every human in the world is a “we-ist”, <\/a>more comfortable around and attuned to people like their own community, and less to to people less like them in ways that are manifested as everything from pointed humor to muted suspicion to blind hatred.<\/p>\n“RGOL”:\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 Like conservatism!<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 Well, no.\u00a0 Liberals too.\u00a0 I mean, mention, say, a white fundamentalist from Mississippi who resurfaces driveways for a living…<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 Hah!\u00a0 Dumb redneck wingnut!<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 …or an NRA member…<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 Bigger gun clinging snake-handling cousin-kissing Jeeeeeebus freak hahahahahahahaha!<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0….right, or Sarah Palin…<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 Hahahahaha!\u00a0 She went to community college!\u00a0 Trig is Bristol’s baby!\u00a0 She can’t even write and has fake boobs and slept with her deputy mayor and …<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 …or the Japanese…<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 Er…what?<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 Well, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the godfather of the modern nannystate, did <\/em>not only order the most singularly racist government action in the past 100 years – the mass internment of American citizens of Japanese descent<\/em> – but did it after two terms in which he supported California’s deeply racist anti-Japanese immigration laws.<\/p>\n“RGOL”: …<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0OK, fine, it was seventy years ago.\u00a0 Still, your entire case that “conservatism oozes racism”\u00a0 seems to be based on 1) a bunch of anecdotal stories of Republicans who said racist things 2) a bunch of memes from Media Matters and the like, that largely yank statements by the likes of Rush Limbaugh so far out of context you’re getting into borderline defamation, and 3) framing conservative issues as fundamentally racist.<\/p>\n
To which I reply 1) Why does Robert Byrd never make it into those lists, 2) Gosh, a liberal flak group waterboarding context, notify the media, and 3) when your entire argument is designed to try to misleadingly frame your opponent as something evil – and we all agree that racism is a bad thing, right? – then you are committing a crime against truth!<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 What are you talking about?<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0For example, every time a conservative talks about strengthening the Tenth Amendment, some idiot lefty will come back with “That sounds like “states rights”, which was once used to defend slavery.<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 Right!\u00a0\u00a0 Conservatism supports slavery!<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 {{facepalm}} No.\u00a0 No, we are pretty much the opposite extreme; we are the party of individual self-determination.\u00a0 And, by the way, it is a fact that Jim Crow after 1900 was largely a government initiative that overrode the free market; that in most southern states, the business community – which are stereotypically conservative, right?…<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 Bosses!\u00a0 Bosses!<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0…right.\u00a0 They largely opposed Jim Crow<\/em>, since Jim Crow took anywhere from 10 to 50% out of their markets!<\/p>\n“RGOL”:\u00a0 But the southerners were racists!\u00a0 And Nixon brought them into the GOP!<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 Well, no and yes and no.\u00a0 The “Southern Strategy” sought votes from southerners who were upset over a variety of things – federal intrusions into property rights and free association as a matter of principle, the size and growth of government, and the federalization of an awful lot of things that had always been left to the states.\u00a0 And yes, there were no doubt some among ’em that were upset that the Feds poked their nose into race relations – because a racist citizen’s vote counts just as much as yours does.\u00a0 Which galls the crap out of me when I see some of those anti-semitic filth at left-leaning demonstrations, by the way – but I digress.\u00a0 The framing of all <\/em>southern conservatives’ flight to the GOP as race-related has become part of the conventional wisdom, to the extent that all defenses of the thesis become tautological.\u00a0 Just watch:\u00a0 “The southern strategy was not primarily about race”.<\/p>\n“RGOL”:\u00a0 But the southern strategy was racist because it brought racist southerners into the party…<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 Thanks.\u00a0 I rest my case.<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 …um…<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 Move along.<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 Yeah?\u00a0 Well…what about Arizona?<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 Jeez.\u00a0 More framing.\u00a0 The Arizona law – which most Americans support, in its final form – is about securing our borders<\/em>.\u00a0 That is one of the missions of government, no?<\/p>\n“RGOL”:\u00a0 But it’s racist!<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0\u00a0 Huh?\u00a0 Let me ask you something; if Minnesota were awash in Canadians sneaking across the border, and illegal Canadian immigration were forcing down American wages, and if in coming here they rejected American culture and upheld Canadian culture with their back-bacon and hockey-worship and mass drunkenness, and if the Canadian Army were charging across the border to help out Canadian drug smugglers and killing people on our side of the border, that “illegal” Gordon Fitzpatrick wouldn’t replace the “illegal” Juan Jimenez as the boogeyman du jour?<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 But that’s just dumb.<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 What if our hypothetical Gordon Fitzpatrick was pro-charter schools and anti-card-check?<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 Then he’d be racist and he’d hate children…<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 Er, yeah.\u00a0 Look – do our laws mean anything, or do they not? Are we a sovereign nation, or are we not?<\/p>\n
“RGOL”:\u00a0 Er…huh?<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 …<\/p>\n
“RGOL”: You are obviously a racist.<\/p>\n
ME:\u00a0 Riiiiight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ME:\u00a0 Hi! REPRESENTATIVE GROUP OF LIBERALS (RGOL):\u00a0 Conservatism is fundamentally racist! ME:\u00a0Um – beg your pardon? “RGOL”:\u00a0 Racism oozes from every pore of conservatism! ME:\u00a0 OK, that’s what we call “bigotry” where I come from, but what the hell, I love a good ad-hominem argument.\u00a0 Do tell! “RGOL”:\u00a0 Nixon’s “southern strategy” brought all the racists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,54,297,294,79],"tags":[258],"class_list":["post-11387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-ebony-and-ivory","category-favorites-culture","category-favorites-politics","category-slander-files","tag-we-ism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11387"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44168,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11387\/revisions\/44168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}