NFL Protest, Healthcare Inferno, Tax Cuts… With the GOP it is all about kicking “niggers” all the time
Lee Atwater let the cat out of the bag way back in 1981, and it is still true.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
So if Republican polices don’t seem to make sense, it doesn’t matter. They aren’t supposed to. They are simply there to show that the GOP hates blacks. If their policies hurt middle and lower class whites, it doesn’t matter as long as “blacks get hurt worse.”
That is the GOP that Tom Carper and Chris Coons want to find common ground with. That’s Chris Coons’ prayer group for you. And it isn’t some kind of closely guarded secret. They’ve been using this playbook since Nixon.
I’ve come around to the fact that at the base of all this is the same vile racism and white supremacy we been ravaged with since the beginning.
All the focused analysis of the economically stagnant, heroin ravaged “white” working class, while accurate, is another big tell. It was OK for blacks, Hispanics, etc. to be poor, to have unstable housing, to have communities struggling with addiction. But as soon as some fucking hillbilly loses his job at the mine there’s a munity of white dolts.
On top of which the lion’s share of white Trump voters are suburban middle/upper-middle class whites. Not poor or working class whites.
The group of us need to stand up to this. We cannot afford to treat confrontation as anathema to the civil discourse. Find that courage somewhere in your collective guts and call it out as you see it. Trust me you’ll feel much better.
The NFL thing is a great opportunity. If you overhear someone talking about “disrespecting the flag” pleased pipe up. This isn’t about “the flag” or “the anthem” or “the troops”. It is about 400 years of violent oppression that people don’t want to take responsibility for because there scared little cowards.
Nixon is the tragedy, Trump is the farce.
@REV: You’ll notice that they changed the subject from police brutality to patriotism as quickly as possible.
I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that when you disrespect the flag, the flag itself doesn’t give a fuck — it’s the people who like to wrap themselves in it who do.
I have noticed and correct.
Police brutality stains the flag. So does judicial neglect and whitewashing of police criminal behavior.
The irony i have seen on social media is a lot of the people who are supporting trumps ‘the owners should fire them if they dont stand’ are union represented workers
Hence the reason Nixon & Co. invented the “Law and Order” gambit. Basically a euphemism for police brutality with impunity. Cops do no wrong and minorities do no right. It’s a very clever little trick from one of the trickiest dirty tricksters that’s ever operated.
who’s
It was no trick to get racists to double down on what they already believed.
The reason I loved The Wire was because it revealed how the police, politicians, schools, the press, and the poor (black with white) are dancing around Baltimore in the strangest of Kabuki dances. They feed into each other, prey upon each other, (well, schools not as much except to be passive enablers of the other four), devour each other, while the people of privilege don’t even look on. They’re oblivious that the dance is even happening. Apply this construct to the entire country, and you pretty much have where we are. This hatred goes all the way back to the slave trade in the 1600s. (I wonder if, psychologically, the hate is based upon a sense of guilt suppressed by the slavers in order to continue their despicable behavior). No matter, we seem to be stuck with the legacy. Kind of reminds me of the scripture when Pilote tells the crowd he cannot be responsible for the murder of Jesus. The crowd allegedly responds “let it be on ourselves and our children and our children’s children.” Our legacy. I vote that we start truth and reconciliation asap.
I very much liked all the comments on this.
Fair call on the grammar. I tricked myself with all the tricks. Also fucked up there vs. they’re in the last sentence of the first comment.
Tapping this on the year phone sucks.
Paul ftw. Conservatives will deny feeling guilt or being racist but subconsciously regard blacks as lesser to justify their subjugation.
Alby what you said and what I said are not mutually exclusive.
Randy Newman’s “We’re Rednecks” repeats many of the ideas that I’ve read on the web in the last few days. Randy is quite clever. He notes that racial hatred is prevalent not just in the south but in the north as well. All over, in fact. i share the lyrics with you now.
“Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too
Well he may be a fool but he’s our fool
If they think they’re better than him they’re wrong
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that’s where I made this song
We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We’re too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we’re keepin’ the n______ down
We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol’ boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU
Went in dumb. Come out dumb too
Hustlin’ ’round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin’ drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they’re keepin’ the n______ down
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
And we don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
And we’re keeping the n______ down
Now your northern n___a’s a Negro
You see he’s got his dignity
Down here we’re too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the n___a free
Yes he’s free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he’s free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They’re gatherin’ ’em up from miles around
Keepin’ the n_____s down
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
And we don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
And we’re keeping the n_____s down
We are keeping the n_____s down”
Songwriters: Randy Newman
@Paul: I was agreeing with you. that’s why I said ftw.
I have a CD of that album that includes Newman’s demo tape for the project. It’s cinematic.
The thing about the so called insult to the troops about these protests is crazy
Everyone one who served swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against ALL enemies foreign and domestic and bearing true Faith and Allegiance to the same.
It’s doesn’t talk about the flag or the anthem.
Yeah. It is absurd. As Alby said, the flag doesn’t give a shit.
Isn’t there some relevant history involving coercion with patriotism?
The patriotic relevance to the flag and the veterans is a relatively new concept. Talk to a vietnam vet about how they were treated when returning from vietnam. They were treated as pariahs as if they were responsible for the start of the war. i would say a good deal of the veterans returning from vietnam were very prevalent in the protests against the war (which included flag burning)