In a world where you can believe what you want to believe because you want to believe it — and your beliefs can be shared by others who want to believe what you want to believe too — there’s no room for genuine dialogue and debate.

There’s an old expression in Washington:  “Everything’s been said, but not everyone has had a chance to say it.”

Rather than succumb to this temptation and simply observe, like countless others, that the Obama-Reverend Wright controversy has transformed the Post-Racial Man of Hope into Lying, Race-Obsessed Political Hack, let me focus on the broader issue at hand; namely, my contention that the present state of American politics has deteriorated to such a point that fully one-half of the voting population couldn’t care less if Obama is nothing more than an empty suit who mouths racially harmonious platitudes while looking for spiritual guidance from a race-baiting bigot.  Or, if the O-man is somehow denied his party’s nomination, once the brouhaha in Denver subsides a large portion of this same electorate will put their differences aside and openly embrace a lying, manipulative, sniper-dodging phony who will do, or say, virtually anything to acquire political power. 

Now, we all know that differences exist in every election, and the political rhetoric that gives expression to these differences can at times be extreme.  Pacifists routinely get tarred as Unpatriotic Pinkos, just as law and order proponents get unfairly labeled as the New American Gestapo.  Exaggerations and excesses are as much a part of this country’s political dynamics as motherhood and apple pie.  To rail against these as injurious to the very system that gives them voice in the first place is to understand nothing about how politics is actually conducted in the real world, with real people.

But, it’s also true that at some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.  Exactly when that threshold is crossed isn’t always clear, but like the Supreme Court which can’t define pornography but knows it when it sees it, that threshold exists.  Bill Clinton helped cross one line by making “penis” a word of common, every-day usage, where previously an endless series of euphemisms were employed when publicly speaking about it.  Now, thanks to Bill and Monica and a box of cigars, even fifth-graders can talk openly about the exit point of the male reproductive system, oral sex, and a myriad of other once-forbidden topics without the slightest hint of social inhibition. 

And so it is with politics in general.  Questioning one’s patriotism once merited a full-blown investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Now, thanks to the excesses of McCarthyism, it’s just the first arrow in the political quiver of both the Right and Left which simultaneously condemns Code Pink and General Petraeus as disloyal subversives. 

Heated rhetoric in and of itself no longer captures the public’s attention.  Today it’s the normal, expected medium of political discourse.  It only becomes a story worth covering when a candidate publicly disavows the use of inflammatory language by one or more of his supporters; or, where bigoted language contradicts the primary message of the candidate himself.  Had Obama run as an angry “black candidate” instead of a post-racial messiah, there never would have been a Reverend Wright story.  There’s nothing particularly newsworthy about a black nationalist denouncing the U.S. of KKK, whether he’s speaking from the pulpit or participating in a CNN-sponsored presidential debate.

So where does all this lead to?  Are we to simply accept the fact that American politics constantly “evolves,” pushing the threshold of acceptable speech out farther and farther with each passing year?

I don’t think so.  I believe that the last 10-15 years have given birth to an entirely new phenomenon, one that poses a serious threat to the integrity of the political system itself.  We’ve crossed a threshold that, like opening Pandora’s Box, is not easily backtracked.  And, the brave new world it has ushered in is ripping apart the very fabric of our society.

To illustrate what I mean, we first need to recognize a tendency that misinforms a lot of political analysis.  When thinking about the world in which they live, people tend to mark the beginning of history with the moment of their own birth.  Those for whom the Great Depression was the defining experience of their lives never quite saw the country the same way as those born in the post-WWII era.  Baby Boomers like myself, whose perspective was shaped by the fifties and sixties, carry a different image of the country from those born into a post-Carter world of high technology and seemingly endless economic growth. 

Each of these generations, and sub-generations in between, measures the flow of history from their own starting point.  Forget about the fact that politics in the 19th century was in many ways infinitely more brutal than it is today.  I wasn’t around when Grover Cleveland ran for president, so it’s not a touch point for me.  My point of reference is Kennedy-Nixon.  For others it’s Carter-Reagan, or Bush-Gore.  In doing so we arbitrarily pick an election and use it to evaluate the propriety of all future presidential campaigns.  It’s the same reasoning science uses in demonstrating or refuting man-made global warming.  Start with the 1880s (an exceptionally cold period), and everything that follows is warmer.  Start with the 1990s (where temperatures reached a peak), and the last 10-15 years have been “cooling.”

Recognizing that where you start your analysis will influence what conclusions you draw, I still maintain that a new, over-arching phenomenon exists that has completely transformed the American political process.  One’s personal historical starting point may make this trend seem greater or smaller, but the trend is still there.  In certain respects it mimics the vitriol of American politics in the 19th century, but it’s on such a greater scale that the difference has become a difference of kind, not just degree.

And what is the source of this pox on the political process?  It’s the very instrument you’re using now to consider my observation.  The Internet.

The Internet has forever transformed American politics in some good, but many bad ways.  It’s beneficial in that it’s a source of alternative information that keeps the Dan Rathers of the world from perpetrating election year hoaxes on the American public.  And, it’s an excellent way for like-minded people to come together in like-minded ways to pursue like-minded goals.  But the yin to this yang is that instead of isolating the real kooks as non-Internet modes of communication tended to do (it’s not quite as gratifying to wait days or weeks for a letter to be returned, or a magazine to arrive — assuming one kook could easily find another kook to communicate with in the first place), the Internet has made it possible for kooks everywhere on the planet to get together in real time and operate in a virtual world of their own making.

Almost anything can be said on the Internet without fear of retribution or condemnation.  The person saying it doesn’t need to reveal their identity, and can lie about their age, gender, even nationality.  In this medium facts are no longer immutable anchors of information, but wholly fungible delusions that assume concrete status if and when enough people choose to believe them.  Not only was Bush personally behind 9-11, no plane flew into the Pentagon that day.  So, where did all the passengers on that plane go?  Modern-day “facts” don’t require coherency or consistency, so the answer is “Bush was behind 9-11.”  That’s all the response required to end the discussion, and move on to another delusional topic.

In a world where you can believe what you want to believe because you want to believe it — and your beliefs can be shared by others who want to believe what you want to believe too — there’s no room for genuine dialogue and debate.  Obama is post-racial, and will produce “change.”  Demonstrate that he’s chummy with a race-baiting bigot, or just another Chicago machine hack who cuts cozy deals with shady real estate developers, and you get at best a shrug, and at worst the non-sequitur “Bush lied about WMD in Iraq.”  If Obama shot Mother Theresa while holding up the First National Bank on live TV, about 60% of all registered Democrats would still vote for him because (a) he didn’t really do it despite the overwhelming evidence against him, (b) he’s for change and the country needs change, or (c) Bush lied about WMD in Iraq.  The other 40% would vote for Hillary instead, but only after she offered the VP slot to Obama because — to quote Joe Biden — he’s clean and articulate.  And anyway, Bush lied about WMD in Iraq.

I wish I had the solution to re-instill some sense of reality into the political debate in this country, but I don’t.  The problem isn’t limited to the political Left.  Some of the people reading this essay who identify themselves as Conservatives will focus only on whether I or others are “conservative-enough” to lay claim to this designation.  Others will ignore everything else I’ve said to affirm the existence of man-made global warming, since I mentioned it in passing earlier in this essay.  Still others of all political persuasions will launch into a personal attack on those who disagree with some arcane point tangential to this conversation.  Only a small portion of readers will actually ponder what I’ve said and refute or support it on its merits.
 
Things will change only when reality slaps us in the face again, and we no longer have the luxury of playing in the fantasy worlds of our own creation.  The same people who supported “torture warrants” in the aftermath of 9-11 now decry the lack of due process afforded to non-uniformed military combatants captured in the Middle East.  Slam another plane into a skyscraper, set off a bomb or two in a major American city, and the people today who condemn warrantless wiretaps will clamor for the political heads of those in power who “didn’t do enough to protect us from our enemies.”

Watching this spectacle unfold will be the American public who, except for the hardest of the hard-core kooks, will at least temporarily return to the real world and look for real solutions to very real problems.  Their only hope is that in the intervening time we haven’t elected a bunch of kook-supported clowns to office who wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to confront a real problem other than to pander to the world community, or talk it to death with meaningless rhetoric.

But hey, if such a situation does one day arrive, as long as our new leader can make a good speech, or represents the correct race or gender, we should all take comfort in knowing that at least the wrong Conservative didn’t make it to the White House.