A Monopoly on Crazy?

In today's Washington Post, columnist and author Rick Perlstein has an opinion article that tries to make two points: 1) the "crazy tree blossoms" "when liberals are in power" (and this does not happen when conservatives are in power), and 2) the media is complicit in drawing too much attention to the crazies.

Perlstein thinks the political right has a monopoly on crazies and, apparently, people on the left are all calm, rational, law-abiding citizens. However, either he has a very short memory, simply isn't paying attention, or intentionally wrote a one-sided partisan article to rally the troops.

While I agree that many of the town hall protests have been out of line, especially the person who was carrying a gun (perfectly legal, but totally unnecessary and unwise), and, yes there are crazies in the right wing, it's absolutely ridiculous to claim one party or the other has monopoly on crazies.

First, his claim that the recent protests are all coming from the right is unproven. Has anyone checked the party affiliation of everyone speaking up at these town hall meetings?

In addition, there has been some craziness from the left at the meetings. Does he remember the SEIU members who physically assaulted a black conservative? It's one thing to speak your mind, and another to assault someone (One is legal and the other is not. Guess which.)

Perlstein is making an intentionally partisan ad hominem attack. Instead of dealing with specific arguments in the health-care debate, he pre-emptively categorizes claims about health care from the right as false, and paranoid, while categorically validating claims from the left. Note his selective use of quotes below, when saying that Walter Cronkite would have treated this situation differently:

The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims.

My guess is that both sides have some valid ideas, and both sides have some bad ones.

In spite of Perlstein's "thoughts", "crazy" is not a partisan problem, but a people problem. From any perspective, you could find people "on the other side" to call crazy.

The "crazy tree" blossomed just fine when Bush was in power: How about those who claim President Bush caused 9/11? Have you ever Googled "kill Bush"? Try that, then try "Bush Nazi". Perhaps you've seen the "Kill Bush" computer game?

Remember the violent protesters during the Republican National Convention? Watch this, this, and this, but not in work or with children in the room. There was physical violence, explosions, attacks on police officers and journalists, protesters resisting arrest, and protesters recording the events to post online.

This last point seems similar to one of Perlstein's objections to the town hall events:

The BBC...quoted liberal Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's explanation: "They want to get a little clip on YouTube of an effort to disrupt a town meeting and to send the congressman running for his car.

Is Perlstein arguing that YouTube makes a protest illegitimate?

The crazy tree also blossomed among the left while President Bill Clinton was in power. In 2000, Alec Baldwin screamed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien about Henry Hyde, whose supposed crime was advocating the impeachment of Clinton:

“I’m thinking to myself if we were in other countries, we would all, right now, all of us together, . . . would go down to Washington and we would stone [Republican U.S. Representative] Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! Wait! . . . Shut up! No, shut up! I’m not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death, and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families.”

Instead of disapproving, the crowd cheered as this man (who has since considered running for public office) seemed to be advocating the murder of innocent children.

To this day, some defend Alec Baldwin's ranting on TV, saying it was just an act and he was using a public forum to show how upset people were about the ongoing investigation into President Clinton's infidelity and repeated lies while under oath.

By that same logic, if the town-hall protesters are "acting" on behalf of some organization to show how passionate people are, does that not make them legitimate as well?

In the end, the craziness from all sides helps explain why U.S. government was designed with so many checks and balances, and why polls often show that Americans prefer divided government, where one party controls the White House and a different one controls Congress. Very few want our government to stray too far one way or the other.

Perhaps the crazies on one side serve an important purpose in calling out the crazies on the other? Perhaps the fact that one party currently controls two branches of government and the other has only a slight hold on the third explains the behavior Perlstein is complaining about? Maybe they feel like they have no other representation.