Some many decades ago I had a high school teacher who was a surprising adept and knowledgeable person. I say surprisingly, because, of all the many years I spent in education, High School was the single biggest waste of my time of any life experience I have had. I have been to management seminars taught by consultants that were more valuable to me than high school. But every now and then, even in the intellectual desert of high school, you find a good one.
This social studies teacher condensed 40 years of partisan conflict down to a simple equation:
"The American Right wants things to stay the same or change slowly. The American Left wants things to change quickly. This alone is the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Look under the hood on any major issue of our time and you will find this difference lurking under there."
At which point I responded, fairly quickly. "I’m clearly a Democrat. Where do I sign up?" And he gave me what I didn’t recognize right away as a patronizing smile that clearly indicated that he was a Republican and clearly someday I would learn the error of my ways.
I didn’t. In fact, if anything, I have found myself drifting further to the left as I age and not further to the right. Part of me believes that is because I now understand what it is that’s at stake. But another part of me knows the truth.
Republicans, universally, talk out of both sides of their mouth.
There is a core of intellectual dishonesty and falsehood that goes to the very core of their political thought. It is beyond un-American, boldly treasonous and wrong.
Republicans, since the passing of the intellectual heavy weights of their movement like William F. Buckley, have become completely obsessed with doublespeak. They use the language of nostalgia to speak in code to their followers. They talk about periods in the U.S. history as shining beacons of morality and progress while completely ignoring the dirty, immoral underbelly of those times. Segregation. Back Alley Abortions. Beating up hippies and shooting them as public policy. Gays quiet, hiding in the closet.
I mean please people. Does anyone really believe that the 1950s were such an ‘effin spiffy time that we’d all like to go back to 1950 back-to-the-future-style? Is it really critical to our national interest that we desperately try to stuff gays back into the closet and return to segregation? Stepping backward isn’t possible, but the Republican Party desires nothing more.
Because, that, above all things, is what the doublespeak really means.
Republicans talk about "family values" but everyone knows that is nothing more than thinly veiled code.
What they WANT to say is: "We want women to stay home, stop working and this nonsense of having careers."
"We want to be able to smack our wives around if they get too mouthy. We want to be the kings of our castle because our weak, fragile machismos are deeply threatened by this changing world with "woman supervisors" and "career moms" and "double income, no kids" – None of these not-that-recent developments do anything to assuage the ever fragile white male ego.
Trent Lott got in a world of trouble when he told all his GOP buddies that the world would be a better place if Strom Thurmond had won the presidency. He got in a lot of trouble because he very nearly said what the GOP was thinking. He said: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."
What that MEANS is: "we want to own brown people again, like Strom Thurmond wanted. Like George Wallace proposed."
Republicans were horrified – not because of what he said – but because it was true.
They collectively did wish Strom had been president. Not because they are deeply and truly wishing it was 1948 again – but because the changes of the 1960s, starting with ending discrimination in housing and going forward, threatened their white male egos. How can you be superior if middle class blacks can buy a home in your neighborhood? The mere existence of middle class blacks was enough to start anti-integration riots in Chicago and start Dr. King on his path towards the Promised Land and his death at the hands of yet-another-right-wing-lunatic-the-Right-only-disavows-AFTER-he-does-something-horrific.
When the right wing says "no new taxes" what that means is something completely different.
It means this.
"We have no problem paying taxes for roads, and bridges and police officers to respond to that suspicious looking man who SAYS he’s a professor at Harvard. But the minute brown people stand a chance to get a dime via education funding, it’s tea party time."
"It’s not that we really hate taxes – it’s that we hate paying taxes which might have an outside chance of helping brown people improve their situation." Taxes which fund a bloated decrepit military infrastructure are fine. Police are fine. Tax breaks for big corporations are fine. But don’t ask me to pay for a school – that’s blasphemy.
Anti-tax sentiment is driven in large part by a nostalgia-driven-meme that is nearly meaningless. Do people realize just how miserable the 1950s were? It’s 2010 – people who were 20 in 1950 are 80 now. Either their memory is bad, or their facts are deliberately distorted.
The past? Not that ‘effing great. But the future has the potential to be great if we embrace change. Change is inevitable. It’s not like anything the conservatives do will stop change, no matter how desperately or insanely they try.
But what needs to stop is our side allowing them to frame the debate using their words instead of what they really mean.
The pro-life movement is absolutely 100% about two things: 1. returning women to the kitchen 2. more babies. They could give a fat rats ass about "babies lives" – it’s all about making women breeding machines instead of breadwinners. Taking away choice is about taking away CHOICES. Women don’t need to make their own decisions – the Republican right is more than happy to do it for them.
The "tea-party" movement is about 1 thing. We don’t want to pay for schools. Not because we think schools are bad – but because anyone can attend them. The openness of American public schools is again, a threat to male, white privilege and the "tea-party" gang wants to return to those days where tea-parties weren’t necessary.
In the 1950s, tax rates on income were much much higher than they are today. And wealthy people paid unheard of marginal tax rates that today cap at 38%. Now. If it would have ever really been about taxes, you would figure that Joe McCarthy and the 1950s GOP would have been screaming "tea-party" at the top of their lungs. But they didn’t have faux protests and anti-tax screaming matches. On the issue of taxes in the 1950s, the GOP just lay their quietly -- and concerned themselves with the ever frightening red menace.
There were never tea parties it the 1950s because white people had their own schools and brown people had separate, unequal schools.
If you look at EVERY SINGLE Nixon appointment to the US Supreme Court, you will find, under the hood (pun-intended) and single clear compelling judicial requirement: the appointee must have been quietly anti-desegregation. (This includes everyone he considered for appointment as well as those he actually appointed, to use the modern term, it was Nixon's litmus test.) Nixon felt that he could not openly come out strongly against desegregation, but he was damn sure determined to make it so that the court could overturn, delay and obstruct the desegregation of public schools if at all possible.
All of this fake nostalgia boils down to a simple fact.
A fact so powerful, the Republican Party is on the verge of tearing itself asunder rather than acknowledge the truth of the fact. Michael Steele threatens this fact by his very EXISTENCE -- proving that the GOP cannot willingly accept leaders who will not participate in the lie.
The fact is this: the nostalgia, the "conservatism" of the Republican Party doesn’t mean they don’t want to, or can’t accept, change. The myth of nostalgia means they want to go back in time to when all the political and economic power was in the hands of white males. They want to change BACK to a society where bloated white blowhards have all the power and women and minorities have none.
Every time a teabagger, tea-partier, pro-lifer comes up to you with a sign (spelled incorrectly) and starts screaming "socialist" or "conservative" at the top of their lungs, we should suggest this.
Sure – we’ll give some ground on your "surface" issue. But you have to agree to go back to the 1950s tax code where the wealthiest people paid a maximum tax rate of 87% (instead of 35%).
It’s not that they object to change – they had no problem with the change of 87% going down to 35% -- it’s that they object to all the OTHER changes that came with it. Desegration. Legal Abortion. Equal Funding for Schools. Drill down on any one of them and that’s what this language is really about. Ending any semblance of equality in favor of a return to inequality is the ultimate goal of the Republican party.
The myth of Republican nostalgia is a myth premised on a lie. They are liars and frauds. Call them out. If the 1950s were so ‘effin awesome, let’s go back to the 1950s tax code.