Jack & Jill Politics

Talk about a revolting spectacle. A GOP presidential debate on MLK Day where the group of men seeking the nation’s highest office engaged in the lowest form of scapegoating and race-baiting in order to garner the support of voters who are political and cultural Neanderthals. Not a single one of the candidates acknowledged the important legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a life devoted to perfecting the state of our national union by breaking down racial barriers through appealing to our higher nature.

I could focus on the condescendingly ignorant statements made by Newt (the Snoot) Gingrich about poor children having no work ethic, a condition that would be cured by having them work in their local schools for meager salaries cleaning up people’s shit. When given the chance to take back, amend or soften these remarks Gingrich instead chose to double-down and twist the knife a little further in the backs of the poor, all for the sake of some redneck votes and the chance to smear Obama. Or I could focus on the suggestion by Rick Santorum that unemployment benefits encourage people not to work therefore the time should be limited, like welfare benefits – forget the fact unemployment is still at record highs in many parts of the country and jobs are in scarce supply. Gingrich decided to raise him one by adding that receipt of benefits be contingent on participating in a ‘work training program’.  Training for what jobs? Makes you wonder if any of these people have ever had to live on unemployment benefits?

I must admit my biggest ‘say what’ moment came when Rick Santorum attacked Romney for having a more liberal position than him on felon voting rights – pushing Romney to say he supports permanent disenfranchisement for people convicted of a ‘violent felony’. Does that mean he supports restoring voting rights to people convicted of drug offenses? How will that play in South Carolina?

I believe the most revealing moment of the night was when Rick Perry declared that “South Carolina is at war with the government and this administration”. The remark was met with rousing applause by the audience, including the state’s governor. I kept waiting to hear the Confederate Rebel yell, it was that surreal. It’s 2012 and yet to listen to the debate and that audience you would think it was 1912 and this was the Reconstruction South complaining about those uppity Northerners who run the federal government interfering with the state’s internal affairs. Who are they to tell the South how to deal with their lazy, shiftless ‘colored people’, who want more money for their work and don’t know how to stay in ‘their place’? I guess the battle for “redemption” is still on.

What’s striking to me is the virtual lack of media coverage regarding the substance of these statements. They’re generally characterized as giving ‘red meat to the base’, as if the substance of what’s said is unimportant, what matters is the audience reaction and whether they’ve scored any points. The significance of making that statement in South Carolina, the state that launched the Civil War, on the only national holiday honoring an African-American was as important as Ronald Reagan launching his presidential campaign by declaring “I believe in states’ rights,” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the city where Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered in 1964.

It’s not so much a declaration of war as a statement of fact. The GOP is at war with the government and in particular this administration. What’s interesting to me is that contrary to all appearances the GOP doesn’t really hate Obama because he’s black – their open embrace of Herman Cain and Allen West belie that claim. They hate him because he’s progressive, because he believes in the effectiveness and relevancy of government and he still has the support of the majority of the American people despite their best attempts to bring him down. Forgive the pun but he’s like Muhammad Ali – he looks pretty, he talks pretty, they can knock him down but they can’t knock him out!!!

At a time of severe economic pain, anxiety and heightened fears for the future the GOP has made a calculated decision to use Obama’s race to help stoke racial fears and class prejudices to their political advantage. Anyone in government knows the principal beneficiaries of domestic aid programs – food stamps, Medicaid, housing, WIC etc are poor whites and because of the recession that number has grown dramatically. A disproportionate percentage of blacks receive assistance – about 27% for food stamps – but cutting the program significantly would still hurt poor whites the most, particularly since most don’t live in areas with many supplemental social services, like food pantries. Yet the GOP, with lots of assistance from the media has successfully framed the issue as one of giving ‘handouts’ to people unwilling to work who are being encouraged by government to become ‘dependent’ as opposed to being assisted by government from becoming destitute.

What most saddens me is that all the Republican presidential candidates are using racial subtexts in their campaigns that are essentially  a not-so-subtle promise to preserve white supremacy. Instead of addressing the issue of providing jobs and increasing economic security, the GOP candidates propose to make their voters feel better by making other people’s lives worse. GOP voters may not be rich, but at least they’ll still have the perceived advantages of being white in a country they still control. Romney is the most subtle and increasingly the most effective in projecting an image of ‘whiteness’ that appeals to many traditionalists, not just Republicans. As described in a recent article in the NYT:

[T]here has yet to be any discussion over the one quality that has subtly fueled his candidacy thus far and could well put him over the top in the fall: his race. The simple, impolitely stated fact is that Mitt Romney is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory.

Of course, I’m not talking about a strict count of melanin density. I’m referring to the countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways he telegraphs to a certain type of voter that he is the cultural alternative to America’s first black president. It is a whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America. ………….

Contrast that with Mr. Romney’s meticulously cultivated whiteness. He is nearly always in immaculate white shirt sleeves. He is implacably polite, tossing off phrases like “oh gosh” with Stepford bonhomie. He has mastered Benjamin Franklin’s honesty as the “best policy”: a practiced insincerity, an instant sunniness that, though evidently inauthentic, provides a bland bass note that keeps everyone calm. This is the bygone world of Babbitt, of small-town Rotarians.

Mr. Romney does not merely use the past as an inspirational reference point, as the other candidates often do. He conjures it as a total social, cultural and political experience that must be resurrected and reinhabited. He speaks of the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence as phases of national creativity that we are destined to live through again. He frequently accompanies his recitative with verses from “America the Beautiful.”

And while Mr. Romney may, in some people’s eyes, be a non-Christian, he is better than any of his opponents at synching his worldview with that of the evangelicals. He likes to present, with theological urgency, a stark choice between, in his words, President Obama’s “entitlement society” and the true American freedom of an “opportunity society.”

[A]s became immediately apparent in 2009, millions of Americans were unwilling to accept the basic democratic premise that Mr. Obama legally and morally deserved to sit in the White House — and that was before they confronted his “socialist” and “un-American” policy agenda.

Mitt Romney knows this. He knows that he offers to these people the white solution to the problem of a black president. I am sure that Mr. Romney is not a racist. But I am also sure that, for the many Americans who find the thought of a black president unbearable, he is an ideal candidate. For these sudden outsiders, Mitt Romney is the conventional man with the outsider faith — an apocalyptic pragmatist — who will wrest the country back from the unconventional man with the intolerable outsider color.

Contrast the attitudes and statements of Republican presidential candidates with this statement by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. about confronting evil:

If we lack the courage to confront evil acts, or tendencies toward hatred and discrimination, both within ourselves and in society, they will spread unchecked, as history shows. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

A final thought: Note to Gingrich and Santorum – Enough with all the BS homilies about marriage as the guarantor of economic stability. In a nation with a divorce rate of 50% that’s really rich………. If you want to encourage marriage in low-income black communities, stop arresting and incarcerating our men!! That’ll do more to support stable relationships and families than any of the proposals I’ve heard from you to date………….