I think the terrible piece that Zandar and ABL discussed is a picture perfect example of what I’ve been talking about: a concerted effort to normalize racist sentiment. Specifically, by presenting that sentiment as a kind of “daring” in the way DougJ describes, racism as an act of intellectual courage or some such self-aggrandizing narrative. Meanwhile, those who engage in that sort of thing will be defended by the notion that criticism is a kind of leftist censoring. Take it away, Mark Steyn:
The Left is pretty clear about its objectives on everything from climate change to immigration to gay marriage: Rather than win the debate, they’d just as soon shut it down. They’ve had great success in shrinking the bounds of public discourse, and rendering whole areas of public policy all but undiscussable. In such a climate, my default position is that I’d rather put up with whatever racist/sexist/homophobic/Islamophobic/whateverphobic excess everybody’s got the vapors about this week than accept ever tighter constraints on “acceptable” opinion.
It writes itself, if you’re trying to erode our fragile consensus on the equal dignity of black people. (There’s all kinds of racism, but let’s be real: they’re talking about black people.) Note that the idea of scandal exhaustion helps here; it’s far less likely that Mark Judge will be fired than John Derbyshire, and were he to be, the next conservative who said racist shit would be in even better shape. Every instance of bad behavior that provokes a righteously critical reaction simply feeds into the conspiracy mongering and grievance that animates the conservative project.
I fully expect that, in the near future– the next several years, and likely specifically as a reaction against another term for Obama, or a racialized controversy like the Trayvon Martin case– some fairly prominent conservative will write a post about “coming out of the race realist closet.” It will deny that any animosity is intended, again defining racism as a kind of lack of civility rather than as the belief in the inherent superiority and inferiority of different races. It will at once make broad claims about the lower intelligence and tendency to violence in black people, while expressing that position in an idiom designed to seem anodyne and academic. It will repeatedly assert that the writer is terribly hurt to have to make this argument, and insist that he (it will be a he) wishes it weren’t so, but as his job is to tell the whole truth, he will bear the pains and risk his career. Despite this meticulously curated “more in sorrow than in anger” pose, the piece will assert the fundamental dishonesty of those who disagree.
Now, maybe this first post won’t change things itself. The person who writers it will take heat. But it will come in a more prominent publication than Taki, and whoever voices it will likely be able to keep a job in the conservative media. And objections will spawn accusations of liberal groupthink, and the center will be moved, and then you’ll have the cable news networks at least talking about the idea– because “it’s out there now”– and even if they hold their nose and create distance, the idea just gets more and more mainstream. Then more dominoes fall, until the idea that any suitably large group of black people is statistically certain to be majority stupid is the sort of opinion a US Congressman can hold.
It isn’t gonna come from some bold break. It’ll come drip-drip-drip, first with your fringe figures like Derbyshire, than a little more mainstream, and a little more, and a little more, until….
Baud
To be honest, I prefer the overt bigotry to the dog whistles and the code-speak we normally have to listen to.
Sly
Gripes about political correctness have always been the lament of stupid fucking assholes who resent the fact that they cannot be stupid fucking assholes in public without any blowback from civilized people.
aimai
Does it matter? They are going to come out of the closet with “race realism” (great phrase) at exactly the same time as the angry white male voter ceases to be the most important voting block. The whole point of the move to covert racist language was to get the votes of people who were racists but were ashamed of it. By the time the race realists get back out of the closet they will be bursting on a world that the REpublican party will have decisively lost to a majority minority society. They can keep up the voter suppression for only so long and they will still lose to minority voters. So the stone racists and the racial holy war people will be happy to have spokesmen championing their cause. But most of the racist eldelry white voters can’t really be whipped into any more of a froth than they are already in. And the younger white voters who may head towards racism as an explanation for their financial disenfranchisment? Well, they may vote for racism but they won’t go to war for it so their votes will cease to count.
aimai
Southern Beale
I took the “are you racist” test that John Derbyshire took. It said I’m not racist and I really hate Ron Paul.
Husband took it and it said he prefers black people to white people and Herman Cain to Mitt Romney. Hilarious.
Hunter Gathers
Several years? Try 20. The demographic clock keeps clicking ever louder, and the louder the clock gets, the louder the racism gets. They know that their time of racial numerical superiority is coming to an end, so they must yell louder and louder to mask their racial insecurities. Obama’s presidency isn’t the end for them. It’s only the beginning. Think it’s bad now? Wait until we begin to reach minority majority. The the real hissy fit starts. And they will all be televised as ‘concerned citizens anxious about an uncertain future that pushes them into society’s margins’. By that time, Neo-nazis and the Klan will all be referred to as a ‘civil rights groups’.
Joel
My thoughts exactly. Great post, Freddie.
Mr Stagger Lee
I think in 10 years or so, the Republican Party will be the party dedicated to defending the White Race and White Culture.
David Duke was the prototype, but he was a couple decades early.
Killjoy
I thought Andrew Sullivan broke the seal over a decade ago (even the liberal New Republic!)
Svensker
It’s significant that Steyn mentions Islamophobia, since that’s his stock in trade. For him I think, the anti-black racism is just icing on the cake.
Whatever, it’s all coming out now. Obama drew the boil and it’s a getting ready to pop. A whole buncha ugly pus is going to flow.
It’s horrible but fascinating. I really can’t look away.
pragmatism
@Baud: I have taken to telling the dog whistlers and code speakers I know that overt racists t least have the courage of their convictions. Im not allowed to talk politics with some old “friends” any more but it is preferable to enabling.
Loneoak
Our society would be so much better off if only we were empowered to speak the truth about blah people.
Hungry Joe
All this strikes me as very canary/coal mine-ish: As long as they feel it necessary to dog whistle, we’re pretty much okay as a society; after all, morons will forever be with us. When (if) out-front, open-air bigotry becomes acceptable, as in —
— then look out.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
My 6th grader is starting to realize that what some of his classmates say is racist or sexist, and so we’ve been having lots of talks about these subjects and others. Because of this, I have come up with a bar that is both easy to understand and easy to figure out whether you are clearing it or not. See whether your statement is equivalent to this: If you think a black is automatically going to vote for Obama, then you are being racist. It might be mostly true, but you can’t just assume it. Considering the odds of that guys bike being stolen by a black are worse than the odds of a black voting for Obama, his assumption easily puts him over the bar.
MikeBoyScout
The first step, any which way and every which way you look at it, is the liquidation of the Republican party.
pseudonymous in nc
I can tell you why people want that particular “debate” shut down: it’s because after producing 57 variations on the theme of “Ni-CLANGs are dumb, amirite?” there is no sign that they have anything else to say.
Schlemizel
Christ, I’m not already depressed enough for you? Things are just going too well as we spiral around the drain?
I wish I didn’t think you were absolutely right. GACK we are fucked as a nation
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@MikeBoyScout: Don’t worry, here in Texas all I hear is how Democrats are extreme, and that the party will split, and that Mickey Mouse was allowed to sign the recall petition in Wisconsin and his name was kept.
The Thin Black Duke
Thing is, once these crazy Sons of the Aryan Brotherhood finally step out of the closet, “divide & conquer” ceases to be a viable political tool for them.
And all these angry white guys are going to be w-a-a-a-y outnumbered by all those niggers, spics, feminazis, queers and towelheads.
I think I like those odds.
MikeBoyScout
@17 Belafon (formerly anonevent): You may find that to be complete and utter BS, but many (especially in TX) believe it.
The greatest threat to what Americans (and even Murikans!) believe we are is the Republican party.
Little Boots
freddie de boer? really?
wow.
Raven
@Schlemizel: Come on Dawg, there’s nuthin new in the universe. Sha Lah La La Lala Live For Today, with an intro by the Snozzzzzz.
Goodnight Miss Calabash
wherever you are…
slag
Sadly, we’ve all learned that, when you debate with crazy people, nobody wins.
Raven
@The Thin Black Duke: And the support cadre of us self-hating honkies!
Little Boots
actually, Mr. Steyn, I sorta want to hear the “debate” on racism. go ahead, sir.
Little Boots
the birchers just never went away, or changed in any way.
that is actually a little bit surprising.
maybe it shouldn’t be. but to somebody who was raised on WFB and the new, improved national review, it actually is.
sadness.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dƶnitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnƶchtler-PĆzsmÅgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
One thing that drives me nuts about these right-wing assholes is that, as you write above, criticizing them is a violation of their rights. They’re such weak little flowers. When they tell us that black people are quasi-retarded, subhuman criminals, well, there’s no call to take that personally; but if you call them racists, their tender feelings wilt from the white-hot meanness. I can only assume that they fall asleep each night weeping softly into their pillows.
But, in truth, it all makes sense. They really believe that they’re boldly speaking The Truth here, saying the things that everybody else is too scared to say aloud, though we all–well all we white people, anyway–believe it. I think that a lot of these turds somehow truly can’t understand why we’re all so hell-bent on refusing to believe The Truth. They can only understand it by believing that we’re all sleazy, race-baiting poverty pimps. We choose to believe what we know are lies when we say bad things about bigotry. We’re cowed.
In the last 40 years, things have slowly changed to where open racism will get you cast out from good society. And they resent that. They don’t just want the right to be racist, though that’s what they whine about, even though nobody’s taken that right away. What they want is to be admired for being racists. They want all the rest of us to look at them in mild awe for being so bold, so gutsy, that they can stand up to the Almighty Negro-Minority Power Structure and Speak the Truth. To Power, no less. In their minds, the class-warring, race-baiting poverty pimps hold all the power here. And they want credit for it.
The Thin Black Duke
@Raven: Oops.
Sorry.
I forgot to add “working class heroes”.
Welcome aboard.
Little Boots
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dƶnitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnƶchtler-PĆzsmÅgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
the shrieking and howling is, again, a bit surprising.
there actually was a certain self respect. Once.
General Stuck
Sounds like more “progressive” envy of the right wing message machine. It is not that powerful, to return us to Jim Crow, and the other racist worlds this country has a history for.
Some things the country has moved on, and while plenty of racism still exists, with the virulent kind mostly arising from the 27 percenter crowd, at least. There are limits to a strategy of dredging up the prevailing state of race relations of racism of and before the 60’s. Same is true for birth control, and recent over reaches, trying to stop abortions from happening.
And we are already seeing backlashes to this hyper nostalgia as a way to politick, from the wingnuts grasping beyond their reach in the 21st century.
The wingers used to know and understand the limits of their efforts to turn back the clock. Now they are off their rockers with 1950’s kinds of rhetoric and actions at the state level especially, done out of desperation from too much entitlement and too much resentment. And a shrinking white voter base.
This bullshit will not move the Overton Window to an earlier era, at least for swing voters, democrats and some moderate republicans on social issues. It is out of control, the wingnut brethren, with no one in control to mitigate the right wing primal urges to go ultra native wingnut. And the polls are showing it.
I just wonder about very young progressives, having a lot of their pol thinking shaped mostly by the Bush presidency, and the skewered effects of 9-11.
But don’t give up hope. Some day some liberal hero will show up and fix all this shit.
Chris
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
And if you think the reason black people vote for Obama is because he’s black, you might also be a racist. (Something tells me that a white liberal would still get a much bigger share of the vote than Alan Keyes, Allen West or Herman Cain).
Little Boots
the real question is why we ever took them seriously.
cause we still kinda do.
I still think there’s this assumption of seriousness when it comes to the right, and it is pretty much never deserved anymore.
John? you know, right?
Jay in Oregon
For Fuck’s sake, we had a senior VP of a national news network (well, OK, it’s Fox News, but still) opine in public that the sitting President of the United States threatened to murder a girl in order to keep the truth about his birthplace secret.
And then have the chutpah to act surprised when people called her on it. Gee, with a reaction like that she must have touched on something that no one wants to admit…
I’m surprised she didn’t reply with “R U MAD, LIBS?”
Little Boots
@Jay in Oregon:
I think that actually is part of what I was talking about.
I mean, on one level, fox news is the joke of the universe, but there’s still just enough of that assumption that they can get away with it.
look at george will.
NO, actually, no, look at Peggy Noonan. a complete joke in any universe but ours.
different-church-lady
The conservative project used to be winning over voters with subtle code. In order to achieve the end, lines needed to be flirted with but not actually crossed.
The current conservative project is to scorch the earth and cut of noses in spite. Which is why every envelope that could be pushed is instead being shredded. The point of the bad behavior is nothing more than engaging in the bad behavior. It’s as if Lee Atwater has come full circle: soon people will just be saying N-Word, N-Word, N-Word out loud again, because dog whistles no longer feed the rush.
This is the legacy of Gingirch and Rove, implemented by the sword of Palin. The monster has left the lab, and will not ever return. The racism is not a new intellectual exercise, nor a reaction to Obama — it is its own end, indulged in for its own pleasures. There will be more Derbyshires, more Limbaughs, more and more people who will lose their paper thrones as the middle will no longer stomach the sheer vulgarity of their ever-more-decadent performances.
The center is already moving — but it’s moving away from the vulgarity.
MikeBoyScout
Sociopaths don’t stop unless you stop them.
Splitting Image
As much flack as Obama and some others in the Democratic party have taken for trying to placate the 0.1%, I think they have a better chance of success there than with the honest, hard-working middle class voters (i.e. venom-spewing white trogoldytes) that make up the “Tea Party”.
The Republican party is currently made up of an alignment of business leaders (including the fake religious organizers) and the customers they regard as suckers. The suckers are starting to become a larger and larger drag on the corporatists’ economic goals, so it’s only a matter of time before the corporatists ditch them. The Democratic strategy seems to be designed to give the corporatists room for a safe landing for whenever they feel they have to ditch. Evidently most of them aren’t quite there yet.
Whether that is a good strategy or not in the long run probably depends on which of the two groups you most want to be defeated.
In the meantime, what we’re seeing is the corporatists giving the suckers airtime to vent their spleens, and the suckers being encouraged by this to go further and further, and it remains to be seen what will happen when the corporations decide to cut the purse strings. The Confederates will die out slowly, but I think the end of their political influence may turn out to be rather sudden.
Little Boots
@Splitting Image:
the suckers, at least the effective suckers, are old people who are protected from the consequences of their constant bullshit.
that is actually a problem, but one I think any liberal is willing to live with, for the greater good.
it still sucks, though.
jl
Research on population genetics, various measures of aptitude, relative role of genes and the environment, and role of developmental factors are moving along just fine. Nothing has been shut down, except maybe research that has obvious mistakes in it (eg, Bell Curve), and outmoded concepts of ‘race’ are not used, as our knowledge evolves.
If you can pass for whatever is deemed to be ‘white’ at the time, from twenty paces or whatever, the various myths and misconceptions have a much shorter half life.
From an interview with population genetics researcher Luigi Cavalli-Sforza
” Many of the Italians that came to the U.S.A. at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century were poor and desperate. Eighty percent of them were illiterate and, at conscription during the First World War, were given an IQ of 0. ”
Zero? That is pretty bad.
” Along with the strong racism of the time, this was one of the āfactsā used by C. B. Davenport of Cold Spring Harbor for promoting the 1924 law that greatly limited immigration from southern Europe. ”
So, the very scientific racists at one time had scientifically determined that Southern Europeans were genetically stupid. Too bad their research was shut down.
” My father visited the United States in 1920
and told me that at that time the docks of New York were looking for longshoremen and advertised their needs with posters offering a given salary for whites, a lower one for Negroes, and an intermediate one for Italians. ”
Interview with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza: past research and directions for future investigations in human population genetics, F. Manni, Human Biology 82(3):245-266. 2010.
Chris
@Splitting Image:
In most European countries, they’d be two parties. The corporatists would run the “respectable,” “mainstream,” center-right party (UMP, CDU, Conservative Party) while the teabaggers would be the far-right extremist party (BNP, FN, BZO).
One fairly unique thing about the American political system since Nixon, compared to the rest of the free world, has been the way it fuses the traditional conservative elites of the center-right with the quasi-fascist far-right fringe into a united movement. If you’re right, that may change soon if the corporatists decide that the teabaggers are doing more harm than good and need to be dropped. Not soon enough, but I’ll take whatever I can get…
Little Boots
@Chris:
the Republican Party is made up, largely, of crazy old fucks. until we get that, we get nothing.
gnomedad
We’re pretty rigid about the Earth being round, too.
Little Boots
do people not get this? are people really this stupid?
Splitting Image
@Little Boots:
For the moment, but look at it this way:
Companies that market their products to 18-49 year old women have spent the last three months supporting an increasingly extreme political platform to undercut the medical rights of 18-49 year old women in order to appease a demographic group made up of 50+ males, simply because that is a more favoured demographic for national politics.
Think maybe a small problem is on on its way to becoming a large problem?
cokane
I disagree.
I think, despite shit that has happened, the country overall has made large strides on race in the past decades and continues to do so. As the older generation dies, and the younger generation takes positions of power, the needle will move ever so gradually in the opposite direction that your post implies. It has done so for the past decades.
Little Boots
@Splitting Image:
yes, it’s all ridiculously short sighted. but old people, and women more generally, have GOT to stop falling for the bullshit.
we actually depend on old people and women to save this fucking country.
honus
“The Left is pretty clear about its objectives on everything from climate change to immigration to gay marriage: Rather than win the debate, theyād just as soon shut it down.”
Climate change, gay marriage and immigration. The fact is, there is no debate to be had on theses issues. The fact that Steyn feels there is some value in continuing to debate them speaks to his inherent stupidity.
Little Boots
Here’s what pissing me off more than anything about the War on Women.
Women can stop it any time they want.
You are the majority.
STOP FALLING FOR THE BULLSHIT WE ARE ALWAYS DISHING OUT.
STOP IT.
Splitting Image
@Chris:
That’s exactly it. The flexibility of the multi-party system allows the corporatists to ally with other centrist parties or with the crazies, depending on which can make them more money. In the U.S. the Republican party has to break in two for a new alliance to happen, and the suckers’ investment in the party brand has been helping to keep that from happening so far. (Loyalty to a brand being one of the prime characteristics of a “good customer”.)
jnc
What do folks think about that baseball manager getting suspended for some games because he said some favorable stuff about Castro?
Neldob
Wow. He didn’t include antisemitic. Is that cool too?
handy
@jnc:
Considering he’s the manager of the Miami Marlins, I’m guessing he’s not getting any keys to the city or invitations to speak at the local chambers of commerce anytime soon.
That and, you can always take the White Suck out of Chicago but you can’t take the White Suck out of the (former) player :)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@jnc: In Milwaukee, it wouldn’t have caused much of a fuss. In Miami with a large Cuban population who have, um, strong feelings about Castro, it’s an issue.
And fuck Mark Steyn, with a heated and oxidized very sharp object. Repeatedly.
Chris
@Splitting Image:
Well theoretically, there’s no reason why there can’t be cross-party alliances like that in the U.S. It’s happened before, e.g. the Conservative Coalition for most of the last century or the less formal way liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans worked together on things like civil rights.
But in the current GOP, there’s been so much purging and ideological purity testing that most of its politicians are corporatists AND teabaggers at the same time, so the concept of one of these groups breaking away from the other isn’t really possible.
dogwood
The thing about the Derbyshire piece and the various right wing defenders of him and their war against political correctness isn’t just the overt racism on display. The racism is obvious and its integral to who they are. But no one ever calls these bastards on the sheer phoniness of it all. I mean seriously. when and where would John Derbyshire and his precious children ever come in contact with a dangerous African American? These are elites who live in safe neighborhoods, whose children go to posh private schools. The chances that any of these racist assholes would come into contact with dangerous people of any race are minimal. There’s nothing brave about any of this crap. Derbyshire doesn’t have the balls to simply say he hates African Americans so he comes up with these lame pseudo-mathematic probability scenarios to put some kind of intellectual veneer on the fact he is a poor excuse for a human being.
Citizen_X
God, the sheer whining vicimhood of that Steyn piece. “Help, help, I’m being repressed! They won’t let my friend Derb say ‘n****r!’l
Yeah, good thing we were able to shut down all questioning of climate change, ay, comrades?
Quaker in a Basement
It’s a sure sign of the death of our freedoms when you can’t even complain about all the stupid, whitey-hating, affirmative action hired black women at the DMV without having annoying sane people notice that you’re writing racist bullshit.
Quaker in a Basement
@jnc: If the Marlins wanted want a manager who doesn’t say crazy shit, they hired the wrong man. That said, I’m in favor of the team taking action. I think the league and MLB should butt out.
Cacti
For 45% of the population, give or take a few points, such dignity never existed.
That’s the reason why a good-sized chunk of them construct elaborate fantasies about Obama being born in Kenya, or ACORN stealing the election.
The alternative explanation, of a black man winning fair and square is unacceptable, as it forces them to possibly acknowledge that inherent white superiority is a fiction.
Raythe
On the post the Rich Lowry put up on the Corner where he explained why he shut down comments on the original post that stated that Derbyshire was fired (he claimed it was a holiday weekend and no one was there to monitor comments so a large amount would have been in the queue unreleased until Monday – however, it also was pointed out that this always happens on the weekend and they’ve never shut down comments before) there were an overwhelming number of commenters that argued exactly what Freddie says they will here. The VAST majority.
Now I know that this is the Corner and it’s to be expected in some ways. But I didn’t get the impression these were all old people who are dying off that were commenting. It felt like younger people (totally unscientific here) who honestly do believe that their racism is actually just being open-minded and all the evil liberals are keeping down legit thought about this. The small minority that said Derbyshire was a racist crank and had been for a long time (that actually wasn’t debated, everyone agreed that he had been spouting this stuff IN the NRO for years), but this time he didn’t use the right “word choice” so he got into trouble.
So basically they think its about semantics (how they say this shit) versus what they are saying. Its BOLD, INTELLECTUAL and TRUE what he said just he said it wrong. But I think that now that Derbyshire’s been fired for this it won’t quiet them. It’ll be like Freddie said someone else will stand up. And they’ll couch it in courageous tones.
It’s sickening and frightening and I swear to goodness that we have got to beat these people and their ideas into the ground b/c I don’t know about you, but I’m not going back to a time where racist crap like them have any standing.
samara morgan
wallah, more sawdust sawing.
snore city, freddie.
do you know who rawks?
Dan Savage.
Savage U.
i dig that guy.
and you know what else, freddie cher?
Balloon Juice is just as pants wetting terrified of cognitive genomics as the Right is of ToE.
we really are the same, after all.
or at least…..you are all the same.
;)
samara morgan
@Raythe: nah,,,,the demographic timer, dude.
like Nate Silver says demographics is destiny.
you an’ de Bore can stop clutching your pearls naow.
Little Boots
@efgoldman:
still no excuse.
seriously, ask John, when he’s in the mood to talk seriously.
samara morgan
no, moron, this is adaptation.
if the GOP wants to survive in 21st century america, it must adapt.
this is step one.
samara morgan
fucking rhetorics professors.
what are they good for anyways?
Gian
@Quaker in a Basement:
by definition it’s not “political correctness” like the firing of Bill Maher, or the jihad against the Dixie Chicks, or a baseball manager who after saying he’s basically an alcoholic (I get drunk after every game) says something nice about Castro, one of the most hated persons ever by right wing cuban exiles.
criticism, suspensions, blacklisting, and firing people for those words is pure american patriotism.
damn I remember when the anti-politicaly correct stuff had some comedy value. I remember an old Bloom County strip about some character being confused about the difference between “people of color” and “colored people” A modern version of that might be “welfare cheating parasite n___” vs “african american” why are people so offended by one and not the other? I don’t get this PC stuff
samara morgan
@jl: Astaghfirullah! someone else here has read Luigi Lucca ?
i don’t believe it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Southern Beale: I apparently slightly prefer black people to white and am rather pro-Obama.
Disclaimer: I am almost translucent, and I have a preference for brunettes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: Count me in that bunch.
Karen
In the not so distant future…
It will be seen as brave and spiritual to tell Jews that they owe their lives to Christians and should either convert or go to Israel to be slaughtered…oops…sacrificed….oops…do what G-d put them on the earth to do. And I still say that I will never live to see a Jewish President. But Ann Coulter already gave the plan away by saying that the earth would be perfect if there were no Jews. She backpedaled by saying that she meant they’d be perfect if they just converted to Christianity. She actually said this already so no future needed.
And the Obama ads…
Obama will be morphed into Treyvon Martin and the message will be that Obama wants special rights for black people and that he hates white people. The word “hate” won’t be in the ad of course, but they will be overtly unsubtle and say that he is not pro AMERICAN. Translation, get ready non Christian and non white people, we are no longer real Americans.
Every ad of Obama will have him so darkened because of course, in these ads, dark = evil. They will do all the stuff in these ads that McCain would not do.
And Romney’s surrogates (who will be everyone everywhere except for UNAMERICANS) will not say the N word outright. But what they will do is up the ante, using more and more racist language. The media is starting to already. Racism is more and more acceptable and if you complain about it, you want special rights.
To these people …the fact that we want to live means we want special rights.
Now…tell me I’m wrong. I honestly hope I am. But based on all the poison that’s just growing more poisonous this is all they have: Obama is incompetent = because he’s black and subhuman and retarded. That’s all they have left.
El Cid
Dick Cheney was the only one brave enough to stand up to Nelson Mandela and his terrorist race-baiting!
El Cid
When are the non-Confederate states going to apologize for what they did to us? Hmmmm?
Lit3Bolt
My Christian guilt died on Good Friday, April 6, 2012. That was the day my bike got stolen.
I was at the National Shrine of the Mammon’s Triumph to celebrate the my Dark Lord’s unholy victory over the weak and pathetic Son of God, a traditional pre-Easter celebration for Followers of the Left-Hand Path.
It was a beautiful and sunny day, and I planned to ride my bike around the city. The bike, a sharp silver-blue hybrid from L.L. Bean, was only a year old, but had already taken on great literal and symbolic significance for me. In 2008 I was diagnosed with uncurable assholery, and the affirmations of endless narcissism caused some logic damage. The doctor says it will slowly make me write bigoted articles but exercise will be a big help of increasing my chances of meeting a dump truck.
I bought a bike, and it quickly became a source of joy ā and efficiency. D.C. is a car-heavy city, and the bike made getting around it a breeze. I could park on Capitol Hill, coast down Independence Avenue and take in the museums and cherry blossoms in a couple hours. The bike was a sign of strength, of determination. Of recovery. Of emotional dependency. When a friend of mine, a social worker, expressed surprise that the entire time of my treatment I had never gone on disability, I couldnāt believe she would even think that I would do such a thing, because that was only something a Christian would do. One magical early spring night I rode through about half the city, going to rock clubs, coffee shops and museums, ending up on the lit hilltop at Georgetown University. Disability? Wrong answer, even though I have freely enjoyed my government job, government healthcare, government planned city, government roads, government military-industrial complex, government parks, and my government sanctioned right to Free Cognitive Dissonance.
But when I came back to my car after the stations, my bike, and the commas surrounding it, which had been locked to a bike rack on my car, was gone. I called the cops and filed a report. Then I walked around Brookland, the neighborhood around the Shrine, for an hour to see if I could spot it, and unleash the unholy might of Lord Beelzebub upon the foul urchin who nicked my bike. I didnāt see it, but I did talk to some conveniently anecdotal people who said there were a lot of Christian kids around that day because the schools are out, because of that foul Christian holiday.
I went to college at Miskatonik University, which is right next to the National Shrine of Mammon’s Triumph, and I know Brookland pretty well. Itās home to several Catholic religious orders (Brookland was once known as āLittle Romeā). I could be pretty certain that on Good Friday a member of the Little Sisters of the Poor, which is across the street from where I was parked, had probably nicked my bike. Or maybe it was the monks at the Dominican House of Studies on the corner. The students at Catholic University were on Easter break, but maybe one of those little Papists shits was still in the area. Then there was the highly Catholic, and highly Christian neighborhoods around the university. Since the time I was an undergrad at Miskatonik University in the 1980s, most of the crime that has occurred on campus has come from those neighborhoods, which are predominately Christian. As sure as it took the D.C. cops forever to get to the parking lot to file a report, I knew that the odds were very high that a Christian had taken my bike ā maybe one of the kids that had been described.
When I got home I vented to my friends. I told them I was going to scour those Christian neighborhoods until I found the bike. In reply, a liberal friend gave me a lecture about profiling and told me to just forget about the bike. āThat person needs our prayers and help,ā she said. āThey havenāt had the advantages we have.ā
“Fuck that!” I said. “I just want my fucking bike! And I know a swarthy, hirsute, wafer-eating, rosary-fondling, Cross-licking, Miter-wearing, incense-huffing, Pope-humping Christian took my bike, because it was stolen on a Catholic campus!”
Why does everyone assume I’m bigoted?
Clime Acts
…until WHAT?
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
excellent.
the fact that racism, in the right wing view(and moving appallingly close to the center) is a matter of civility rather than the core beliefs that some people are inferior, because the market has expressed itself is very very apt.
in fact its something i may have failed to account for trying to understand what conservatives view as racism.
Taylormattd
So galling that a person who will be helping Mitt Romney get elected is writing a piece lamenting conservative racism.
Triassic Sands
I read the article and the further into I got, the less I liked the author and the less I cared about what happened to his bike. Mark Judge didn’t need to have his bike stolen to become a racist; he needed to have his bike stolen to give him license to proclaim his racism publicly. I’m sure Pat Buchanan sympathized with Mr. Judge.
When I was a college student and completely dependent on my bike to connect all my jobs and classes in a timely fashion, I had my bike stolen. From the sound of things, I was both more dependent on my bike and in a much worse position to replace it than Judge is. So, on the one hand, I understand the pain of having a bike stolen; on the other hand, his racist diatribe made me sick.
He really has no idea who stole his bike, and no justification for concluding it was an African American. It may have been. And it may have been a white or a Hispanic or an Asian or almost anyone except someone from another planet. His rush to judgment and his triumphant divestiture of his white guilt sounds suspiciously like little more than a confirmed racist finally coming out of the closet.
I’m white. And I don’t believe for a second that white pain is the same as black pain. Nor is the pain I’ve faced as an individual the same as that faced by others. But to condemn all black people, because his bike was stolen in an area where the majority of neighborhoods are supposedly predominantly black is ridiculous.
Mark Judge strikes me as a racist who has finally found the excuse he needs to make his bigotry public.
It’s hard not to be just a little glad he had his bike stolen. Whoever took it, probably without realizing it, chose a deserving target. Screw Mark Judge.
(I looked back through Judge’s earlier scribblings for The Daily Caller and if I’d never seen his “white guilt” essay, I’m pretty sure I’d still have pegged him as a racist on the basis of that drivel.)
samara morgan
Headline: Freddie Saws Sawdust ….badly.
you might think that, but you would be wrong.
“in the near future”, there will be a continuing and cohesive effort to separate from the overtly racist elements of the GOP, because of the demographic timer. Old people like Derbyshire will be moved out.
FOXnews already gave Beck the heave-ho because he became detrimental to their brand inspite of his ratings.
This is probably the last presidential election where demagoguing blacks and browns as subhuman criminals will benefit the Right, because of the demographic timer…whites still make up roughly 70% of the electorate. One third of whites traditionally vote democratic–this is a floor– Obama and Clinton got significantly more. But as soon as white “conservative” drops below 50% of the electorate the GOP will never win another general election…unless they can change their branding.
Freddie is being stupid, as usual. Firing Derbyshire isn’t an anomaly– its the beginning of a trend.
BTW de Bore…. how about that trillion dollars of student loan debt? still think the owwies are whiners? still think the owwies “mostly” hate Obama and that they are firebaggers like you and Hamsher and GG?
Occupy the electorate is coming.
Changing the conversion.
Peter A
The liberal refusal to recognize biological reality ironically gives cover to the right wing to talk about “superiority” and “inferiority”. People are not the same. The reason why people of primarily
Sub-Saharan African descent, Native American or Native Australian descent tend to have more problems than other peoples in living sucessfully in our post industrial symbol heavy culture probably goes beyond cultural transmission. White racism does not explain the relative success of dark skinned South Asians at negotiating that same culture. It is probably not a coincidence that descendants of peoples who have been engaged in agriculture and hierarchical social cultures for several millennia (Europeans, East Asians, Middle Easterners, South Asians) are better adapted to our time sensitive, hierarchical society than people whose ancestors only a few centuries ago were still hunter gatherers or subsistence farmers. Even among white people there are clear aptitude differences between descendants of feudal peasant cultures (ethnic Russians for example) and more urbanized cultures (English, Germans, Ashkenazi Jews, Northern Italians). Human beings are animals, inbred groups will evolve different traits over time just like any other animal. That’s a fact. You can either be like the right wing or the so called “race realists” and twist that knowledge to pretend that “whites” have some kind of divine right to rule, or you can actually try to create a better society by recognizing that, for example, there is no one size fits all education system that works the same for everyone. Recognize that being a lawyer or financial analyst is not the summit of human achievement – people who have no aptitude for that sort of work should have more options in our society. I don’t know if a true multicultural society will work. I do know that the current liberal version of it – where we welcome immigrants from everywhere and expect they will happily integrate if whites just stop acting “racist” – in the end is just going to create another Mexico or Brazil. Countries where whites are a minority, but, oddly, still seem to own and run everything. Not surprising when we live in a culture designed by white Europeans to play to our own strengths.
samara morgan
Consider this….Firebagger Freddie is trying to inflame the juicitariat against white conservative racists to farm sympathy and page clicks….just like conservatives use dog whistle racism to farm votes.
samara morgan
@Peter A: Liberals are to cognitive genomics as conservatives are to ToE.
one place where “both sides do it” is actually true…
that makes me haz a sad, because it weakens Mooney’s theory.
/sadface
samara morgan
@Taylormattd:
yup.
WTF is Cole thinking of putting Firebagger Freddie on the frontpage?
Might as well frontpage Douthat.
He writes better.
samara morgan
@Joel: this is a crap post, like everything Firebagger Freddie has written here.
El Cid
@Peter A: Yes, yes, you’re right — I need to exchange my foolish liberal outlook that all races and heritage groups are uniform for the totally and deeply supported scientific understanding that certain genetic groupings of humans around the planet have genetically and/or culturally evolved better for some careers than others.
Thank god some people are willing to look science in the eye and take what they want.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Little Boots: Freddy the Farmer? In Nederlandse, ik denk)
Hypnos
@Peter A: except that is all bullshit as Native American societies were as complex and hierarchically structured as the European ones – in the case of the Maya, even more so. And lo and behold – Yucatan is still poor as piss! I wonder if 400 years of cultural and military oppression have anything to do with it?
West Africa had the Mali empire and the Songhai empire – which defeated a gun toting Moroccan invasion force mostly composed of Portuguese and Spanish mercenaries. In East Africa the Buganda kingdom had a navy of giant war canoes on Lake Victoria and the Swahili principalities were trading with India when Northern Europeans had barely moved past the “painting our faces blue and killing each other” phase. The Bakongo kingdom in the Congo had a coast-to-coast trading network and repeatedly defeated Portuguese attempts at pushing inland from Angola. Great Zimbabwe was so good at monumental architecture that British archaeologists had to make up a story about King Solomon and the fucking Queen of Sheba building it because god forbid we recognize the stupid niggers as anything more than monkeys.
And you are making the SAME FUCKING ARGUMENT. It is the argument used to support the wholesale slaughter and enslavement of tens of millions of people, so excuse me if I have an instantaneous allergic reaction to it.
samara morgan
@Hypnos: @El Cid: And here we have a field lab case study validating my thesis that liberals are so horrified by cognitive genomics that they become as irrational as republicans.
Seventeen years later the BJ commetariat is still rage-raving over The Bell Curve, questioning the heritability of IQ, and falling for any panderbot that pretends to share their ideals while aiding and abetting the Romney campaign.
what Peter A is saying is the anglosaxons and euros stacked the deck in their favor with weaponry, colonialism, imperialism, and christian dominionism and individualism.
That is CULTURAL heritability.
@Peter A:
bzzt wrong.
You are wrong because in the heritability of intelligence, WITH EVERY CORRELATE AND IN EVERY STUDY, the within group variation is LARGER than the between group variation….
This is true in sex, in race, in political affiliation, in religious affiliation, in nationality, in ethnic group.
So between group difference in racial, gender, political or religious affiliation DOESNT MATTER… the tails of the curves overlap.
samara morgan
oh great, moderation is always with us.
fuck you all very much.
samara morgan
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: Firebagger Freddie the Farmer.
try to be accurate, please.
samara morgan
@Hypnos: @El Cid: And here we have a field lab case study validating my thesis that liberals are so horrified by cognitive genomics that they become as 1rrational as republicans.
Seventeen years later the BJ commetariat is still rage-raving over The Bell Curve, questioning the heritability of IQ, and falling for any panderbot that pretends to share their
idealsobsessions while aiding and abetting the Romney campaign.what Peter A is saying is the anglosaxons and euros stacked the deck in their favor with weaponry, colon1al1sm, imper1al1sm, and christian dominion1sm and christian individual1sm.
That is CULTURAL heritability.
samara morgan
@Peter A:
bzzt wrong. you are also a retard. do multi-gender societies work?
You are wrong because in the heritability of intelligence, WITH EVERY CORRELATE AND IN EVERY STUDY, the within group variation is LARGER than the between group variationā¦.
This is true in sex, in race, in political affiliation, in religious affiliation, in nationality, in ethnic group.
So between group difference in racial, gender, political or religious affiliation DOESNT MATTERā¦ in ANY comparison, the tails of the bell curves overlap.
Tone In DC
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
LULz.
Tone In DC
@Lit3Bolt:
Dayum.
Good one, dude.
El Cid
@samara morgan: No, and I don’t need lecturing on science from someone whose idea of science is throwing around terms like “cognitive genomics” and “Maynard-Smith uninvadability” and “social network theory” as totemic phrases rather than scientific and statistical concepts and contexts within which arguments are made.
“Science” has said very little about the ability of individuals from genetic stock of origins in other parts of the world — with whom they may share very little original culture — and their ability to pursue different career.
Where?
Where is the “science” or new totemic phrase generator which proves the statistical relationship between imperialism, colonialism, post-colonial neo-imperialism, etc., and the abilities of various individuals of arguable heritability?
Where?
Where is it? Who do you cite? Where is this body of study?
Hypnos
What Peter was saying is that blacks are genetically unable to perform in complex, hierarchical societies because they evolved as hunter gatherers. It is a very simple concept. It is also wrong on every possible level.
Genetically: there is more genetic variation within Africa than in the rest of the world combined, so it makes absolutely 0 scientific sense to argue for a common “black” genetic inferiority, as there is no such thing as a common “black” genetic code at all.
Historically: African populations built complex, hierarchical societies that were, at times, more advanced than their European contemporaries. Mali, Songhai, Aksum, Nubia, Zimbabwe, Kongo, Ghana, just to mention a few. Same goes for Native Americans.
Biologically: evolution does not happen in the space of 10,000 years. Epigenetic changes on the other hand happen in the space of generations, making the already unfounded claim of “black” inability to adapt to contemporary complex environments possibly even more unfounded.
Culturally: contemporary post-industrial society is as different from traditional “white” culture as it is from traditional “black” culture, and “whites” can fail at post-industrial society just as badly as “blacks”. One needs look no further than Alabama to see it.
Morally: by ascribing the failures of “blacks” to environmental and genetic determinism you are depriving them of agency – the capacity to make choices and impose those choices on their environment, and by so doing affect and change their life situation. That is the epitome of the imperialist mindset (and something that liberals are often as guilty of as righ wingers).
NobodySpecial
@El Cid: It, like so much of Moko, is in her ass.
I mean, have you seen it? It puts the donk in badonkadonk. Twice.
samara morgan
@El Cid: @Hypnos: so much fail.
Cochran & Harpending, the last 10,000 years.
ahhh yess….where are those societies today? all fallen or colonized.
again, there is no environmental determinism– environment is plastic.
and there is is no genetic determinism, because within group variance is GREATER than between group variance.
i have repeatedly cited the literature and used islamic culture as an example of a Maynard Smith uninvadable strategy, and cited the current literature on neuropolitics and red/blue genetics and cognitive genomics with links and documentation.
And the empirical proof of my thesis is that the US has been kicked out of Iraq, is being kicked out of Afghanistan, and will be kicked out of Pakistan, after trillions of dollars and years of occupation, because it is impossible to impose/install/implant/force secular democracy in majority muslim cultures.
samara morgan
And Chris Mooney’s new book The Republican Brain arrives at a lot of the same conclusions that i have about red/blue genetics and neuropolitics.
Is Chris also “throwing around totemics”?
samara morgan
@NobodySpecial: you have never seen my ass. and you never will.
samara morgan
my new thesis is that cognitive genomics terrifies liberals exactly as much, and for the same reason, as ToE terrifies conservatives.
Both represent attacks on neuropolitical belief systems.
Happy naow?
both sides do it.
NobodySpecial
@samara morgan: You’ve done nothing on this blog BUT show your ass, from the days you were Matoko Chan, MENSA genius and Islamic scholar, to now. You’re only better than the likes of Stuck in that when you fart something onto my screen, I can giggle at it.
samara morgan
@NobodySpecial: firebagger freddie, OTOH, shows his ass with every post.
samara morgan
@NobodySpecial: again, i have never been in MENSA, i am neither a mufassir or a scholar, and i have documented and linked current domain science for cognitive genomics, evo theory of culture and evolutionary games theory consistently.
you don’t want to believe the science so you throw feces….Corner Stone.
;)
bi la kayfah
NobodySpecial
Science, I can believe.
You, on the other hand, are a hand-waving screechapod with no connection to any science I can see.
But I like pushing your buttons, because you’re nowhere near as smart as you claim you are and it must BURN when someone treats you with the respect you so obviously deserve.
Now go ahead, screech some more and entertain the nice bloggers.
samara morgan
@NobodySpecial: i am smart enough to recognize you, CS. Isn’t sock puppetry illegal under Cole’s code of conduct?
and i’d infinitely rather have your burning hatred than your respect.
i only want respect from equals.
;)
NobodySpecial
@samara morgan: Report me. Have Cole do an IP check. One MORE thing for you to be wrong about, chippie.
samara morgan
@NobodySpecial: idc enough to bother Cole.
hes bizzy dealing with all the emails calling for my banning.
;)
but your attack on poor old general stuck was a dead give-away.
El Cid
@samara morgan:
Your thesis? As opposed to who else’s?
I’m sorry, what? Are you of the opinion that arguments that the US would not remain in Iraq, would not remain in Afghanistan, and would be ‘kicked out of Pakistan’ were dependent upon your preferred arguments centered upon ‘social network theory’ or ‘Maynard Smith uninvadability’?
I don’t understand what you’re suggesting here. Surely you’re not suggesting that there was some opposing scientific consensus (i.e., some actual scientific consensus holding that the US would remain in Iraq or enforce secular democracy etc.) which your preferred approaches disputed.
In fact, the basic logical framework is absurd, because to find this imaginary thesis disproven you’d have to have first come to empirically demonstrate that this was a major characterization of US goals and efforts. This in itself is controversial and not at all to be deduced from public statements.
(Yes, you can do content analysis studies on both public record and non-public record documents and compare them to US activities at different levels.)
Surely you’re not suggesting that without your preferred arguments, people believed that the US would remain in Iraq forever. That would be flat out silly.