David Weigel is a smart commentator, but he really doesn’t get it when it comes to racism in the Republican Party. I wrote about this before, Dave Weigel’s Racist Apologetics. And I’ve written about it in a more general sense, Why My Father Watches Fox News. The fact that Republicans get behind people like Allen West and Herman Cain is because they are black men who ask nothing of the party. They are iconoclasts who are willing to pretend that racism is a thing of the past. A black conservative who was upfront about racism would be marginalized. Just look at Colin Powell, who probably couldn’t win a Republican primary in a single state of the union.

This seems to be a foreign concept to Weigel who wrote today, What Conservatives Mean When They Talk About “Race-Baiting” in Mississippi. He’s right in a certain way: Mississippi conservatives don’t hate all blacks, just the ones who make the slightest demands on their fantasy world where racism was abolished 9 April 1865. I really do mean to go back that far, because it is clear that the conservative movement now thinks the civil rights laws of the 1960s were a form of tyranny. That is, after all, what was behind John Roberts’ decision to gut the Voting Rights Act: to pretend that racism is that thing that used to occur in the United States.

If Mississippi conservatives were really concerned about fairness and not just stopping blacks from voting, they would have changed their voting system. Instead of requiring voter identification, they would have required partisan primaries. Instead, they did the opposite. And their most conservative voters then freaked out when the blacks who they had intended to stop from voting at all went ahead and voted for a Republican that they didn’t like. I’m sorry, but this is racism pure and simple.

This is how Weigel sums up the complaints of the Mississippi Republicans, “The ‘racist’ party is the one that wins black votes by promising largesse, and the colorblind party aims to win them by talking free markets and social values.” This in itself is a racist view of the situation. What, after all, was Medicare Part D, but a giveaway to a Republican coalition? What was the attempt to privatize Social Security, but a giveaway to a Republican coalition? What was the recent farm bill, but a giveaway to a Republican coalition and an attack on a Democratic coalition? The whole idea that it is just blacks who are won over by a party’s pandering is racist. And add to that, the idea that rich people vote for the Republican Party because of their embrace of “free markets (!) and social values,” and you have a frighteningly racist statement.

I don’t know how long Weigel can go on making excuses for the clearly racist attitudes on the party of conservatives. And what’s more, I don’t know why he does it. There is no indication that Weigel harbors any more racist attitudes than we all do. And he is certainly smart enough to know what he’s doing. Does he think that he needs to be the one to always be out in front making the best case for the Republican Party’s racist language and policies? Or does he have a real blind spot where he can’t see that even his best case apologia for conservative racism is itself racist.

Let me make it easy for Weigel. The Mississippi conservatives are complaining because they know there are not that many black makers, so it must have been all those black takers who won the election for Thad Cochran. That’s the blunt way of putting, “The ‘racist’ party is the one that wins black votes by promising largesse, and the colorblind party aims to win them by talking free markets and social values.” I really want to know if Weigel would still claim that the conservatives making that argument aren’t really racists.

You probably know the idea of “creative destruction.” Basically, it means that smart people come into a poorly performing company. They get rid of the dead wood—they fire people. Then the company’s prices go down so that consumers have money they can spend on other things, increasing demand elsewhere. Then the fired people and even more can be better employed doing something else. The idea is that it may be disruptive, but in the long run, everyone is better off.

I have always had a problem with this idea. The reason is that prices do not reflect costs. Let’s suppose that I manufacture chairs and they cost me $5 each to make. I’m not going to sell them for $10 because that’s a reasonable markup. If I can get people to pay $100 for them, I’ll sell them for that price. On the other hand, if people will only pay $2 for the chairs, I will sell my existing inventory at that price and discontinue the line. So the only way that costs matters to me is if I’m not making enough. Otherwise, if people want to pay a million bucks for my $5 chair, that’s just fine.

Those of you who know a little economics will say, “Yeah, but you aren’t the only person who makes chairs!” And this is right. In the perfect markets of Chicago School models, other producers will come in and beat down my price. We will go back and forth until we get a price that is some reflection of the cost of bring the product to market. But such truly free markets are almost nonexistent. Let’s look at the way things normally work.

There are a bunch of little drug stores and they employ a whole bunch of people. A Walmart comes into town and puts them all out of business for both good (Walmart really has perfected the supply chain) and bad (Walmart illegally suppresses unions and can provide lost leaders) reasons. So there is lots of disruption but consumers really do get better prices. But the extra savings in the community is not equal to the loss wages. So creative destruction creates profits for the already rich and destroys the incomes of the community.

I was thinking about this after reading a great interview at Truthout between Jason Hickel and Alnoor Ladha, Are Economic Growth and Social Justice Incompatible? I recommend reading the whole thing, because it discusses the way the economy actually works and not the myths that we are constantly told. Take this frightening bit of information from Hickel:

That’s right boys and girls. In the mind of my father’s generation, “capitalism” was the same as “democracy” and “freedom.” But the oligarchs want to create a new kind of system. Feudalism became capitalism, but it seems very much like we are headed to what I call neo-feudalism.

What’s most upsetting about all this is that it has always been a farce. There have never been “free” markets. The system has always been geared to maintain the status quo. On the whole, the rich are not rich because they are smarter or more knowledgeable or harder working. They are rich because they are rich. They are rich because their parents were rich or simply because they were lucky. Being brilliant brings many rewards, but great wealth is not usually one of them. Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds truly revolutionized computing, but it was the subgeniuses Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who became billionaires.

So unless we stand up and do something about it, we will end up not only serfs, but serfs who are beholden to mediocrities. Kind of like we are now, but worse.

Image taken from The Amendment Gazette, Feudalism Then and Now.

There’s been something on my mind from a month and a half ago, and I thought I would address it. I have, what I think is a very friendly relationship with The Q-Filmcast guys. But when they did an episode of Dr Strangelove, there was a little unpleasantness—both on their blog and on Twitter. I was unhappy that they simply avoided the political content of the film. And as is my way, I am not one to use the soft sell. I wrote, “It amazes me that any of you could miss the fact that the same radical right-wing John Birch Society has come back in a big way within the Tea Party.” That was specifically in reference to how the film lampoons water fluoridation as a communist conspiracy.

They wrote back that they wanted to stay away from politics and focus on character and so on. If that’s the case, I can only wonder why they picked the film. Really. If they decided to watch Birth of a Nation, would they focus on Lillian Gish’s acting and avoid its explicit racism and Klan apologia? I don’t think so. My point is not to put these fine guys down, but just to point out that politics is politics. It is no longer acceptable to publicly claim that the Klan was just created to protect the purity of southern white woman. But we are (sadly) still arguing about American empire. And even more pointedly we still have people like Brigadier General Jack Ripper (the Fluoridation guy who starts the nuclear war). All you have to do is listen to Lieutenant Colonel Allen West (retired).

So to take no position on these matters is very much to take a position. One can’t, for example, be agnostic on the issue of torture. Being agnostic is being for it. But what really bothered me about the whole interaction was that facile disregard of my position. And then there was this tweet, “I go to the cinema to get away from socialists, or at least escape the endless political nonsense that’s tearing us apart.” They go to the cinema to get away from socialists? Really?! Because all you have to do to get away from socialists in America is to step outside your house, visit almost any website, watch any television program, or talk to anyone. And then, after implicitly vilifying socialists as a kind of pox on society, they provide an appeal to understanding. Apparently, the political nonsense that’s tearing us apart is that there are socialists who disagree with them.

This, I’m afraid is what is behind the “can’t we all just get along” chorus. It is really just a sneaky way of saying, “Shut up and get lost!” But I would much rather get the latter treatment. As regular readers know, I talk to a lot of conservatives and I find there is a lot of crossover in our beliefs. At least, there is a lot of crossover until Fox News and hate radio start telling them what all good conservatives ought to think. But if someone doesn’t want to discuss politics, that’s fine. But don’t pretend that you’re above it when my opinions offend you. All it really means is that your opinions either go along with the perspective of the nightly news, or you only listen to news sources that reinforce your prejudices. (Actually, that’s the same.)

To give you an example of what I’m talking about, the same guys who complained about my political nonsense that was “tearing us apart” tweeted out this image for Independence Day:

And it went along with the text, “1st rule of America… No tyranny.” Now there is so much wrong here it makes me weep. I hate that it turns Washington into a guy in a Tareyton Cigarettes ad. I hate the depiction of the founding fathers as though they were toughs rather than the Enlightenment thinkers that they were. I hate that of all pictures to post on Independence Day, this is the one they chose. But most of all, I hate the caption. That’s the first rule of America? No tyranny? Well, I’m against tyranny, but the tyranny that the Declaration of Independence refers to is nothing compared to the tyranny that was suffered by the African slaves held by the white ruling elite. And the man pushing hardest against this English tyranny (John Adams) was eager to set up his own tyranny against the lower classes in the new country. And what about Gerald Horne’s contention that many of the delegates were not interested in tyranny but the thought that England was soon going to outlaw slavery in its colonies? But none of this matters. These are arguments that we could have.

But promoting a slogan like “First rule of America… No tyranny” shows that the filmcast guys do have a political ax to grind. If you had asked me what the first thing that the Declaration of Independence brings to mind, I would have said, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I just don’t see the 1765 Stamp Act as the definition of tyranny. But again, that’s an argument that we can have. But we can’t have it when people who clearly disagree with you pretend to be disinterested.

So does Dr Strangelove work today as an indictment of the Tea Party? Most certainly. Does it lampoon people who think that international relations are about how hard various leaders can beat their chests? You bet. And is it scornful of the idea that we live in anything like a tyranny today? Absolutely.

Afterword

The only founding father I have a great deal of respect for is Thomas Paine who has largely been written out of our history books, other than noting the importance of Common Sense. What is not widely known is that his 1797 pamphlet Agrarian Justice called for property and estate taxes to pay for old age pensions. Sound familiar? Sound like an idea that was almost a century and a half before its time? Sound like an idea that conservatives today want to destroy? (Actually, it would already be destroyed, it if weren’t funded by a ridiculously regressive payroll tax.) It has also been suggested that the reason Paine was pushed to the side by the big founding fathers was his abhorrence of slavery. It’s interesting that all the founding fathers in that picture were slave owners. What a joke political discourse has become in this country.

Jonathan Bernstein and Jonathan Chait have had a little fight. Bernstein started it by writing, Barack Obama Is a Generic Brand. Basically, all he’s saying is this, “[A]lmost everything about Obama’s presidency can be explained by saying he’s a Democratic president.” In other words, Obama has acted the way any Democratic president would have acted. Bernstein gives him credit for perhaps being a better manager and even (although I think it’s laughable) a better negotiator. But otherwise, he’s a Democratic president—full stop.

I would go further. I would say that Barack Obama is a generic New Democrat. His brilliant idea coming into office was that if he offered the Republicans policies that they claimed to support, they would support those policies. For example, Obama offered the Republicans the exact same healthcare law that John McCain campaigned on. But the Republicans were never going to allow a Democrat—a black Democrat—to usher in a new era of politics where the two parties worked together on things they could agree on. So I think the difference between a Hillary Clinton administration and an Obama administration is only that she wouldn’t have been so naive. In terms of policy, Bernstein is right: no difference.

But Chait begs to differ, How Barack Obama Saved the Obama Administration. He says that there are two issues on which Obama really stuck his neck out. The first is the EPA regulation of existing power plants. And as proof that this was a gutsy move that most Democratic presidents wouldn’t have done, he notes that some pundits said he wouldn’t do it. Well, the fact that Matt Yglesias laid out the fact that it could be done and then covered himself from being criticized for being naive by saying that Obama wouldn’t do it, doesn’t mean very much. I’m sure that what actually happened was that Obama asked his advisers, “What can we do about global warming?” They mentioned coal-fired power plants and he said yes. Unless Chait’s memory is getting a little weak, a lot of people have been talking about this for years.

The second issue was pushing forward with Obamacare after Ted Kennedy died and it looked like the whole thing was going to fall apart. This one is hilarious. Chait wrote, “In late August of 2009… Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel wanted to pull the plug on comprehensive reform, but Obama overruled them.” Oh my! The Republican who claims to be a Democrat Rahm Emanuel wanted to pull back and Obama overruled him?! Maybe Chait is right, but not in the way he thinks. Your average Democrat wouldn’t have allowed Rahm Emanuel anywhere near his inner circle. Remember: he’s the guy who said that we liberals were “fucking retarded.”

I think it is more likely that Obama pushed ahead with the ACA because by that time he had figured out what a less naive president would have known all along: even if he dropped the ACA and gone with some minor healthcare reform, the Republicans would have killed it too. It doesn’t matter how minor it was, just as with the ACA, there would have been not a single Republican in Congress willing to vote for it.

I have no problem with Obama. He’s about as good a president as we are likely to get as long as half the country doesn’t vote. But there is nothing especially great about him either. He’s certainly not bold. If it weren’t for Joe Biden shooting his mouth off, Obama still would be against same sex marriage. He is an entirely typical New Democrat. That’s what we got last time and that’s probably what we’ll get next time. And there’s nothing especially terrible about that. But don’t let’s think that Obama stands out in terms of his leadership.

Martin Longman brought my attention to the fact that, Opie and Anthony Are No More. Apparently, for almost twenty years, there has been this thing called, The Opie and Anthony Show. It’s one of those shock jock shows that young men of limited intelligence think is super keen. I don’t mean to paint with too broad a brush, but Howard Stern is generally considered the best there is and I find his show to only be of reasonable quality with many aspects that don’t much appeal to me. I figure that Opie and Anthony are on the lower end of the maturity scale, but I really don’t know.

Well, it seems this last week, Anthony Cumia was out in New York City trying to take some pictures. A black woman happened to be in one of his pictures. She objected, Cumia escalated the situation and before long things got totally out of hand. According to Cumia, the woman “punched” him several times, but without minimizing it, I suspect it was what I would call a hit or a slap. And when I’m out in public and I call a woman the n-word and the c-word, I don’t think I’m in much of a position to complain if she knees me in the groin. Apparently, then some black guys came to the defense of the woman. But he doesn’t claim that they touched him and Cumia never went to the police.

Instead, he did what any privileged white man would do: he went on Twitter to vent to his 162,000 followers. And vent he did. No one tweet is a total barn burner. He never uses the n-word (but his followers do), but he does use the c-word. He talks about “those people” and how he was attacked because he was white and how they are savages and it’s a jungle. But his whole interaction was with one black woman. And the black men who came to her defense, probably did it because all they heard was him yelling expletives at her. Regardless, as we know (though it isn’t always right), in an altercation, people will go to the defense of the woman.

But let’s assume that it was a group of ten blacks and Mr Cumia was unfairly wronged by them. And let’s assume that he didn’t go on Twitter and say a bunch of racist and misogynistic things. His takeaway from the incident is the fundamental racist problem in the United States. If the same thing had happened with a group of white people, Cumia would likely be just as mad. But he wouldn’t generalize about it. It wouldn’t be “those people” in the general sense; it would have been “those ten people” who abused him. Because in modern America, white isn’t a race. It’s just the default. All other races are defined by how they deviate from white.

Now I know that Cumia will say that he has nothing against blacks and women. And in fact, right now, his latest tweet [Since deleted. -FM] is of him smiling with his arm around a black man. That’s not it. That’s not how racism works in the “I make $3 million per year crowd.” The problem is thinking that if one person who we’ve arbitrarily placed in some “race” (an artificial construct, but a useful one) does something we like or don’t like, it must say something about the entire race.

My favorite example is a racist driver. A black guy cuts him off in traffic. The guy thinks, “That’s totally typical! That’s what blacks are always doing!” If a white guy does the same thing, he thinks, “What a jerk!” And that’s the end of it. But if a black guy does something nice like allow him to merge into heavy traffic, the guy thinks, “Well, that’s unusual.” Nothing changes, of course. The nice black guy is just the exception that proves the rule. That is racism in America: white people are individuals whose actions only reflect on them; black people are representatives of an entire class.

The terrible thing is that I doubt seriously that Cumia is any more racist than any of us. In my life, I fight gut reactions (good and bad) all the time. But I am at an advantage of understanding somewhat how it works. I don’t delude myself into thinking that just because I would never consciously treat a black man differently that I don’t suffer from racist impulses. I am afraid that it is unlikely that Cumia will ever understand this, especially since so many of his fans seem to be egging him on in the opposite direction.

[In checking the broken Twitter link, I noticed that Cumia now has over twice as many followers as he did at the time of this article. Racism is a good career move in America. -FM]