Me Love You Long Time, Me So Horny: More than Dog Whistles, Republican Pete Hoekstra Embraces the Yellow Peril Strategy

Getting my feet back under me after the Superbowl.

It seems that at the nadir of the American Empire, the Tea Party GOP is more than desperate. They are using their racial air raid sirens to key in on every fear that white conservatives may possess--this is a good strategy as research suggests that conservatives do in fact have larger fear centers in their brains, and are more prone to hold racist attitudes and have low IQ's.

But, from Gingrich's janitor and lazy black people food stamp president meme, to Santorum's black parasites, to Ron Paul's "giant negroes," the Republican Party is going off of the deep end.

Michigan Senate Republican candidate Pete Hoekstra's yellow peril ad is more than failed satire. It is piss poor reasoning and raggedy argumentation. I am very concerned about the rise of China. I am doubly concerned about how the American people sold themselves out for boatloads of cheap crap from abroad. But, there are better and smarter ways to make such claims, and to develop long-term, intelligent, and nuanced policies to prepare the country for the de facto emergence of China's global power.

In keeping with the slave ship anti-Obama ad, Republicans who are lower on the ticket have apparently learned to dig deep in that old bucket of white racial resentment and anxiety to win voters. If the top tier candidates are wallowing in this mess, it just becomes a prototype for others to replicate. It becomes a political version of Moneyball, or the PSA where the kid learns to use drugs or smoke by watching his parents.

"I learned it by watching you!" becomes a catch-all phrase to legitimate toxic behavior in the public and political spheres.

In all, conservatives are in a state of existential angst. A black man happens to be President of the United States, and America is a falling power and not a rising one. Moreover, as cultivated by the Right-wing echo chamber, black and brown people are oppressing white folks. Consequently, many white conservative populists are at a total loss. A few decades ago black people stopped getting off of the sidewalk when whites approached; it is a slippery slope as such changes in social convention have led to all sorts of madness and upset for the White Soul.

Who knows where this will lead us? Next thing we know, perhaps the nativists and know nothings in the Tea Party GOP will be recycling Madison Grant's racist screeds and stripping Jews, Poles, Italians, and others of their recently earned full Whiteness. Perhaps the Tea Party will form patrols to raid opium dens and save white women from slavery at the hands of nefarious, evil, Fu Manchu Asians?

In the 2012 campaign season the Republicans are still fighting the Vietnam War; during the Age of Obama it would seem that the white racial frame is indeed back to the future.

So sad.