The New Confederacy

So I’ve been thinking. (I know, I know. "Danger, Will Robinson.") And it occurs to me that when you lay out the opposing arguments over what’s behind the current roar of anti-Obama rage --

THE LEFT: It’s all about race!
THE RIGHT: It has nothing to do with race at all!

-- it’s just a modern version of the same shoutfest that happens when you bring up the War Between The States:

THE NORTH: It’s all about slavery!
THE SOUTH: It had nothing to do with slavery at all!

It's the "nothing AT ALL" that's the over-the-top giveaway. The South isn't saying "It's not just about slavery," and pointing to state's rights and anti-federalism as the major causes; no, they're taking slavery off the Reasons For Fighting table completely. Same with the anti-Obama tea-party movement. To listen to them, you'd think they didn't have a racial bone in their bodies. And while that might be true, the fact that they will not admit even the possibility that it might be false is what gives them more in common with a South Carolina plantation owner in 1859 than it does a South Carolina senator in 2009. I think we should call these people the New Confederacy. Now let's see how they stack up against the 19th-century version.

OLD CONFEDERACY: It's not about slavery!
NEW CONFEDERACY: It's not about race!

The other thing the New Confederates always say? “Obama’s 50% white!” “He’s not even black, he’s half white!” The implication being, “So how does that make me racist?” But the real message being, “He’s so uppity he’s claiming he’s something he’s not. But I know the real truth.” To which the proper response is, “No, you know a real fact, but the truth is, you wouldn’t be making such a big deal out of it if it really didn’t matter to you.”

NEW CONFEDERATE: It doesn’t matter.
ME: Then why bring it up?
NEW CONFEDERATE: Because you need to know it doesn’t matter!
ME: People don’t keep shouting about things that don’t matter.
NEW CONFEDERATE: They do when no one listens to them.
ME: Oh we can hear you fine. I’m just saying, that’s all we’re hearing. And from personal experience? People yell the loudest when they know they’re in the wrong.
NEW CONFEDERATE: We are not in the wrong!
ME: I hear you. But I don’t think you really believe it.
NEW CONFEDERATE: Why not?
ME: Because when Glenn Beck says things like: “Obama has a deep-seated hatred for white people and white culture,” not a single one of you ever says: “But he’s half-white, Glenn!” Or does that mean you guys are just 50% hypocrite?

Don't hate me because I'm 50% beautiful.

OLD CONFEDERACY: God damn Republicans!
NEW CONFEDERACY: God damn Democrats!

Typical Yankee vs typical Flower of Southern Womanhood

(As Portrayed By A Brit).

Look -- America is a frontier nation. Always has been, always will be. That means two things. There's always a line we have to cross, because frontier means borders, and borders means fighting over what's rightfully ours. And we can't feel good about ourselves unless we have an enemy to fight. How badly do we need that enemy? Well, let's see -- we fought the previous inhabitants of this continent, we went back to the old continent a couple of times to fight against a couple of their countries, and we even went so far as to fight a land war in Asia, which is like the third stupidest thing an army can do (right after trying to invade Russia in winter and setting foot in Afghanistan, period). And whenever there's no obvious enemy out there, we just turn around and start fighting amongst ourselves. Over what?

OLD CONFEDERACY: You won’t conquer our country!
NEW CONFEDERACY: You stole our country!

This has been the New Confederate cry since the Clinton administration, but was never heard once during the administration of the guy who actually did pickpocket the Presidency. And because stealing implies a period of prior legal ownership, the mind-set behind this attitude is to rational thought what the orbit of Pluto is to our solar system. These people actually think they rightfully own the country. The horrible truth is that the upper one percent of them actually do.

OLD CONFEDERACY: No city slicker is going to swindle us.
NEW CONFEDERACY: No government hand-out program is going to swindle us.

According to the New Confederates, there are two classes in this country: the good, productive people with jobs, and the lazy good-for-nothing loafers who want to steal the good peoples’ hard-earned money. Basically, the New Confeds equate freedom with capitalism (which means they treat the Constitution like it’s a set of corporate by-laws), believe that patriotism means correctly answering the question “What have you done to support the free market system?” and preach the gospel of fiscal conservatism by making sure that money is never distributed to those who do not work. Their battle cry is "You can give my money to the Army, but not the homeless Army vet." Their definition of prosperity is not when Main Street is making money, but when Wall Street is.



OLD CONFEDERACY: Your laws are not binding on us!
NEW CONFEDERACY: Your laws are not binding on us!

The South has never forgiven the North for using numbers and resources to defeat passion and a principle. Because they fought for a principle, that made the Old Confederates morally superior to everybody else, which is why they considered themselves beyond the legal jurisdiction of the North. Currently the New Confederates consider themselves beyond the jurisdiction of civility and politeness. Why be polite to someone whom you do not recognize as an authority figure? Why show respect for the office, when the man inhabiting it is anathema to you? The Left did it during the Bush administration, right? Damn right. They went over the line. And they would have carried guns to town hall meetings, too, except that they were too busy getting arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts.

NEW CONFEDERACY: Respect for the office only applies when one of us holds the office. When one of you gets elected? The office is vacant.
TRANSLATION: It’s not a World Series unless the Yankees are in it.



OLD CONFEDERACY: God is on our side!
NEW CONFEDERACY: Satan is on your side!

To the New Confederacy, the world is full of godless Northerners, who raid their homeland like Vikings with Boston accents. But what do you expect from a group of people who think that Jesus wears a T-shirt with WWRRD on it (for “What Would Ronald Reagan Do”)? They prefer the Christ who comes with a sword, and love to quote the time when He said “Suffer!” like He never added the words “the little children to come unto me.” And meanwhile the rest of us have to suffer through the sermons of pastors who pray that God will make the President of the United States die of brain cancer, like, yesterday -- a sentiment echoed by their gun-toting parishioners, who wish Obama would hurry up already and "die and go to hell."

OBAMA: Whatever you do to the least of my citizens, you do it to me.
NEW CONFEDERACY: No! No! A thousand times no! That’s atheistic socialism!
JESUS CHRIST: Actually, it’s the essence of Christianity.
NEW CONFEDERACY: Sacrilege!

So yes, what's happening Out There is caused by more than racial anger, just like the War Between The States was caused by more than the South's peculiar institution. But on another level it's exactly the same thing, because what's happening Out There is the rising of the New Confederacy, and Obama is their Fort Sumter.

Will there be a war? There already is. Every day you can hear the battle cries of those who feel they have been betrayed, disenfranchised and marginalized. And because they feel that no one is listening to them, their cries are only going to get louder. And as Abbie Hoffman would be the first to agree, volume translates into numbers -- the louder you shout, the more of you there must be. And the more your message gets repeated, the closer it gets to becoming a fact, rather than an opinion.

Will the war ever end? God no. The only thing more satisfying than fighting for a Cause is fighting for a Lost Cause, which is why you can distinctly hear a lot of New Confederates whining about the Lost part. Jefferson said that the tree of liberty needs to be watered with blood every generation or so, to which Aaron Burr is supposed to have remarked, "If you want that particular tree to live longer, then you had better pluck all the sour grapes off it." But no, those sour grapes hang there still, and the loudest shouters on either side cannot utter a word without the smell of them on their breath. They get drunk on them, so drunk that they have no wish to ever be sober again. That's why the war will never end. The anger is so intoxicating that those in the front lines of both sides will continue to drink from this particular cup, and look forward not to victory, because that would end the fighting, but the next battle, because that will fill their cup up to the brim. It's like cancer research -- there's so much money invested in the problem that a solution is unthinkable.

NEW CONFEDERACY: We'd rather fight than win. Winning is like death. We only really feel alive when we're revolting.
THE NEW CONFEDERACY'S MEDIA CONSULTANTS: Will you listen to what you're saying?
NEW CONFEDERACY: And it's not about race. We just don't want this country run by a Muslim.
THE NEW CONFEDERACY'S MEDIA CONSULTANTS: Good for you. We quit.

Parsing David Brooks: Wanna Bet, David?

September 18, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
No, It’s Not About Race
By DAVID BROOKS
WASHINGTON

(Original column in white; translation in red.)

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I go running several times a week.

I'm trying to think of something that doesn't make me look like a Wall Street executive who wears pink shirts and fuchsia ties.

My favorite route, because it’s so flat, is from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol and back. I was there last Saturday and found myself plodding through tens of thousands of anti-government “tea party” protesters.

I saw a couple of hundred angry white anti-Obama demonstrators the other day.

They were carrying “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, “End the Fed” placards and signs condemning big government, Barack Obama, socialist health care and various elite institutions.

They were also carrying signs that said NEXT TIME WE'RE COMING WITH OUR GUNS, but I didn’t see a single one of them. Swear to God.

Then, as I got to where the Smithsonian museums start, I came across another rally, the Black Family Reunion Celebration. Several thousand people had gathered to celebrate African-American culture. I noticed that the mostly white tea party protesters were mingling in with the mostly black family reunion celebrants. The tea party people were buying lunch from the family reunion food stands.

This is because tea party whites all think Blacks are good for only one thing: serving them food.

They had joined the audience of a rap concert.

They wanted to be able to tell their children they actually heard rap once so they could say “I heard a rap concert once and it sucked!” just like I can now say “I saw white people at a rap concert once!”

Because sociology is more important than fitness, I stopped to watch the interaction.

I get paid a lot of money to make false generalizations about specific incidents.

These two groups were from opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum. They’d both been energized by eloquent speakers. Yet I couldn’t discern any tension between them. It was just different groups of people milling about like at any park or sports arena.

Wow! People in public can be civil with each other!

And yet we live in a nation in which some people see every conflict through the prism of race.

Wow! People in public can be so uncivil with each other!

So over the past few days, many people, from Jimmy Carter on down, have argued that the hostility to President Obama is driven by racism.

Jimmy Carter is an asshole.

Some have argued that tea party slogans like “I Want My Country Back” are code words for white supremacy.

This is called the Straw Man Argument.

Others say incivility on Capitol Hill is magnified by Obama’s dark skin.

This is called the Maureen Dowd Argument.

Well, I don’t have a machine for peering into the souls of Obama’s critics, so I can’t measure how much racism is in there.

Oh snap, Maureen!

But my impression is that race is largely beside the point.

Because I’m white and privileged, racism is always beside the point.

There are other, equally important strains in American history that are far more germane to the current conflicts.

See, I wanted to type “stains” and "German" there, but you would have totally gotten the wrong idea.

For example, for generations schoolchildren studied the long debate between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians.

I am now going to compress 300 years of American history into a false analogy that will make my argument sound intelligent.

Hamiltonians stood for urbanism, industrialism and federal power. Jeffersonians were suspicious of urban elites and financial concentration and believed in small-town virtues and limited government.

It’s all about the rich versus the poor.

Jefferson advocated “a wise and frugal government” that will keep people from hurting each other, but will otherwise leave them free and “shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

The government has no right to take money from the rich and give it to the needy.

Jefferson’s philosophy inspired Andrew Jackson, who led a movement of plain people against the cosmopolitan elites.

Andrew Jackson was hot two years ago, and I like to keep up with the times.

Jackson dismantled the Second Bank of the United States because he feared the fusion of federal and financial power.

Did I mention that this was all about money?

This populist tendency continued through the centuries.

Heh. I just said that a President of the United States was actually an anti-governmental populist. How many of you noticed that?

Sometimes it took right-wing forms, sometimes left-wing ones.

This is where I pretend to be “balanced.”

Sometimes it was agrarian. Sometimes it was more union-oriented.

And we all know what unions are code for, right? (Cough) Gangsters. (Cough)

Often it was extreme, conspiratorial and rude.

That would be the left-wing populism.

The populist tendency has always used the same sort of rhetoric: for the ordinary people and against the fat cats and the educated class; for the small towns and against the financial centers.

You think it’s about the have-nots versus the haves, right?

And it has always had the same morality, which the historian Michael Kazin has called producerism.

Wrong! It’s about the rich having their money stolen by the government.

The idea is that free labor is the essence of Americanism. Hard-working ordinary people, who create wealth in material ways, are the moral backbone of the country.

Like all shills for corporate America, I believe that lazy, good-for-nothing unemployed people are an immoral cancer in our society.

In this free, capitalist nation, people should be held responsible for their own output.

It’s not about race; it’s about wage slavery.

Money should not be redistributed to those who do not work, and it should not be sucked off by condescending, manipulative elites.

East-Coast liberals love to give handouts to the unemployed, and throw money at problems in order to solve them.

Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated.

This makes him a condescending, manipulative elite.

His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals.

I will now (a) use "movement" to describe the Democrats, like it's a religious cult, and (b) list four types of people who don’t live in Kansas.

In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector.

I will now pretend that Obama has socialized the country out of nowhere, instead of as a corrective response to the last 8 years of Bush/Cheney.

Given all of this, it was guaranteed that he would spark a populist backlash, regardless of his skin color.

None of the people demonizing Obama will admit that it was Bush who got us into this mess in the first place.

And it was guaranteed that this backlash would be ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top — since these movements always are, whether they were led by Huey Long, Father Coughlin or anybody else.

When my people are ill-mannered, conspiratorial, and over-the-top, it’s just politics as usual, so deal with it.

What we’re seeing is the latest iteration of that populist tendency and the militant progressive reaction to it.

I am now going to call a bunch of right-wing reactionaries “progressive”, and you are going to buy it.

We now have a populist news media that exaggerates the importance of the Van Jones and Acorn stories to prove the elites are decadent and un-American, and we have a progressive news media that exaggerates stories like the Joe Wilson shout and the opposition to the Obama schools speech to show that small-town folks are dumb wackos.

This is me laughing my ass off, because I am now using the word "populist" to describe Fox News and the word “progressive” to mean Socialist, Commie-symp liberals.

“One could argue that this country is on the verge of a crisis of legitimacy,” the economic blogger Arnold Kling writes. “The progressive elite is starting to dismiss rural white America as illegitimate, and vice versa.”

It’s actually the Left’s fault for starting this mud fight. So of course we have to stoop to their level. And by the way, I have just used the word “progressive” three times to mean three completely different things.

It’s not race.

It’s not just about race.

It’s another type of conflict, equally deep and old.

It’s about welfare queens.

Parsing Maureen Dowd: Oh, Girl

September 13, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Boy, Oh, Boy
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

(original column in white; translation in red)

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

The woman knew it was a racist remark even if the black guy didn’t.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

Memo to fact-checkers: don’t. This is an opinion column.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

Everything anybody says from South Carolina is racial.

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention.

This guy is a loser.

Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

This guy is now a loser with a following of other losers.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president.

He’s also a fucking bigot.

Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

And even worse, he’s ignorant and rude.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

This is me trying to be balanced and objective.

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

The Republican party has been a pack of demagogues for the last 60 years.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

Did I mention he’s a fucking bigot?

“A lot of these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing him as a president,” said Congressman Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the South Carolina delegation. Clyburn, the man who called out Bill Clinton on his racially tinged attacks on Obama in the primary, pushed Pelosi to pursue a formal resolution chastising Wilson.

I will now use one of his own colleagues to nail this guy to the wall.

“In South Carolina politics, I learned that the olive branch works very seldom,” he said. “You have to come at these things from a position of strength. My father used to say, ‘Son, always remember that silence gives consent.’”

I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Barry Obama of the post-’60s Hawaiian ’hood did not live through the major racial struggles in American history.

Heh. I just called the President “Barry”.

Maybe he had a problem relating to his white basketball coach or catching a cab in New York, but he never got beaten up for being black.

‘Cause I know what it’s like to get beaten up for being black.

Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension.

It’s all about race.

Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.

This is the South’s worst nightmare.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

Look out, white women – it’s Nat Turner, President of the United States!

The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health care plan.

Wait – that’s not hot-button enough. Let me think of another example.

Rusty DePass, a G.O.P. activist, said that a gorilla that escaped from a zoo was “just one of Michelle’s ancestors.”

Mu-u-u-u-uch better.

Lovelorn Mark Sanford tried to refuse the president’s stimulus money.

I have no idea what I’m talking about.

And now Joe Wilson.

His real first name is Addison, by the way. But he calls himself Joe because he wants to be thought of as just folks.

“A good many people in South Carolina really reject the notion that we’re part of the union,” said Don Fowler, the former Democratic Party chief who teaches politics at the University of South Carolina.

In South Carolina, “just folks” means “plantation owners who are still fighting the Civil War.”

He observed that when slavery was destroyed by outside forces and segregation was undone by civil rights leaders and Congress, it bred xenophobia.

They really really hate blacks down there.

“We have a lot of people who really think that the world’s against us,” Fowler said, “so when things don’t happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders.”

You know those Southerners – if they’re not blaming it on the blacks, they’re blaming it on the Jews.

He said a state legislator not long ago tried to pass a bill to nullify any federal legislation with which South Carolinians didn’t agree. Shades of John C. Calhoun!

What did I tell you? Still fighting the Civil War.

It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some.

Obama has more manners and brains than the entire middle of the country.

“My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said. “Some people are prejudiced anyway, and then they look at his education and mannerisms and get more angry at him.”

And they really really REALLY hate uppity blacks down there.

Clyburn had a warning for Obama advisers who want to forgive Wilson, ignore the ignorant outbursts and move on: “They’re going to have to develop ways in this White House to deal with things and not let them fester out there. Otherwise, they’ll see numbers moving in the wrong direction.”

I know, I know – it’s a lame ending, but I couldn’t think of a way to tie everything together. I mean it’s not like I’m a writer or anything. I just come up with an idea for a column and then I type till I get to 250 words. Besides, nobody’s going to quote the close. They’re going to quote the part where I say it’s all about race. I suppose I should have said that at the end in some clever way, maybe by saying “To some people in this country, it’s not just numbers that are moving in the wrong direction.” But if I did that, I’d be admitting that the Republicans have a valid political beef against Obama, instead of an invalid racial one. I mean, if I thought about it for a while, I might come up with something clever. But I have to stop now - I have a Marc Jacobs Fashion Week show to get to.

Spineless Media Watch, or, Here We Go Again

Howard Kurtz in today's Washington Post announces the return of journalistic integrity, which is what always occurs when a "liberal" gets elected President:

If journalists don't start holding the 44th president accountable--in the same way the left wanted us to hold George W. Bush accountable--we will have defaulted on our mission. It will be bad for the country, and bad for Obama.

Just like it was bad for the country when nobody held W accountable? God no--that's totally different! [Insert sarcastic emoticon here.]

Journalism 101, folks -- cowardice is the way of the journalistic world. Because the Main Stream Media has a perceived left-wing bias, they always treat right-wing Presidents with kid gloves -- if they don't, they'd be perceived as biased and partial, and the MSM is never biased or partial in this country, no siree. [Insert incredibly sarcastic emoticon here.] Which is why they put on the boxing gloves when they get in the ring with anybody who's not a right-winger, because what better way to look impartial and unbiased than by beating up on somebody who shares your perceived values?

Bottom line? Because they had a perceived anti-Bush bias, the MSM coddled him. And because they have a perceived pro-Obama bias, they will rake him over the journalistic coals. All in the name of objectivity. [Insert incredibly disgusted emoticon here.]

Watching the Inauguration in Times Square