Fear and Loathing of the 1960s

"The brutal reality of politics alone would probably be intolerable without drugs." - Hunter S. Thompson

The Wingnut Right is caught in a time warp. It's like they mugged Doctor Who and stole the key to the Tardis, thinking they could go back forty years in time and bring back to the future some good ol' commie-fearing, jesus-wheezing, hippie-bashing, negro-lynching, feminist-mocking, kill-the-queers, America-love-it-or-leave-it fanaticism and win a 21st century election with it.

In essence, the McCain/Palin campaign now consists of playing Merle Haggard's 1969 anthem to the silent redneck majority, "Okie from Muskogee" on endless repeat at ear-bleeding volume from now until election day.

(The irony of Haggard's later descriptions of the lyrics as being a tongue-in-cheek pean to small-town innocence is lost on today's wingnuts. But the times they are a-changing: Haggard's newest song is a sincere tribute to a modern woman in politics, and it's not about Sarah Palin - it's called "Hillary". Yes, that Hillary.)

And this time-twisting campaign strategy, to the great surprise of the wingnuts and no one else, is failing. Epically.

What's amazing is that the Right actually thinks that the politics of the 1960's is a winner for them. As far as I'm concerned, the social-political milieu of "The Sixties" didn't actually end until 1974, with the disgrace and resignation of Nixon. And it began roughly ten years earlier, with the defeat of Goldwater. The political arc of The Sixties was not a happy ending for the Right wing in America.

Even St. Reagan, who the wingers believe succeeded by running against "The Sixties", was far less belligerent than his ideological successors. He simply declared everything evil was called "big government" and needed to say no more. But the current wingnut desperation ("why oh why won't everyone LISTEN TO US! BLAAAARGH!") is what's killing them.

Poorman Institute sums it up:

This is the problem. It’s not just the McCain campaign’s problem - although their inability to pick a narrative and stick to it is a special kind of inexcusable - it’s a problem for the entire wingnut noise machine. Obama is a Marxist Muslim Arab Jesus Black White Terrorist Technocrat Racist Do-Gooder Liberal FDR Stalin Hilter Commie Fascist Gay Womanizing Naive Cynical Insider Noob Boring Radical Unaccomplished Elite Slick Gaffe-Prone Pedophile Pedophile-Seducing Liberation Theology Atheist Etc. & Anti-Etc. with a bunch of scary friends from - wait for it! - the Nineteen Hundred And Sixties. It makes no sense. It’s a jumble sale of fears and scary associations from 50 years of wingnut witch hunts and smear campaigns, a flea market of pre-owned and antique resentments, and if one does detect a semi-consistent 1960’s motif running through it all, that’s because that’s when most of these ideas were coined.

What the wingers are pushing now is a dingo's breakfast of forty year-old tropes. Half the voters in this election weren't even ALIVE in the 1960s. But this old hippie kid hasn't felt this kind of schadenfreude since I watched Nixon resign.

As consolation for all you dispirited wingers out there, here's Merle. (Notice the long-haired hippies in his band, and his tongue firmly in cheek.)