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Shuts and Failures

by Michael Maiello

cmaukonen's picture

Todd Akin: The Goal is to Maintain a White Christian Male Power Structure at All Costs

by cmaukonen 8/23/2012 - 7:44 pm
But Todd Akin's biologically bizarre statement about the diabolic notion of "legitimate rape" did me in.  Put aside for the moment that Akin's obtuse and fundamentally heinous notions of rape had their origins, in part, from Nazi concentration camp experiments, as we noted yesterday.
 
When individuals or groups are in deep emotional stress, fighting for supremacy of power, they turn to fictional and mythic constructs that they present as fact.  (Just look at the Aryan myths of the Mein Kampf.) These mistruths, however macabre and bizarre, are used to justify their clinging to power.
 
In an age when women have been emancipated, to some degree, to pursue positions of power and privilege historically preserved for men (although this too has its glass ceilings), white men who have ruled American in almost every field, including corporations and government, are threatened in their guts about power sharing.
 
As far as the violent crime of rape, there is no greater gender control than to dehumanize a woman into a receptacle for a man's sexual urges, and to force her to accept the semen of any man if it leads to fertilization.  
 
But more than that, Akin symbolizes the entire white male assault on the notion of equality in a democracy.  All of the "others" are a threat: women who seek to have careers; blacks who take positions formally only held by white males; non-Christians who believe in other values besides money; the poor who seek a share of the economic pie; the elderly who seek to stay out of poverty in their senior years – and of course a black president of the United States.
 
The list goes on and on, but the fear of the white male is fundamentally one of power sharing and sense of potency.  For most Republicans, the goal is to use any means possible – including openly acknowledged voter suppression – to maintain a white male Christian power structure.
Read the full article at http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/11694-todd-akin-the-goal-is-to-maintain-a-white-christian-male-power-structure-at-all-costs

Respectfully, I have to disagree.

Akin is trying to do everything he can, to save the lives of the unborn, even if it means hanging on to misinformation as facts, for support of his guiding principles.

He misspoke, no need to pile on the older man.

I didn't see his words as malicious.

by Resistance 8/24/2012 - 9:41 am

As a white male, fuck off.

The non-Hispanic white male population of the US is about 98 million. There are about 700 million white males in the world, so say 13% live in the US.

From surveys, 72% of American atheists are white & 60% are male, so probably 50+% of atheists are white males. Of the 35 million irreligious people, assume at least 15 million are white males. So that leaves only 83 million US religious white males

Almost 1/2 of US white male Christians are Catholics - hard to say if this is a diatribe against fundie white male Protestants (GOP label), or includes non-Hispanic Catholics (49% leaning GOP, 42% Democrat). In olden days, white male southerners were the culprit, but with northern Catholic Paul Ryan, this year folks will be more inclusive in their overall slurs.

Arguably the 230 million white males in Europe - whether atheist or Christian - have been more sharing with females than most other cultures & religions in the world - Shinto, Buddhist, Taoist, Muslims, Hindus, nativist.... (pick the nationalities within) - and created a more enlightened culture than most around, whatever the still existing faults and our total sins of the past.

So rather than insulting all white males - or Christians - figure out your real point and stick to those terms. Otherwise, you're just being racist, sexist, and as bigoted & insulting as most of the people you profess to be complaining about.

by PeraclesPlease 8/24/2012 - 12:18 pm

The idea that anti-choice Republicanism is about subverting the individual power of women is hardly new.  It's about assigning obligations to people and about undoing part of what medical science has given us by taking away the ability of a woman to decide that a consequence of being sexually active will be life-altering parenthood.  Akin and Paul Ryan are against the right to an abortion in any context.  Romney has held every opinion possible on the issue.  All of them agree that health insurance providers shouldn't be required to cover contraception, which you'd think they'd be all for is they were just anti-abortion, but they're not just anti-abortion -- they want to have a voice in the sexual decisions of women they don't even know.  How is that not a play for power?

I'll leave arguments about the general superiority of white male culture in terms of enlightenment and women's rights and minority rights to the Niall Fergusons on the other side.  That there's a contemporary power struggle within our society, being waged by people afraid of losing their status and privilege, seems clear enough (and more important) to me.

by Michael Maiello 8/24/2012 - 1:15 pm (re: PeraclesPlease)

I have no problem discussing the actual struggle for power with a reasonably exact focus on who's pushing which agendas.

What some folks seem to ignore is that these people try to co-opt a number of symbols, often with no basis in reality, simply because grabbing those symbols, like "capture the flag", means another success.

So they might grab "patriotic", "conservative", "balanced budget", "moral", "Christian", "anti-Communist", "anti-Socialist", "libertarian", "manly/ballsy", "hard working", "common man", "real American", "anti-Washington" and a variety of other hogwash.

Not that there's necessarily something wrong with those terms. It's just that the people who use them the most don't actually believe them - they're just weapons that they use to foster their culture wars. And the left falls for it  - instead of uniting the 99%, we end up insulting people who have more in common with us than not.

Ryan's not fiscally responsible, Gingrich isn't very moral or Christian, Bush wasn't a compassionate conservative, Cheney wasn't a guy with military values, on and on. They just grab these words and run with them, and half the time we abet the crime.

And if we act like jerks, all that SuperPAC money going for lies to make us look like knee-jerks? well, it works. Liberals are supposed to be tolerant, flexible, far-thinking. If they can get us spouting rabid nonsense so easily, well, shame on us.

From my view, I don't think they're particularly anti-women as an ethic - it's just a purely cynical ploy in their culture games - build up an absurd stance that counters anything the "left" is for and push it to the limit, justify it with nonsense, lies, etc.

Of course women get hurt badly in this game. Just like the planet gets hurt when so-called "conservatives" saying "nobody can tell me how much to drive, how many trees to cut down, how much smoke to put out".

Do we stop and think that many of these people are ostensibly sane, yet they're willing to do some pretty strange self-destructive things just to show machoism and faith to cause? And pretty restrictive things to their families. People do like to feel heroic and victimized - easier than being successful, so not that unusual, but you'd think at some point they'd notice the gaps between reality and their visualizing themselves as the armies keeping out the pagan menace to society. I guess if you found the right words, we could all be persuaded to throw away our modern possessions and live like Amish, whatever our political persuasion, and feel moral and proud about it.

Strange thing to deconstruct.

by PeraclesPlease 8/24/2012 - 4:38 pm (re: destor23)

My gut is that these people largely believe what they say.  Akin isn't baiting his opponent in some game of 12 dimensional chess, he really thinks that women under duress are so unlikely to ge pregnant that the issue of abortion in the case of rape is irrelevant.  And, he's bargaining that enough people are fine with that to make him a Senator and he might not be wrong.  I think that climate change deniers really do believe it's all phony.  The gold standard people really think that's a better way to live.  And so on.

But, you're right that we shouldn't be giving up words like patriotism or Christian to the right or fiscally responsible to Gingrich, Ryan, et al.  But, the thing is, when I see an argument like, "Akin believes what he believes in defense of male privilege," I don't think there's anything wrong with the argument, and I don't think that it even implicates males who don't think as Akin does.  Does Rush Limbaugh abhor affirmative action in defense of white privilege?  I think so.  But, as you would say, he doesn't speak for all white men.

So, it's possible that when you tell Cmaukonen that you'd punch him in the nose over what he's just said, that you're being too quick with your fists because he didn't mean you, until you reacted defensively to his post.

If somebody calls you a white devil, the best response is not to unwittingly act the part.

by Michael Maiello 8/24/2012 - 5:08 pm (re: PeraclesPlease)

I don't know. Although I don't think cmaukonen means it the way it sounds that first sentence in the last paragraph definitely comes off as painting all of us white males with the same brush. (Since IIRC cmaukonen is also a white male, that just supports the thesis that he doesn't mean it the way it sounds. It still sounds that way, though.) That said, as your last sentence suggests, I think perhaps discretion is the better part of valor.

by Verified Atheist 8/24/2012 - 5:26 pm (re: destor23)

I guess I'd split the baby (bad pun) and say Akin's no Rush Limbaugh. I think he possibly does women's goodies crawl shyly into their snail shell at the first sign of wickedness, and come out like blossoms when the sun shines - in other words a gullible putz. Or he may be just using this as well, but in any case, most of the thousands who follow him are doubtlessly not so tricky and manipulative with the facts, but have had the poor sense to believe in snake charmers.

And I agree that some issues are probably more heartfelt than others, though if that climate change gets felt in their back yard, probably will be some running to daddy. If someone off in the ocean somewhere gets hurt? if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears?

Oddly enough, I think the people like Maukonen enable Rush by spreading his evil and blowing his bluster and hyperbole up further, giving proof by reciprocity.

No, I don't think Maukonen was referring to me - at first, until he called me the "pseudo-left" in his feeble attempt at self-justification. But just as a Hispanic born in San Antonio might feel offended at the term "wetback" even though it doesn't literally fit him as swimming the river, I feel offended at being called a Mein Kamp-reading Aryan-chauvinist attacking equality - I know, I know, should be able to take a joke, or as Jacob Freeze would say, HAR HAR HAR. And I'm not a Christian despite my childhood, so DOUBLE HARHARHAR.

I mean, what's the harm with being associated with a guy & movement who massacred a race by the millions in horrid ways, or with being thought of as just another knuckledragger trying to stake a claim on women's ovaries and support primitive debasement and progenitive humiliation akin to First Night? Those white almost-Christian males, they sure have thin skins...

by PeraclesPlease 8/24/2012 - 5:49 pm (re: destor23)

Most of your comment is an argument that states your views cogently and well, and is well-taken.  Your first paragraph is not ok.  Please don't tell people here to fuck off.  It fosters food fights I and we are sick of refereeing.  You offer a lot, we'd appreciate your help with that.

by Articleman 8/24/2012 - 1:55 pm (re: PeraclesPlease)

Okay. However repeated white male as Nazi Antichrist is seriously offensive.

Really, this whole post should have been pulled down - invoking Mein Kampf as part of white males clinging to power, white male assault on equality, Christians only believe in money (only non-Christians have non-money grubbing values), the white male Christian power structure...

And you only notice the words "fuck off" and think *I'm* starting a food fight. As if the intent of this piece wasn't a huge "fuck off" to a large swathe of people.

There's a lesson in semiotics in there somewhere.

[okay, to be fair, this was posted on a supposedly liberal blog where uncontrolled irrational hate speech is okay as long as it's directed towards the enemy, however poor the aim]

by PeraclesPlease 8/24/2012 - 4:04 pm (re: Articleman)

HAHAHAHA...I don't believe it. This is so hilarious.  Did this piece wound somebody's egos ???

 

Well gee....looks like the pseudo left here is just as narcissistic as the right.

by cmaukonen 8/24/2012 - 1:02 pm

No, it didn't wound egos - it's hate speech, and if you said it in front of me I'd punch you in the nose. You insult whites, males, Christians, slopping the paint of Nazism, sexism and racial superiority over all in your exhuberance.

Instead of taking a hint and thinking about it like an educated person might, you get smug and self-righteous.

Look in the stream yourself, Narcissus - the shit-eating grin does no favors to your image.

If this is being "real left" rather than "pseudo", thanks but no thanks, I'll step out of the whole vicious circle jerk. Call me an "independent", a "centrist". Or call me Ishmael.

by PeraclesPlease 8/24/2012 - 4:13 pm (re: cmaukonen)

This also has a lot to do with it as well.

The Republican Party is in the grips of many fever dreams. But this is not one of them. To be sure, the apocalyptic ideological analysis—that “freedom” is incompatible with Clinton-era tax rates and Massachusetts-style health care—is pure crazy. But the panicked strategic analysis, and the sense of urgency it gives rise to, is actually quite sound. The modern GOP—the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes—is staring down its own demographic extinction. Right-wing warnings of impending tyranny express, in hyperbolic form, well-grounded dread: that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests. And this impending doom has colored the party’s frantic, fearful response to the Obama presidency.

The GOP has reason to be scared. Obama’s election was the vindication of a prediction made several years before by journalist John Judis and political scientist Ruy Teixeira in their 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Despite the fact that George W. Bush then occupied the White House, Judis and Teixeira argued that demographic and political trends were converging in such a way as to form a ­natural-majority coalition for Democrats.

The Republican Party had increasingly found itself confined to white voters, especially those lacking a college degree and rural whites who, as Obama awkwardly put it in 2008, tend to “cling to guns or religion.” Meanwhile, the Democrats had ­increased their standing among whites with graduate degrees, particularly the growing share of secular whites, and remained dominant among racial minorities. As a whole, Judis and Teixeira noted, the electorate was growing both somewhat better educated and dramatically less white, making every successive election less favorable for the GOP. And the trends were even more striking in some key swing states. Judis and Teixeira highlighted Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona, with skyrocketing Latino populations, and Virginia and North Carolina, with their influx of college-educated whites, as the most fertile grounds for the expanding Democratic base.

And the main interests is that of white Christian male dominance. Not just here but globally as well.  With the military being the ultimate in male dick waving.

by cmaukonen 8/24/2012 - 1:26 pm

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