G. Gordon Liddy and the Ugly Americans

We are living in the middle of a John Carpenter movie.

And perhaps through one of the ugliest periods in our nation’s young history.

It is there to see and hear everywhere you turn. The election of President Obama, a bright, articulate and good man, to the highest office in the land has sent the loons over the edge. And each day it grows worse.

It took flight with the Birthers movement, championed by the always dependable hard right who questioned whether the President was actually born in the United States. Despite overwhelming proof–from birth announcements printed in two Hawaiian newspapers free of charge and based solely on calls from them to local hospitals to the birth certificate itself, authenticated by a Republian official–these clowns continue to parade themselves on national television and present their proof, which is, essentially, no proof at all. The best case I can make behind the insanity of all this is that one of the leading Birthers is none other than G. Gordon Liddy, a man famous for not being able to find five criminals who knew how to pick a lock.

I watched Liddy on “Hardball” a few weeks back. Now, I love Chris Matthews and think his show is one of the best political hours on television. But why he would have as a guest a man who has accomplished nothing of note in his life is beyond me. A short bio of Liddy tells you everything you need to know about the word failure:  He managed to make it through the Army, but like most gung-ho war guys, he never saw any action and never left Stateside.  He landed a job in the FBI where a supervisor labeled him a “superklutz.”  He worked as a prosecutor and shot a gun off in a courtroom. Then, he found heaven working as a “counter-intelligence mastermind” for Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election committee. And man did he come through like Mariano Rivera in the clutch for that team. He and his fellow “White House Plumbers” proposed bombing the Brookings Institute and then going in disguised as fireman to steal documents. That didn’t fly. He then came up with the idea of kidnapping anti-war protesters and shipping them off to Mexico. That too got a thumbs down. So, instead, he was put in charge of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate. Here’s how well that one went: It brought down the President of the United States and landed Liddy a 20-year prison sentence. He ended up doing 4 and one-half years behind bars. In the 1980s he wrote a book and started a private security and counter-surveillance company that went belly up. He now has a syndicated talk radio show with a following that is gun-loving, racist and dull normal.  Here are a few of his radio suggestions:

In 1994, he said, “Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot…..kill the sons of bitches.”

And just to show he hasn’t mellowed over the years, this is what he said this past May on the possible confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor: “Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she is menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad.”

And before I forget, there’s this little ditty:  as a child, Liddy listened to speeches made by Adolf Hitler and come away feeling “a strength inside I had never known before.”

And this is the genius who is one of the leaders in the march against our President.

But he is not alone.

We live in an age where facts no longer matter, only uninformed opinions do. Where a guy like Joe the Plumber (who is neither named Joe nor is he a plumber) can speak at an anti-health care rally and actually have people listen to what he has to say. You have the far right calling the President a Nazi and drawing a Hitler moustache on his photos failing to realize as Pete Hamill noted the other day on Morning Joe that “the Nazis were right wingers.”  You have citizens showing up at Presidential rallies and town hall meetings armed as if the Taliban were in the next room. You have angry men and women tossing around words like socialism and fascism and not even sure what they actually mean. You have elected officials like Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Gov. Sarah Palin openly lie about death panels and the health care plan that is winding its way toward Congress.

And then if you read enough of the comments and hear enough of the talk you realize what it really is all about. The GOP doesn’t care about health care, if they did they would have come up with a plan for it years ago. Instead, they planned a war that can’t be won in a country we shouldn’t be in. That has wasted billions of dollars and destroyed thousands of young lives. But they’re not interested in those facts. That was about freedom and, well okay, oil.

They don’t care because the guy driving the car this time around happens to be black.

That’s what this shouting match they like to call a debate is really about. And the right simply cannot come to terms with that fact. They still can’t believe we as a country allowed it to happen. And they will do anything and everything to see that it never happens again. So, they let loose their meager mouths that roar–from Rush on the radio, downing his dope with gulps of Green Tea to Hannity and Beck the crying man and the off-the-rails Lou “Obama wasn’t born here and neither were the Mexicans” Dobbs. Their politicians cackle when the Administration makes an error in judgement or unemployment goes up another couple of hundred thousand. They disregard the human cost. They only focus on what it costs him in the polls.

To simply defeat Obama with lies would be one thing.  But they have another weapon at their disposal and they use it well and with frequency–hate. No one hates like the fringe right. Gays? Not in our house. College-educated working women? So long as I don’t have to work for her. Hispanics? Let me see their papers first and bury that talk about pride. This is America, damn it. African-Americans? We’ll take Steele, Rice and Thomas, after that, table’s full and they can only stay if they do as we say. Pro-Choice. Not a chance.

It is a group that is aging faster than a bottle of two-buck Chuck. They are down to 20% of the population and sinking. They are angry over lost jobs that will never come back their way. They are fueled with a hatred toward those with educations because they chose not to pursue one. They are cornered because they are now the minority and they just didn’t see that punch coming their way. They don’t read, trusting the folks at Fox and right wing radio to tell them the real truth about the real America. They are told over and over that they once lived in the greatest country in the world and it can be that again. But first, we have to deal with the problem at our front door. We got ourselves a black Hitler in the White House. A Socialist. Going to come in and take your guns and tell your kids to get abortions. Make you drive French cars and exercise every day and kill your Grandmother. He is the reason you are in such a bad place. Once he’s gone you will again be free Americans.

Once he’s gone.

They hear this talk and they embrace it and take it to heart, mostly because they don’t know any better and partly because they want it to be true.

They are the Ugly Americans and they are not on foreign shores but right here, right here among us.

The death threats against President Obama are 400% higher than those against President Bush. Those numbers will only grow as the hatred meter moves deeper toward the red line.

It is truly a dangerous time.

FDR once warned that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Today, our biggest fear comes from those around us.