American Bigotry X
The Normalizing of Hate
The Black Hat
The notion of Communism being “evil” was part of a PR campaign invented
by Dean Atchison, President Dwight D. Eisenhower's undersecretary of
state. Atchison felt the postwar Soviet threat was too complex a concept
to explain to the American public, so he fitted the Soviets with a black
hat, painting them in simplistic, child-like tones of black and white,
and literally invented this notion of the evil being not merely the
Soviet Union but the political ideology of Communism itself which, in
turn, led to Korea and Vietnam. Atchison literally invented the Cold
War, which at times threatened to destroy the entire planet, as America
naively waged war against an idea; not even specific persons, but a
political concept. This thinking is now deeply embedded within our
cultural DNA as we still consider Communism "evil," as opposed to more
properly understanding some Communists have done evil things. Right-wing
conservatives have successfully translated this concept to Islam. Rather
than our focus being on specific people who commit evil acts, we ascribe
the quality of evil to an ideology and fight the air. People can be
hunted down and killed. Ideas cannot.
Ideas, however, continue forever. Once metastasized into the cultural
bloodstream, ridiculous and illogical notions such as Communism = “evil”
endure and become accepted as fact, no matter how anti-intellectual or
illogical. This can have unexpected consequences, like the Cuban Missile
Crisis where the U.S. almost destroyed the planet in a dispute over
one-half of a tiny, impoverished island, or the completely pointless
“police action” in Vietnam which cost over 58, 000 American lives while
benefitting or protecting America in no perceptible way. In retrospect,
both arguments were fallacious. Communism itself, as an ideology, wasn’t evil, although Nikita
Khrushchev and the Soviet political structure may well have been. But we
wasted lives and resources on completely pointless war making and a race
to the moon all in an attempt to battle an ideology which, we now
realize, threatened the U.S. in no meaningful way. It was all
propaganda—theirs and ours—but the damage and ruin to countless lives
was very real.
Politics, by definition, concerns managing public perception. By
managing public perception, you can galvanize support for a cause or
purpose. Making Communism evil helped galvanize the public to fight the
Russians, our former and very important friends during World War II.
Making Saddam Hussein—arguably an evil individual—seem to be a looming
threat to the U.S. (which he was not) was the main purpose of an
extremely effective propaganda campaign by the Bush Administration in
the run-up to the start of the Iraq war in 2003. Skip ahead to 2009,
where the Republican Party here in America were shown the door to great
applause by the American public after eight disastrous years of
The Bush
Legacy, and we find a new weapon in the political war: race. Race
was the most obvious, most powerful and most volatile weapon left to a
political party accustomed to dominating the American political
landscape only now humbled back on its heels saddled with a legacy of
ineptitude and failure. America’s troubles, the political argument went,
were the fault of undocumented Mexicans and, of course, blacks. The
newly sworn-in president became the literal face of America’s minorities
in spite of the fact the president’s truer and more accurate life
experience does not differ measurably from any middle-class white child
raised in Kansas. The president rarely if ever touts his white heritage
or pushes back against the conservative right’s relentless blackening of
the president. The president is not lack. He is biracial. This is not
merely a semantic differential: there is likely no more genuinely
American an individual in this country than Barack Hussein Obama. Yet,
both he and his enemies seem to focus on what is arguably only one half
of his amazing story. The president himself, therefore, is in large
measure responsible for the unqualified success of the Republican
Party’s relentless campaign of hate.
As painful and unsettling as the racist and sexist jokes on TV shows
like Mad Men are, I believe they play a role in speaking a certain truth
about us without glossing it over the way network TV had done for
generations. We laughed at Archie Bunker, but we laugh at Roger Sterling
more nervously because Mad Men does not appear to be disposed to
educate, while Archie Bunker was clearly designed to profit from racism
while combating it at the same time. All In The Family said, it’s just
Archie and made Bunker a kind of obvious fool. Mad Men treats
Roger Sterling and other characters as normal, saying, this was us,
this is still us, which is a lot
more unsettling. What disturbs me more than Duck Dynasty Guy’s racist
and homophobic rhetoric is that White America is not abandoning is TV
show. They don’t care, it doesn’t bother them. Duck Dynasty Guy evokes
the good ol’ days. His greatest sin was having been caught telling the
truth. But truth is good for America. It’s good to know where we stand.
The AMC Network is obviously more interested in short-term profits than
in the long-term goodwill making a stand of conscience would bring them.
Why? Because blacks don’t watch AMC. I’d never even heard of this show
until all the flap about one redneck homophobic racist. So what? There’s
millions of them out there. Duck Dynasty ratings are way up, their DVD’s
flying off the shelves. This is the truth of White America, brought to
you by the Republican Party in their endless obsession with not only
pushing their own agenda (they don’t actually have one), but with
destroying the legacy of Barack Obama at any cost—including rending the
very fabric of the society they portend to represent.
Making Racism Acceptable: Obama is the target, but the overarching damage to the fabric of American ideals is inestimable. The GOP's naked pursuit of power represents the most shameful and utterly disgraceful betrayal of American principles.
A Silver Lining?
And, maybe that’s a good thing. Shocking as it seems, maybe this
radioactive fallout of hate will ultimately be good for America, as the
next attempt to deal with what is, at its core, intrinsically childish
tribal behavior will be more sincere than the cosmetic approach of
Political Correctness. Maybe the public schism, the two and three and
forty-seven Americas, spit along lines of race and ethnicity and gender
and sexual orientation, will do so much damage that, ultimately, we’ll
all be forced not only to live with one another or tolerate one another,
but to actually evolve our thinking past what Grama anem taught us.
Between now and whenever America actually deals with these issues as
opposed to glossing them over, we will have absolutely insane public
initiatives like Arizona (now synonymous with Intolerance)’s
what-on-earth-were-they-thinking Senate Bill 1062, which veiled racism
and homophobia in religious freedom, more Congressional redistricting
and “voter protection” laws clearly designed to disenfranchise blacks
and other minorities, “Dog Whistles” being replaced by overtly racist
rhetoric aimed at this president, and more weakening of social safety
nets for the poor (which benefit twice as many whites as blacks,
although the GOP has successfully equated food stamps and welfare
exclusively with Black Americans). This is the GOP strategy: to return
to power on a rising tide of hate. But, then what?
The divisions the GOP political strategy have created have arguably
destabilized the social contract of America. This will make the nation
that much more difficult to govern regardless of which party next comes
into power. The hardening arteries of American discourse has created
only polarization and gridlock. It is beyond childish for either party
to believe this phenomena will simply vanish after the next election,
but that is precisely how these lunatics are behaving. It’s a mess now,
they seem to be saying, but things will settle in once we’re back in
power. This is deeply disturbing, unhinged thinking. It will take more
than a generation to clean up the social mess this political party has,
in capricious calculation, deliberately caused in a futile attempt to
subvert the U.S. Constitution by effectively nullifying a national
election of a U.S. president.
The GOP has ushered the lunatics onstage. Hatred and violence are now en
vogue. Not only can we not get the guns off the street, we can’t even
conduct a reasonable background check, in spite of the repeated mass
shootings and school shootings—which have killed many more whites than
blacks. In my local Walmart, I’ve never seen a black man buying guns or
ammo. Ever. It's all been white people, many of them paranoid about
blacks and Latinos and gays because of all the unfettered knowing lies
the GOP continues to spread twenty-four hours a day. Their propaganda is
specifically designed to stoke the lunatic fringe and keep them in a
frenzy until election day. But, far too many of these lunatics own guns.
The GOP has seen to it and work actively to ensure the lunatics can keep
their guns. So, when the rap music is too loud, they can just fire ten
shots into a car full of teenagers and go order a pizza. Or, in the case
of Trayvon Martin, shoot an unarmed teenager and then just—it stuns me
that the media’s never made a point of this—just stand idly around while
the boy bleeds out, making absolutely no attempt to stop the bleeding
until paramedics arrive. This lunatic
Zimmerman, by his own testimony,
just kind of paced idly about while Trayvon lay there, feeling absolutely
no responsibility to even try to save the boy’s life.
This society was certainly not created by the GOP, but it is one most
definitely exploited and encouraged by the GOP, who have placed
black hats on African Americans, immigrants both documented and not, LGBT persons, and liberals in general, all of it in an attempt to make
life in America as stressful, as unproductive and as difficult as
possible so they can, unfathomably, present themselves as the solution
to problems they themselves have created or made worse. And, sadly,
white conservative America really is that stupid: they’re buying it.
They know it's a lie, but they choose to believe it. This is the Republican strategy:
to give conservative whites license to freely vent their intolerance, to
make racism and homophobia en vogue. You’re Stupid And We Know It. They treat
their entire constituency like children, scaring them with stories of
the Boogeyman and disseminating disinformation they know their faithful
will not challenge. White Conservative America, perhaps frightened by
all this liberalism gone wild, by the browning of America, are eager to
believe whatever the GOP is saying because the alternative is to
confront the reality that it is not, in fact, 1965 and the overall
influence of conservative White America is becoming increasingly more
proportionate to their actual numbers as opposed to the outsized level
of influence they’ve enjoyed for generations. Blacks and Latinos and LGBT persons are voting now, which makes them a direct threat to the GOP
political will. Worse, their divide and conquer strategy has caused
divisions within themselves, with patent lunatics like Ted Cruz
deliberately knifing fellow Republicans in an obvious internal schism
between rational GOP conservatives and the lunatic fringe Cruz
represents.
Flag Day:
Member saluting the American flag and then the Confederate flag during the
Ku Klux Klan's secret membership ritual, Atlanta, GA, May 1946.
Send In The Clowns
President Obama’s “Above The Fray” strategy only fuels the chaos. There
is no Clintonian voice of reason shattering the Clown Car rhetoric. The
Leader is not leading, which only empowers the whack jobs. The
president, therefore, bears some burden in the terrible social
consequences of this heinous political strategy. Trying to be
reasonable, to keep his options open, has demonstrably, repeatedly
failed with these obstinate lunatics. The president needs to call a
spade a spade and call these evil—yes, evil—men and women out for not
only the political machinations, but the threat to the very fabric of
America their Endless
Campaign poses.
The cartoon rhetoric of Fox News has gone mainstream, desensitizing
otherwise rational whites over matters of simple tolerance and decorum.
Ribald, open racism has become socially acceptable once again. Obama is
the target, but the overarching damage to the fabric of American ideals
is inestimable. Which makes the GOP's naked pursuit of power a most
shameful and utterly disgraceful betrayal of American principles.
Christopher J. Priest
1 March 2014
editor@praisenet.org
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