I’ll have more to say about this once I complete my Friday morning “real-job” responsibilities. I did like this variation on saying that you’d rather get the clap than support Jeb Bush, though.
“He is running the Seinfeld campaign — it’s a campaign about nothing except money,” said an Iowa Republican. “I have never seen a guy with such a great Rolodex who is incapable of connecting with regular voters.”
I don’t want to disparage Iowa, which is a great state that produced my father. But there’s a reason that the most racist member of Congress, Steve “Canteloupe Calves” King, keeps getting elected there.
Jeb has four other serious strikes against him in the eyes of the conservative grassroots, based on this week’s feedback: supporting Common Core, backing legal status for illegal immigrants, bearing the burden of Bush fatigue and endorsing the confirmation of [a black woman] Loretta Lynch as attorney general last month.
Normally, you can only get three strikes before you’re out, but maybe this explains why Iowa Republicans seem more inclined to court gonorrhea than the Jebster. You might think that one of those strikes isn’t primarily about race, but then you probably haven’t considered the little brown ones.
Racism has been a primary motivator to many voters’ partisan and policy choices for centuries, but the first African-American President has cause many Americans to uncover even more explicitly racist beliefs, made barely acceptable by their masking in discussions of policies and the “proper size and role of government”.
The rank-and-file Iowa Republicans described here are like Republicans in many states. They hate the ni** President, and anything and everything he is doing is being done on behalf of the unworthy, and is taking away hard-earned money from Good White Americans. This had made it necessary for these Good Americans to hate their government openly. That’s it, and our mainstream media and broad culture is unwilling to call this out.
The dishonesty here is so unhealthy. I’m sick of the complicity of the American culture in this dishonesty.
Considering that in two times out, Obama won a majority (unlike the “first ‘Black’ President” who only managed to get a plurality), and that Dr. Ben’s poll numbers are better than many of his white primary opponents, you’re way over-reading the impact of Obama to conclude They hate the ni** President…
Not that they aren’t filled with hatred for many people, including the poor, gays, non-Christians, and abstract and poorly grasped ideas like socialism and reproductive health autonomy for women. It’s a matrix that in combination at any time is stable at around 35% of the electorate. In general elections that portion of the electorate is only available to Republicans or more blatant, hate based third party candidates and the latter struggles to capture half of that.
A large portion of that 35% you propose, not enough to win Presidential elections but certainly enough to poison our public discussions around electoral politics and government policy, are reacting to our first African-American President in explicitly and implicitly racist ways, deepening and broadening what for many of them were preexisting racially coded ways of thinking and talking about policies and elections. Unfortunately, their number, and those they influence, are plentifully enough to win many off-year elections.
Let’s start with the basic mental framework of multimillions of those in the Republican base when they consider the problems faced by Americans with low incomes. Almost all low-income black Americans are poor because they’re lazy/on drugs/criminal/immoral/etc., and almost all low-income white Americans are poor because we’re spending their money, and the money of businesses and the rich who would give them great-paying jobs if only they didn’t get taxed to provide programs which give free money to lazy minorities. We hear this over and over again, both of these things. It’s racist. I’m sick of our culture pretending that it’s not. Look at the right-wing’s response to the Freddie Gray murder. Almost all of it has been racist as hell.
Would you deny that plenty of the rhetoric and actions opposing our President by the Republican Party base, from voters to Party leaders to elected officials, have an easily identifiable racist point of view? It’s clear that this does not mean that all those who oppose the President’s policies are racist. No, it’s those who say and do racist things while stating their opposition are racist.
Dr. Ben? Gotta be kidding me. He’s this POTUS election cycle’s version of Herman Cain. He says hateful and virulently racist things about minorities. That polls extremely popularly with Republican base voters until they enter the ballot box, when the support mysteriously disappears when there are other, lighter-skinned options on the ballot who join them in hating minorities.
Wonder why that is?
Negative stereotypes to define “the other” are easier to promulgate when “the other” is of an observable “racial” group. However, it’s not necessary. Those at the bottom of economic wealth and privilege are always disparaged. Not that wealth and privilege alone inoculates members of certain identifiable from continuing discrimination and disparagement.
The lily white Irish were England’s “other” and it wasn’t so great for a long time for the millions that immigrated to this country. But unlike Jewish immigrants, the Irish had little to no empathy for later white immigrants from other countries or the native African-Americans in this country.
IMHO, on balance and perhaps by only an infinitesimal amount, the election of Obama reduced the aggregate anti-black racism in this country. Ignore the racist noise making that his elections stirred up. They’re small people clinging to their racism because they don’t have much else. They existed before and will exist after Obama leaves office. They’ll find new targets for their hatred, and as it’s emotional for them, they can’t be talked out of it and talking about it probably does more harm than good.
We don’t actually know if Cain’s poll numbers were inflated or Carson’s are inflated because those Republicans polled haven’t had to vote for them. However, J C Watts won a statewide office in OK and Tim Scott in SC easily won his Senate race (did better than Lindsay Graham).
“We the people” do better when we address and attack institutional forms of racism that government has the power to fix and personalize it less. That’s not an easy task and takes time and effort to correct. The 1994 crime bill (that many Democrats including Clinton) was inherently racist and set black people back. Real harm that pales in comparison with all the current anti-black rhetoric we hear today.
“”We the people” do better when we address and attack institutional forms of racism that government has the power to fix and personalize it less.”
The problem with this prescription is easily identified: “Ignor(ing) the racist noise making” is exactly what our society and mainstream media strains to do. The result? The perpetuation and increase of “institutional forms of racism.”
You and I are in full-throated agreement that we wish to do away with institutionalized racism thru government policies, from social services to housing and worker rights protections to law enforcement practices and more. Our society and media almost always chooses the dishonest tack of “personaliz(ing) it less.” This is NOT working, and the dishonesty is sickening and harmful to the spirit and our attempts to reform.
The claim is lodged here that the election of President Obama “reduced the aggregate anti-black racism in this country.” I’d concede that it is difficult to prove or disprove this claim, but I would offer this as evidence that there is much reason to doubt this claim:
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/29/sean_hannity_blames_freddie_grays_death_on_freddie_gray_dont_run_whe
n_you_see_a_cop/
I think it is harmful to our understanding of American culture to dismiss this message because it comes from a vicious partisan who is merely heard every weekday and weeknight by millions on major radio and television broadcasts.
Note that Hannity ignores the possibility, a possibility which has been claimed as fact by the Baltimore State’s Attorney, that Freddie Gray had DONE NOTHING that established the BPD’s right to apprehend, much less maim and murder, him.
“”You know, there’s a simple solution in terms of, for other people going forward,” he said. “Don’t be involved in the sale of drugs, don’t think police are your enemies, don’t run at 8:30 in the morning when you see a cop.””
Freddie Gray was, and frankly is still, presumed to have been “involved in the sale of drugs” on the day he was apprehended. Why? Because he was a young black man and the police chose to apprehend him. Therefore he is guilty and was culpable in his own murder.
Hannity’s insane, nonsensical view is the view held by, at minimum, tens of millions in this country, if not over 100 million. This group of racists vote more frequently than other voter groups. They SUPPORT the institutionalization of racist public policies.
It has been harmful to “ignore the racist noise making” in the formation of public policies. Perhaps we should try something different if we want a different result.
Racists asswipes always ramp up their rhetoric when they’ve been exposed and one of their own is facing consequences. More so when it also portends some change to their “way of life.” It’s their counterprotest to the protests of their opponents. Both sides a noisy in their efforts to win in the court of public opinion. Both sides screw up in their rush to write a narrative absent adequate facts. Nor much recognition that a large percentage of facts don’t exist after the event.
Marilyn Mosby doesn’t need to concern herself with the Hannities and their viewers because they won’t be in the courtroom as defense counsel or jury. She and her team have the evidence which they will share with defense counsel but not the public until the trial. Charging all those with some culpability was smart because it’s the only possible way to pierce the “blue line” and get closer to the truth.
wrt Freddie Gray or Michael Brown having drug connections — if as much public protest and attention had gone into the 1994 crime bill as their deaths have received, both of them would have had a better chance to be alive today. Institutions can easily weather taking out one or a number of bad cops at a time. The Oakland Police Dept continues to be racist and corrupt after decades of one cop at a time incidents, civil suit losses, and even under federal court orders.
If the “left” doesn’t shut up and accept the outcome (be it failure to indict or failure to convict) of high profile tragic events, why expect the “right” to shut up when they don’t like outcomes?
Sometimes a tragic incident is the only way a festering wound can be exposed and requires lots of public noise to achieve positive institutional changes. We can hope that happens in Ferguson and Baltimore.
“Marilyn Mosby doesn’t need to concern herself with the Hannities and their viewers because they won’t be in the courtroom as defense counsel or jury.”
If this were only true!
I concede that we do not have enough information to determine what should be the fullest form of justice in the Gray case. Let’s accept, for our discussion’s sake, that Mosby’s public statements detailing the assertions of facts of the case are correct ones. The challenges her prosecution team would face to gain convictions would still be enormous ones.
Police officers are almost never found guilty in a court of law, in Baltimore, Maryland or anywhere else in this nation, no matter how heinous the evidence. This means there is almost zero chance that any of these officers will agree to a plea deal.
So, jury trial it is almost certain to be. The next barrier will be that the defense teams will demand that the trial and its jury pool be held outside of Baltimore, because an impartial jury pool cannot be drawn from City residents. There is a long history of defense teams in high-profile cases being able to win with this request. And who selected the judge or judges who will decide on these demands from the BPD officers? Lots and lots of people who share Hannity’s views. Hell, many JUDGES appear to share Hannity’s views.
This would move the trial to the Maryland suburbs, where it may be equally likely that it is impossible to find a jury pool that has 12 jurists willing to convict BPD officers for any crime whatsoever, no matter how damning the evidence.
And what motivates a community’s worldview such that it becomes nearly impossible to find 12 jurists willing to hold law enforcement officials completely unaccountable when they have harmed an African-American or other minority? Racism, chiefly. Authoritarianism, for sure, but an authoritarianism steeped in racism.
And what motivates a Nation’s worldview such that the citizens choose to vote for candidate who make laws and put in place members of the judiciary who disproportionately harm African-Americans and other minorities? Racism, chiefly.
The 1994 Crime Bill is, in total, a Bill that only “racist asswipes” and those influenced by or accepting of racist asswipes should be able to love, made more so by the choices made every day by prosecutors and street law enforcement officials to unequally enforce the Crime Bill’s standards. The enforcement of laws becomes the laws, essentially. And the system of civil punishments doled out punitively to residents of low-income minority communities which has proliferated around our crime enforcement policies, civil punishments not dictated by the 1994 Federal law, have made it worse.
It is posited here that the number of “racist asswipes” is relatively small in number, but they sure are influential in the making of laws and how those laws are enforced. When I say it would be healthier for our culture and media to call out racism, this is intended to target the millions of Americans who are not racist asswipes but who are sympathetic with and/or completely tolerant of racist asswipe laws, enforcements, and social policies, as well as the attitudes that create those laws and enforcements and social policies.
It has become important at the dire moment we face now, in the wake of Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, Charleston, Baltimore and elsewhere, to shake these Americans out of their moral torpor which allows them to tolerate these eliminationist actions.
Yes. And unlike his brother, who only thinks he can speak Spanish, Jeb speaks impeccable, fluent Spanish. Which is actually bad — the wingnuts affirmatively believe that bilingualism is a sin.
One or two lines in Spanish at his convention acceptance speech would be about the limit for most Repubs.
And just wait until Jeb gets to the Southern Primaries. Like South Carolina.
There are guaranteed to be huge, organized subsurface attacks about the Bush Family’s little brown ones. And it will be very effective. Just ask John McCain about it.
You call Steve King the most racist member of Congress? Was that intentionally trolling Louis Gohmert or just accidental?
Gohmert is the stupidest. Only one award per member.
Hey, you’re disparaging my asparagus!!
Gohmert is certifiably paranoid, which is a different kind of affliction. King gets the nod because Tancredo retired.
I can still hardly believe this quote from the Dkos front page:
That quote, if true, not only disqualifies Jeb from being President, it disqualifies him for any job except, possibly, trash handler.
It should be brought up to damage him in the general. But will it be a positive among Goopers in the primaries?
your Jeb posts crack me up