In Luc Besson’s campy movie, The Fifth Element, the villainous Zorg wants to rule the world. Like many a villain before him, Zorg (Gary Oldman) makes chaos his philosophical and tactical ally. As Zorg puts it:
Life…comes from disorder, destruction and chaos…You see Father, by creating a little destruction, I am in fact encouraging life.
Uh-huh. But in the aftermath of the passage of health care reform, Republicans are learning a downside of melodrama. They are hoist with their own violent, anti-health care petard, much like Zorg is smithereened by his own bomb. Keith Olbermann warned them about this several years ago, employing that wonderful French pun of a word.
The Republican leadership aggressively encouraged violent, hateful rhetoric from their flying monkeys. Casting health care reform as the coming of the communist apocalypse, they are now struggling with the growing perception that the bill just makes it possible for our hardworking next-door neighbor to see a doctor.
The Right’s eliminationist actions are disturbing, of course. When they knife gas lines, spit on congressmen, or threaten supporters of reform, the radical rightists, like all bullies, betray their own deep feelings of inadequacy. The obsequious loser Greg Marmalard in Animal House comes to mind (Babs to Marmalard on Lover’s Lane: Greg, honey, is it supposed to be this soft?).
The Republican leadership deserves the ridicule as well as condemnation for feeding the fires of racism and hate. The mockery works because they are inadequate to their own impossible authoritarian desires. There’s no ideological integrity to their public attacks on health care reform. Mandates were a Republican idea way back in 1993, much to Mitt Romney’s current embarrassment.
But behind their attacks there is an ideology of control and authority. Health care reform is liberating. Fewer people will be locked into dead-end jobs. Young people will find it easier to get a head start on their dreams. A robust public option would have been far superior, but it’s still the case that we have taken some small steps toward liberating Americans from the deprivations of the insurance industry.
It’s our freedom the Right is most afraid of. They hide behind the rhetoric of liberty, but authority is their god. They truly believe they are God’s Elect and that they are supposed to enjoy unrestrained control. This explains, in part, their move to replace Thomas Jefferson with John Calvin in social studies textbooks. Calvin’s Doctrine of the Elect guides their political thinking.
How, you ask, can the right-wing zealots be compared to both Zorg and Marmalard? Isn’t it the case that Zorg relies upon chaos and destruction where Marmalard stood, so to speak, for order?
There is a difference between the mad and the madcap. In Animal House, the Delta House free spirits created chaos in the name of freedom. The brand of destruction favored by Marmalard and Dean Wormer came in the form of expulsion and the military draft. Otter, Boon and the boys didn’t invade the homecoming parade so they could take charge. But that’s exactly why the Zorg Republicans tried to rain on the health care reform parade.
It didn’t work. It’s their parade that’s collapsed in chaos, and it is an entertaining spectacle. The Authoritarian Party, like Zorg, is undone by the chaos it unleashed on the country. Even Shakespeare couldn’t resist the gibe, giving Hamlet the words:
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard; and ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon: O, ’tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
