Voter anger transcends good sense ...
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By Joseph Spear
You'd have to be a hermit not to know that most Americans are mad as
hell this election year.
Countless headlines have told us this. "Why U.S. Voters Are `Mad as
Hell,'" read the banner on one column I recently saw. "Mad as Hell,"
screamed the cover of a recent Time magazine, which featured the photo
of a scowling, chubby-cheeked creature identified as House Minority Whip
Newt Gingrich.
All over the country, candidates are assaulting each other with negative
ads. In Oklahoma, they say, only the "three G's" are important: God,
gays and guns.
Fact is, all this anger is making me angry.
I'm not knocking honest anger. There's nothing wrong with a good
tantrum, if it's rational and based on principle. But much of what we
have witnessed this year, it seems to me, is irrational rage, a madness
that borders on the loony. It's a scary anger that transcends good
sense.
Every serious voter in Virginia, for example, knows that Oliver North is
a gap-toothed fraud, a convicted liar denounced by such rabid liberals
as Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf. But
what did this matter? The people were mad as hell and wanted the creeps
in Washington to know it.
Every serious voter in California knows that Michael Huffington is a
mindless millionaire who wants to buy a seat in the U.S. Senate,
whatever the cost. But what did it matter? The people were mad as hell
about illegal immigrants and big government and they wanted the dolts in
Washington to know it.
In many ways, the powers-that-be deserve the public's ire. We don't
like it when our esteemed legislators exempt themselves from the laws
they write for the rest of us. We don't like it when Congress gives
itself a $35,000 midnight pay raise and tries to pass it off as "ethics
reform." We think there are too many bureaucrats feeding at the public
trough and we are sick of all the dumb regulations they keep stuffing
down our throats.
Actually, the Big Snit has been building for years. Anger is what
compels maniacal pro-lifers to murder doctors who perform abortions.
Anger is what provokes thousands of people to tune in to crackpots like
Parson Pat Robertson and moves thousands more to buy videos hawked by
the Rev. Jerry Falwell that implicate Bill Clinton in numerous suicides
and murders.
Indeed, anger is what motivated the Reagan revolution. Anger is what
created a candidate out of a pipsqueak named Perot. Anger is what made
Rush Limbaugh a multimillionaire.
Anger is what compels talk radio fanatics to scream at moderates like
yours truly and accuse us of being "media elites" who succor traitorous
liberals. I recently participated in a show hosted by columnist Mike
Binstein, and only one person who called in sounded sane a senior
citizen from Pennsylvania who berated the "dittoheads" who seem to
dominate the airways.
Everyone else was bellicose. One caller from Florida got exercised over
the "liberals" we were always defending. The thing is, we weren't
defending any. This was pointed out to him and he countered with the
charge that President Clinton was a "pathological liar" who passed
"unconstitutional laws." We pointed out that Congress passes laws and
presidents sign them but in any case no unconstitutional ones had been
passed or signed lately. "Oh you people are unbelievable," the caller
screamed. "They ought to take you off the air." He then hung up.
I have tried to think of other elections which were as contentious as
this one, and the congressional campaign of 1950 keeps coming to mind.
That was one of the McCarthy-era years when fear of Communism
obliterated good sense and Richard Nixon got to the U.S. Senate by
smearing his opponent, former actress Helen Gahagan Douglas, as "pink
right down to her underwear."
If that specter doesn't disturb you, then you have truly taken leave of
your senses and this nation is in deep trouble.
Copyright1994 NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN.