblivion. (Yes, I mean that as a good thing.)

Obama is a Muslim. Obama was born in Kenya. Obama was a terrorist. Obama will destroy Medicare. Obama will kill your grandmother. Obama is a racist. Obama wants atheism taught in the schools. Obama wants us to pay for the health care of illegal immigrants.

These beliefs are held by various segments of our population. They are absurd. Any intelligent person can see they are absurd. It is not my purpose here to debate them, because such debates are futile. With the zealous True Believers there is no debating. They feed upon loops within loops of paranoid surmises, inventions which are passed along as fact. Sometimes those citing them don't even seem to care if you believe them. Sometimes they may not believe them themselves. The purpose is to fan irrational hatred against our president.

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What about the entire climate of paranoia and hate? Have these people always been there? Are they only now becoming more visible because of the internet, cable news and talk radio? They're way, way beyond the pale. I believe they feed more on each other than on what they learn from the media. It's too easy to blame them on Fox News. Somewhere there must be internet sites paranoid even about Fox. Some of these people are uninterested in anyone who doesn't buy into their fantasy. Name a subject, and they know the real story that's being covered up.

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How much of the anti-Obama outrage is racist? Some is. Many of these angry people (I believe, but cannot prove) are made deeply unhappy by the reality of an African-American in the White House. Let's not pretend otherwise. Perform this mind experiment. If Obama had declared war in Iraq and was caught lying about weapons of mass destruction, what would the right have had to say?

Racism plays a role, but conspiracy theories themselves have an addictive quality. They appeal to a personality type. Many of those who take nourishment from them have, I suspect, a bitter resentment against authority. They don't want anyone telling them what to do. They're defiant. Anyone who is in power is lying to them for evil motives. Nothing they learn from the mainstream media can be trusted. Some people may think they're so smart -- but these conspiracy insiders know the real story. They learn it from each other, they embellish it, they pass it around, they "document" it with invented connections, they bond among themselves, and they live in a closed system that seems to validate them.

They lack common sense. Their conspiracy theories cannot tolerate it. Most reasonable people, when they heard Obama wanted to kill their grandmother, simply smiled, because -- well, because they knew he didn't. But the conspiracy people Know Better. That's the whole point. That's where the fun comes in. They have a peculiar intensity in their circular reasoning. They cite facts that are not facts, supported by authorities who are not authorities. As my grandmother freely said of perhaps too many people, "They don't have the sense God gave them."

Ebert goes on to tentatively explain how this movement of imbecility, ignorance and paranoia is arguably fueled by the droves of abandoned and disenchanted youths who are failed, utterly failed, by the education system, their parents, and society in general. That these kids, who are as intelligent as any others but who are not as lucky or helped, are left behind to fend for themselves, and in doing so, develop a jealousy-based anger and resentment towards authority, those in charge who let them down to begin with and who are the root of all their problems in life. These angry, resentful people grow up learning little else but to mistrust and doubt what they’re told, and moreso, to latch on to ideas and mindsets that fit in with said distrust and doubt (ie. conspiracy theories).

I think this explanation is absolutely dead-on, and frankly, I’m currently kicking myself for not having thought of it sooner. It makes perfect sense. (Although, if I may, I’d also add that a certain amount of this hysteria, if not a large one, is likely caused by plain ol’ mass hysteria.)

Sometimes, I wish I had a shred of Ebert’s mastery of the written word and his remarkably keen insight into what makes society tick as it does. The man rarely says anything I don’t 100% agree with.