The strategy of fear and loathing

Last night (10/19/2010), Rachel Maddow was discussing the “southern strategy,” discovered by the Republican Party in the process of losing the 1964 presidential election. Barry Goldwater lost everywhere but in the south, which had until then been heavily democrat; this time around, Lyndon Johnson handily took everything else. The reason Goldwater got those votes was because of his stance against the Civil Rights Act. Realizing this led to the southern strategy: play on white folks’ racism. Nixon ran with this and won; as his chief political analyst told the New York Times:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that… but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are.

This wasn’t something that was leaked, this was plainly stated to the most prominent newspaper in the country by Nixon’s official right hand man. It would be embarrassing to come out and say this in public today, to admit to the party’s and white electorate’s general racism, but as Maddow conveyed during her segment, endless Republican/Tea Party candidates are using the southern strategy today, issuing and/or insinuating racist slurs and rhetoric to a surreal degree (my word for the GOP of the last few years has been surreal, when I’m being polite). And yet, they’re not being called on it as they have in the past. Previously, such comments could end a politican’s career, or at least an election; these days, fouls are being allowed to slide. The refs are largely missing, they being the news media,* pundits, and the candidates’ peers and rivals (thankfully, my hero Rachel and others on MSNBC are at least pointing these things out in the realm of TV news… if anyone knows of others on air that are bothering to raise an eyebrow, please let me know, since I don’t watch much TV news beyond MSNBC these days).

And so Rachel discussed the boldness and proliferation of the southern strategy in practice today with her junior black correspondent Prof. Melissa Harris-Perry (the latter part of that hyphenation is new: congratulations!), who I also love to watch (I can say this about most of Rachel’s contributors). In their chat they did touch on the strategy not being restricted to race - though it is being used to a far greater degree than in the last couple of decades on account of there being a black man in the white house - but also re: the gay community. And, important to note, that it can’t fairly be called the “southern” strategy because it’s not just effective in the south.

They didn’t mention religion in their (too brief**) talk, but if we want to see the strategy for what it is, we should include religious prejudice as well. And there’s the key word: prejudice. Put most plainly, it’s a strategy of playing on the prejudice against non-whites, non-heterosexuals, and non-Christians. Feel free to mention a non-x if I’ve missed one; it’s tempting to add non-male, though that angle is relatively subtle (not like the candidate of the same name… HAW HAW HAW!). I do see the anti-choice crowd (they’re typically called pro-life, but that sounds more “pure” than warranted) as treating women as inferior; but I connect this stance with religion more than gender, though it affects the entire gender, regardless of an individual woman’s religion. Clearly women being regarded and treated as the secondary gender is a part of the culture, but it’s not used as an overt part of their political strategies.

And they’re right, the strategy of playing on racism isn’t just a southern thing, it’s effective everywhere that there’s racists, and that’s everywhere. It’s generally more important in places where there are more hardcore clusters of racists, especially in a national (presidential) election; running a race-baiting ad in my state of Massachusetts, for instance, will likely (I hope) lose you more votes than gain them. But the strategy plays well in the fly-over states, basically, and while I know that’s a generalization, it’s generally true. (This gets my mind chugging along on my usual train of thought about the need for the weakening of the federal government, and the creation of regional, self-governing provinces… basically the break-up of the United States, but without breaking the union entirely, etc. I once even drew up a map of my desired re-configuration!)

As I said, the strategy is really not just about race, but about prejudice, which is about close-mindedness, fear, and hate. If we want a new name for it, I’d call it the strategy of fear and loathing, or the white power strategy (that term really does speak about more than just racism, but that’s another discussion). And the way to counter it is for people to call it for what it is, using specific evidence (which is always readily available via recordings), and making sure people know why these politicians (and others) are using it and just how despicable it is. I love that Rachel Maddow does this (as well as others in MSNBC, such as Olbermann and Lawrence O’Donnell with his new show Last Word), but the ones that need to do it the most are these vile candidates’ opponents. They’ve got to get some frakkin’ balls and stand up against this prejudice, and show these villains for what they are. They’re doing the public a disservice by letting everything just fly, and supposedly, they’re running for office in order to serve the public (ha! well, that was the original intent of our government, at least… corporatocracy is, again, another discussion entirely).

I’ve never accepted any of the reasons given for politicans’ not offering hardcore counterpoints to unjust comments constantly vomited up by the right, whether they be prejudiced statements or insinutations, or outright lies, about their opponents, or own actions, etc. A blatant and important example of this, for me, was when our state’s senatorial dullard – John Kerry – utterly failed to respond to the lies about his experiences in Viet Nam. The opposition gave him golden ammo - to paint himself as a decorated war veteran being attacked and smeared by despicable sellouts – and his official reason for failing to respond to the campaign was that it was beneath him. You can’t trust that the electorate is on the high road, and that the public isn’t gullible and easily herded, whether it be by lies repeated as mantras, or by fear-mongering prophecies of doom brought about by Mexicans crossing the border and the armed forces letting gay married folk fight for the rights of our rich people to get richer at the expense of the lives of non-white people killed in countries we civilians don’t ever have to see in person (see above, re: another discussion entirely).

It’s a strategy of fear and loathing, and it should be pointed out whenever its employed, every time it’s employed, as mantra-like as the lies and venom that get repeated until they’re accepted as fact by our easily-conditioned sheep. As the old anti-homophobia slogan says, “Silence = Death,” and that one is all too literal these days. As has often been said regarding incidents when a racist comment goes unimpeded and uncountered, a lack of response grants passive approval (obviously this applies to any prejudiced statement). Fear persists via ignorance, the lack of information, and it will rule us unless we communicate information, rationality, and plain compassion. Our society is antagonistic, selfish, and competitive, when we need cooperation and generosity if we wish to thrive. I call pro-life anti-choice; they make call pro-choice anti-life; to me, the strategy of fear and loathing is anti-life. It leads us to literally destroy one another by various means, and the people using this strategy are running for office. Don’t forget to vote on November 2nd.


* Regarding media: Can people start countering right-wingnuts when they criticize the mainstream media? Or that’s the “lamestream” media, as Sarah Palin says repeatedly, with the wit of a pre-pubescent. Fox News is the most popular TV news source in America: it is the mainsteam media, and the idiot gets a paycheck from them. And anyone that thinks of the rest of the major media as being liberal has no clue regarding liberal ideas. Maddow and Olbermann are liberal, for today’s standards. But then, these terms mean less and less over time: liberal, conservative, even left and right wing, etc. They’re comparitive terms, and as the general political bodies shift and fall off the deep end of the spectrum, and as surreal ignorance sweeps over the atmosphere, everything becomes rather nonsensical. Some of Reagan’s ideas are now liberal by comparison to those of today’s Republicans/Tea Party characters. Furthermore, re: labels, when a system of government is rife with corruption, its supposed style – democractic, socialist, communist, theocratic, whatever – is less defining than the corrupt elements superceding it. I spent a college semester in Malawi (fall 1989), a country that had been relinquished by the British in the 60’s, turning the place over to democratic self-rule. I found it was ruled with an iron fist by a guy that had democratically elected himself president for life. Our country was founded as a democracy by and for the people, but our government has become a front for a corporatocracy. Corporations have been gaining the same rights as people for ages now though, so really, we can say we’re technically still holding true to the original concept. Again, I digress and ramble.


** Regarding interviews being too brief: I’d love to see more extended interviews with – well, just about anyone – on TV. Rachel Maddow has people on for as good a length of time as any, if not better, excluding shows that have the long interview as their format, such as Larry King, etc. (and amusingly, we also need to exclude the Daily Show, which on occasion has had interviews longer than the show’s actual running time). Shows that have interviews with multiple guests interrupting one another drive me insane, and short interviews are so often useless and end up leaving questions unanswered and raising new ones. Which of course the TV news folk can then make into a news cycle’s worth of analysis, spin, and speculation. Sound bites are outright detrimental to our society.

I’ve been watching more documentaries lately as a result of my increasing frustration with TV news. Speaking of Larry King, I just watched an amazing interview he did in 1974 with Jacque Fresco, regarding his invention of “sociocyberneering, a new science” (although honestly, it was Fresco that was amazing, King just wisely let him talk). The guy was so far ahead of his time it was sick, and he’s the most earnest speaker I’ve seen in ages. He was so intensely passionate about his work – the development of a utopian future - which he covered a great deal, considering the range of topics he touched on in just 40 minutes. You can get the interview via torrent (legally!) here, and you can see him far more recently in the docu Zeitgeist: Addendum (in which he discusses his Venus Project), which is far superior to the interesting but at times eye-rolling original Zeitgeist film. (Click on those links to watch the movies free/legally; for a lot more Zeitgeistery, go to The Zeitgeist Movement site. I'm looking forward to Peter Joseph's next film coming in January 2011.)

I highly recommend watching the 3-docs-in-1 Zeitgeist primarily for its first third, re: the mythology of Jesus/Osiris/Dionysus/ad infinitum; the last third is on our debt-based economy and the federal reserve, which is great material, and is then expanded upon greatly by Addendum. My eye-rolling was caused by the segment on the 9-11 conspiracy; not that I think the questions asked aren’t valid, but that I can’t honestly trust anyone’s answer to the questions when the harcore evidence that could be used to uncover a potential conspiracy has been destroyed. I don’t think we’ll ever know if there was some kind of an “inside job” or just assistance to Al Qaeda’s actions unless someone confesses and offers proof of their involvement. There is, plainly, the aspect that many people knew the attack was forthcoming and didn’t try to stop it, and for some, they didn’t want it stopped, as it was an avenue for the invitation to insanely profitable/holy war. Another discussion entirely? I digress.

Unrelated but also brilliant: I’ve just finished watching the six-part series Monty Python: Almost the Truth (Lawyer’s Cut), just recently aired during this 40th anniversary of the group’s formation. Their work still holds up beautifully; amazing. It was really interesting – and funny - to watch the surviving members recount their experiences in those few years. Graham Chapman (“Arthur, King of the Britons!”) died many years ago from cancer, and it was sad only to be able to see him in interviews given during the 80’s. All the Pythons regarded him as being the best actual actor among them, and one – I forget which, but I think it was Terry Jones – mentioned how he’d have loved to have seen him go on to act in non-comedies, imagining him playing King Lear, for instance. I can imagine that as well; the man was really amazing. If you watch his performances, specifically for him and his skill, as Arthur, as Brian, as old biddies (of course), it’s impossible not to be impressed. He could have been a great leading man in many films. And I have to say, I love that Monty Python’s default leading man just happened to be the one gay man in the group, and that he was out (eventually). It just didn’t matter; he was brilliant whether he was or not, or you knew it or not. I’ve wondered, had he lived, what impact he might have had as a role model, icon, whatever. Although I’m sure that the more homophobic of we Americans think that there’s some amount of the gay in any Brit, or especially in any “European,” and in any event, they live in some other perverse world of socialist pagan aberrance that must be repeled by our collective straight white Christian rugged individualism at all costs.