US politics

Only white people count

bigotry, US politics
Published on

For the Republican Party, as
Avedon Carol details:

Not quite real Americans, and not quite real voters, either. So that would explain why it’s okay to do things like, oh, just casually remove millions of them from the voting rolls, as they have in Florida and elsewhere. The continual use of the kind of rhetoric Josh is talking about is certainly meant to suggest to the public that Democrats gain elective office by use of illegitimate votes:

  • They’re blacks.
  • They’re redskins. And of course,
  • They’re criminals.

As Josh points out, it seems like it wouldn’t need saying that if a segment of a party’s constituency were removed from the picture, it would reduce their turn-out and thus their representation. But why belabor this point? Are we supposed to respond by asking whether Republicans could win office if white racists and corporate criminals were eliminated from the picture? Isn’t that the obvious inference?

But I don’t think that’s where they’re going. The right takes for granted that it is racism rather than blackness that is properly “American”.

Newman on pro-corporate market fundamentalism

Capitalism, US politics
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Nathan Newman:

But the triumph of pro-corporate market fundamentalism is a core part of at least a wing of conservatism, from Milton Friedman to supply side economics to the Federalist Society. These folks always were always more concerned about government protecting property interests than limiting government per se. Look at intellectual property rights– the economic right has been demanding that China — China for gods sake– increase its government repression to get rid of software and entertainment piracy.

[…]

While I’ll defend Clinton relative to Reagan and the Bushes and want Kerry to win, Robert Rubin or the equivalent that Kerry will appoint is not going to confront head-on the economic warfare that working people are facing, at both the government level and by private sector corporate organizing. And the fact that liberals don’t take the economic component of conservatism seriously enough is exactly why the rightwing can get away with it given the often deadening media silence.

Untitled

US politics
Published on 1 Comment on

I don’t think it’s accurate to describe America as polarized between Democrats and Republicans, or between liberals and conservatives. It’s polarized between the people who believe George Bush and the people who do not. Thanks to some contested ballots in a state governed by the president’s brother, a once-proud country has been delivered into the hands of liars, thugs, bullies, fanatics and thieves. The world pities or despises us, even as it fears us. What this election will test is the power of money and media to fool us, to obscure the truth and alter the obvious, to hide a great crime against the public trust under a blood- soaked flag. The most lavishly funded, most cynical, most sophisticated political campaign in human history will be out trolling for fools. I pray to God it doesn’t catch you.


Hal Crowther, “With trembling fingers”, Independent Online.

Brown v. Board of Education

Civil liberties, US politics
Published on

Nathan Newman turns conventional opinion on Brown v. Board of Education on its head:

On the 50th anniversary, the conventional wisdom is that Brown v. Board of Education represented the moment when our nation realized that the majority could not be trusted with individual rights, that democracy had failed for the black minority and we needed unelected judges to save us.

Which is just bad history.

What the Supreme Court did was save us from unelected Senators, who had been put there by unelected judges on the Supreme Court back in the 1870s– when those judged killed the Reconstruction laws that protected minority rights in the South.