White is the new Black

    It's interesting, if not disconcerting, watching the right co-opt the plaints and the postures of the left, in a thoroughly cynical but formulaic pattern.

    Sure I see some problems with Politically Correct speech on campus shutting down debate. But the irony is palpable - "Yet today free speech is blatantly under attack on multiple fronts, in all of our institutions, especially in the very place where it was supposed to be most enshrined: the universities", one article in the Federalist writes.

    These are the universities that largely didn't allow women for much of their existence, that had to be integrated by court order and force in the south just 50 years ago, where specific religions and genders and ethnic groups were long de facto majorities, or a university where a conservative government fired on unarmed protesters at Kent State in 1970, where Title IX allowed lawsuits to go forward suing for women to have equal facilities rather than those tilted very heavily towards male teams. That conservatives regularly attack for their liberal speech, and prefer to defund as hotbeds of liberalism, or to overtly obstruct their votes.

    Those on the left are now the "intolerant" ones by protesting largely peacefully, rather than those that Trump were encouraging to punch out intruders a few weeks or months ago - but now you'd think these were flower-carrying peacenicks.

    Conservatives are getting great fun talking about the "crying rooms" and such for students recovering from Trump's election, presuming any of these stories have any truth to them. Forget Trump declaring he'd only accept results if they went his way - a position recorded on national TV by a major candidate. Forget all the times he said everything's rigged - court cases against him, laws other people obey, elections, anything. The guy who whines constantly is leading the outrage against the supposed whiners.

    When Colin Kaepernick stayed seated and then started kneeling to protest black lives abused, it turned out it was white lives disrespected - the troops, the flag, America's 2nd greatest past time. (The more cynical might have thought Traumatic Brain Injury traded for a few dollars should have been a greater focus, but we've grown accustomed to a slurring incoherent Mohammed Ali). And when Black Lives Matter among numerous others protested, we discovered it was white policemen who were the victim, not Freddy in Baltimore, not the innocent guy in a chokehold elsewhere, not the black guy on his mom's front porch who got punched in his eye for "not cooperating". 

    God bless America's white patriots. They've resisted the perils of socialist health care even as their Republican task masters made the programs ever worse by resisting and suing and otherwise throwing a spanner in the works. Fortunately they've retaliated - against Democratic candidates who didn't speak nice enough, didn't come calling before they switched positions. Rural white voters have apparently learned that it's all a trap, that accepting a health plan that is simpler and less costly weds them to non-capitalist systems, even as they rail against leaders who are supposedly too close to those capitalist systems. Don't fret at the incoherence and contradiction - sometimes the mortally oppressed have trouble expressing themselves well, none moreso than the now famed rural whites. (While only 17% of the electorate, they now have teeth far beyond their feeble Tea Party forefathers. They are now kingmakers, or as Oppenheimer proclaimed, they've become as Death, destroyer of worlds).

    Appreciate the concerns of white rural voters - exporting their cheap agricultural products to Mexico to destroy that sector, but suffering the slights of rust belt jobs gone south - as much to southern states as Mexico, but never-you-mind; NAFTA has torn our soul, and just because we refused to let Mexican trucks into the US for 15 years as required under the deal, don't presume it was all roses.

    While blacks were getting along with 18% unemployment, and whites were suffering from the first black President (and incidentally the first chimp president before him), others were suffering through the poor economy caused by a series of malfeasance. Where to start; where to survive? Our grievances, of course.

    Comments

    Where have you been, PP? I wrote a whole book about this phenomenon in 2010. Buy it at Amazon for the low-low price of one-cent (plus shipping).

    Militant homosexuals and secular humanists persecute Christians, welfare and affirmative action discriminate against white people, political correctness violates the first amendment rights of conservatives. Right-wing appropriation of civil rights language has been going on for decades. I call it "persecution politics."


    First they came for Grandma, and I didn't say anything. Then they came for Christmas, and I didn't say anything. Then they came for homosexuals, and I didn't say anything. And by the time they came for my Rick Astley collection, there was no one left to stand up for me.

    Like a lone sentinel sending out a warning signal on a cold winter's night, you've been a far-seeing Cassandra heralding perils to come, but like the original sadly ignored in your own time, even at 1 pence bargain basement prices. If only I could dig up Grandma, I would, but sadly it seems it's too late. How do we go on from here?


    Yeah, they should write a Greek tragedy about me/us.

    PS We need a new narrative to counter right-wing persecution mythology. 


    Alt-wingnut. Why won't they let us into the club? We have our neuroses too...

    ETA - think I misunderstood your comment at first - yes, we need some way to neutralize or counter or somehow co-opt their victimology back to ours or back to the real issues. 

    Easier said than done.


    The success of conservative persecution politics owes much to its depiction of measures to end prejudice and institutional racism as existential threats to those who benefited from the previous arrangement.

    As long as the change can be sold as a cage match in a zero sum game, then the conflict will be like World War One where the trenches got deeper and longer each day to avoid the sweeping lines of fire from the machine guns above.

    The Right does not take any responsibility for this state of affairs. It looks like the solution will have to start from some other place.


    We live in a 'democracy' where the Party that controls all 3 branches of government lost the national vote by a large margin. The Senate can be controlled by 17% of the population, who live in rural states and who are by and large uneducated, angry, fearful and broke. Easily manipulated as a result,.....and also rabid consumers of internet fake news purveyed by a new breed of fact destroying ideology spreading grifters, and also addicted to hate radio indoctrination and Faux News.  Which Roger Ailes ran not only to spread lies, innuendo and a warped ideology but also used for years to assuage his huge sexual appetite. He now works for our next President.

    These Republican voters are the people for whom facts and figures and logic used to disprove their core beliefs, just end up strengthening their belief. 

    The Democrats are led by a trio of near 80 year olds, and the race card Trump played is southernizing the white votes in the upper Midwest.

    If the Democrats can preserve public schools, Social Security, and Medicare from being sent to the chopping block to Wall Street by the GOP we can be thankful. The prospects for single payer or other progressive policy happening anytime in the near or intermediate future seems nil.


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