ThinkProgress went to a town hall held by Rep. Steve King (R-IA), at which King agreed with a constituent that President Obama was a Marxist and probably a Muslim to boot:
BYSTANDING CONSTITUENT: He won’t do that. He’s a Marxist! He’s a Muslim Marxist.
KING: He’s at least a Marxist. And he surely understands the Muslim culture.
TP was more interested in King's charge that Obama "does not have an American experience." And that's batshit insane, of course. But I'm more interested in King's "complaint" that the president understands something about the wider world.
The full dialogue, as reported by TP:
KING: I’ve just started to think about what we need to do and I have made this argument for a long time now that I am in the business of seeking to embarrass the administration into enforcing the law, particularly with regard to immigration.
BYSTANDING CONSTITUENT: He won’t do that. He’s a Marxist! He’s a Muslim Marxist.
KING: He’s at least a Marxist. And he surely understands the Muslim culture.
CONSTITUENT: He surely does. That’s where he grew up with, that’s his culture.
KING: He doesn’t have an American experience. He does not have an American experience.
CONSTITUENT: He didn’t grow up in America.
KING: Mmhmm.
Of course, there's no such thing as a Muslim Marxist, since Marxism is antagonistic to religion. And Obama spent only a few years in Indonesia; he grew up in Hawai'i, which is definitely an American experience. For an elected representative to insist on either of these batshit arguments is completely irresponsible - but then, King is not exactly the responsible sort.
But the main thing for me here is that King, and his cohort, think that it's to Obama's detriment that he has had experience of cultures other than the American, in particular, that he understands Muslim culture. This plays directly on the nativist, isolationist, theme, and beneath that, the triumphalist theme, that the GOP is hoping will get them back into power: We don't need to know anything about the rest of the world.
Willful ignorance about the world has a long political history in this country, and certainly appeals to that segment of America that thinks it already knows everything it needs to know (generally because the Bible told them so). It's the same level of ignorance that led American car manufacturers, for example, to think that they could sell right-side cars to Japan, which drives on the left. Or that led Bush and the neo-cons to think that there were no sectarian divisions waiting to be unleashed in the absence of Saddam's heavy fist.
A two-year-old thinks that if he can't see you, you can't see him. That's the kind of thinking King and other Republicans are encouraging: If we don't bother to learn about the rest of the world, the world won't bother us. We'll close our borders, throw out everyone who can't prove their ancestors came here from northern Europe, and the rest of the world can go to hell (except for those we bring to Jesus) - but leave the oil behind.
The whole controversy over the Cordoba House Islamic center (and we should stop calling it the "Ground Zero Mosque" as it's not at Ground Zero, it's only incidentally a mosque, and the phrasing is intended to get people upset) was ginned up by elements of the radical right precisely to stir Americans' fear of the different. Same thing with Arizona's SB1070 law.
A Republican senator is suggesting there could be political fallout from President Barack Obama's remarks about building a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn (KOHR'-nihn) says Obama is "disconnected from mainstream America" and that voters this fall will "render their verdict." Cornyn leads the GOP's Senate campaign committee. AP (Yahoo)
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, in a calculated and desperate political move for the GOP Gubernatorial nomination, has decided to introduce an even harsher and more outrageous version of Arizona's SB 1070 anti-immigrant bill. Evidently deciding that if it worked for a politician of limited ability like Jan Brewer it might work in Florida ... HuffPo
And the ever lovable Newt weighed in, comparing Muslims to Nazis:
"The folks who want to build this mosque -- who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists -- those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community. They're trying to make a case about supremacy. That's why they won't go anywhere else, that's why they won't accept any other offer.
"And I think we ought to be honest about the fact that we have a right -- and this happens all the time in America. You know, Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center." TPM
There are some on the GOP side who worry about these tactics, whether for practical or ethical reasons - and it is worth noting that George W. Bush, for all his faults, made serious efforts to keep America, and the GOP, from bashing Islam. But, as pointed out by some TPM readers, now that Bush is no longer keeping them under control, the GOP bigots are crawling out from under.
And it seems that the GOP has calculated, or been forced by its base to calculate, that appeals to fear, bigotry, division will help them win the 2010 election.
Democrats need to make the opposite calculation - not just because of the election, but because of the soul of the country. We are what we are today, the most important, most powerful country in the world, largely because we have risen above fear and hate. We will remain in that position only so long as we continue to value hope over fear.
It will not be enough this fall to campaign on the economy - and it won't work anyway; the slogan "Things would have been worse" while true, doesn't sell. And we will never gain the votes of the bigots, the Tea Parties, the hyper-conservatives (ultra-conservative is no longer conservative enough for some of these people). We need to both appeal to our base to join the fight, and to the independents in the great middle who must be made to realize the danger we are in from the haters, the fearful, the bigoted.
Call the Republicans out on their extremism, their nativism, their naivete about the world. They boast of their lack of understanding; we should turn that boast around. It is vital to our security, to our safety, to our very survival, that our leaders do understand the world, with all its differences and complexities. King thinks it is a fault; we should proclaim it as a virtue.