Staying Angry
BY MICHAEL MANVILLE
POLITICS | 8.25.2004
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=304
1. The "Southern Strategy" and the Urban/Rural Divide
Barry Goldwater was the first to give it a whirl, but it was
Richard Nixon who really made it work. In retrospect, it was
simple enough: emphasize the cultural differences between the
North and South, use the rhetoric of "states' rights" to veil an
ugly appeal to race prejudice, and watch the former Confederacy
defect to the Grand Old Party. This was in 1968, which political
scientists now call a "re-aligning" year, because its
presidential campaign brought the South into the Republican fold,
and showed Abraham Lincoln's legacy the door. The South has
stayed Republican ever since, and the Republican Party--for all
its contempt for "class warfare"--has stayed afloat through
polarization and divisiveness.
When Ronald Reagan kicked off his general election campaign in
1980, he did so by travelling to Philadelphia, Mississippi--site
of the brutal murder of three civil rights workers in the
1960s--and giving a speech in which he praised states' rights.
Some critics of Reagan see this as a sign of his racism, a charge
that I think is both inaccurate and unfair. I don't think Reagan
was racist, and I know he was a sincere believer in the more
benign definition of states' rights, which is the idea of a
weaker federal government and increased local control. But I also
think that Reagan and his handlers were well aware of the
symbolism in his speech and its location, and I think they were
willing to let the ambiguity of his meaning play on the fears and
prejudices of his audience. In that, we have a fine example of
the southern strategy.
Today, fortunately, most of the more naked appeals to race
prejudice are gone* (especially since Jesse Helms retired--after
graciously accepting the thanks of a woman, on Larry King Live,
who called to commend him for all he'd done to "help keep down
the niggers"). But race-baiting has been replaced by an equally
effective strategy of cultural warfare. Now Republicans emphasize
the "differences" between urban and rural America. The rural
residents are Good Country People who believe in God, Nation,
Hard Work and NASCAR, while the urbanites are latte-swilling
members of a Jewish/communist/homosexual/hate-America conspiracy.
You can find this nonsense in the infantile and sociologically
incompetent writings of David Brooks; in the deranged ravings of
Ann Coulter (who not only "loves Kansas City" but wishes that
Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times headuarters
instead of the Oklahoma Federal Building); and in the cheesy
"family values" speeches of countless conservatives.
What the folk of Red America who buy into this don't realize is
that they've been given a bait-and-switch. The Bible is not
coming back to school. Abortion is not going away. Affirmative
action will not be permanently undone. And despite the railing of
Senator Rick Santorum, gays, sooner or later, will be able to get
married (and the sky will not fall when that happens). In the
meantime, the Republicans will yell, and scream, and quietly cut
the taxes of the decadent wealthy urbanites they've convinced
Middle America to hate.
* Republican race-baiting is not altogether extinct. In 2000,
Bush loyalists in South Carolina started a whispering campaign
against John McCain, suggesting that McCain had fathered an
illegitimate daughter with a black prostitute. The "evidence" for
this slander was McCain's daughter Bridget, whom the Senator and
his wife had adopted from a Bangladeshi orphanage. Eleven years
old at the time of the 2000 campaign, Bridget's dark skin,
visible as she waved from stages with the rest of her family at
events across South Carolina, became the stimulus for a host of
vile lies. In the days before the primary Bush supporters
push-polled likely Republican voters, asking if McCain's black
baby would influence their vote. If that isn't gutter politics,
nothing is.
2. The Tax Cut
It's because the surplus is too big! No, it's because there is no
surplus, and we need to stimulate the economy! No, it's because
terrorists have attacked and we need to restore confidence! No,
it's because it cures acne and impotence!
Rarely has one law had so many justifications, none of them true.
Almost every competent and honest economist that has looked at
the Bush tax cut has come to the conclusion that it is a way to
move a massive amount of wealth to the very rich from everyone
else. Ronald Reagan did the same thing, but he at least had the
decency to be honest about it. This current crop of Republicans
can't quite bring themselves to match his candor. The tax cut, we
are told, is for "working Americans." Getting rid of the "death
tax" will "save family farms."
Let's cut through the *****: the tax cut was about people
already drowning in money getting a whole lot more of it. When
House Speaker Dennis Hastert held a press conference in support
of it, he had to get lobbyists to dress up in hard hats to create
a "working class" audience. (A memo about the rally from the
National Manufacturer's Association read: "the Speaker's office
was very clear in saying that they do not need people in suits.
If people want to participate -- AND WE DO NEED BODIES -- they
must be DRESSED DOWN, appear to be REAL WORKER types, etc.") As
for the "death" tax: no one has ever lost a family farm because
of the estate tax. Never ever. Can I be clearer about this? The
people who say otherwise are liars.
The ideological foundation of the tax cut lies in supply-side
economics, the charlatan subdiscipline of economics that casts
aside the free market and chooses instead to believe in the free
lunch. Supply-siders argue that if you cut taxes enough,
investment will rise and the government will still have plenty of
revenue to function--that you will, in other words, get something
for nothing. There is no reason not to believe in supply-side
economics; the only two places it fails are in theory and in
practice. Yet despite its inconsistency with all other economic
logic and its failure of every empirical test, supply-side lives
on. Its most ardent proponent remains Jude Wanniski, the former
editorial writer of the Wall Street Journal who laid out its
logic in a book he modestly titled The Way the World Works.
Wanniski has a talent for avoiding those advances in economic
theory (read: all of them) that undercut his own ideas. He still
believes, for instance, that gold is the only valid measure of
wealth. This leads him in turn to other, weirder beliefs.
Consider a juvenile tirade he launched against Paul Krugman,
which ended when he summed up America's problems as follows: "The
poor have become fat and happy, the rich impoverished. This is
why we are in the fix we are in. Everyone wants to be poor,
because it has so many more advantages!"
Would you buy an economic policy from that man? The White House
has. Actually, supply-side is less an economic policy than it is
a religion, where the answer is always the same regardless of the
question. Cut taxes. If the surplus is too high or too low, if
job performance is weak or strong, cut taxes. Like snake oil from
the back of the wagon, a tax cut is the tonic the nation
requires. We have the cure, just name your disease. "Nothing is
more important in a time of war," Tom Delay said after 9/11,
"than cutting taxes." Have we ever cut taxes during a time of
war? No. Does the strategy seem to be working out well?
Absolutely not. But again--we are dealing here with children, and
childhood is the kingdom where facts can be pushed aside, where
temper tantrums can replace rational thought, and where things
are just because we want them to be.
3. ***** Cheney
I'm not even sure I can be serious about this one. Originally
sold as the steady hand in a team that would "restore dignity and
honor to the White House" (remember that promise?), Cheney has
instead become a leering caricature of himself, a Strangelovian
zombie-warrior who transitions seamlessly between his roles as
President, dark puppet master, minion of Satan, and dour old
white guy. His heart beats once every seven minutes, he's spent
three of the last four years in an undisclosed location, and when
he emerges he makes statements that defy all logic and empirical
evidence. ***** Cheney thinks deficits don't matter; ***** Cheney
says conservation has no role in public policy; ***** Cheney sees
nothing wrong with letting people from Enron write our national
energy strategy; ***** Cheney is the last person on earth who
thinks the Iraqis attacked us on 9/11. A walking symbol of war
profiteering and corporate malfeasance, he remains bound up with
Halliburton, a company guilty of voluminous "accounting
irregularities" while he was its CEO. Halliburton landed all
manner of lucrative contracts as a result of the Iraq war and
then--not satisfied with regular government largesse--proceeded
to defraud the military at seemingly every opportunity.
No portrait of Cheney would be complete without mention of his
firebreathing wife, a shrewish culture warrior determined that
U.S. students should learn nothing more controversial than
"America rocks!" and convinced that college exists to churn out
robotic adherents to her own jingoistic brand of patriotism. In
the aftermath of 9/11, her American Council of Trustees and
Alumni released a strange report saying that the "weak link in
the war on terrorism" was the nation's professors (as opposed to,
say, its utterly incompetent intelligence agencies). The report
documented 117 instances of "unpatriotic" rhetoric from our
colleges; examples include a professor who said "ignorance breeds
hate", and another who said Osama bin Laden should be tried for
crimes against humanity in an international court. Subversion!
Insubordination! Off with their heads! I think the Cheneys
should relocate immediately to Iraq, where he can drive a truck
for Halliburton and she can craft their new educational curriculum.
TO BE CONTINUED
--
Warm Regards,
Raven Cecil
"Tribal sovereignty means that; it’s sovereign. I mean,
you're a — you've been given sovereignty, and you're
viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship
between the federal government and tribes is one between
sovereign entities." - George W. Bush
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you
think it means." - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual
profit without individual responsibility." - Ambrose Bierce
The Modern Newspeak Dictionary:
http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/
"It's Double-Plus-Good!"
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