> I understand. But remember `Liberal' is code.
I think we all agree that racism remains a serious problem in American society. That isn't at issue here. Racism was a problem 30 years ago when the conservative revolution started. The conservatives have used race frequently, but they aren't as much anymore. My hunch is that "liberal" is a code word now for "liberal."
> First, remember when backlash was called `white' backlash? It was all
> about the `white' backlash against the `Liberal' reforms like
> affirmative action, busing, affordable housing, etc.
Yes, that is history. What are the conservatives doing now? Are they whipping liberalism because of race? No, as Thomas Frank argues, and I think he makes a good case, they are pursuing the culture wars to deflect attention from what they are doing for the capitalists.
> So dot, dot, dot, in a few years `white' and `reform' were dropped and
> now it's just about the `Liberals'. `Liberals' stands for the `enemy',
> i.e those who fight against the white reactionary backlash. Opps,
> replace `reactionary' with `conservative' and drop `white', and change
> `backlash' to `populism' but keep Enemy and Liberal part. Sorry.
Ideologues always need an enemy that is easy to define. Frankly, I think that most analysis of the right wing's motivations are too deep. I think that most right-wingers need a simple bogeyman to hate. Kind of like what the liberlas are now doing with the conservatives. The ABB crowd tells us that George W. is evil incarnate, yet they ask us to vote for Kerry instead of throwing Bush out of office. Make up your mind. It's standard operating procedure in world history to throw out evil dictators directly.
> We are dealing with a code world here. Sure at the moment, the
> rightwing code world is all about the War on Terror, code for White
> Christian Crusade of the righteous America against the dark hooded
> hordes of Islam who span the globe, some 1.3 billion people strong from
> Morocco to the Philippines. Terrorism is indeed everywhere, if that is
> the Enemy of Freedom.
You are reading too much into this. The "hordes of Islam" have been demonized for sure, but "evil libraralism" is being used as a simple target of hate for people who know they are upset about something, but who have had ther anger hijacked by right wing zealots.
> In the foreign policy domain of rightwing codeland, Liberals are just
> the same as always: soft on terrorism, soft on national security, just
> like they are soft on crime, giving criminals rights they shouldn't
> have, a bunch of elite intellectual queer crapolla, all wishy-washy,
> limp wrist hand waving at a vicious Enemy who must be exterminated
> like insects, so forth and so on.
You got it.
> The real question in my mind is how do Democrats or `progressives' who
> want to, get some of those white working class votes back? It
> obviously won't do any good to call people racist.
Or call them stupid, like Janeane Garafolo constantly does on Air America. As much as I'm a fan of Garafolo, her attitude towards Republicans and conservatives typifies why Liberals don't connect with working Americans. I shake my head every time I hear some Air America talking head (usually Janeane) go on about how liberals are so good and righteous and smart. You mean to tell us that there is a gene for smartness that is on the same chromosome as liberalism? This essentialist attitude that liberals are more enlightened than conservatives just turns everybody off.
I remember an incident at work several years ago when one of my office mates told me that she was a Democrat because Democrats do good things for people. My jaw dropped at the naivete of that ignorant statement, so I missed an opportunity to explain to her what a poverty pimp was and why working people hate liberals (because of the reformist social programs that liberals promote).
I really hope that Democrats don't figure out any new ways to fuck over working class Americans. I really hope that the Democratic Party goes down the shitter, to be followed by the Republicans. If you are a poor, working-class American, it doesn't matter much which wing of capitalism is fucking you over this week. For example, I don't see any Democrats going out of their way to extend unemployment benefits. If the Dems are so caring of the working class, why the hell are they letting unemployed people fall between the cracks after 9 months? Because its fucking politically inconvenient to fight for a minimal safety net for working class Americans?
> So, the only way I can see is political education. Name the policies
> on the Right agenda that systematic institutionalize racism, as
> racist, since that's what the policies do. There are a very long list of
> them: school vouchers, privatized public services, and
> numerous so-called rightwing `reforms' in public housing, urban
> re-development, zoning, affordable housing, public transportation,
> bilingual education, re-districting, employee benefits, labor, minimum
> wage, `right to work' laws, public health, drug rehab, and of course
> the whole `law and order' routine with the prison-industrial-complex,
> mandatory sentencing, three-strikes, death penalty, juvenal justice,
> family services, probation departments etc, etc, etc.
Sounds good to me, as long as we talk about how liberals, Democrats and progressives perpetrate these policies and racist programs. How many Democrats do you know of who are fighting to put affordable housing IN THE NEIGHBORHODDS WHERE THEY LIVE? Why do Democrats pursue the privatiazation of public services (see Mayor Tony Williams). Law and order, prisons, and the death penalty? Last time I checked, the Democrats were in favor of all this shit. They certainly aren't prison abolitionists. They have done NOTHING to even reform America's gulag system, which currently enslaves over 2 MILLION PEOPLE. The only thing the fucking liberals want to reform in this area is the ability of convicted felons to vote, so that they can rely on these poor people of color to vote for some rich white liberal for president.
Yes, I remember the last fucking time we were promised a Democrat who would roll back the programs of the right wing. We got eight fucking years of Bill Clinton, who put almost a 100,000 more police on the streets, who presided over an ever increasing prison system, who said little about the racist death penalty, and who couldn't even be bothered to pardon Leonard Peltier when Clinton left office.
> Each of the above domestic policies and many, many more covertly
> systemize defacto segregation, discrimination, and institutionalize
> racism, building into the fabric of daily life a `separate'
> theoretically `equal' set of systems, one for middle class white, one
> for others, where any economic privilege operates to magnify the
> separation by denigrating the public sector, privilaging the private
> sector, so as to join an economic class privilage to an already
> existing race or color line---however fuzzy that line might be at the
> moment.
And these racist policies are supported by both parties.
> This isn't much of a plan, but political education on the issues is
> about the only way I can think of to expose this white reactionary
> backlash for what it is. By that I mean argue about the fairness or
> lack of it and the resulting impacts on people, often along economic
> lines, and more often on race and ethnicity. Sure the white working
> class may or may not care or change their mind, but at least lay out
> the public policy implications and let them make their decisions on
> some honest appraisal of conditions, rather than deepen the code
> pretexts and pretend these sorts of policies are about something else.
>
> Public education, public health, criminal justice are key focal points
> and battle grounds where race first and then economic class are almost
> always the subtext and almost always conjoined.
My feeling is that the only way to fight the right is to expose their ties to the rich and and simultaneously highlight the ways that the liberals conspire with the conservatives to screw working people over.
Chuck0