Bob Basso, the 21st Century Thomas Paine?

I think Bob Basso is brilliant. A tip of the tri-cornered hat to him for his energetic portrayal of Thomas Paine! Basso’s anger, convictions, and beliefs are clear and compelling. His costume is resplendent and convincing.

While good, it is not his acting skill or his clothing that I think is brilliant. Neither do I think brilliant his literal message promoting uniculture and anti-tolerance with the goal of arousing the citizenry toward a second revolution to “stop the destruction of America.” What is brilliant, in my mind, is the conversion of an American icon away from its original meaning into its near polar opposite and the recognition of how effective that is in reducing the quality of public discourse into simplified ideological myths that are to be followed rather than understood.

Thomas Paine was an American revolutionary, thinker, intellectual, activist, and author of one of the most popular and important books ever published. Thomas Edison writes that, literally, there might not have been an American Revolution without Thomas Paine and Common Sense. Being highly skeptical of powerful institutions – governmental, corporate, aristocratic, and religious – he was a grass roots rebel. His skepticism and concern arose from his convictions about democracy: that a ruling elite shouldn’t have power over a larger underclass; that there should be free, universal, public education; that science and justice should not be subjugated to politics or religion; and that women should have equal rights. He argued for concepts and themes that included a living/minimum wage, government medical assistance, housing assistance, social security, food assistance, and more. He was against offensive wars.

On taxation, he argued for progressive taxation, stating in part:

“All accumulation, therefore, of personal property beyond what a man’s own hands produce is derived to him by living in society, and he owns on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

He was practically an 18th century Bernie Sanders! These ideas, many of which were described in Paine’s Rights of Man, were way ahead of their time. According to writer Thom Hartmann,

“…Rights of Man was written as an answer to a correspondence and debate Paine was having with Sir Edmund Burke, the famous British nobleman who is revered by modern conservatives (Russell Kirk, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Jr.) as the founder of modern conservative thought. In some ways, it’s a classic debate between conservative and liberal worldviews, with Paine presenting the liberal side of the equation.”

Quite a guy, truly.

So what are we to think when we see his image, his clothes, worn on top of a modern day pundit who utters not one Paine quote, who uses practically none of Paine’s thinking, who uses anger but not logic, fear but not reason? Are we to think at all? Are we to merely accept the words because of the veneer of clothing and bluster? Do we trust the wolf in sheep’s clothing because, well, it looks like a sheep?

It’s not the only time we’ve seen this phenomenon in recent months. Recently, a woman who wanted to promote a myth at a town hall meeting abandoned all reason and logic and opted for emotion and an impromptu recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Truly amazing. Equally brilliant. She even used words (or verse?) similar to Basso: Basso’s “plea to take back America” became from her “I want my country back!” (More can be read about the meaning of that related event at openleft.com) Similar hijacking of imagery was seen in the recent Tea Parties and in the dust up about lapel pins.

These techniques, in my opinion, don’t further quality in public discourse. They stop reasonable discussion. They stop reason and replace it with salutes, loyalty to ideology, slogans and, ultimately, falsehoods. Paine wanted to “break the chains of political superstition,” he didn’t want MORE superstition, propaganda, and myth. In fact, he said:

“When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.”

So I’d like to call for a more accurate use of an honorable man’s image and thinking. As the video stands, my reaction from the left is that the portrayal is ironic, contemptible, perverse, dishonorable, does a disservice to democracy, and denigrates a true patriot and visionary. And it’s brilliantly and unfortunately effective.

James Dockstader,
Orange County, California

You can read a lot more about this at the following links, which served as sources:

• thomaspaine.org
• tompaine.com
• buzzflash.com
• youtube.com
• infidels.org