While Jamelle Bouie marshals data to make the case that racial minorities have done better economically during Democratic presidencies than Republican ones, Kevin Williamson pouts that he has been misunderstood. He never said that blacks are “the helpless victims of cynical racial bribery;” he said that they are collectively a bunch of morons equivalent to the people who rely on psychics and horoscopes for life advice or the rubes who fall for “crackpot weight-loss programs.”
Mr. Williamson dismisses the entirety of Bouie’s argument with a wave of the hand: “…a column organized around the preposterous superstition that national economic conditions are substantially shaped by the party identification of the person residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…” He then proceeds to accuse black people and women of being risk-averse because they have such recent experiences of being excluded from the workplace.
What I have argued is that black voters, like single women, prefer the Democratic party and welfare-statist policies because they are remarkably risk-averse compared to traditional conservative constituencies such as white men and business owners. For blacks and women to entertain some suspicion of economic arrangements that have within living memory formally excluded them, and to regard interventionist economic policies as a hedge against economic abuses, is not irrational. It is erroneous, but not irrational…
…As voters, African Americans and single women are the political equivalent of people who embrace crackpot weight-loss programs or consult psychics: Their agency is not in question, but their judgment is. You don’t just trip and fall into a psychic’s den or accidentally end up with a stomach full of cotton balls spritzed with orange juice.
Right. So, they are not “irrational;” they’re stupid. Just like it isn’t irrational (only stupid) to consult Tarot Cards or fall for the latest diet fad.
It’s good of Kevin Williamson to continue the National Review’s fine tradition of racial sensitivity.
Not just racial minorities, everyone has benefited economically during Democratic Presidencies, even the one percent! The people who do better during Republican Presidencies are the 0.1% and especially the 0.01%!
Sorry, no link. I saw this at either The Big Picture blog or the Bonddad blog.
I’m having trouble figuring out why it’s either irrational or stupid to vote for a party that enacts social and economic policies that are in your best interests. There’s a big difference in believing that access to affordable health care and a living wage are good for people and believing in fortune tellers. But this is a conservative argument after all. That it’s also racist is just icing on the cake for them.
That’s #EpistemicClosure. It’s bad because the theory says it’s bad, or it totally will be bad soon if it isn’t already (better buy gold!) and why should we confuse our pretty little heads with empirical evidence?
I’m wondering how the historical fact that blacks as a group voted GOP from Lincoln to FDR fits into this racist fable.
BooMan, even reading your excerpts did not prepare me for how stomach-churningly awful Williamson’s weak defense is, particularly in response to Bouie’s well-commanded, somewhat dry recitation of factual info.
Williamson’s column is all feelings, no facts. He expresses contempt for Bouie as a PERSON. Using rhetoric which expresses such personal, thematic animus for those with whom you disagree is a sure sign your argument can’t persuade on the facts. We’ve seen that sort of thing here on the Frog Pond from time to time.
sometimes BooMan, you’re just hilarious. I love the way you put stuff.
Black folks are not in the habit of voting against their economic interest. That’s working class White folks. Williamson is just mad that Black people vote their economic self-interest, and aren’t blinded by bullshyt shiny objects and vote Republican.
As a working class white man I have to admit that you are right about my people. They worry if it is “fair” to tax rich people’s mega-estates. They worry if it is “fair” to tax over 50% of an income that brings in in one year more than they will make in their entire life.
I am ashamed for them.
And this is the exact same argument that I get from my fellow working class white men. They will vociferously defend the righteousness and fairness of multimillionaire and billionaire white men paying a lower tax rate than themselves, who are making anywhere from $45-$80K. I really cannot comprehend how an individual can view this as a rational or persuasive stance. Do they picture themselves someday being in the same position as these super-rich and privileged people? Or are they simply defending a fellow tribe member from the paranoid threat of pitchforks and torches wielded by the ravaging dark-skinned natives and their communist friends who, in their view, see their birthright as one of perpetual handouts and gratuities taken off the backs of their tribe? I have yet to have anyone give me a reasonable argument as to how that is a tenable position to have. I get the feeling that they view the threat as simply a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to these moochers showing up at their doorstep to steal their accumulated cache of worldly goods.
The whole thing is simply complete nonsense. Yet that seems to be the gist of their fear.
I think your first thought is the correct one. They do probably think that they are just one lottery ticket or one lucky day away from being one of the richest of the richest.
A lot of people don’t mind being treated like shit if they know for sure the other is getting it far worse.
My tribe, right or wrong.
I think you are absolutely correct.
Williamson gets the quadruple stereotype award – for stereotyping African Americans (there are some registered Republicans who split tickets quite a bit), single women (ditto), the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party.
Just pushing the talking points so his fans can mimic the talking points and their buddies will mimic the talking points.
It’s not about political discussion at all–just marketing and brand reinforcement for the base.
He’s doing exactly what he was hired to do. Be as insulting as possible so as to mobilize the bigoted base.
The R in NRO stands for Racist doesn’t it? I’ve always thought so.
Also too there was this:
R.I.P., Maya Angelou, Proud Gun Owner and User, by Tim Cavanaugh,…
NRO trolling the dead of Maya Angelou.
Cavanaugh trivializes Angelou’s work and character, and takes weird, inappropriate swipes at other poets associated with Obama.
And then the commenters: I refuse to quote them. On the day of Maya’s death, the readers fall in line with William Buckley’s proud, explicitly racist tradition at the National Review.
Keep on growing your tent, conservative movement!!
I think you are completely misinterpreting Mr Williamson.
This was a written assignment to complete as part of his application for the prestigious position of minority outreach director for the RNC.
And he beat his competition (Pat Buchanan, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Free Range Bundy, and Zombie Jesse Helms) by a wide margin.
Look for a lot more activities that will position the NRO, the RNC, and Mr Williamson as the most influential actors in shaping how minorities will just love being part of the big tent coalition championing true (maybe harsh as well) justice for their long term interests and helping to (re)build their (misplaced) character as well.
Remember, tough, sadistic love is still love and they are only doing it for each minority’s own good. You can tell that altruism by how much more it hurts them than the minorities that are receiving the tough, sadistic love those minorities so desperately need.
Self-sacrifice by conservative Republican TeaBaggers is always misconstrued by those who seek to discredit their superior, if slightly paternalistic and definitely sadistic, policies for minorities and sluts, er women.
Why these minorities don’t recognize the clear superiority of social Darwinism is really a mystery that will only be solved by even more compelling arguments by the new national outreach director.
I applaud the completely different direction he’s going to take the whole conversation about race, gender, and economic class differences.
In a way, this lines up with what I’ve seen across the political spectrum – those to the right of you are evil and those to the left of you are stupid/ignorant/uninformed, no matter where you are on the political continuum.
I see this to a degree, Oscar. There is a striking difference, though: we’re not trying to prevent conservatives from voting. A symptom of the radical strain coursing through the veins of today’s conservative movement is that liberals and Democrats are ILLEGITIMATE. Stripping them of the right to vote and creating preposterous, factually absent characterizations of the actions and motives of liberals is necessary to save America.
The lessons they took from the criminality of Watergate was “Nixon wasn’t ruthless enough.”
That’s true, but those to the right of them would see their efforts as stupid since the optimal solution is obviously the Final Solution, and most of today’s GOP would see that (at least officially) as evil.
It’s very kind of this Team Conservative coach to publicly explain the “conservative” intellectual justification for suppressing the vote of these “bad judgment” groups…