Comments Posted By michael reynolds
Displaying 11 To 20 Of 839 Comments
<em>THE RICK MORAN SHOW</em>: TEA PARTY NATION
Bob:
Excellent poll. Somehow I don't think Glenn Beck will be citing it.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 16.02.2010 @ 21:26
B.Poster:
And there you go, right back to square one:
Now as far as race charlatans go, I think there are a number of them of all colors, hues, and nationalities. I’m thinking Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, however, maybe not. I think there are a number of them who Hispanic, Japanese, and all other groups but again perhaps not. In any event all of it needs to be opposed.
Yeah, the problem is Jesse Jackson. Not 300 years of vicious white racism. Not the current conservative return to to those same racist themes. No, the problem is Jesse Jackson.
Also Elie Wiesel, another race hustler I assume. And rape victims, why don't they just shut up? And people who get run down in the streets, why don't they just get over it?
Because the real victim is the poor, beleaguered white man who is made to feel bad. I feel so sorry for you.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 15.02.2010 @ 20:10
Since I don’t think race plays a big role or any role for that matter for the average person, I’m tired of America being accused of being a racist nation.
Bullshit. Not a tenth of Americans even know about Japanese internment let alone a slaughter in the Philippines. In fact, I doubt the average American knows there was a Mexican-American war or a Spanish-American war.
But translating your point into German: "Ve all know about ze holocaust, let us forget about it. Ve must move on. After all, ze Nazis are not at you door, are zey?"
The rule seems to be that history -- the Founders, D-Day, 9-11 -- are all vitally important parts of our national life and form our national character.
But history -- Wounded Knee, Fort Pillow, the Tulsa race riot -- are best forgotten.
Shall we set aside Bunker Hill and Belleau Woods and John Paul Jones as irrelevant? Shall we forget Paul Revere and Leyte Gulf and Inchon? I'm going to guess your answer will be "No."
It seems to me you want a 4th grader's version of history. Include the good stuff, exclude the bad stuff. Doesn't work. That's not history, it's mythology. If you're a German you have to own Auschwitz if you're going to claim Schiller. If you're Japanese you have to own Nanking you can't just cry for Hiroshima. And if you're an American you have to own our past -- all of it. All of it or none of it.
While we should never forget, little is accomplished by continuing to flog Aemricans over this. After all, we don’t flog Germans, we shouldn’t treat Americans any differently.
When I say race does not play a big role for the average person, I’m talking about today, right now. While there remains much work to do, we’ve come a long way and credit should be given where it is due.
Oh, we flog the Germans, my friend. I'm a Jew and believe me, we don't forget. Any more than a black man forgets this country's history or an Armenian forgets what Turkey did, or a Cambodian forgets the Khmer Rouge. The victims always remember. And the people who profited always want to forget. I'm sure Bernie Madoff would like that kind of deal: let's all just move on. . .
This country was built in part by taking things away from other people solely on the basis of race. And today the Congress is what, 95% white? And the GOP contingent of course is 100% white. History has a lasting effect -- it doesn't just evaporate. We are all the products of our history. There's no magic blade that comes down and suddenly frees us from the legacy of the past.
But that is particularly the case when current individuals and institutions deliberately and maliciously carry forward the crimes of the past. Rush Limbaugh -- to pick an easy target -- is a race-baiting goon following in the footsteps of 300 years of racist goons. It's not 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, it's right now, today, here, all around us.
You aren't the guy who gets to decide that the past is over and done. Not when your side is still singing the same old song but in a minor key. And when you try to turn the issue around to position yourself as the victim -- as you very definitely did in your first comment -- believe me when I say that black people, Jews and others with a history of being on the shit-end of the Aryan stick, know exactly what's going on.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 15.02.2010 @ 01:53
B. Poster:
Since I don’t think race plays a big role or any role for that matter for the average person, I’m tired of America being accused of being a racist nation.
A brief history of race in the United States:
- The US enslaved Africans and instituted one of the harshest forms of slavery ever known, including not only widespread torture, rape and murder, but the frequent breaking up of families, the sale of children, and the forbidding of education. Our slavery included an element of racial contempt not present in most previous systems of slavery.
- The wholesale massacre and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. This was America's longest war. It included the deliberate and calculated slaughter of children, widespread rape and even biological warfare.
- The theft by force of arms of half of Mexico -- carried out deliberately in such a way as to take the most valuable land while excluding the "inferior" mixed race Mexican population.
- The bait an switch over Cuba. They were "freedom fighters" resisting the evil Spaniard until we got to Cuba and discovered they were black. Our liberation turned into occupation.
- An even more appalling bait and switch in the Philippines where we evicted the Spaniards and promptly began the deliberate, calculated wholesale rape and murder of the Philippino people on explicitly racial grounds.
- The institution of Jim Crow laws that denied the vote to blacks, sentenced them to second class status, and turned a blind eye to regular acts of murder through lynching.
- The interning of Japanese-Americans during WW2 despite the fact that German-Americans were left alone.
- The conducting of medical experiments on un-informed African-Americans, including deliberate infection with syphilis.
- Within my lifetime we denied voting rights and basic civil rights to African-Americans. My family was personally threatened by the Klan for having blacks in our house in Florida. Not a million years ago and far, far away: in my lifetime.
- Today the Right continues to race-bait, to circulate overtly racist emails, to employ dog whistle racist messaging for the GOP and the tea party movement.
But you're sick of hearing about it. Too damned bad. History doesn't just evaporate.
Today in Dresden 6,500 neo-Nazis were stopped from entering the center city by 10,000 decent Germans -- Germans who don't deny their past, who aren't "sick of hearing" about their past but step up like men to acknowledge the truth and who vow to stop it from happening again.
But you, you're sick of the truth. Waaah. Poor baby.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 14.02.2010 @ 23:34
Actually, Rick, if you go back through the comments you'll see that the very first one -- by B. Poster -- headed the conversation off the rails. You wrote a grace note mentioning the election of a black president. B. Poster riffed on that to restate his white resentment:
As to rising above our own sordid past, I can only hope so. I’m getting sick and tired of being reminded on a daily basis about what an evil and racist country America is. If I only listened to our talking head pundits, I would think America is the greatest incarnation of evil ever in the history of the human race.
In the 3rd comment Mr. Bottoms responded. And we were off to the races -- so to speak.
You want to try to treat political ideas as 1) stand-alone intellectual puzzles and 2) as an opportunity for partisan cheap shots. You want your commenters to respond only to (1) and to ignore (2.) And you get cranky when comments reflect the same mix of serious discussion and partisan squabbling that characterize the blog overall.
Isn't that unreasonable? Partisans attract partisans -- both in support and in opposition. Whether you like it or not a fairly large percentage of Republican partisans are racist or at the very least shall we say "creative" in their rewriting of history. When folks like that pop up, the folks on the other side pop up.
You have here in microcosm something like original sin. In this case, the sequelae of the southern strategy. You invite these people into your party and instead of sitting quietly in the corner -- as you hope the teabaggers will do -- they end up dragging you down into the gutter with them. You keep feeding them, so they won't go away. And as long as you make them part of you you'll be judged by that association.
You write a throw-away grace note about the first black president and the very first comment includes yet another angry white guy spouting barely-disguised racist nonsense. And you're shocked, shocked when the conversation is hijacked.
Get these people out of your party. Or more accurately, get out of their party. It's simple: the GOP can give up a little power now and in exchange get a clean start. Or they can go on race-baiting as they have for the last four decades. In which case they need to stop being surprised when they're called on it.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 14.02.2010 @ 12:40
Rick:
We're only discussing the issue at all because of Republican denial. You want to deny there's denial? Read your own comments section.
Funny how you attack me while essentially agreeing with me. You think your right-wing friends agree with you that:
Race is still a powerful issue below the surface in the south - despite the protestations of my southern friends. In politics, one way to win is in exploiting differences, engendering fear of the opposition, and playing to the basest of instincts in the voter.
Kind of don't think so. They deny precisely what you're saying.
Do I for my part deny the Democrats in earlier days did exactly what you say they did? No. I can cite you chapter and verse. And Bottoms wouldn't deny it, either I assume. I have zero problem admitting that race has been and remains a huge issue, that Dems exploited it for a very long time, that Democrat hands pulled those lynching ropes tight, before seeing the light and subsequently yielding the race-baiting ball to the Republicans.
But in politics as in all human endeavor progress isn't best built on a foundation of lies, delusion and misplaced rage. And it is a lie to imply that Democrats embraced Civil Rights only when it became expedient. LBJ said, "We have lost the South for a generation." And Civil Rights caused a schism in the Democratic party as you know. Democrats have suffered electorally ever since.
Precisely because your party is in denial about their history they can have the Tea Party convention addressed by a worm like Tom Tancredo waxing poetic over the good old days of poll testing. And because they don't want to deal with the truth the Right continues to drink the poison of race-baiting from people like Limbaugh and Beck.
The argument that "everybody does it" doesn't just apply to race it applies to lying, rent-seeking, bribery and every other foul aspect of our politics. Shall we shrug it all off?
I'm not looking for moral high ground, I'm looking for race-baiting to stop, and that begins when Republicans stop denying their past and this country's past and their present. The GOP can no more deny its profiting from racism than the Democrats can deny flirting with Marxism.
The way to make progress is not by twisting history to serve political purposes, or to excuse the beam in one's own eye and obsess over the mote in the other guy's eye, but to admit bad behavior and then stop it. I for one am very happy to let the GOP off the hook for exploiting race -- just as soon as they stop doing it.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 13.02.2010 @ 15:08
It would be great if Republicans knew at least a teeny, tiny bit of what they're talking about:
1) Here is a brief overview on the Southern Strategy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy At least glance it over before you attempt to discuss it. Yes, it was Southern Democrats who opposed Civil Rights. They then left the party to become Republicans.
2) Not that it particularly matters but Teddy Roosevelt was a white supremacist. Granted that's in the early 20th century context, but let's not pretend he was a racial pioneer. He was an aristocrat who bought into the prevailing "white man's burden" ideology.
3) The notion advanced repeatedly that African-Americans are consistently incapable of discerning or voting in their own interests is perfectly in keeping with the genteel white supremacism that Teddy Roosevelt espoused.
4) That Rick Moran would threaten to ban Richard Bottoms while tolerating "conservative" lies and racist insults is appalling.
Bottoms should be banned but the guy who says:
Obama is not a black man; he’s the son of a white communist student from Kansas who dated a student from Kenya in college
is not?
Uh huh. That makes sense.
And Rick, the reason it's so easy for Richard to hijack a thread by talking about race is that your true believers here leap to the bait, falling all over each other for the chance to deny the truth and go on the attack.
Let me ask you straight up, Rick: Has the GOP ever since the days of the Southern Strategy profited from white racism?
Sure. As did the Democrats for a hundred years prior to that. Stop with the holier than thou bullshit. Politics is politics. It would be nice to think that in grasping for power, there is a higher morality involved, that Democrats and Republicans since reconstruction could have eschewed the kind of slimy racial politics that both sides proved they could practice with a clear conscience.
The attack on using the Southern Strategy is purely political. It has nothing to do with morality because it is hypocritical for Democrats to feign outrage about it now - not when the south was a one party dictatorship for a hundred years with Democrats from north and south enabling the lynchings, the cross burnings, the murders, and all the depredations that occurred. Sure there was a lonely voice raised against it here and there - on both sides of the aisle, I might add. But overall, the Dems needed the south to win nationally and maintain their congressional hegemony.
Stop being childish about this issue. It is what it is because that's the way it is. Race is still a powerful issue below the surface in the south - despite the protestations of my southern friends. In politics, one way to win is in exploiting differences, engendering fear of the opposition, and playing to the basest of instincts in the voter. We'd like to think it an elevating process but it is not now and never has been. For you to play the fool and wax eloquent about the GOP exploiting race as an issue only shows you to be either a morally infantile poseur or a clueless git.
If the GOP denounced the southern strategy today and proposed abandoning it, the Democrats would pick up where the Republicans left off - seamlessly and without hesitation. Are you really making the point that Dems are less desirous of winning? Spare me.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 13.02.2010 @ 12:49
Republicans are not only blind to contemporary racism, they're now evidently trying to close their eyes to historical racism.
Not a surprise. People who profit from evil are quick to forget it. Sort of like asking Bayer Pharmaceuticals about their past. Or asking the Southern Baptist church how they came to form a separate denomination. Or asking Lloyd's of London just what it was they used to insure back in the day. Or asking just how and why we came to have a state called Texas.
Do evil, profit from same, then angrily denounce anyone who inconveniently points out that you're still spending the profits of your crime.
You want a statute of limitations? Step one is admitting what you've done. You don't get to demand we "put it all behind us" while you're still denying what you did and actively profiting from same.
The GOP used the Southern Strategy to profit from crude, overt, undeniable, historically-demonstrated racism. Not a million years ago, during my lifetime. If REpublicans want to move past that step one is to admit it. Step two is to stop practicing the more subtle modern variant.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 12.02.2010 @ 21:08
SARAH PALIN AND THE ASPIRATIONAL POLITICS OF RESENTMENT
While my opinion of Palin hasn’t changed since it became clear that her depthless intellect and lazy habits of mind made her extraordinarily unready for national office, the more I see of her, the more I want to understand her appeal - and figure out what drives the left nuts about her.
You want to understand her. You appreciate that the left despises her. This is a crucial step. You move away from despising her as much as the left does. You establish distance between your feelings for Palin and theirs. You halve the distance between you and Palin by differentiating yourself from the despised leftists.
Basically ignorant not because she is stupid but because she is lazy, the half formed opinions that spout from her during her speeches may be enough to satisfy her legions of worshipers but, as we are finding with President Obama, translate poorly into a governing philosophy.
Two uses of the word "lazy," a characteristic that may be corrected over time with hard work. The qualifier "Basically." The assertion that she's not stupid. Equating her with Obama which of course allows you to move to the next stage which is to see her as a necessary evil, a counterbalance to Obama.
I'll stand by my prediction: 3 months until you roll over for Palin.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 10.02.2010 @ 23:42
THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT AS ANOTHER 'GREAT AWAKENING?'
Rick:
I'm suggesting that a movement that is home to birthers, deathers, Christianists, dog whistle racists and bomb Iran ignoramuses, and is headed by Sarah Palin who took over as Bagger-in-Chief from Ron Paul, will end up taking over the GOP.
You're suggesting that on the contrary, said movement will be absorbed into the GOP.
I'm not sure which of those two propositions is more insulting to the GOP. And I'm really at a loss to understand why an intelligent atheist like you would want to be associated with that party.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.02.2010 @ 22:08
