People have been talking for a long time about the obsession with the supposed "otherness" of Barack Obama on the right. Talking with a friend yesterday, it occurred to me that the three main epithet descriptors the more deranged elements of the Republican Party have used to refer to President Obama all mean exactly the same thing: Enemy alien.
Check it out:
"Socialist": Teahaddists and Limbaugh-loving mouthbreathers have no idea what that word really means. What they mean by it is "an alien, enemy form of government". You know, like they have in scary places like the Soviet Union, and France.
"Muslim":"alien, enemy religion."
"Kenyan" (code for black very black): "alien, enemy race."
And then you have your "unAmerican, "doesn't understand American values", &c, &c. We can call them the Tea Party/Sununu talking points.
Enemy. Alien. Not one of us.
What do aliens supposedly do? They enslave you...so Tea Party Taliban shriek about "loss of freedom" under Obama. They take away your power...which in the United States, means your money. So they shriek about imaginary, gigantic tax hikes under Obama. They destroy your institutions and replace them with their own. So they shriek about the ACA "destroying freedom of religion", about supposedly suddenly important budget deficits leading to a national meltdown.
Those who use these terms to describe the President are mostly parochial people with little education and who haven't seen much of the world other than where they were born--and if they have, it's likely it was from inside an institutional bubble, like the military or a school program.
The unfamiliar frightens and threatens them, and they therefore hate it. The fact that the nation is becoming more multicultural, more tolerant of sexual diversity and so forth simply panics them. They don't know how to live in such a world or with people who aren't like themselves, nor do they wish to do so. Being poorly educated, most don't have many tools for learning to bridge cultural gaps of difference...particularly if it undermines assumptions of white privilege they have taken for granted all their lives.
As far as they're concerned, it's an alien invasion, and one of the pod people has taken over the White House. No wonder they need to cling to a story that he isn't really American: it is intolerable to them that someone like him be "a real American".
The vehemence of their hostility to those who don't agree with them arises because they literally feel their survival is threatened. They are terrified. That makes them angry, and potentially dangerous.
The enemy aliens are here. They're infiltrating us as we speak. They've taken over our institutions. Only our faith, our belligerence and our guns can save us.
Which raises the question, of course: how do you deal with governance when 1/3 of your country is made up of delusional paranoiacs?
Reposted from Green Dragon