On Wednesday, June 21st, Republican bigots in the House of Representatives derailed the renewal of the National Voting Rights Act...you know, the one that guarantees the free and fair access for ALL Americans to one of our most basic rights, regardless of race, creed or color? Well, apparently these cowardly vermin want a return to the dark days of
Jim Crow...and it's looking more and more like they just may get their wish.
No, friends, that GOP "big tent" comes MUCH closer to being a big white sheet. Complete with pointed hood. From the earliest beginnings of Nixon's "Southern Strategy," some thirty years ago, Republicans have been America's Party of Hate.
A Washington Post article
published in January says explicitly that "George W. Bush is appealing as a leader to those Americans who harbor greater anti-Black prejudice." This is not news; it should come as no surprise. The Republican message has--for decades!--been aimed at people to whom racial prejudice comes as naturally as breathing.
Does anyone remember when Ronald Ray-Gun declared his candidacy for the highest office in the land prior to the 1980 election? Well, let me refresh your memories a little: He made his announcement at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi. With a nod and a wink to the Klans R Us crowd, he invoked the old racists' code words "states' rights" during that speech, words last heard bandied about during the legislative free-for-all over the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What is even more telling, however, was that Philadelphia was the place where three civil rights activists were brutally murdered...and where former KKK agitator Edgar Ray Killen was convicted last year of the crimes. Ronnie was showing the racists--and simultaneously telling them, in so many words--that he was their boy and he'd do his part to keep the uppity Negroes in their place of subservience. (To be scrupulously fair, Bad Actor may have been so completely clueless that he, himself, missed the subtext; I don't really think so...but it IS at least possible. However, it's an iron-clad certainty that his campaign manager and the Republican National Committee knew EXACTLY what they were saying. And doing.) And, later, he fought to revoke the authority of the Internal Revenue Service to deny charitable tax exemptions to Bob Jones University, an unaccredited fundamentalist snakepit of a college with stringent rules against interracial dating. Although it ended in failure, the attempt at least demonstrated his intentions to placate the prejudiced Southern knuckle-draggers.
By the same token, how could anyone fail to perceive the fact that our present White House halfwit was reaching out to those self-same bigoted elements in the speech he gave at...Bob Jones University in February of 2000, during his own campaign! At the time, he was running neck-and-neck with John McCain and needed an edge in South Carolina...so this was an obvious Turdblossom Special. (The dating prohibitions have since been rescinded--at least on paper--but they were in full force when the speech was made.) THIS is the brand of raw sewage that forms Karl Rove's natural habitat.
The mainstreaming and merchandising of hate has been the GOP's defining characteristic. Jon Krosnick, a psychologist and political scientist at Stanford University sums it up thusly: "We have 50 years of evidence that racial prejudice predicts voting. Republicans are supported by whites with prejudice against Blacks." Now, who do you think watches Faux News avidly...people who want the truth? Not a chance. This bilious propaganda is consumed, wholly and faithfully, by insecure frightened simpletons who require repeated confirmations of their own biases. In their book, Outfoxed, (The Disinformation Co. Ltd, 2005) Robert Greenwald and Alexandra Kitty have this to say:
Slowly, when each layer of Fox News' facade is peeled back, a more accurate picture of our subject is revealed. The FNC is a person in need of controlling its image and environment. It is a simplistic, domineering, inflexible, paranoid, narcissistic, manipulative, petty and deceptive entity--and those are just its good qualities. The FNC is an appealing-looking bundle of unpalatable contradictions: It consistently vacillates between self-adoration and self-loathing and praises its audience while talking down to it.
Who do you think listens to the vitriol-spewing bonkjobs of AM Hate Radio? Michael Savage is one of the most egregious offenders among that unpleasant army...and he could pose as the poster child for anti-Semitism. Convicted junkie Rush Limbaugh specializes in playing upon the worst in his dittoheaded listeners, bringing their fears and loathings to a rolling boil on a daily basis. This is not politics, gang, this is full-blown demagoguery...and it is the Republican stock in trade. Michelle Malkin keeps company with unapologetic white supremacists while she defends the Japanese internment during World War II...which even our government has repudiated.
The results of stirring up this cauldron of chaos is now becoming apparent in the Real World. In 2005, the number of active hate groups had jumped more than 30% since 2000 to over 800. Anyone who doesn't understand that this is a DIRECT result of inflammatory rhetoric and political pandering to the basest instincts of ignorant people is simply deluding themselves. Personally, I am inclined to believe it is also intimately linked to the dramatic rise in violent crimes as well. (Of course, the policies of this blighted administration cannot be discounted, either; their legislative decisions have made average people more desperate and budget resolutions have cut crime-prevention programs, a deadly double whammy.)
It is but a small step, then, from Black-hatred to outright abhorrence of ANY person not of the Caucasian persuasion. Their rightwing propaganda machine has, naturally, played up the racial aspects of the so-called War on TerrorTM (which doesn't exist) and those dark-skinned Arabs make an all-too-easily identifiable enemy on US television screens. This subtle frame we can see reinforced continually, everyehere we turn.
Closer to home, the immigration issue has brought bands of bigots crawling out of the woodwork...precisely as Rove had hoped. The Ku Klux Klan actually burned a 22-foot-high cross in Alabama earlier this month at a rally aimed squarely at those similarly-swarthy Latinos. Time Magazine reported last month that neo-Nazis, white supremacists and demented militiamen had been "revivified" by the debate on immigration. Now isn't THAT just jim-dandy?
The thing to remember here is the fact that plans for almost 9800 border patrol agents were scrapped from the budget proposal for 2006 which President Loser signed into law LAST YEAR. What does THAT tell you about the nature of this hot-button issue and how much those Capitol Hill hypocrites REALLY care about it?
It's a game, friends and neighbors, an elaborate kabuki presentation being produced, directed and stage-managed by the Party of Hate for purely political gain. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...
Cross-posted at Conceptual Guerilla's Strategy & Tactics. Please stop by and say hello...