Here's the Sixth part in Bill Whittle's excellent "Firewall" series on the core ideas of the Tea Parties. Part Five dealt with gun rights, and was the usual cool, rational tour de force, and I do recommend it. But, in my view, it lies a bit to the side of the main thrust of the series, which is to shine a clear light on the dizzying succession of absurdities which are leveled at the Tea Parties by their determined, well-funded adversaries.
The Tea Parties are a heterogeneous assemblage of groups, still very much finding its voice and finding its feet. They contain a fair share of flakes and philosophers, psychos and statesmen. They differ broadly on methods and on messages. They engage in their fair shares of far-sightedness and folly. They are still evolving. As such, they are easy pickings for those who would "pick their target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it." It's easy enough to pick and decontextualize the dumbass things that are said and done within established political entities, with lobbyists and press handlers and a measure of message momentum. To take a stew like the Tea Parties, still in full rolling boil, and dip the fork of opposition research into it, one is bound to come up with more than one unsavory ingredient.
All of the abject nonsense about racism, xenophobia, theocratic aspirations, and domestic terrorism has either dropped into the pot from fringe elements who are broadly denounced from within the Tea Parties themselves...or have been slipped into it from without. I can only get up so much of a head of steam about the foolishness which comes out of the mouths of some Tea Party adherents. I could really live a whole lot better without the selective harvesting of these mal mots, and their use as cudgels, but if someone said 'em, there's no use hiding 'em. It's the introduction of slanders spun of whole cloth which really chaps my chalupas. One of the real biggies, the great, steaming, nitrate-rich piles of pure felgercarb, is this whole bit about racism.
One may, of course, differ with the small-government, free-market, decentralized politico-economic model of the Tea Parties (the one thing they all have in common). One can, of course, hold to a model of greater intervention in the economy by a more robust centralized government. But all of this non-sense about xenophobia is simply not in code of the Tea Party program. If anything, the meritocratic opportunity society which the Tea Parties envision is one which leaves zero room for the identity politics which form a far more fertile patch of soil for the undue emphasis on differences whose excessive extension leads into the rank recesses of racism.
It is to this last point that Whittle speaks in this latest vid. One of the recurring themes in the Tea Parties' discourse is one of push-back against illegal immigration, and against those government policies which --in effect or by intent-- abet it. Naturally, among Transnational Progressives, any mention of protecting National borders is at best distasteful...at worst, it is a kind of nativist provincialism which is treated as interchangeable with xenophobia. The cult of multiculturalism will not brook any talk of assimilation, treating it as some Borg-like attempt to erase the essence of the soul of the somethingorother. They would have us replace the "melting pot" with a very busy salad.
The problem is that all of this is beside the point. That point is that one of the chief functions of a Nation-State is to guard the borders which, in large part, define it. It is to reinforce the membrane around the organism of State, and thus to preserve the integrity of that entity with respect to its surround. A cell with an overly porous membrane (or none at all) simply melts into a patch of protoplasm, indistinct and quite dead. Say what you will about the Nation State as a concept (sigh, I guess that includes you, Mike), but so long as it exists, it must preserve a certain structural integrity, which includes the regulation of passage across its borders. Ethnicity has nothing to do with this, except inasmuch as given ethnic groups may (lamentably!) be statistically (though by no means essentially) associated with the sorts of failed and failing states from which people show a tendency to want to emigrate, with the US as a prime destination. But (and this is the central point) that ethnicity is wholly incidental to the question of whether their quite legitimate grievances with their countries of origin entitle them to carry with them some of the lawlessness that they strive to escape, and to import it into this Nation by the sheer act of slipping into it extra-legally.
There are whole shadow infrastructures which subtend the passage of illegal immigrants into this country, vast criminal enterprises which I would flatter by referring to them as merely amoral. Emotional appeals about poor families, hoping to make a better life must be held up against clear-eyed acknowledgments of the brutal, lawless cartels which pad their clandestine balance sheets by flouting the legal structures of this Nation and marching those families across the frontier in the dead of night. An insufficiently guarded border is like one big broken window in the neighborhood. It signals a laxity and decadence which invites exploitation like a wounded seal in a school of sharks. The national security implications of poor border enforcement are obvious (or should be!). But there are subtler issues afoot here, issues having to do with the level of order which a Nation can assure its citizens (not so great for the people of border states, who are urged to avoid certain areas so as not to run afoul of well-armed Coyote caravans), and with the value of labor (materially deflated by the presence of an entire underground economy of desperate people willing to take less than a pittance for jobs which would otherwise have to compete for workers in the full light of day).
The leaky bottom of the labor market, as far as I've been able to discern, is the main point of contention within the Tea Party ranks when it comes to illegal immigration. It speaks directly to the integrity of the marketplace as a mechanism for assigning value to economic activity, and the distortions of that marketplace where the value of labor is so unbalanced by a vast pool of undocumented workers, pulling that value artificially downward. Throw in the whole bit about the government failing to act on its Constitutionally-mandated charter to enforce the borders, and there's a whole lot of principled ground for the Tea Partiers to stand on with regard to this issue, and not a bit of it has to do with racism. Fancy that.
Now, I would be the first to be attacked from some quarters of the Tea Parties (and no, not because I am Hispanic. Sheesh!), in that I do support some kind of mechanism for bringing many of the diligent and law-abiding illegal immigrants in out of the cold...though not without penalty, and not in a way which disadvantages those who have striven mightily and waited long to secure legal residency or citizenship. But such measures would be meaningless in the absence of robust border enforcement, and a national will to expel those who game the system and/or commit crimes while they're here (aside from the one about being here in the first place, that is). If this way of thinking appears racist to some, then I submit that their definitions of that word cry out to be revisited.
Anyway, here's Bill's take on the matter:
Showing posts with label Racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Racism. Show all posts
Monday, November 15, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Nazi Smears Old & Busted? Whip Out the Race Card!
[by Mr.Hengist]
Let me just start this off by saying that "race relations", as they used to be called when I was a boy, are of no interest to me. I was raised in a racially colorblind household, and, come to think of it, I can't recall ever having seen even mild racism in my nuclear or extended family. I attended colorblind schools with a variety of peoples of different races, and so forth. As a result of this upbringing I believe that racism is just wrong. This was an issue to press with my parents' generation, and my parents in particular, and press they did. As for me, well, waging eternal war against racism is just not my bag.
Here in America, the advocates of racial equality won, thankfully. I was born at a time when the first inter-racial kiss on Star Trek was a notable event, and what seemed generations away back then has, after a generation or two, come to pass: we have a black* POTUS, as well as black Congressmen, Governors, Mayors, CEOs, and so forth. America has come a long way, yadda yadda yadda. The color barrier has been broken and racism dare not show its face in polite society. However, I'm of the opinion that racism has not been and never will be eliminated; we waged a world war trying to eliminate the f'ing Nazis and yet there are still admirers of that abomination to this day; racism, likewise, will endure. It usually takes some generations to make societal changes like these. We should neither sanction racism by law nor countenance it personally. I don't make friends with bigots, and I keep myself from slapping them.
I find myself in good company on the American Right. In the midst of my political conversion during the Spring and Summer of 2003, I found myself visiting rightwing blogs for reasons wholly unrelated to politics and, to my surprise, I found paraphrased there the famous quotation of Martin Luther King Jr. from his "I Have a Dream" speech, to the effect that he wished for a nation that would judge people not on their skin color but the content of their character. I found it on several different rightwing blogs, actually, and it took a while before I came to believe that, rather than simply being than a cudgel with which to beat the hypocrisy out of their ideological enemies, it was indeed, as it appeared: an expression of genuine desire. After a couple of years of reading rightwing blogs, columns, and publications, I came to realize upon reflection that not only was racism absent from the places I visited on the Right, but also absent too was the soft bigotry of low expectations to which I had become accustomed in my previous life as a Liberal (not that I shared it at the time, but it's so pervasive on the Left that I'd come to hardly notice it).
Accusations of racism, however, are cudgel in the hands of Liberals. They're also big on calling us Nazis, notwithstanding the irony. Racists, like Nazis, have no legitimate currency in our realm, and no say in our national debate. That's why they demonize us by calling us these names; not because it's true, but because they would have their idological competition eliminated from the debate without having to address our arguments on merit. We end up having to defend ourselves from these scurrilous attacks which in turn reduces the time we can spend talking about the flawed policy and wrongdoings of our opponents and it taints our image in minds of the gullible and uninformed. It's a despicable political tactic.
You'll want proof, of course. By way of example I give you Rush Limbaugh, who was most recently pilloried when he tried to buy an ownership stake in a football team. The Left used one of Alinsky's tactics (see "Rules for Radicals"): "Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It and Polarize It". The Left set their sights on Limbaugh and opened up with all guns blazing - blanks. The quotes used against him were either fabricated or decontextualized. That was the best they could do, and bear in mind that Limbaugh has been broadcasting for the last twenty-five years. That's an hour or two a day, five days a week, most of the year, year after year, and despite the vast wealth of material through which they are free to comb for examples to bolster their charge, again, this is the best they can do. If, like me, you think as serious an accusation as racism should be backed up by evidence, then that's not just weak tea, that's homeopathic tea, but then, Liberals neither require proof to make accusations against their political opponents, nor do they see this as being a problem.
All this brings me to my pet piñata of a dinosaur media columnist: Eugene Robinson of the WaPo, and his latest column, "Obama needs to stand up to 'reverse racism' ploy" (WaPo - July 22, 2010 - A19). Let's start with the title, which calls out the "reverse racism ploy" of the Right. "Reverse racism" is sort of like racism, but in reverse. It's when people of other ethnicities are accused of racism - other than white, of course. That is to say that racism, as defined by the Left, is when whites discriminate against people of other ethnicities, so the reverse of that would be when people of other ethnicities discriminate against whites (or, occasionally, ethnicities other than their own). Racism is, by their definition, exclusively the province of white people; racism, when exhibited by non-whites, is the reverse of that. "Reverse racism" is, therefore, a divisive and racist term itself (it's a racist term, in that they have a special term for wrongdoing by a particular racial group). Congratulations, Eugene! Right out of the gate, you've beclowned yourself.
Let's move on to the body of the text:
This was not, however, an accusation that when "minories reach positions of power, they seek some kind of revenge against whites." What it illustrated was that the NAACP, which hosted the event, applauded and gave approval to Sherrod's recounting of her tale of when she racially discriminated against a white farmer, not doing all she could to help him (when she was working for a non-profit). She states that she was of the opinion that he should seek help from "one of his own kind." She went on to say that she had since come to believe that poor whites are also worthy of her help. Middle class and rich whites should still, presumably, be helped "by their own kind." (in her own semi-coherent words, "That’s when…it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white — it is about white and black — but it’s not, you know…it opened my eyes." )
There's the Gates/cops incident, in which Gates threw a tantrum, ranting and shouting about how he was being racially harassed when the police came to protect his home from burglars. They had asked him to step outside of the house, which is a standard police procedure which removes a person from any potential threat in a dwelling; even if a homeowner insists from within their own house that everything is OK, the police will ask them to step outside and say the same thing, just in case the homeowner is being coerced by, say, somebody behind the door, holding a gun on him. The problem with what POTUS Obama did was that, before any investigation, and before all the facts were known, Obama characterized the police as having acted "stupidly." This was unpresidential and possibly racially motivated, as Gates is black and the police were mostly white, but not provably so. That was the attitude, by and large, of the Right on this flap; it was Gates who was the primary object of scorn on the Right, for playing the race card, and POTUS Obama a distant second for inappropriately injecting his uninformed opinion on an issue of minor national significance - and, predictably, automatically siding with the black guy screaming "Racism!"
Then there's the then-nominee for the SCOTUS Sotomayor, who made an arguably racist statement in a 2001 speech to law students at the University of California at Berkeley: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." That remark was less about wise Latinas as it was about how white men are not as wise or fair as Latinas.
That should have disqualified her for the nomination to the Supreme Court. Don't think so? Fine, let's try a little thought experiment. Imagine the SCOTUS nominee of a Republican POTUS had said the following: "I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina who hasn't lived that life." Kinda pops out at ya now, doesn't it?
Remember, these are Eugene Robinson's cited examples of false charges of racism by the Right against POTUS Obama.
He goes on:
The last thing the Left wants is to have a serious discussion with their political opposition about the future of this country and Liberal vs. Conservative policies. Instead, as always, they seek to eject their opposition from the discussion by manufacturing accusations of racism against them. Granted, when your ideas are as bankrupt and divisive as theirs, it's understandable why they would like to avoid that debate, even if it means throwing serious accusations of evil around. It's understandable, and shamefully so.
Shame on Eugene Robinson, shame on the Left, and shame on you willing Liberal dupes who live in your Liberal bubbles. You will never understand your political opposition, or have a coherent political discussion with them, until you start to listen to what they have to say for themselves. When you let fools like Robinson (or the busted ThinkProgress) explain the Right to you instead of actually listening to the Right, you end up sounding incoherently disconnected from reality and dishonest.
* Regarding my usage of the word "black" instead of the more PC "African-American": yes, that's right, I still say "black". I know, I know, black people aren't actually black, they're brown, in the same way that I'm not white. As inaccurate as these hues are in describing our relative pigmentation, they are a more accurate description of the thing we're talking about than the term "African-American". There are lots of black people who are not from and have never been to Africa, just as there are lots of people who are fishbelly white who actually live there, and, perhaps just as confoundingly, black people who were born in, say, Canada are not, obviously, African-American. As far as our use of language goes, black beats colored beats negro beats darkie beats the-n-word-I-can't-say-because-I'm-white-even-if-I-do-so-in-contempt-of-it, but African-American is just silly and so I generally avoid it.
Let me just start this off by saying that "race relations", as they used to be called when I was a boy, are of no interest to me. I was raised in a racially colorblind household, and, come to think of it, I can't recall ever having seen even mild racism in my nuclear or extended family. I attended colorblind schools with a variety of peoples of different races, and so forth. As a result of this upbringing I believe that racism is just wrong. This was an issue to press with my parents' generation, and my parents in particular, and press they did. As for me, well, waging eternal war against racism is just not my bag.
Here in America, the advocates of racial equality won, thankfully. I was born at a time when the first inter-racial kiss on Star Trek was a notable event, and what seemed generations away back then has, after a generation or two, come to pass: we have a black* POTUS, as well as black Congressmen, Governors, Mayors, CEOs, and so forth. America has come a long way, yadda yadda yadda. The color barrier has been broken and racism dare not show its face in polite society. However, I'm of the opinion that racism has not been and never will be eliminated; we waged a world war trying to eliminate the f'ing Nazis and yet there are still admirers of that abomination to this day; racism, likewise, will endure. It usually takes some generations to make societal changes like these. We should neither sanction racism by law nor countenance it personally. I don't make friends with bigots, and I keep myself from slapping them.
I find myself in good company on the American Right. In the midst of my political conversion during the Spring and Summer of 2003, I found myself visiting rightwing blogs for reasons wholly unrelated to politics and, to my surprise, I found paraphrased there the famous quotation of Martin Luther King Jr. from his "I Have a Dream" speech, to the effect that he wished for a nation that would judge people not on their skin color but the content of their character. I found it on several different rightwing blogs, actually, and it took a while before I came to believe that, rather than simply being than a cudgel with which to beat the hypocrisy out of their ideological enemies, it was indeed, as it appeared: an expression of genuine desire. After a couple of years of reading rightwing blogs, columns, and publications, I came to realize upon reflection that not only was racism absent from the places I visited on the Right, but also absent too was the soft bigotry of low expectations to which I had become accustomed in my previous life as a Liberal (not that I shared it at the time, but it's so pervasive on the Left that I'd come to hardly notice it).
Accusations of racism, however, are cudgel in the hands of Liberals. They're also big on calling us Nazis, notwithstanding the irony. Racists, like Nazis, have no legitimate currency in our realm, and no say in our national debate. That's why they demonize us by calling us these names; not because it's true, but because they would have their idological competition eliminated from the debate without having to address our arguments on merit. We end up having to defend ourselves from these scurrilous attacks which in turn reduces the time we can spend talking about the flawed policy and wrongdoings of our opponents and it taints our image in minds of the gullible and uninformed. It's a despicable political tactic.
You'll want proof, of course. By way of example I give you Rush Limbaugh, who was most recently pilloried when he tried to buy an ownership stake in a football team. The Left used one of Alinsky's tactics (see "Rules for Radicals"): "Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It and Polarize It". The Left set their sights on Limbaugh and opened up with all guns blazing - blanks. The quotes used against him were either fabricated or decontextualized. That was the best they could do, and bear in mind that Limbaugh has been broadcasting for the last twenty-five years. That's an hour or two a day, five days a week, most of the year, year after year, and despite the vast wealth of material through which they are free to comb for examples to bolster their charge, again, this is the best they can do. If, like me, you think as serious an accusation as racism should be backed up by evidence, then that's not just weak tea, that's homeopathic tea, but then, Liberals neither require proof to make accusations against their political opponents, nor do they see this as being a problem.
All this brings me to my pet piñata of a dinosaur media columnist: Eugene Robinson of the WaPo, and his latest column, "Obama needs to stand up to 'reverse racism' ploy" (WaPo - July 22, 2010 - A19). Let's start with the title, which calls out the "reverse racism ploy" of the Right. "Reverse racism" is sort of like racism, but in reverse. It's when people of other ethnicities are accused of racism - other than white, of course. That is to say that racism, as defined by the Left, is when whites discriminate against people of other ethnicities, so the reverse of that would be when people of other ethnicities discriminate against whites (or, occasionally, ethnicities other than their own). Racism is, by their definition, exclusively the province of white people; racism, when exhibited by non-whites, is the reverse of that. "Reverse racism" is, therefore, a divisive and racist term itself (it's a racist term, in that they have a special term for wrongdoing by a particular racial group). Congratulations, Eugene! Right out of the gate, you've beclowned yourself.
Let's move on to the body of the text:
"After the Shirley Sherrod episode, there's no longer any need to mince words: A cynical right-wing propaganda machine is peddling the poisonous fiction that when African Americans or other minorities reach positions of power, they seek some kind of revenge against whites."Leaving aside the false pretense that Robinson or Liberals have up until now been mincing words, the "right-wing propaganda machine" is what Leftists imagine to be the rightwing equivalent of their own propaganda machines. Like, say, JournoList, in which Liberal journalists and academicians colluded to coordinated smears of their political opposition and spike stories which made their side look bad. They imagine that since they work together in this way, their opposition must as well, and having imagined it to be possible, they suppose that it's probable, and having supposed that it's probable, they conclude that it must be true, and so with the speed of a caffeinated ferret they know to be true that which they've only imagined. Proof is no longer necessary for Leftists to delude themselves. At any rate, the target of Andrew Breitbart's posting of the clips of Sheley Sherrod was not her; it was aimed at the group to which she was speaking, the NAACP. The NAACP, which is working together openly with the openly racist "Nation of Islam". This was in response to the NAACP calling out racism in the Tea Party, citing now-debunked accusations of racism (see Power Line's "Don't leave it to Cleaver", parts 1 through 17).
This was not, however, an accusation that when "minories reach positions of power, they seek some kind of revenge against whites." What it illustrated was that the NAACP, which hosted the event, applauded and gave approval to Sherrod's recounting of her tale of when she racially discriminated against a white farmer, not doing all she could to help him (when she was working for a non-profit). She states that she was of the opinion that he should seek help from "one of his own kind." She went on to say that she had since come to believe that poor whites are also worthy of her help. Middle class and rich whites should still, presumably, be helped "by their own kind." (in her own semi-coherent words, "That’s when…it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white — it is about white and black — but it’s not, you know…it opened my eyes." )
"A few of the purveyors of this bigoted nonsense might actually believe it. Most of them, however, are merely seeking political gain by inviting white voters to question the motives and good faith of the nation's first African American president. This is really about tearing Barack Obama down."This had nothing to do with POTUS Obama. The fact that this Marxist racist worked for the USDA was something of an embarassment to the Obama Administration, and she was fired for it. Now they've apologized for that, since, I guessing, they're of the opinion that if you're a Marxist racist, and not just a plain old racist, that's OK.
"With the Obama presidency, though, has come a flurry of charges -- from the likes of Breitbart but also from more substantial conservative figures -- about alleged incidences of racial discrimination against whites by blacks and other minorities. Recall, for example, the way Obama's critics had a fit when he offered an opinion about the confrontation between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a white police officer. Remember the over-the-top reaction when it was learned that Justice Sonia Sotomayor had once talked about how being a "wise Latina" might affect her thinking."Well, no, there haven't been a flurry of charges about incidents of racial discrimination against whites by blacks and other minorities. Robinsons WaPo readers are not expected to doubt this despite having little recollection of any such thing, but rather his assertion alone, in their minds, will make it so. He imagines it, and so he asserts it, and on that basis they believe. His examples?
There's the Gates/cops incident, in which Gates threw a tantrum, ranting and shouting about how he was being racially harassed when the police came to protect his home from burglars. They had asked him to step outside of the house, which is a standard police procedure which removes a person from any potential threat in a dwelling; even if a homeowner insists from within their own house that everything is OK, the police will ask them to step outside and say the same thing, just in case the homeowner is being coerced by, say, somebody behind the door, holding a gun on him. The problem with what POTUS Obama did was that, before any investigation, and before all the facts were known, Obama characterized the police as having acted "stupidly." This was unpresidential and possibly racially motivated, as Gates is black and the police were mostly white, but not provably so. That was the attitude, by and large, of the Right on this flap; it was Gates who was the primary object of scorn on the Right, for playing the race card, and POTUS Obama a distant second for inappropriately injecting his uninformed opinion on an issue of minor national significance - and, predictably, automatically siding with the black guy screaming "Racism!"
Then there's the then-nominee for the SCOTUS Sotomayor, who made an arguably racist statement in a 2001 speech to law students at the University of California at Berkeley: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." That remark was less about wise Latinas as it was about how white men are not as wise or fair as Latinas.
That should have disqualified her for the nomination to the Supreme Court. Don't think so? Fine, let's try a little thought experiment. Imagine the SCOTUS nominee of a Republican POTUS had said the following: "I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina who hasn't lived that life." Kinda pops out at ya now, doesn't it?
Remember, these are Eugene Robinson's cited examples of false charges of racism by the Right against POTUS Obama.
He goes on:
"Before Sherrod, the cause celebre of the "You Must Fear Obama" campaign involved something called the New Black Panther Party. Never heard of it? That's because it's a tiny group that exists mainly in the fevered imaginations of its few members. Also in the alternate reality of Fox News: One of the network's hosts has devoted more than three hours of air time in recent weeks to the grave threat posed by the NBPP. Actually, I suspect that this excess is at least partly an attempt by a relatively obscure anchor to boost her own notoriety."Robinson will not let his lack of comprehension of the arguments of his opponents stand in the way of his characterizing them as being frivolous or malevolent - a pitch-perfect Liberal. In this case, what has the Right outraged has less to do with the New Black Panther Party than the Department of Justice. The New Black Panther Party is, indeed, a tiny group of violent racists who are, on the whole, of little consequence. During the 2008 election two of them, one armed with a billy club, were stationed just outside a polling station, and were intimidating voters. It was a clear violation of law, and regardless of the merits of the case, the DOJ had the case won through a default judgement, had they but taken it. The New Black Panthers did not show up, nor did they send representative council, and so would have lost the civil suit filed against them by the DOJ had only the DOJ accepted it. Deliberately, they did not do so, and it is the contention of J. Christian Adams (and initially corroborated by two of his colleagues, now a third) that it is the internal policy of the DOJ that the voting rights laws will not be enforced in the defense of white voters. The Right has a problem with that. So should the Left, but they don't. Instead, they mischaracterize these allegations and their political opposition.
The last thing the Left wants is to have a serious discussion with their political opposition about the future of this country and Liberal vs. Conservative policies. Instead, as always, they seek to eject their opposition from the discussion by manufacturing accusations of racism against them. Granted, when your ideas are as bankrupt and divisive as theirs, it's understandable why they would like to avoid that debate, even if it means throwing serious accusations of evil around. It's understandable, and shamefully so.
Shame on Eugene Robinson, shame on the Left, and shame on you willing Liberal dupes who live in your Liberal bubbles. You will never understand your political opposition, or have a coherent political discussion with them, until you start to listen to what they have to say for themselves. When you let fools like Robinson (or the busted ThinkProgress) explain the Right to you instead of actually listening to the Right, you end up sounding incoherently disconnected from reality and dishonest.
* Regarding my usage of the word "black" instead of the more PC "African-American": yes, that's right, I still say "black". I know, I know, black people aren't actually black, they're brown, in the same way that I'm not white. As inaccurate as these hues are in describing our relative pigmentation, they are a more accurate description of the thing we're talking about than the term "African-American". There are lots of black people who are not from and have never been to Africa, just as there are lots of people who are fishbelly white who actually live there, and, perhaps just as confoundingly, black people who were born in, say, Canada are not, obviously, African-American. As far as our use of language goes, black beats colored beats negro beats darkie beats the-n-word-I-can't-say-because-I'm-white-even-if-I-do-so-in-contempt-of-it, but African-American is just silly and so I generally avoid it.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Krugman Unhinged
Via the ever-reliable New York Times, comes this screed by Paul Krugman. I've passed on many an opportunity to vent on the egregious spleen vomited forth by those who would silence the legitimate concerns of dissenting citizens on the question of healthcare "reform." I simply have not been able to rely on myself to remain even remotely civil in commenting on the sneering hypocrisy of the very voices who declared dissent to be the highest form of patriotism...so long as that dissent took the form of exercising their freedom of speech to declare (largely unchallenged) that George W Bush was squashing dissent.
I am no longer all that concerned about remaining civil.
Krugman is so far off the deep end with his assault on the legitimacy of his (cough) fellow citizens' expressions of discontent, that he couldn't touch bottom from a diving board which required oxygen supplies:
Really? The "Birthers" (those who question Obama's citizenship and thus his qualification to hold the office of POTUS) are a fraction of a fraction of the farthest fringe of the conservative movement, scorned by all mainstream conservative spokespeople. Krugman's and his Democratic fellow-travelers' disingenuous attempt to conflate this gang with the broad spectrum of Americans who object to the Democrats' attempted phagocytosis of the world's premier healthcare system by yet another bloated, deficit-funded bureaucracy is the very depth of demagoguery.
This is not about race. It is not about "astroturfing." It is about political (and literal!) thuggery of the most base sort, with a liberal dose (pun intentional) of snide elitism (right down to the ever-so-cleverly embedded Yeats reference in Krugman's penultimate paragraph).
The people who are organizing (as a community...) to protest this Rube-Goldberg of a healthcare takeover are not "brownshirts." They are not funded by nefarious corporate cabals. They are not motivated by racism, nor are they ignorant of the issues. They are our neighbors, our relatives, our friends. They are Americans. These attempts to vilify and silence them are a nauseating disgrace, a perversion of the very essence of political discourse in this Republic.
And, as is becoming increasingly clear, there will be a price.
I am no longer all that concerned about remaining civil.
Krugman is so far off the deep end with his assault on the legitimacy of his (cough) fellow citizens' expressions of discontent, that he couldn't touch bottom from a diving board which required oxygen supplies:
That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.
Really? The "Birthers" (those who question Obama's citizenship and thus his qualification to hold the office of POTUS) are a fraction of a fraction of the farthest fringe of the conservative movement, scorned by all mainstream conservative spokespeople. Krugman's and his Democratic fellow-travelers' disingenuous attempt to conflate this gang with the broad spectrum of Americans who object to the Democrats' attempted phagocytosis of the world's premier healthcare system by yet another bloated, deficit-funded bureaucracy is the very depth of demagoguery.
This is not about race. It is not about "astroturfing." It is about political (and literal!) thuggery of the most base sort, with a liberal dose (pun intentional) of snide elitism (right down to the ever-so-cleverly embedded Yeats reference in Krugman's penultimate paragraph).
The people who are organizing (as a community...) to protest this Rube-Goldberg of a healthcare takeover are not "brownshirts." They are not funded by nefarious corporate cabals. They are not motivated by racism, nor are they ignorant of the issues. They are our neighbors, our relatives, our friends. They are Americans. These attempts to vilify and silence them are a nauseating disgrace, a perversion of the very essence of political discourse in this Republic.
And, as is becoming increasingly clear, there will be a price.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Rolling Stone Gathers More Than Just Moss (In Other News, Dog Bites Man)
Today I looked in my In box and found a message from a good friend, with the subject line: "FW: Excellent Article." As usual, I took a deep breath and braced for the worst. A quite intelligent fellow, whom I love like a brother (with all that that entails!), he is nonetheless camped pretty securely on the port side of the ship of state, so I have resigned myself to sifting through intermittent Progressive polemics I might otherwise scan and discard (my friends almost always get the benefit of the doubt...only fair, given how patiently they tend to listen to my dextrospheric diatribes). Generally, I find something I can identify as good [enough] sense, which at the very least forces me to unpack and revisit sets of assumptions which might otherwise go unexamined (always a healthy exercise).
Then there was this article from Rolling Stone (where I always go for hard-hitting political analysis).
It was far, far, far worse than I could possibly have imagined. And, like Han Solo, I can imagine quite a bit. By way of illustration, I present the 'satirical cartoon' which accompanied the editorial emesis in question:
Never mind the simply nauseating racial stereotyping (though I find it curious that so much of the obsession with race seems to come not from the Right but from those who are ostensibly all about transcending the bigotries of the past). Never mind the infantile caricaturing of political opponents. Never mind the dismissive and disrespectful treatment of a man's distinguished military record (which, for all the posturing about "supporting the troops" is, after all, de rigeur for so many on the Left). It's the sheer repellent callousness with which the almost unimaginable suffering which McCain experienced at the bloody hands of the North Vietnamese is tossed off as though it were a mere political wiffle-ball.
And we haven't even gotten to the text yet.
I simply lack the energy to do a proper block-quoted, point-by-point fisking of this toxic train-wreck. I would simply ask that the reader pay attention to a few key concepts as they slog through it.
Note the pervasive and pernicious elitism and condescension which permeates it like swamp gas, the repeated references to variations on the "slack-jawed yokel" motif. Try, if you will, to reconcile this with the putative populism which is supposed to underlie the Democratic message. Note also the way a snippet of an interview with some less-than-enlightened "sweet-looking old ladies" (who are not even denizens of "the darkened plains of Montana and South Dakota," or "backwoods South Carolina," or some such benighted place) is interjected apparently as a stand-in for the views of McCain supporters in general. Here's a neat trick: How about I write an article about Obama, and let interviews with this crowd (NSFW) stand in for what I will portray as the mainstream of his supporters. That would be fair, yes?
Pay attention to the number of times some racial broadside is shoe-horned into the text. Try a thought experiment: Imagine if the words "a Negro intellectual from Harvard who's never served in the military" had appeared in the pages of The National Review. Imagine the comment threads over at the Huffington Post over that one!
Notice the offhand reference to the "mean-ass hate-radio conservatism of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh." The implication here seems to be that the complacency of Liberals was instrumental in allowing those Venal Right-Wing Haters to gobble up the airwaves so they can whip up the Brownshirts against the slumbering forces of decency. Hogwash. Liberal ideas were simply unable to garner the market share on the languishing AM band by attracting listeners and sponsors the way Conservative shows were (and are) able to do (just ask Air America's accountants). Instead, those who hunger for "Progressive" voices to bring those Right-Wingers to heel have to pin their hopes on the return of the almost-laughably misnamed "Fairness Doctrine," and the Carthaginian peace it would bring to political discourse on the airwaves.
Notice how McCain is mocked for allegedly "going dumb and courting the same talk-radio demographic that used to despise him." So, then, after many years of developing a reputation for reaching across the aisle and irritating the Conservative wing of the GOP by his "Maverick" positions (a far more impressive track record of actual bipartisanship than Obama's history [such as it is] can boast...but I digress), he is reaching out to that bloc of citizens and reassuring them that he will represent their interests as well if elected. The bastard! Actually, this is one of the precious few points on which the Rolling Stone editorial is not completely nonsensical. McCain has adjusted his positions on several issues over time...and he has accounted for all of those changes:
I must confess that these passages confused me:
So, no, this does not qualify as anything even resembling an "excellent" article (unless one's intent is to so comprehensively discredit the seriousness of McCain's opponents as to indirectly burnish his credentials to lead...if that's the goal, then it is truly Most Triumphant). What it is is a sorry, slap-dash potty-mouthed playground hack job which allows name-calling and profanity to substitute for analysis, and tries to shame people into not noticing how utterly it fails to make anything resembling a coherent argument, by making them feel that anyone who was Clever and Sophisticated enough would see its murky premises as blindingly obvious.
I am not impressed.
Then there was this article from Rolling Stone (where I always go for hard-hitting political analysis).
It was far, far, far worse than I could possibly have imagined. And, like Han Solo, I can imagine quite a bit. By way of illustration, I present the 'satirical cartoon' which accompanied the editorial emesis in question:
Never mind the simply nauseating racial stereotyping (though I find it curious that so much of the obsession with race seems to come not from the Right but from those who are ostensibly all about transcending the bigotries of the past). Never mind the infantile caricaturing of political opponents. Never mind the dismissive and disrespectful treatment of a man's distinguished military record (which, for all the posturing about "supporting the troops" is, after all, de rigeur for so many on the Left). It's the sheer repellent callousness with which the almost unimaginable suffering which McCain experienced at the bloody hands of the North Vietnamese is tossed off as though it were a mere political wiffle-ball.
And we haven't even gotten to the text yet.
I simply lack the energy to do a proper block-quoted, point-by-point fisking of this toxic train-wreck. I would simply ask that the reader pay attention to a few key concepts as they slog through it.
Note the pervasive and pernicious elitism and condescension which permeates it like swamp gas, the repeated references to variations on the "slack-jawed yokel" motif. Try, if you will, to reconcile this with the putative populism which is supposed to underlie the Democratic message. Note also the way a snippet of an interview with some less-than-enlightened "sweet-looking old ladies" (who are not even denizens of "the darkened plains of Montana and South Dakota," or "backwoods South Carolina," or some such benighted place) is interjected apparently as a stand-in for the views of McCain supporters in general. Here's a neat trick: How about I write an article about Obama, and let interviews with this crowd (NSFW) stand in for what I will portray as the mainstream of his supporters. That would be fair, yes?
Pay attention to the number of times some racial broadside is shoe-horned into the text. Try a thought experiment: Imagine if the words "a Negro intellectual from Harvard who's never served in the military" had appeared in the pages of The National Review. Imagine the comment threads over at the Huffington Post over that one!
Notice the offhand reference to the "mean-ass hate-radio conservatism of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh." The implication here seems to be that the complacency of Liberals was instrumental in allowing those Venal Right-Wing Haters to gobble up the airwaves so they can whip up the Brownshirts against the slumbering forces of decency. Hogwash. Liberal ideas were simply unable to garner the market share on the languishing AM band by attracting listeners and sponsors the way Conservative shows were (and are) able to do (just ask Air America's accountants). Instead, those who hunger for "Progressive" voices to bring those Right-Wingers to heel have to pin their hopes on the return of the almost-laughably misnamed "Fairness Doctrine," and the Carthaginian peace it would bring to political discourse on the airwaves.
Notice how McCain is mocked for allegedly "going dumb and courting the same talk-radio demographic that used to despise him." So, then, after many years of developing a reputation for reaching across the aisle and irritating the Conservative wing of the GOP by his "Maverick" positions (a far more impressive track record of actual bipartisanship than Obama's history [such as it is] can boast...but I digress), he is reaching out to that bloc of citizens and reassuring them that he will represent their interests as well if elected. The bastard! Actually, this is one of the precious few points on which the Rolling Stone editorial is not completely nonsensical. McCain has adjusted his positions on several issues over time...and he has accounted for all of those changes:
- On the Bush tax cuts, he saw that they had achieved what they were intended to do, galvanizing the dynamism of the US economy after the potentially catastrophic effects of 9/11 on a sluggish post-dot-com situation (but he continues to quite rightly blast the GOP for not reining in spending commensurately...which was one of his main objections to the cuts in the first place), so now he wants those tax cuts preserved, and a greater emphasis on fiscal discipline.
- On immigration reform, he has shifted the emphasis from creating a non-amnesty path to citizenship for illegal immigrants while securing the border; to securing the border, then creating a fair path to citizenship, in response to the withering stream of the harshest criticism from Conservatives. Anyone who thinks he has caved altogether on this issue and is now in the good graces of Immigration Hawks simply has not been reading some of the stuff that is still getting written about "Juan McCain."
- McCain has always been an opponent of abortion. Indeed, this is one aspect of his candidacy with which I have struggled most; while I find abortion to be a grisly, tragic, grotesque, and morally repulsive affair, undertaken far too lightly and frequently for the very worst of reasons...I stop well short of being able to put my libertarian tendencies far enough to the side to feel that it should actually be banned. Still, as this Jan 2000 Salon article lays out, McCain's position on abortion for at least the better part of a decade has been markedly similar to that of Bush who, after almost 8 years (six of which were spent with majorities in Congress), has still managed to not return us to the days of wire hangers and back alleys. I'm not writing this to get into a debate about abortion, though, (please!) so much as to point out the vapidity of the Rolling Stone editorial's depiction of McCain as somehow having morphed into a rabid Anti-Choicer. It is yet another instance of the gross intellectual dishonesty with which this hit piece is riddled like profanity and brilliance in a George Carlin comedy routine.
I must confess that these passages confused me:
And when it comes to Obama's and his wife's America-hating, well . . . McCain really doesn't need to say anything about that. All he needs to do to remind audiences of Reverend Wright and Michelle "I'm proud of America for the first time" Obama is to offer a few bons mots in the opposite direction. "I seek the office with the humility of a man who cannot forget that my country saved me," McCain likes to say. And while he doesn't believe he was anointed by God to lead the great nation of America, he insists, "I am her servant, first, last and always."
That's it — that's the entire argument. McCain is a canny enough old goat to know that the public's insatiable appetite for traitorous enemies will do the rest. He'll wave as many flags and stand in front of as many fucking fighter jets as you like, while the other guy lectures us about why he doesn't always need to wear a flag pin in his lapel and calls a bomb-throwing Sixties terrorist "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" instead of calling for his immediate beheading.
The author appears to be saying that McCain is graciously (some say foolishly) refraining from directly attacking Michelle Obama for her belated pride in the nation in which she has been able to achieve so much, or her husband's public struggles to pin down (har-har) the symbology of his own patriotism, or the implications of his affiliation with an unrepentant terrorist, focusing instead on his own affection and gratitude for that nation. Further, the implication appears to be that McCain is placing his trust in the American people to recognize when those who wish to lead them are not doing enough to "sell" them on their pride and devotion to its ideals and their opposition to those who stand for undermining its interests. So, this is supposed to be an attack on McCain?
From this point on, the editorial simply degenerates into the same old tired, ad hominem wank-fest of long-distance psychoanalyzing (blah-blah PTSD, yadda-yadda bitter Woodstock-envy...) which is the last refuge of those who are unable to mount a coherent argument based on issues. I would say that in this part the author just embarrasses himself...but it is clear that the capacity for self-reflection and critical thinking were not priorities for him from the get-go.
So, no, this does not qualify as anything even resembling an "excellent" article (unless one's intent is to so comprehensively discredit the seriousness of McCain's opponents as to indirectly burnish his credentials to lead...if that's the goal, then it is truly Most Triumphant). What it is is a sorry, slap-dash potty-mouthed playground hack job which allows name-calling and profanity to substitute for analysis, and tries to shame people into not noticing how utterly it fails to make anything resembling a coherent argument, by making them feel that anyone who was Clever and Sophisticated enough would see its murky premises as blindingly obvious.
I am not impressed.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
WaPo: Only Bigots Won't Vote For Obama
[by Mr.Hengist]
Today, the WaPo brings us harrowing tales of racism encountered by brave and earnest Obama campaigners canvassing the smallminded local hillbillies of flyover country. Here's a paragraph which is worth noting:
Vandalism is inexcusable, but is this is evidence of bigotry? Not at all - so what is it doing in this article? It's an effort by the Washington Post to delegitimize these issues because they're problematical for Obama. The Liberal MSM and likeminded pundits will be delivering this message throughout the campaign: If you don't vote for Obama then you are a racist. Only the more clumsy amongst them will put it so bluntly.
Today, the WaPo brings us harrowing tales of racism encountered by brave and earnest Obama campaigners canvassing the smallminded local hillbillies of flyover country. Here's a paragraph which is worth noting:
"The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: `Hamas votes BHO' and `We don't cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright.'"
Vandalism is inexcusable, but is this is evidence of bigotry? Not at all - so what is it doing in this article? It's an effort by the Washington Post to delegitimize these issues because they're problematical for Obama. The Liberal MSM and likeminded pundits will be delivering this message throughout the campaign: If you don't vote for Obama then you are a racist. Only the more clumsy amongst them will put it so bluntly.
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