Thursday, May 13, 2010

The Anxieties of Middle America


As the United States descends further into nativist paranoia, a few brave souls like Walter Rodgers dare to ask the really hard questions. Like, for instance, are Teabaggers racists?

The answer is no, because racism has effectively been redefined as hating people for no good reason. If you hate someone for having dark skin or slanted eyes, that's fairly strong evidence of racism (unless you've been drinking). But if you hate someone because he's (probably) a lazy, shiftless welfare cheat, or an "illegal" who's (probably) planting anchor babies like some Reconquista version of Johnny Appleseed, you're simply voicing middleclass concerns, and your tirades against "rapist animals" from "Third World cesspools" will be politely overlooked by our defenders of Civil Discourse.

Thus, Rodgers says that calling Teabaggers racists is "a neo-McCarthy tactic, which stifles what should be a healthy debate about serious issues – such as federal debt."

Sure. Anyone can see that the reason we're not having "a healthy debate" about an issue most Teabaggers ignored when Bush was president is 'cause leftist neo-McCarthyites like me keep calling them racists. Once we stop trying to stifle these thoughtful people by calling attention to the disturbing aspects of their worldview, we can have a free and frank discussion about the need to deport all illegals, mine the border, end all social spending, nuke Iran, pull out of the UN, cure faggots with electricity, hang Michael Mann to a tree, and demand proof of citizenship from anyone darker than Marco Rubio.

Racism is so terrible, and so unjust, and so rare, that to accuse a white person of it is well-nigh unforgivable. Granted, there is a racial component to the Tea Parties, but it's not a matter of racism so much as...well, self-preservation.

The dominant “racial” factor in the tea party movement isn’t antiblack bigotry but whites’ fear of their own diminishing political power.
See, it's not that they hate darkies; they just want to be in charge of them, rather than vice versa. Have a little sympathy! They're getting on in years, some of them, and their world is changing, sort of, and their natural rights are being usurped, in a sense, by a bunch of goddamn wogs and spics and sand niggers who don't even believe in customer service anymore.
Ask any Anglo visiting South Texas who has been ignored and refused service because he does not speak Spanish.
Actually, they treat you that way even if you're bilingual. Last time I was down in Del Rio, I pulled up to the hotel and there was a Mexican bellhop leaning against the wall. So I waved a dollar bill at him and said, "Me habla mucho suitcases, por favor! You carry them en casa, mucho pronto, I give you dolor!"

He just stared at me, so I said it again, louder and slower. He shook his head and walked away. Turned out he was the chief of police. Still, would it have killed him to be polite?

The point is, you shouldn't judge a nativist zealot until you've walked a mile in his moccasins. Imagine what it's like for the average Teabagger to call a business and hear a recording that says "Press 1 for English." Or to see McDonalds serving bizarre ethnic specialities like "fajitas." Or to drive on the freeway and see exit signs for El Paso or San Diego or Santa Fe or Casa Grande. It'd be like waking up in a foreign country full of horrible people, hundreds of times a day!

These patriots may get a bit overexcited from time to time...but honestly, who among us can gaze dispassionately upon the Decline of the West? A perpetual state of incandescent rage is a perfectly natural response to the "diminishing political power" of the White Race Real Americans. Calling it "racism" is simply a means of pathologizing the legitimate racial anxieties that made this country great.

Besides, as Rodgers notes, people used to hate the Irish, too. Doesn't that put everything in perspective, when you think about it? It's not that all Mexicans are bad people, necessarily. It's just that we have too many of them and they don't know how to act and their culture is dysfunctional and they spread disease and they're ruining everything, just like the Jews and the Irish and the Chinese before them.

Is that racism? Only to the sort of PC elitist who defines racism as some kind of...of...prejudice against people whom one perceives as being culturally or genetically inferior. (In reality, racism is a political ideology that had all but died out by the late sixties, and persists mainly among the Ku Klux Klan, La Raza and the Democrat Party.)

Teabaggers just don't trust Obama, for some reason. It's really that simple.
If Obama doesn’t address the anxieties of Middle America – from taxes to immigration – he may find that the rest of the silent majority is shouting by Election Day.
So he needs to lower taxes on the middle class, as he's already done, and then seal the borders, as every president before him has failed to do. And he has to do this without raising the federal debt, or diminishing white political power, or electing ugly lesbians to the SCOTUS, or doing anything else that might trigger panic attacks among conspiracy-addled rageaholics who believe that anti-discrimination laws are racist against whites. Otherwise, the Teabaggers may decide not to vote for him in 2012, even if he shows them his long-form birth certificate!

It's no more than we'd demand from any other Muslim Marxist pseudo-president who was born in Kenya and hates hardworking Christian white people. So let's have no more talk of "racism," please. It's unseemly.

7 comments:

Jay Schiavone said...

"...hang Michael Mann to a tree..."
Do you mean "hang Michael Moore from a tree?" Or do you mean that the 'baggers aren't comfortable with the diversity on display in Miami Vice?

Phila said...

"...hang Michael Mann to a tree..."
Do you mean "hang Michael Moore from a tree?" Or do you mean that the 'baggers aren't comfortable with the diversity on display in Miami Vice?


Neither. I'm referring to Michael Mann, the alleged so-called "scientist" who created the infamous Hockey Stick graph, which has been discredited upwards of 20 million times by certified neo-paleoclimatographical discoverists from all walks of life.

The Hockey Stick is the biggest lie ever imposed on the public by a crypto-Malthusian envirosocialist elite, which makes Mann worse than two Al Gores, four Rachel Carsons, or eight Hitlers, based on current exchange rates.

Karin said...

You're a great writer, Phila. I'm going to link to this from my Facebook group "Diga No a Arizona" if you don't mind.

Makarios said...

"Or to drive on the freeway and see exit signs for El Paso or San Diego or Santa Fe or Casa Grande."

Not to mention being outraged by the fact that the gubmint used their tax dollars to build the freeway.

Rmj said...

"Or to drive on the freeway and see exit signs for El Paso or San Diego or Santa Fe or Casa Grande."

San Antonio. Los Angeles. Mexia (Texas). Names that don't hardly sound American at all!

It is true that the language of the Civil Rights movement has been co-opted by those who opposed it then (and oppose it now; or their descendants, anyway). But racism wasn't acceptable then, either. I remember learning that 'nigger' was a racist term, not the Southern dialectical variant of "Negro." The word was finally expunged from polite speech, but the racism didn't go with it.

Back then, lots of people who "weren't racists" still thought the "Negro" was going too far, asking for too much too soon. Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" didn't exactly put that to rest. Today, of course, those same people (or their heirs) are "not racists," but they just think certain people should be controlled.

Which isn't racism!!!! Because racism is bad!!!!!!!! Don't tell these people they are bad!!!!!!! THEY ARE JUST CONCERNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Same as it ever was.

Phila said...

The word was finally expunged from polite speech, but the racism didn't go with it.

In some ways, it's enabled it. As long as you're careful not to say "nigger," you can say just about anything, it seems.

Which isn't racism!!!! Because racism is bad!!!!!!!!

It's really fascinating how racism has not only adapted to general disapproval, but exploited it. By making it the worst accusation imaginable, we've reduced the number of people who can be accused of it to the bare minimum, and made giving them the benefit of the doubt a moral duty. A lot of people, these days, seem to find it easier to believe in ghosts than in white racism.

Which is pretty sad, since it's as common as dirt, and is probably based as much on faulty heuristics as ill will.

Rmj said...

It's really fascinating how racism has not only adapted to general disapproval, but exploited it. By making it the worst accusation imaginable, we've reduced the number of people who can be accused of it to the bare minimum, and made giving them the benefit of the doubt a moral duty. A lot of people, these days, seem to find it easier to believe in ghosts than in white racism.

Wendell Berry calls it our "hidden wound," and basically argues it's as American as cherry pie. Which is it, of course. Removing certain words from even the possibility of mention (even "nigger" is commonly rendered on the intertubes as "n*gger" at most, when the vilest terms and descriptions of bodily functions and genitalia are almost de rigeur) just lets the concepts hide and play in the shadows. Or, in this case, out in the open.

Where none dare speak its name. Racism has become too vile to be possible: which makes it even more possible than ever. Of course.