These people are going off the deep end entirely: open panic at a black president is morphing into the conscious fanning of racial polarization, via Gates or ACORN or Van Jones or a schoolbus in Saint Louis. What we're seeing is the Jeremiah Wright moment repeated and repeated. The far right is seizing any racial story to fan white fears of black power in order to destroy Obama. And the far right now controls the entire right.
Do they understand how irresponsible this is? How recklessly dangerous to a society's cohesion and calm? Or is that what they need and thrive on?
Yes. Yes. And yes.
I got a note from a good friend yesterday expressing shock, and anger, about Drudge and Malkin's usage of that alleged racial beat-down on a school-bus. On some level, I wonder if something's wrong with me. I'm neither shocked, nor angry. This is exactly how I expected these fools to respond to a black president.
If anything, I'm a little giddy. For black people, the clear benefit of Obama is that he is quietly exposing an ancient hatred that has simmered in this country for decades. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of us grew tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, mostly because they presented easy foils for Limbaugh-land. Moreover, again rightly or wrongly, they were used to define all of us.
It's intensely grating to live say, in Atlanta, and have some dude in Harlem crowned as your unelected leader. It's even more grating if said dude's agenda seems, in large measure, come down to standing in front of cameras and tweaking his opponents. It's no mistake that O'Reilly and Sharpton would break bread together at Sylvia's--they feed each other.
But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.He tells kids to study--and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West--the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.
It's about time.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
My only question is this: are people like Malkin, Limbaugh convincing people? Are they really scaring the white people that they need to scare, or are they only reinforcing notions that a certain segment of their party already believes? I don't believe they're convincing any people that consider themeselves 'independent.' What they're doing seems too transparent to be taken seriously. But then again, I might just be giving people too much credit.
No, I agree. I don't think if you're on the fence, Limbaugh/Malkin ae going to convince you of anything.
They're not trying to convince people. They're trying to see how far they can push the true believers into action. They're trying to cause chaos so that, at best, Obama will appear unable to lead. It's never been in the conservatives' best interest for people to act with their rational selves. Because, if people did that, Republicans--as their ideology stands now--would be supported by, at best, 5% of the country. Calm self-reflection is their mortal enemy, and they know it. Hiding that fact is contrary to their efforts. So, lunacy, it is.
Exactly---they are trying to make the country ungovernable. But after adopting this scorched earth type of strategy, how will they ever be able to govern again after the country has been riven by this kind of racial & social strife?
dragnet, they don't believe in governing. They believe in ruling.
Agreed. Kind of like Manson listening to Helter Skelter and trying to start a race war by killing rich and famous white people. Limbaugh is no les insane, no less dangerous.
While these cats manipulate the fears of the racists, the same tactic was used by the conservative right to stir the opposition too to JFK, an equally popular, equally brilliant, and, in speeches, equally persuasive President. Signs in Dallas that day in 1963 read "Kennedy a Traitor," and "JFK is a Commie." They created a climate of fear; fear morphs into hate; hate morphs into something we dare not imagine.
Limbaugh is the moral equivalent of someone yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre, and I wish there wass something that could be done to to deter the panic he creates in the ignorant fringes of the far right. I suppose we have to put up, but we don't have to shut up. He has sponsors too, just like Beck.
Sorry I'm coming late to this... But I think you're giving them too much credit. Seems to me they're just trying to make more money. Capitalism/greed has always had the flaw of promoting evil.
I think they can sway people. Someone who might have been "on the fence" a few years ago, maybe with some racist tendencies but trying to live by his better nature, but now has lost his job, his house and his insurance, sees it happening to his neighbors, and is looking for someone to blame. I don't think they could be getting away with the same level of craziness if the economy was in boom times.
Good point. Makes me think of the movie "Falling Down."
Agreed, Jennifer. They are taking people who are already in a compromised position, who are already weak and insecure and defensive because of the economy (which is in and of itself largely the result of devastating GOP policies), and they're appealing to the worst possible element of human nature in order to incite anger, action and, well, viewership. I think a large number of white people (and the older they are, the more accessible it is) have this quiet fear that they are going to be displaced by people that don't look like them. When their bank accounts are fat and their jobs are secure, that thought is annoying, but not much more than that. But when they feel like they're about to go over a cliff....they aren't going to feel quite so charitable then. There's a reason why there's an inverse relationship between the diversity of a society and the strength of its social programs.
And then, to have those social programs introduced by a BLACK man? Who had such a hateful pastor? Who appoints people who blame "whitey" for poisoning the hood? And on and on and on it goes....
I hope these hucksters realize what they're inciting, all in the name of a couple bucks.
Or as another Micheal Douglas character, "An American President" said about his opponent in the movie "He doesn't want to help solve your problems, he wants to tell what to be afraid of and who to blame for it. " This is pretty much the definition of the today's GOP and their right-wing friends.
The worst thing Pres. Obama can do right now is to go all "Virgil Tibbs" and slap that old White man back. There are millions of White people who voted for Obama, many of them political independents who really do want to see an end to the culture wars, who really do want to out grow their history, who really did vote for "change." But real change is usually scarier than the status quo--under the best of conditions. That's why Obama's zen-like calm, his almost unfailing grace in the face of the hate and his strategic rather than tactical thinking, will, in the end, serve all of us well.
It really doesn't matter if this hate is based in racism or political calculation or a hunger for ratings or a combination of all of the above. What matters is his and our response to it.
Calling them racists is not nearly as effective as letting them demonstrate their racism to the world. When one of the leaders of the tea party movement has to admit on CNN that, dispite his seeming "reasonableness" he actually called Obama an "Indonesian Muslim welfare thug," and then goes on to defend his lies and slander by saying "well, that's what he (Obama) acts like" that's a pretty good demonstration.
When Glenn Beck's intellectual, political and spiritual mentor turns out to have been a dude so bat-shit crazy that J. Edgar Hoover disavowed him (see Salon) what else is there left to do but shine a light for all to see and spread the word for all to hear.
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant."
"a dude so bat-shit crazy"
Anna - given who you've worked for and have hung out with (in the "Bunker" on 9/11 no less), it warms my heart to read those words.
I've long thought of Limbaugh as sort of a reverse Keyser Sose, his greatest trick is convincing the left and the right that he is extremely influencial. He does have listenership and at times can get his party to fear him, but if he held the power that is attributed to him, how the hell did John McCain get the nomination? Limbaugh had blasted McCain time and time again.
Also, with respect to a story like the school bus beating, I am not so sure the exploitation of a story like that is always done to spread fear. It could be used to justify having racist thoughts or as a counterpoint to being accused of racism. (the "your side does it too" excuse)
Agreed. That's exactly what I thought when I saw the footage of the school bus beating, the "your side does it too" crap. Because each Faux News pundit conveniently ignored the white kids on the bus who sat there and did nothing. If the point is to start a race war, why didn't they jump in to help their white brother? Limbigot offers no explanation for that.
Yep,
What I've pointed out many times is that the GOP doesn't seem to understand that having 20% of the population following you makes you a very rich talk radio host, but it doesn't win you many elections.
Rush's scale for success is much different.
I don't think they're converting people, but they're sure as hell stirring up the choir.
The second "rightly or wrongly" seems odd. It seems defining an entire race by two people is obviously wrong. Am I missing something there?
They "rightly" defined us--the good and bad--at varying moments. The "wrongly" defined us in total.
Gotcha, thanks
I would submit that it's not only his ordinariness that's driving them crazy (because there is definitely that) -- it's also his extraordinariness.
I don't know about you, TNC, but I don't know very many people as insanely smart and capable as the POTUS, and certainly fewer who can also put everyone in a room at ease and make all the folks swoon as he/she goes by. Crack a joke too? Hell, I know no one.
If you've come up thinking that this man is, by nature, certifiably less than you -- and he turns out to be, seemingly effortlessly, light-years better than you? The seething is very much intensified, I would imagine.
I just ran across this and wonder if the Limbugs will even touch this....doubt it
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/20940073/detail.html
Ugly story. But when these folks are being continually reminded that "they" (Blacks, Muslims, illegal immigrants, whatever) are taking away their jobs, that they're the victims of "reverse discrimination," that the president has it it for "real" Americans and he and his minions are "destroying our country" -- that manufactured anger, stoked and goaded by the right, is ready to come out at the slightest provocation -- or, in this case, at no provocation at all. Sadly, I suspect that Ms. Hill's identifying herself as a service member only enraged her attacker more, because it further challenged his view of what her "correct" place should be.
No, Limbaugh won't touch it, at least until they can find some nugget (real or fabricated) to show that somehow she "caused" it. Then they'll be all over it.
I'm stealing a comment from Rhubarbs at TNR:
The whole point of conservatives' use of racially coded language is to provoke the countercharge of racism in order to activate white grievance. A zen-like policy of nonresponse to right-wing racism is the only way to defeat it: it forces conservatives to push the language closer to the edge of obvious racism, and also confuses and angers them into making unforced errors.
He also makes a reasonable distinction between pointing out obvious racism (no need; people can see it without you pointing it out) and arguable racism (Wilson, and a trap since one winds up debating 'is Wilson racist" as TNC points out below).
Ooh...that is pitch perfect. Thanks, Deborah, for the Rhubarbs.
Damn, QFT.
MF Coates.
Reminds me (the "It's intensely grating to..." bit) of one of my favorite South Park exchanges, where Token refuses to accept Stan's Dad's (or Randy, if you must) apology to Jesse Jackson with the line "Jesse Jackson is not the emperor of black people".
I've been wanting to say this for a while but have been reluctant to get jumped on here, a forum I enjoy a lot.
Maybe all that's being talked about here are specific conservative individuals, for whom it's plausible that the opposition to President Obama's policies is largely rooted in "they hate black people," consciously or unconsciously. I can deal with that.
But it's very frustrating to hear opposition to the President's policies constantly cast in those terms. All conservatives (even all white conservatives) are racist only in the sense that everybody carries a burden of racism that's hard to shake off. Once in a while I'd like to see some acknowledgment that many conservatives oppose President Obama's policies simply on, well, ordinary conservative grounds. I know nobody's coming out and saying anything ridiculous like "The only reason to oppose [say] health care reform is because of hatred towards Obama" -- but it is grating to continue seeing what looks like assumptions, e.g. that Rush Limbaugh speaks for conservatives in general, or that conservatives are generally upset about having a black president. No issue is one-sided, and there are usually reasoned and good-spirited arguments for and against any policy just as there are unreasonable and mean-spirited arguments for and against them. Constant demonizing (either way) is unhelpful, nothing but a barrier to finding common ground where it really exists.
I'm trying to figure out what you're responding too...
I don't think I've written that all opposition to Obama is racist by default, or even Obama hatred.
No, not you personally, TNC. It's more a vibe I get from the general tone of the comments -- something missing more than something that's there.
I apologize for not being clear. I'm not sure I've articulated my response even very well to myself.
When conservatives went crazy on the Clintons, they at least waited until there was actual policy on the table to argue against. They went crazy on Obama during the campaign, picked it up a notch after the election, rising steadily until inauguration day...
And now that Obama's doing things that drive the left crazy (escalating Afghanistan, keeping Gitmo open, continuing renditions and reauthorizing the Patriot Act) -- things that the so-called conservatives were all in favor of when Bush did -- they suddenly find these policies unconscionable power grabs and OMG TAKING AWAY OUR FREEDOM!!!11! Now George Will wants all our troops home, we shouldn't be nation-building. Funny how he didn't think that a year ago.
It's awfully hard to see how this opposition could be based on "ordinary conservative grounds."
@wendy,
I'd have a certain degree of respect for the conservatives if they were actually condemning water-boarding, renditions, or the war on terror. The problem is that they are not.
Rather it's incoherent stuff: Obama =Hitlercastrostalin... but he should still have the power to waterboard and disappear people, ...but for God's sake keep the government's hands off my medicare.
I agree with you that there's an "all opposition to Obama is racist" meme circulating in the air (or rather, on the air) but I tend to think that it is being circulated by Beck and Limbaugh as much as anyone else -- how many times do they preface their remarks "now, people are going to call me racist for saying this..., but... "
That preface is strategic, I believe.
The first reality is that their remarks walk the line on treachery as much as racism -- 'let the country fail, just as long as Obama fails.'
Their freedom rests on the first amendment, not the second.
It would be easier for me to see opposition to the President's goals in a different light if the Republicans actually offered workable alternatives instead of more tax cuts and tax credits. When Jim DeMint tells his colleagues to oppose the President's health care reform initiative because it will then be Obama's Waterloo, that's telling me that there is more at work here than simply viewing the same problem differently. Also, when these same Senators and Congressmen voted for policies that would explode the deficit under a Republican president, they lose the credibility to protest now.
I'm not so simple-minded as to think that all conservatives oppose the President because he is black or because he's a Democrat or because he is a so-called liberal. Yet, there's something about the nature of the opposition that echoes the sneering faces I saw in the 70s when desegregation finally came to my little hometown.
Yeah, I think this is a bit off. I think a lot of people have been saying that there are obvious non-racial grounds on which people can oppose Obama's plans. The problem is that a lot of the people making those arguments (David Frum, George Will, etc) are being drowned out by people calling the president a racist/Muslim/Communist.
But this is largely a problem of complacency on the part of moderate and liberal conservatives. You can't argue that liberals or the media are trying to muddy the waters about who's leading the conservative movement when you have congressman speaking at events put together by Glenn Beck. The reason the two things are being conflated is because they aren't separate, distinct entities at this point; they're one in the same.
If you want to have people stop casting Limbaugh and Beck as the leaders of the movement, then you need to find ways to discredit them and/or make them not leaders of the movement.
Please cite examples. I don't see or hear opposition to actual, real policies. I hear screaming about nonexistent death panels, health care for illegal immigrants, FEMA reeducation camps, questioning the president's citizenship, etc., etc. If a republican actually opened their mouth and made an argument against a democratic policy based upon what is actually written in a bill, they might have a point. But nine months into the Obama administration, fear mongering and falsehoods have drowned out any attempts at reasonable debate. You can't give credit where credit isn't due. Republicans have not put forward any alternatives to democratic proposals nor have they presented reasoned, rational dissent.
Democrats/Progressives aren't the ones who allowed Rush Limbaugh to take de facto leadership of the republican party. The republicans who continue to kiss his ring and never denounce the horribly racist, inflammatory garbage he spews on a daily basis are the ones who have given the incredibly strong impression that he speaks for all republicans. If one of them would man up and take him on, progressives would be forced to reevaluate the GOP leadership situation. So far, hasn't happened.
Well, where are you looking for that rational opposition? I'm here, listening, after all. You could click over to McArdle's Atlantic blog, for instance.
Journalists for whom this is a convenient fiction also give that impression, and reinforce it daily.
I don't know about this. I click over to Megan once in awhile and she is one of the reasonable types on the right in the blogosphere at least. I disagree with her strongly on most things she posts, but not because I think she is crazy, she's smart and wrong to me,in many instances. There are other "reasonable" people that are somewhat right-leaning too, Sully links to so many right-ish type blogs and sites and you can find something that isn't crazy for sure through his blog roll. I like reading these libertarian bloggers for some intelligence on different issues: McArdle, Julian Sanchez and Will Wilkinson.
In terms of mainstream politics though, it seems like a really sad scene. I don't see enough people within the GOP party making a case for taking back their party from these crazies. I actually wrote to my governor here in CA, asking Ahnold to stand up to the fringe that seem to be front and center in their party. The moderates in the party need to add their voice in a loud visible way, to yes, lend ideological diversity to the mix of the GOP.
Dana Rohrbacher is a republican in CA heis not my congressman, but it was nice to see him vote outside his party, when he voted yes for the Joe Wilson censure. Who knows why, i would like to think it was a symbolic vote against the anger and hysteria swirling around the GOP.
Let's face it: Olympia Snowe type reasonableness in the GOP is not very common. She, and people like here, are a minority-type voice in that party.
I'm satisfied with the responses I've gotten to my post. I come here in part because I don't like the echo chamber and I seek out reasonable people I can learn from even if I don't agree politically. This isn't an echo chamber and I appreciate that.
Silentbeep makes an important point. . . there are plenty of reasonable Conservative perspectives and plenty of reasonable critiques of Obama that one might make from a rightward direction. There are other ways of doing business than his, and it's perfectly valid to speak up on behalf of those.
But that isn't really what the conversation is at this point. It's hysterical paranoid nonsense. . . the "crazy tax" bill has come due and there's racism surcharge on it. The conversation we are having is being driven by the hard right nuts, and those people subscribe to a brand of politics that is. . . well. . . infused with racism. There's really no way around it.
One might accuse left wing people of making "weak man arguments" when they attack the G.O.P. of being paranoid and racist, except that the politics they are about right now are. . . well, paranoid and racist. We can't worry about the hypothetical reasonable G.O.P. We have to deal with the thing we've got.
Everything T.N.C said about Obama is how I feel about him too. I'm a white guy actually, but Obama is somehow "like me" in a way that not many people on the national stage are. The fact that he know who Kanye West, and knows that Kanye is, well, kind of a jackass, suggest that he lives in a world much like my own than most of the people on CNN.
Concerning health care for illegals, Dean Heller (R-Nevada) did offer a solution. He tried to require that the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) system be used to check the citizenship of a person before they get government subsidized health insurance.
The Democrats shot down that amendment. I wonder why?
Being in opposition to the president's policies and agenda isn't racist. It's normal, and actually healthy for any democratic society. But the detached-from-reality, seething, gut-level rage isn't about policy differences; it's something much more visceral and ugly. These folks have entirely drowned out the rational opposition that must eventually return to reclaim what's left of the Republican Party; for now, though, the public face of the GOP is Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin and the teabagger crowd. They are the right-wing counterparts of the Code Pink clowns on the left, but with automatic weapons and Hank Williams, Jr. on their iPods.
No issue is one-sided
Have to disagree. For instance, the teaching of flat-earth theology in public school is bad for our kids, and bad for our country. This anti-intellectualism in our politics is degrading our efficacy as a nation.
bearing, I think you're wrong to say "...all that's being talked about here..." if by "here" you mean this blog. For a forum that often deals with questions of race and racism in society, it's refreshing to me to see how rarely criticism of Obama's critics is assumed to stem primarily from racism. In fact, most often on this blog we get debunking of those theories: "People wonder if XYZ protest is primarily driven by racism, but I suspect that's not the primary motivator here..."
I do agree with what you're saying as applied to a broader media context, however. Those theories tend to get debunked on this blog because somebody, on some prominent lefty blog, calls foul on every protest of Obama's policies as being invalid because they're solely or primarily driven by racial animus toward Obama: the tea parties, the various marches, the healthcare forum disruptions, the death-panels controversy, protests over the climate change legislation, protests over Obama's foreign trips, and on and on.
Just as some conservative commentator, somewhere, engages in thinly veiled race-baiting over some supposed white-hating agenda inherent in every one of Obama's policies: his healthcare plan, his climate change legislation, the stimulus, his foreign policy.
I don't know what to say about it. The progressives drive me nuts because it's counter-productive: it distracts from the policy arguments we could be making, and is often seen by persuadable conservatives as the kind of argument you make when you don't have confidence in your substantive arguments. (Very similar to when conservatives defend their failed foreign policies by questioning the patriotism of their critics.) The conservative race-baiters, on the other hand, alternatively scare me and make me absolutely furious.
Once in a while I'd like to see some acknowledgment that many conservatives oppose President Obama's policies simply on, well, ordinary conservative grounds
Bearing, I wish I knew what those grounds were. I am nostalgic for the time when it seemed like there was a Republican party with some actual principles, even if I disagreed with every one of them. What you've got now, or at least the ones who are being given a voice, aren't articulating anything except denials ... I just don't understand what their policy prescriptions are.
BTW, nice to hear from someone with another viewpoint! Glad you posted.
Don't be too afraid about getting jumped on here, this isn't Daily Kos. Almost all of the discussions I have had here have been extremely cordial and never once have I been accused of being a racist. Which isn't to say that I don't pick up on some of the feelings that you mentioned.
It is sometimes difficult when you read things along the lines of "conservatives want small government so money doesn't go to minorities", my first instinct is to take it as an offense. While that is certainly the case in some instances, the last time I actually heard something like that expressed verbally, it was from a guy who did vote for Obama.(His type is what I call an April 15th conservative)
On the one hand, you’re right. There does tend to be a tendency, I think, for people to try to connect dots and complete a narrative that suits their worldview or their experience. The problem is that this seems slightly out of context in this particular thread. It’s difficult to argue, and I am a pretty solid contrarian when I want to be, that Limbaugh, Malkin, Drudge, et.al. are not explicitly race-baiting. I mean, the way these guys are reporting this school bus story, they might as well be carving a backwards B on their face and blaming it on an imaginary black man. Drudge has been doing it in a more subtle way for over a year. I remember when Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother were murdered, for a week or so there would be a headline about Obama right above three headlines about how rough inner city Chicago is. Then there was the girl with the B on her cheek, which was followed by a necessary lull, but for months the innuendo has grown to a sort of fevered pitch. Now we have this story.
You’re right, there are all sorts of principled reasons to oppose the president’s preferred health reforms. The problem is the loudest and most fervent arguments against these reforms have been wildly misleading, and they’ve been accompanied by the birther movement, people all too happy to defend the arrest of a 70 year old black man for breaking into his own house, folks bringing semi-automatic weapons to the president’s town halls, and Glenn Beck going on Fox calling the president a racist. Now, I am happy to hear the legitimate criticisms of the plans for health care reform. There’s just not a whole lot of it going on. Instead, you have ad hominem attacks, and the sort of ‘reporting’ that brings national focus to a story that shouldn’t necessarily have been given local coverage, while Limbaugh tells listeners they should be afraid to put their white kids on a school bus. So while I have definitely taken the position that people are often too quick to infer motives behind the behavior of strangers, in this thread I say screw that. These em-effers need to be called out for this shit.
Wrong ATL blog. Please see Sullivan, Andrew.
"bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just" is just magnificent.
Yes. I've been savoring that line all afternoon.
No one is afraid of black political power, don't kid yourself. Black political power didn't get Obama elected POTUS anymore than it got Axelrod's other client elected governor of Massachusetts or, long before that, Doug Wilder elected governor of Virginia, David Dinkins elected mayor of NYC, the African American fellow elected mayor of Los Angeles, etc. In all cases, it was mainly white people voting for these black men, and one of the motivations was that by electing a well-spoken, bourgeois (to borrow T's term) African American, this could somehow solve the challenges and conflicts of interacting with non-bourgeois African Americans. When this fantasy doesn't come to pass, pragmatic white voters move on.
Thus, for example, New Yorkers who voted for Dinkins thinking that having a black mayor would calm tensions in the city, cashiered him for Giuliani after Dinkins proved soft on crime and the City became less livable under his administration.
Who's making a point about black political power? I see Sullivan talking about "black power," but he's talking about a lot more than casting a vote.
I assumed Sullivan was, from this,
"The far right is seizing any racial story to fan white fears of black power in order to destroy Obama."
Without people casting votes for black candidates, I don't see from where black political power would derive. Since blacks are ~12% of the U.S. population, by definition, in order to acquire significant political power nationally (e.g., to have a black president) or even statewide, in most cases, requires getting votes mostly from other groups. As whites still comprise a majority of the population (~60%) nationally, this means that black candidates need a significant percentage of white candidates to vote for them in order for them to win statewide or national office (obviously, a black candidate can win in a majority black city with just black votes).
I think he's talking about something bigger than a fear of black people voting. I'll leave that to him, though.
Is this the fear that had the right wing rioting when Bush appointed the country's first (two) black secretaries of state, the first black national security adviser, etc.?
I really don't know where Sully is coming from anymore. He seems to have his own self-contained political perspective.
Dave, those people that Bush appointed still reported to a white man. The efforts to "de-Americanize" and therefore deligitimize Obama point to something that has not been wielded against previous Presidents. Fundamental discomfort with a black person at the top of the power pyramid seems to explain this reaction for a lot of observers. If you have an alternate explanation, I'd be interested to hear it.
My interpretation of "fanning white fears of black power" -- well, _Birth of a Nation_ was along those lines too. It's about trying to make white people afraid for their physical safety.
"Black political power," like all political power wielded by minority (in numbers, not race) groups, is more than just counting heads. You don't have the numbers, you have to be able to sway. Black political power is also the power of the unspoken threat; do this or there's gonna be a problem. Black political power is also the power of location; Black people may be %12 of the population nationally but Black people are of greater numbers in larger districts, and have more to say about how things go in NYC than in, oh, Nashville. Black political power is also the power of turnout; not everyone votes, and the numbers of votes cast don't always parallel population concentrations.
It's a far more complicated calculation, and there is reason to respect it.
Don't believe me? Ask yourself why all the Democratic candidates in any reasonably large city in Black churches on the Sundays close to election time.
Are you really asking a serious question?
Fear is often not rational. The fact that any black politician who wants to win an election to a statewide office, (and in most cases, even a regional office), needs lots of votes from white people, is irrelevant. One might think that the country having a white majority would act as a fail-safe measure in everyone's minds, even the most racist of minds, against any real “radical” black pol getting into a major elected office.
But if a racist wants to think that a black candidate is secretly harboring plans of doom for whites everywhere, not amount of logic will dissuade them from their paranoia. They will say the black candidate is simply a "Manchurian candidate", who is hiding his or her real agenda. Or they will say that liberal whites, too gullible to see things at face value, will vote this "radical" black candidate into office out of misguided desires for racial reconciliation.
This isn’t all that different than right-wingers fearing that Muslim-Americans are taking over America somehow. Yet these same people have to twist themselves in knots trying to explain away George W. Bush saying “Islam is a religion of peace” or becoming only the second US President to visit a mosque.
Afraid of black political power? No. And they're also not afraid of black, Latino, feminist, gay, and labor political power all standing behind Obama as well.
They should be, though.
add young people of all races and persuasions.
And sane people.
That came off more flip than I intended. I'm referring to the anti-intellectual strain so prominent in conservative politics just now, and the need--visible in the Republican primary, but even more palpable this spring with the Limbaugh apologia--for anyone who attempts to be moderate to kowtow to those voices.
The non-death of Stephen Hawking is peak wingnut for me, but the entire death panel garbage, with the Republican who drafted that part of the bill flipping and denouncing it after a couple of days of sane and reasonable interviews, encapsulates this bizarreness. Surely Americans who are just flat out unwilling to vote for such spineless "yes sir the sky is green if that's our talking point this week" politicos outnumber the 5-10% who say "darn tootin the sky is green. Sarah says so on Facebook."
Deborah,
I'd let the first version stand. We're watching a movement that revels in being perceived as wild and extreme and unconcerned with factual accuracy. As they roll on, many quite conservative people are backing away exactly because they value accuracy, clarity, self-discipline, and sanity.
I think it's important to consider the downside of losing "the race man" as an asset in anti-racist struggle.
All the zen calm in the world isn't going to confront the subtle racist injuries and indignities that continue to form part of the bed rock of the American landscape.
We may be sick of Jackson and Sharpton but the solution isn't Obama it's another W.E.B. Dubois or another voice from the dedicated anti-racism movement.
"twenty or thirty" that is
I don't agree with this, but I'd love to see the case made. I think the fight has changed so much that when you talk about the big issues that affect black people, you invariably end up talking about issues that affect white people. Education. Health care. The justice system etc.
For the record, I'm not sure Jackson and Sharpton's predecessors--King, Du Bois, Douglass--were ever anti-racist crusaders. They were definitely anti-discrimination crusaders. But the Obama administration hasn't backed off of that, if anything he's quietly pushed it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/us/politics/01rights.html
I don't know. I'm very skeptical of "dialogue," and the benefits of politicians calling out racism.
This is where Obama has been particularly effective, and well worth the vote.
We can worry about where 'he' stands, etc. But his cabinet appointments have been generally excellent about doing their job.
We may be sick of Jackson and Sharpton but the solution isn't Obama it's another W.E.B. Dubois or another voice from the dedicated anti-racism movement.
Another dissent here--the DuBois branch of anti-racism has no political power and calls for none. The moral power of the preacher calling out hatefulness requires both unambiguous hate (see example linked above, GA cracker beats down black Corporal in Cracker Barrel lobby) and no clear path to a political solution.
Obama is a politician who, through his blackness, is serving to trigger far too many racial thinkers to expose their own prejudices.
As to whether anti-racism 'work', presumably social, is better served by a 'race man'--depends on what your goals are.
I want an end to the structural racism that means black children get sick and die at higher rates than similarly poor white children, throughout this country that should be better than that. I don't give a damn about bringing an end to the racism that Joe WIlson feels or doesn't feel in his heart.
The brilliance of this post, to me, was in pointing out that as long as the conversation about racism is about what's in someone's heart you can't pay attention to what his hands are doing.
As Molly Ivins once said, The most important thing to do when writing about politics is keep your eye on the shell with the pea under it.
I'd have to read and think a bit more to do this right but I think that in describing life "within the veil" or the "striving in the souls of black folk" Du Bois was doing more than inveighing against discrimination, he was describing the effects of racism on a society.
King was even more holistic with his focus on fighting against hate and in championing "the beloved community".
The efficacy of such a posture isn't settled in my mind either but I tend to think it has a central place in the struggle for racial progress.
I think that Du Bois called for both political and moral leadership.He help found the NAACP but he also described the stresses of "double-consciousness"
Having grown up in a white midwestern republican home, I am all too familiar with the typical lines of attack on your Jacksons and your Sharptons: the relentless focus on race, the affairs and the tax issues, the inclination to open mouth wide and insert foot from the POV of mainstream politics. But for all the pissing and moaning, thats what made the American right OKAY with black politicians - they were first and foremost BLACK, a kind of black that was easy to stereotype and ridicule, one that could be easily tied back to the stereotypes the white majority had about black people.
Oh, how the right would love to make Obama into that, wouldn't they?
As TNC says, what infuriates them is his "ordinary blackness." He just doesn't fit in their box. And if people realize that, if WHITE people realize that he doesn't fit in that box, they might start to think that maybe other black people don't fit in the box, and maybe that box will start to lose its power, and we all know nothing good can come of that if the source of your power is pitting races and racial stereotypes against one another.
Funny how many times I heard people on the anti-Obama right say they just BET Obama would defend Kanye after that silly outburst. They SO wanted Obama to be Kanye, to back that, as the Boondocks would put it, "nigger moment." How disappointed they were when he responded the same way most sane people, and parents of little girls especially, would respond - by calling him a jackass.
Obama has the potential to be transformational in his normalcy. I've thought that since before the primaries began (and his foes knew it, too - remember Bills crack about Jesse Jackson?). The right has to throw everything they've got at him to protect this lovely little racial resentment-based governing construct they've been ruling over, and its pretty clear that they won't hesitate to do just that.
As Sully once said, the only way past this is THROUGH it....
^ this. all of it. very well put....
"Funny how many times I heard people on the anti-Obama right say they just BET Obama would defend Kanye after that silly outburst. They SO wanted Obama to be Kanye, to back that, as the Boondocks would put it, "nigger moment.""
THIS. Yesterday one of my vocally republican Facebook friends posted Obama's comments about Kanye, and I was surprised at how many repub friends responded with "haha! YES!" kind of statements. They seemed surprised and delighted that Obama would call Kanye out. I was surprised by their responses, and then I started thinking about it: they expected Obama to DEFEND him. Because apparently all black people hang together all the time???
I don't think they expected Obama to defend West, I think they expected a more polite response, or even that he didn't pay attention to the VMAs (what I was hoping for). When he vocalized his displeasure the way they would, they were pretty excited. But, often, conservatives love to watch infighting. Faux news loves Black people to come on their shows and knock other Black people.
It's funny. The cynic in me almost thinks that Obama let this be reported 'off the record.' It puts him in a positive light with the majority of Americans. Ridiculous? Of course. But there are those out there who really, truly believe that Obama would take Kanye's side because they're both black.
"But, often, conservatives love to watch infighting. Faux news loves Black people to come on their shows and knock other Black people."
Probably, but i don't think this was a case of that. I think they were genuinely relieved that their black President felt the same way they did.
I love making West Wing parallels to this administration, and my first thought was that he absolutely let this leak.
"I think we might be talking about a .22 caliber mind in a .357 magnum world"
"Because apparently all black people hang together all the time"
Or perhaps they are just used to understanding this though a media that's fed them racially polarized brain candy like Al Sharpton and Bill O'rielly or the OJ circus.
I keep telling people, take what they say literally and stop reading assumed motives into it. Just because they sound hysterical and hypocritical doesn't mean that they don't believe and won't be happy to find out that Obama thinks Kayne is a jackass as well. They are used to the Democratic party that complains about the hateful hyperbole from the religious right while kissing Al Sharpton's pinky ring. Al's done more verifiable damage to specific individuals with hysterically false claims than anyone well known fire breathing preacher I can think of on the right with generically hateful hyperbole. But despite being a power player at conventions and such his influence and role generally is downplayed on the left or passed off as merely an effect of the sensational media like he has no political power base coming out of the biggest and most influential city in the country. So they are cheered by seeing some consistency.
And you are surprised like Republicans aren't people too.
My comments on Al Sharpton are a matter of public record, but this is either incredibly ignorant, or flagrantly dishonest. Perhaps both. Jerry Falwell not only opposed integration in this country, he traveled to South Africa and endorsed Apartheid. We aren't talking about mixing it up with a political party--we're talking about backing a regime which kept millions of people under its thumb. Billy Graham didn't simply advise the GOP, he advised a sitting president and stoked his anti-Semitism.
I open this space in the spirit of humility, and self-critique.I try to stay loyal to that, and I encourage from my commenters. You're criticizing a lot of people in this thread for generalizing and being sloppy. But frankly, you need to take some of your own advice. Before you write, consider if you're actually clarify something, or if you're just venting. If it's latter, do yourself a favor and have a drink.
Or please read another blog. We don't serve all kinds.
"My comments on Al Sharpton are a matter of public record, but this is either incredibly ignorant, or flagrantly dishonest."
Indeed, then why did you think I was talking about you? Sheesh, somewhere on here I said you were dead on about the O'Rielly/Sharpton thing. You do have a discussion area with conversation beyond your post and I did quote who and what I was responding to.
Look, I agree with you most of the time so generally when you get really upset about something like this where you are simply making a bad assumption I don't get your problem.
My point here had to do with exactly what I responded to and none of it particularly disagreed with you nor defended the religious right. Look again. The point is all about perceptions. It is impossible to have any sort of discussion about politics without making some broad generalizations because that's the nature of the beast. I said simply that conservatives have more tendency to be very literal, lack nuance and should be taken that way. Your case against Billy Graham is accurate but requires a more nuanced understanding and not one where you point to specific and direct victim. In my view their is a far more damning case against the Sainted Mother Theresa and most of the Catholic church. Its hard to measure damage on a grand scale done by religion and I'm not much of a fan. But its easier for the very literal minded to grasp when the damage done by a loud mouthed preacher is accompanied by specific individuals whom it directly affected and a media circus from NYC. Certainly we have had plenty of slimy right wing preachers fall in scandals involving sex, drugs, and rip offs but that's more standard human frailties and they went down. I can't think of any who did something as ostentatious as Al with the cameras running and stuck around like he has. If I've forgotten I'd be happy to be reminded because I have no use for them.
Al Sharpton is a power player in the Dem. party. Certainly the media has helped but he got there with his own power base and ability to play it. Personally I don't have particularly strong feelings about him and see him as more second rate PT Barnum than anything else. I get the impression that most democrats think along those lines. But he's hung around in Democratic politics because the candidates have to visit him to win NY in the primaries. So coupled with his high media profile conservatives see this as a major hypocrisy on the part of the Democratic party. I think that the most damage he has done is exactly what you describe accurately in your post. So yes you will see some more consistent ones show gratified surprise when a Democratic president calls Kayne a jackass. They are surprised not just because of Limbaugh land. He's their bette noire due to all the work that started with the NYC media and spread to CNN to make Al the go to guy on race and where guys like Imus have to go to try and plead their case. Its a case of garbage in garbage out.
Anyhow, if you want to ban me for being the wrong "kind" that's your choice. Its your place after all. But I'm rather perplexed by exactly what your problem is as I like what you write and you seem to get really pissed about stuff that I didn't actually write but you assumed from a counterpoint. I know that I get sloppy writing to fast sometimes but you generally are careful not to jump to unwarranted conclusions like that.
Again, your quote:
I leave to readers to weigh its honesty.
"Again, your quote:
Al's done more verifiable damage to specific individuals with hysterically false claims than anyone well known fire breathing preacher I can think of on the right with generically hateful hyperbole.
I leave to readers to weigh its honesty."
?
I remain perplexed. Exactly what are you hung up on here and why remove all context to make your point?
Do you disagree that Al earned his hatred by accusations he leveled at specific individuals who were hurt or even killed by the results? Do you disagree that him being the go-to guy on race has caused a good deal of misunderstanding? Do you disagree that politically powerful right-wing preachers speak in generic terms about sins they dislike and I can't think of an example of them going after specific people with the consequences Al did?
Really, I don't get the issue here. You've been harder on Sharpton than I am.
There's very little the president actually says or does that's even remotely controversial, so his opponents have to ascribe secret motivations or conspiracies to justify their outrage. Ergo, he's a secret Muslim, his talk to school kids was really about political indoctrination, and AmeriCorps is actually a Hitler Youth-style training program.
"I wonder if something's wrong with me"
Well, it comes with more accurate expectations where most people simply prefer denial. A lot of people, particularly on the normal center/right, have invested a lot in believing that these people are not really as bad as they appear. Many are still willing to jump through all kinds of hoops to downplay it at this stage where they aren't that many steps away from being a violent mob rampaging through the streets. Its the same story as it always has been. Most people deny until its to late.
The only quibble with any of this is that I'm not convinced that they actually understand the substance of any of this. If you diagram the attack its pretty much the same as all of the rest of the arguments they make it is exactly the same. They build a great big strawman based on some minor incident to build a politically correct conservative victim-ology out of it. Pretty much everytime whatever they are claiming looks bizarre and like they are simply intentionally lying. But its not entirely clear that they follow a *ist pattern of any sort other than a general complete intolerance for anything and everything that disagrees with their doctrinaire views and they don't understand. They only seem capable of grasping anything in the most literal and unuanced way. In this particular case they see "racism" as nothing but a set of linguistic and situational rules that "liberals" constantly harp about. I suspect that in Rush's head this is a clever counter attack fighting fire with fire.
Of course the practical effect is racist so in sense this is quite irrelevant except that it much be more useful to see them as hostile because they are clueless and afraid than cynically stirring up trouble. Its reminiscent of one of the variations of "Hanlon's razor" that "Occums razor" of human behaviour. Never assume malevolence where stupidity is equally applicable. I only say this because I think that in their primitive little brains they don't mind being called things like "racist" because it sounds scary and makes them think you are scared of them. That's likely to make them more ostentatious and proned to stampeding the herd rather than less. Something more like pity for the poor fools may be more likely to result in a change of tactic.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting more and more nervous about the issue of safety when these people talk. My son knocked the remote out of my hands as I was scrolling through channels yesterday, landing me on the Glenn Beck show for the 10 seconds it took me to pick the remote off the floor. I've never heard anything so ridiculous and scary in my life.
I am flat-out terrified that someone is going to try something violent, it's going to be race-based, and these pundits and politicians will be able to get away with it by saying "We never said to HURT anybody!" Fuck quantum physics, alternate universes, and time travel... the most confusing and bewildering things in the entirety of the universe are how these people are orchestrating this while convincing themselves they are: A) not powerful voices, B) not racist, and C) correct in their aims.
These people say: "Get angry"; "Protect your country"; "Take back what's yours". By their very nature, these words are designed to be provoking and inflammatory. They are potent and their use is calculated. And yet these people claim to be calm and rational.
I'm fucking terrified.
You know what freaks me out, is the fact that we are not even though the first year of the Obama presidency yet. Can it get more hysterical for some of these people who are already hystiercal? Three more years to go of this, at least. (what I mean by "these people" are the hitler=obama, obama=anti-christ types believers, the death panels stuff...not talking about all of the GOP here)
Exactly. These people had it cranked up to 9 by election day, and they pushed it to 11 by the time April 15th arrived. What in the hell are we going to see in the next 3 years? Are we going to see them turn violent? My guess is that it will get worse before it gets better, and they've just about run out of things to say.
I'm very optimistic that the situation will improve as time passes. Over time, as Obama demonstrates his normalness in his reaction to events, accusations and suggestions of his otherness will seem less plausible to more and more people. People with hateful or fearful views don't always stick with them. They change their minds, and hearts change too. It's early, people are still trying out different ideas about what Obama really is.
I suspect that media organizations will always try to racialize incidents because it's provocative and good for ratings/circulation/page-views. It will get better, though, as more people roll their eyes at "cheesy" efforts by media to find a racial angle.
Not least because many of the people who Rush and Glenn 'fire up' are in their 50s and 60s -- they have much more political weight when part of the 'silent majority'.
Well, it's sort of a win-win situation for conservatives.
I think it's pretty inevitable that people are going to explore racial angles when talking about opposition to the first black president. I mean, there's just no way around that. So conservatives will always have some vaguely ridiculous statement or another (Carter's, for example) that they can point to as evidence of how wronged they are, how they're victims of false accusations of racism and a smear campaign by liberals, etc. They'll kick back in that smug pose of aggrievance that is apparently the only thing they've learned from the civil rights movements of the last 60 years, while executing even viler attacks under its cover.
Too easy to dismiss Sharpton and Jackson, the former the dupe of a lie and the guy with the hair, the latter, the fallen hero caught in one fabrication too many. To me, those dismissals are kind of played out, and an internalization of the caricature conservative Whites and weary centrists created of those two men. Oh, they're prima donnas, they love the camera, their main goal is self-interest.
Yeah, they're of the old school of heroes that came out of "the Black church" (que Ol' Dawg's quote about Black people having too much religion). Given we have Patrick and Booker and yeah even Ford, we have that new generation of elected officials/leaders that really represent the new paradigm, black bourgeois with actual hard power (as opposed to a reverend's soft power, or the local Black doctor/lawyer/funeral home owner with money and not much else).
Despite their short comings they've contributed significantly to where we are now. The implication in saying Sharpton would be pals with O'Reilly is that he's a fraud, which is just what many of his (our?) foes would say. But they said this not as an acute observation but as a way of blunting his argument. Yeah, he will rightly never live down Tawanna Brawley, but he (and the other "race-men") shouldn't be tossed aside.
"I'm fucking terrified"
A:) You should be.
B:) Don't let it show.
TNC is really right in his reaction here for more reasons than one.
People spend to much time attempting to interpret what these guys say instead of just taking it as the gospel according to them as is. Rush Limbaugh LOVES to brag about how scared liberals are of him. This is basic primitive animal behavior. Rational or not they believe they are threated and our responding with ostentatious strutting and colorful displays of power. You see the same thing in most aggressive mammals and homo sapiens from armies and color guards to gangs. TNC's O'Rielly point really is dead on and apropos. The difference between Gansta' Rap strutting and Country music jingoism is only style and rhythm. They bring their guns to rallies and shit because they want you to be scared. Just like with any animal who prefers being predator to prey when they smell fear they will get more and more aggressive.
In my view anybody who's is scared needs to get a gun, learn to shoot, practice often, and join the NRA. Seriously, its what they respect and understand.
lol @ your NRA comment. My wife comes from a very pro-gun family, but I've never even seen one... we'll see how that turns out with a kid in the house.
That said, I think the fact that I have a son is making me more frightened than I normally would be. Parental instinct, I suppose. And against an invisible foe, no less. Strange, scary times indeed.
dreiner
"Parental instinct, I suppose. And against an invisible foe, no less. Strange, scary times indeed."
Well, I'm not going to do anything to ally your fears because I've read to damn much history and science fiction. :) Democracies and republics seldom last long and the guys with the strongest weapons and willingness to use them unflinchingly usually win. The best sci fi writers tend to be folks who read a lead of history and look at the future in those terms as well. The future is always unknown but the cycles of the past tend to repeat.
I actually grew up in an anti-gun (but religiously not liberally so) household in an area where most boys and a lot of girls (particularly ones with sonless fathers) didn't come to school the first day of hunting season. Now I'm raising two boys in a town that is exactly the opposite. I've come to find that as stupid, bullying, and irritating as rednecks who loved shooting things were at their worst at its best that culture is profoundly more realistic and grounded. For some reason it really bothers me that I have a twelve year old who loves playing violent games like Halo, complains if he doesn't get decent helping of meat at every meal, but considers people who hunt to be vicious and backwards. Its a dreadfully unrealistic view of life and far to many people in this country young and old have it. It makes us very vulnerable in my view. So I bought my first gun last month and I'm going to force the kids to take hunter safety courses. I won't force them to actually go hunting but I'm going to force myself to and if I manage to get something it will be the meat we have for however long it lasts. They will see and know where it came from and if they can't handle it they will have to learn to be a vegetarian.
So my problem here is that this is not an "unknown evil" to me. I'm 40 and spent the first 20 years living in a place the exemplified one side of the political divide and the second half in another. My fear is that the two sides do see each other increasingly as unknown and choose strong ideology over practical application of politics.
Personally what I like so much about Obama is that despite being an intellectual liberal he was a background and temperament that gives him an inherent understanding of the Yin/Yang principal. Neither side of the cultural and political divides in this country can survive without the other. He understands that and tries to work with it. So we have the right stroking their guns and raging while the left puts on their hairshirt and wails about the public option and lack of progress on gays in the military. Neither side is realistic but one is being more typically ostentatious about it. And being the ones with the disproportionate affection for guns as well as influence in the military and law enforcement they are likely to come out on top if push comes to shove. Not to mention that they simply have more political real estate if not an actual majority. That is, it tends to split on the map by rural and urban and our constitution was designed to "balance" this so that big population centers didn't get the upper hand. So that has led to unbalanced representation for rural wackjobs.
So I'm suggesting that you get to know the unknown a bit more and you'll probably find the NRA and shooting ranges more tolerable and fun than an evangelical church. :)
Aside from all that, while the left has a better grasp on history in many ways the right has more education in some stuff that the left tends to ignore. Do you know, for example, that the NRA was started because during the Civil War all those educated city boys who joined up with the North couldn't shoot worth a damn? The superior rifle skills of country boys in disproportionally rural areas was one of the big reasons that it dragged on so long despite the massive advantage in population and resources in the north. The NRA started to teach the city boys how to shoot and make sure that Americans didn't lose track of that skill. The sorts of folks who belong to it are very aware of this history, think about it, and worry about it. Funny how circumstances have led to them to exemplify this divide instead of bridging it now.
So my problem here is that this is not an "unknown evil" to me.
I used the phrase, "this is not strange to me" a couple of times in the last few months to discuss the gun issue. Some of liberal and East coast/European friends were horrified at my newfound desire to shoot skeet & trap. FTR, I'm a black Am female and appreciate how you unpacked this.
I urge many on the left to explore the historical topics and interests of those on the other side. There is 0 chance of combating something you can't understand. Outright dismissal of the basis for the other side's grievance only leads to disaster.
sigh.
I could almost have predicted that the end of this thread would have said something like, "...get a gun and protect yourself!"
The whole strategy of the the Limbaugh/Beck/Malkin/Coulter/Levin crew and followers is to instill fear. They are trying to drive you to that state. If you get a gun and shoot someone that will just allow them to do what they did with that bus video. Only in spades.
oops. Didn't mean that in any racial way! :-0
Meant it to be "multiplied many times over".
Keep your eyes on the goal. Keep calm and keep pointing out the inanity of these fools.
What they are and what they are saying is based on nothing. It's all just air.
They will soon be just a footnote in history.
And that is their biggest fear.
"They are trying to drive you to that state."
No shit. And you miss the point.
The attitude toward guns is a huge part of the divide. As they see it people who don't like and/or are afraid of guns are impractical and weak. A big part of their fear of "liberals" being in charge is that they will not be defended probably. This is really sort of an "Athens vs Sparta" problem. Greek civilization only held at its peek as long as the Spartans could respect and tolerate the Athenians and the Athenians were tough enough to stand up to them by force of arms.
The point of getting a gun is not to shoot somebody. Oddly enough its more like diplomacy. They simply will take you more seriously and see you as being less foolish. Its time that more of the left starting meeting them on their own turf.
At least for the more rational ones.
For the knuckleheads? I just let 'em know about my attitudes towards guns just to screw with their heads. The cognitve dissonance just stops them cold.
If what you say is true, then "a big part of their fear of liberals," like so many of their "fears" is simply not reality based. FDR was a liberal, it was the conservative isolationists who didn't want to stand up to the Nazis. Remember Harry Truman (D) and the Korean War. LBJ, again a big D and Vietnam? All that aside, hasn't more than 3,500 years of human history taught anyone anything about the efficacy of "getting a gun."
Be prepared to defend ourselves (and our clearly defined vital interests,) yes, "walk softly and carry a big stick," certainly. Today, however, we are spending more on our military budget than all of the industrialized nations in the world--combined. (BTW, did all this hyper-expensive "brawn" stop OBL from attacking us? Maybe, just maybe we should've used our brains just a bit more.) And that doesn't count the billions of $ going to "classified" programs or the billions of $ stolen every year by shady contractors. Having worked for two GOP admins, I'm no hippy peace-nik, but I am a Bush 41/Powell/Scowcroft realist.
"Getting a gun" first is what got us into the illigimate war in Iraq, cost the lives of 4,000 American soldiers and an estimated 100k Iragi lives and displaced according to some accounts, one million Iraqi citizens.
I’m with you in the realist camp, in terms of my views on foreign policy.
Have you ever read “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”, by John J. Mearsheimer? It illustrates a realist position of geo-political theory like none other that I’ve read. It definitely put me in the realist school of thought; I’m just not sure if I’m with him in the offensive realist faction or with Waltz and the defensive realist faction.
(And I didn’t mean to rip you off with my calling out of that “Tea-Bag Party” leader. I honestly missed that one post of yours.)
"Having worked for two GOP admins, I'm no hippy peace-nik, but I am a Bush 41/Powell/Scowcroft realist."
And so am I. This is realism.
"All that aside, hasn't more than 3,500 years of human history taught anyone anything about the efficacy of "getting a gun.""
Yes, its taught me that you keep it balanced and make sure that rational and civilized people have the same approximate knowledge of them as the irrational and violent.
The political history of which you speak is not that connected to our current political divides. I'm talking about what the liberal-conservative divide has come to mean over the last 40 years particularly its evolution post Reagan.
Aside from all of the history I could point out to make explain what I am trying to explain let me point out a contemporary example in Iran. Here we have a majority population that is intelligent and civilized being dominated by a minority of violent religious militias. One side eschews violence and plays by the rules. The other side lies, cheats, fear mongers, and kills. They can because they like and have the guns.
There are many reasons I am saying what I am saying. Going off half cocked is not one of them. One is simply that if somebody really is scared that push may come to shove here then I suggest that reasonable knowledge of and experience with firearms would be a good thing to have. If you actually know history and are a realist you would know why.
For simple, practical political reasons I also think that people who are worried about the direction of our country should choose this as a point of strategy change and influence. Gore says its why he couldn't win the map in '00 and he's right. Clinton said much the same. Simply put they will not give up their guns and they have more influence in a lot more real estate. You can't and won't beat them. So you can join them and influence them or only win national elections when the GOP has fucked up so badly that the gun nuts won't vote for them in enough numbers to make sure that they pull out swing states with huge rural populations. The only road back to power for the GOP any time soon requires that they keep this stocked up.
Despite our increasingly polarized view of things this is also a very big and complicated country. Religious nuts, racist fruits, and gun nuts are not necessarily natural allies en masse nationally. But the NRA does what it does and gets the response they do because of mutual demonization on both sides of this issue. We have two feedback loops where even the most reasonable and responsible people on each side only hear the nastiest, most prejudicial, and most paranoid ideas from the other. This gives the Glenn Becks disproportionate influence over the dialogue. To the degree they are truly frightening and dangerous it is because of this dynamic and because they are armed as well.
Well, they're stupid then. I'm not about to buy a gun just so I can comport myself properly within their framework of asinine prejudices.
Exactly Matt. Nuada, thanks for the book tip and the more people with sense who see, hear and call out these nasties, the better. Lift the rock, shine the light, ring the bell.
"within their framework of asinine prejudices"
Well if that's all you got out of that perhaps you should consider your own prejudices. Or maybe you think you have nothing to worry about anyhow. To me history does not suggest that. It's littered with the corpses of people who thought things couldn't get that bad.
The problem for the right: it's the first amendment that protects them, not the second.
The state still holds the monopoly of organized violence. You could say they're thinking like 357s in a .223 caliber world.
Great post.
What's driving me crazy is that we had a great invitation in March 2008 to start talking about race more productively, and while the media pundits oooh'd and ahhh'd back then, there are very in the media and in politics who have taken Obama up on his challenge: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html
Thanks for being one of the few places online where people can come to talk about race in a meaningful way.
Obama was keepin it real. And that's what happens when "Keepin it Real" goes right. Pow!
But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.He tells kids to study--and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West--the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.
you sho' right. absolutely none of this is surprising to Black folks.
For those who are still clueless, Obama put the beat down on Kanye showed him who the HNIC is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km567lUoMZI
word.
I've always, as a white person, wanted to say that. Well fucking said.
Although I am a registered Democrat and I voted for Obama last year, I would hate to have the situation come to a point where all opposition to the President’s policies is considered racist.
However, there are things that must be done all the same.
First, we have to understand the point of Mr. Coates’ blog entry from a few months ago. To the best of my memory, the crux of it was racism is not just the KKK and similar displays of hate. It can and often is much more subtle today. It is often mixed in with other, more defensible feelings. And when we think of racism as nothing but pure, blinding rage against a certain skin color, we do a disservice to our society. It allows people with a significant amount of bigotry in their hearts to say, “hey, that’s not me, I never lynched anyone”. (I hope that I did your point justice.)
This feeds into Laurence O’ Donnell’s point, that he made this week in regards to these “Tea Bag” protests. He pointed out how he was closely involved with the efforts to reform health care in ’93-’94. (He was the chief staffer on the Senate’s Finance Committee.) Yet in the 1990’s, he didn’t see any protests against reform like we are seeing today. Yes people attacked the reform efforts, particular the elements Hillary Clinton was involved in. But these attacks were on policy grounds, actual policy grounds. Perhaps it was a debate motivated by campaign contribution from the insurance companies but it was a sane debate nevertheless. There were no mobs of people, marching in the streets, comparing the Clintons to Hitler and Eva Braun.
But now we have a black man in office, with the middle name of “Hussein”. So, quite logically, the ’09 health care reform effort is really an attempt to institute a euthanasia program. Similar to Adolf Hitler’s “T-4” program, “ObamaCare” will set up death panels to help weed out undesirables. And it’s not just cranks peddling this stuff, United States Representatives and United States Senators are backing it.
This gives me the impression that racism is manifesting itself in they way that some of the President’s critics are so willing to believe the worst about him. And “the worst” about Obama is far worst than “the worst” about Clinton. Clinton killed Vince Foster; Obama wants to kill millions of Americans. The white man with the middle name “Jefferson” may be a liberal without morals but the black man with the middle name “Hussein” is a genocidal dictator. Obama was in office 3 months, (if we consider the first “Tea Bag” Protest in April), after being elected by the largest margin in 20 years, yet he is already trying to take over the country in defiance of the constitution. These people are not upset over anything that’s happening in 2009, not as much as they are upset over what happened in November 2008.
All of these things call to mind a figure I once saw that said black people convicted of murder are 9 times more likely to get the death penalty than a white person convicted of murder. Not that black people are more likely to get convicted, only that once convicted, they are much more likely to get the death penalty than life imprisonment. Basically, black people are, (if only slightly), less human than white people. They can’t be trusted; no matter how high a black man might rise, he is still potentially dangerous to white people. Like Chris Rock once wrote years ago, “to some white people, Clarence Thomas and Ed Bradley standing on a street corner is potently scary”.
Second, we have to call out blatant racism when we see it. It’s not the job of President Obama; it’s the job of every decent American.
The other night, I saw a debate on CNN. It was moderated by Anderson Cooper and it was between David Gergan, James Carville and some pile of crap doing a sorry impersonation of a person with a conservative point of view. This P.O.C. had a smarmy smirk on his face the entire time, spewing lines about what “real, hard-working Americans” think.
Towards the end of the discussion, Cooper finally revealed that on the P.O.C. website, he called President Obama an “Indonesian Muslim Welfare Thug”. The P.O.C. defended his words, saying, “well, he’s acting like one”.
Forget the Indonesian Muslim part and what an Indonesian Muslim supposedly is supposed to act like. Is there anyone who translates “welfare thug” to mean anything other than the “N” word? In Lee Atwater’s school of politics, does it translate into anything else other than a codeword to use when actual racial slurs are counterproductive?
Oh…and I forgot to mention, this P.O.C. was indentified as one of the leaders of the 9/12 “Tea Bag” movement. The same movement where middle-aged white ladies hold up signs that say “The Zoo has an African Lion, the White House has a lying African”. And not only does she feel comfortable bringing such a sign to a rally, she smiles when someone takes her picture. It’s not that everyone brings a sign like that, only that everyone who does obviously thinks that everyone else will agree with her racist sentiment.
I understand your giddiness, Mr. Coates. Sometimes I say to myself, “good, at least these evil wack-jobs are exposing themselves for all of America to see…..better for all decent Americans; conservatives, liberals and everyone in between”.
But then my wife has a nightmare about someone doing the unspeakable to Pres. Obama and I fear where this orgy of hate will lead. (Of course, being a nightmare my wife has, it always gets weird. In this one, both Michelle and Barack himself somehow show up to pray with her at a memorial service.)
Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy. It's about time.
Truer words have not yet been said on this topic. I've been busy with a move to a new city and a new job, but I am gratified to come back to this page and see that you are still bringing the truth in that hardcore, succinct style that I first grew addicted to. Thanks TNC, this puts the craziness in perspective.
I got a note from a good friend yesterday expressing shock, and anger, about Drudge and Malkin's usage of that alleged racial beat-down on a school-bus. On some level, I wonder if something's wrong with me. I'm neither shocked, nor angry. This is exactly how I expected these fools to respond to a black president.!
The sad truth is that I live in Saint Louis and it is and has been a racially charged place. We sure didn't need Rush drumming this up.
The other sad thing is that the kids on the bus (some of them have been on facebook giving their side of the story) have been wrapped up in this nonsense.
Now Ed Shultz thinks there needs to be a root beer summit with the kids..come on...they are kids that had a fight on the bus.
I appreciate your salient points on this topic TNC...i wish there were more folks like you on the interweb that committed themselves to true dialogue and truth.
Day late and dollar short here, but of course the right wingnuttery are playing on identity politics and age old American pecking order paranoia; the demographics of the world is changing, and the US is headed towards a multiracial-multiethnic population and the modest white world that David Brooks laments has for some time now been going retrograde. There is a power shift in this country, and it is one of the reasons Obama got elected. His stance on health care reform was another reason he got elected.
I had a hard time with Wilson being the straw that seems to have broken the camel's back on this, especially because the actual racism he employed was a fear of brown people crossing the Rio Grande, not a black person in the White House. That is, what Wilson wants his constituents to think is that they have more to fear from illegal immigrants playing the system than the insurance companies (who have contributed largely to his campaigns) screwing the American populace.
Of course some racism should be called out, but the problem with it being called out in an ad hominem fashion is that folks such as Limbaugh can easily distract everyone who thinks just because they don't belong to the KKK that they are not racist from the policy issues. The kind of unconscious racism that is almost impossible to avoid in the US is something being played. But the real meaning of racism is when it is institutionalized.
Let's take Acorn. There should be no difficulty with the idea that Acorn should be held accountable and on the up and up, but voter fraud is nothing compared to institutional voter suppression. No doubt even if the count were accurate in Florida in the first Bush election, voter suppression clearly changed the election and the fate of our nation. Similarly, and this is directed at those who have posted at this site on Acorn, we just had an administration whose justice department went out of its way to encourage voter suppression in several elections vis a vis prosecutions that had no legal standing all over our nation. And it took months longer to get rid of the Attorney General presiding over that justice department than it did to get rid of Van Jones, who was forced out simply because of some things he signed on to when he was not even a member of any administration. And Karl Rove who orchestrated the whole thing kept his position throughout.
There is no point pointing out the number of assassination threats on our President is historically unprecedented, or that there have been blatantly racist responses to his election, except to remind people that we aren't quite post racial yet. However, pointing out how right wing regulatory, tax, trade, and wage policies have screwed poople of color and the working classes of all backgrounds should be hammered away at repeatedly, and it is on issue and policy the numbskulls on the right, who would rather call being a wise Latina reverse racism, while denying that they might have racial motivations, than really have anything other than a tax break for themselves to discuss, should be called to task.
I guess you guys are mostly Obama supporters? Its interesting that everyone is getting so worked up over racial issues, I guess nobody noticed that Obama basically sold out every constituency that may have voted for him.
Look what he's done for you - bailing out banksters while he watches the unemployment rate soar, no meaningful financial reform, no real inclination to renegotiate free trade agreements, health care "reform" that basically grants private insurers a government enforced monopoly and threatens to pinch thousands more per year from the middle class paycheck, wholehearted support of the PATRIOT act, no accountability for Bush II era crimes, trite laughter at the idea of drug policy reform, support for organized labor that only goes so far as lip service, and so forth.
Just like anyone else who gets to the level where they were able to mount a serious (and ultimately successful) attempt at the presidency, Obama is scum; yet another face man who told us all a big pack of lies to get elected. Now that he's in office he fiddles while Rome burns and bankers rejoice, stuffing their pockets with all they can grab before the house of cards comes crashing down for good. And for the rest of us? Let them eat hope!
So, while some people may hate Obama for his race, please don't so smear all of us who stand against him; many hate him for his policies and his plastic persona. It's nothing personal; give me a guy on the same level as Bush and I will hate him with equal veracity.
Perhaps the outrage would be better spent in holding your man accountable for some of what he promised you?
I have serious problems with O on banking and Afghanistan policies. I believe he should have been called to task on health care, but the real culprits here you should be critiquing are the Senate Dems). So far however, I don't see him behaving much differently than what he campaigned to do. The idea that he is the same as Bush is foolish. So far Obama has been a decent President as Presidents go (get a grip on historical perspective here), especially given the ditch our nation has driven itself into. I do think the critique of him from the left is far more cogent than the one from the right because it is on policy rather than fallacy, but I haven't noticed him fiddling (George Bush actually played guitar while New Orleans drowned), and this particular post is not about all opposition to the President, but how TN and the people who are posting here relate to how racial issues are part of our current national political illness and fever.
"Obama is scum." Not really up to the usual level of debate at this site. But what can one expect of a thread-jacking, concern troll. As a former GOP flack, I know one when I read one. No disrepect, but if you are going to earn your keep, you're going to have to do a better job than this.
Sorry I'm late on this. Been off working. Dude is banned.
Dude, chill.
Obama was elected President, not Dictator. He took office nine months ago. If he had attempted to ram through his full agenda in the first nine months, the craziness we're seeing now would look like a love-fest. It would have been a disaster of epic proportions.
Nine months in office. Seems a bit premature to give up now and just hate the man. Giving up now and spending the next three years griping that he didn't do everything YOU wanted the way YOU wanted it done isn't going to move us any closer to getting anything accomplished. Don't just hold your breath until you turn blue. Push for what you want. Push your Congresscritter. Organize around a policy init1ative you think is important. Channel that disappointment toward getting something done.
Perhaps the outrage would be better spent in holding your man accountable for some of what he promised you?
That's what most of us are doing. Seems more productive than giving up and deciding to just hate the man and hope things get better magically in 2012. Because guess what? They won't. Your responsibility as a citizen doesn't begin and end with casting a vote for somebody else to do your bidding. You want change? Make change happen.
Listening to Obama's clip, I have to enjoy the initial question -- in essence "can you compare Joe Wilson and Kanye West." It is interesting that Obama was perfectly happy to do so.
What's also interesting is the sense we get of Obama's relationship with his press pool.
Except that the question and answer weren't as you described.
The question was, "Were your girls as hacked off as mine that Kanye gave Taylor Swift the Joe Wilson treatment?"
The initial answer was, "I thought that was really inappropriate."
As I heard it, the Joe Wilson reference was a throwaway attempt at being clever. True, the President's response could easily apply to the actions of either Kanye West or Joe Wilson, although I think it's pretty clear he was talking about Kanye. I'm sure he thought they were BOTH really inappropriate. As do I. That doesn't imply a comparison, though, much less any kind of equivalence.
If you're a black person who believes that affirmative action is unfair; who believes that the government should take no role in aid to the black community; who believes that the government has nothing to apologize for with regards to slavery and Jim Crowe; if you're a black person with these political beliefs than Limbaugh and company will love you. Look at Michael Steele and Condoleeza Rice.
Um, Condi supports affirmative action. When someone in the Bush 43 WH press office leaked to the press otherwise, during the dust-up over the Michigan decision, she issued a press release (the only one during her tenure as NSA) stating her clear support--I know, I wrote the release. Look it up. And if you are going to snap on her--at least spell her name right.
Just a couple more points: Condi has said repeatedly and on the record that slavery was "America's original birth defect" and that the Constitution left her folks out when it said "all men are created equal." And long before Don Imus was kicked off the air for the "nappy headed ho's" crap, Condi, dispite repeated requests from WH (43) senior staff, refused to go on his show, because Imus had "joked," on the air, that the WH was letting a cleaning woman into the press briefing room when Gwen Ifil was named a WH correspondent.
Condi doesn't need (and probably doesn't want) me to defend her. I will continue to do so, however, when I think people are just plain wrong.
I was unaware that she supports affirmative action. That certainly goes very much against her Party. I still say it is a relevent question of why the teabaggers think Obama is the antiChrist but Rice and Clarence Thomas are totally chill?
I'm not demonizing black Republicans. It's totally cool to be black and small government, strong national defense. I just worry that people like Michael Steele can give the confederate flag waving teabaggers cover to say, "Hey we're not racist because look at who our friend is."
I think Colin Powell has done the right thing in distancing himself from these people. I wish the rest of Black Republicans would do the same.