This week I will be posting the 2nd episode in Season 2.5 of the podcast series. I also have some posts related to the Right-wing media, gun violence, and propaganda that are a follow-up to the essay here (which thanks to you and other readers is doing well on Facebook with 3k shares so far). I am also scheduled for Ring of Fire Radio this weekend where I will talking about the Right-wing noise machine and its relationship to the recent Las Vegas white supremacist shooting.
In addition, and if you have not read Cord Jefferson's "The Racism Beat", I do urge you to do so.
I will be sharing some thoughts on Jefferson's very real truth-telling about how "the race beat" can be exhausting and trying to one's mental health and well-being.
We are a bit short of last year's fundraising amount--I would guesstimate the difference is 20%. It would be great to close that gap so that I can pull back in the begging bowl and stop doing the money dance in the next few days.
Once more, and again, your kindness and generosity is appreciated.
13 comments:
Glad you are raising money to support the blog. Now, to something completely different. MSNBC announced that the #2 in House, Eric Cantor, was beaten by a Tea Party candidate who ran hard on opposing "illegals" and "amnesty." Not one MSNBC commentator--Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Ari Melber, or Steve Kornacki--could mention the obvious: the triumph of white supremacy in the Tea Party movement and now the Republican Party. Sure, they talked about the issues, but not the underlying structure of what "illegals" and "amnesty" is all about. I'm sure you'll be delving into that.
Doing some editing here for the podcast series and saw that news flash. They are being eaten alive by their own monsters. You read my mind. Why do you think the are afraid to comment on the obvious?
thanks for linking to the piece by Cord Jefferson, it came across my radar a couple times today, but I didn't bother to read it.
I suppose he's thinking of the next step. Regardless of how he felt about writing about the Sheriff in New Hampshire, something more powerful came out of it.
Tea Partier Dave Brat says "I want to scale down the size of the govt in DC and give the power back to the states"
Smells like southern fried triple talk ie; Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dave-brat-meet-candidate-beat-eric-cantor/story?id=24081628
The problem Maddow, Hayes, et. al. have is that the GOP believes that since they don't condone slavery and the KKK (officially), they aren't racists (and they truly believe that shit). What's more, a significant minority of the Democratic Party also believes this is pretty close to the bar for being a racist. So if Maddow asks Mr. GOP Strategist, "Did Cantor's religion have anything to do with his loss?" "No Rachael, I don't think so." "Mrs. DNC Strategist?" "Well, I think we have to tread carefully on those waters. There are plenty of other reasons for Cantor's constituents to be disenchanted, and look, he did represent the district for seven terms - so probably not." The pundit gets to sound reasonable and fair-minded. Ugly confrontation averted.
As you've excellently documented, the conversation needs to change about what it means to be a racist. My nephew is a libertarian. His significant other is black. Me: "Your philosophy advocates for racist outcomes. Those who have benefited from racial disparity for centuries get to keep what they have and will always have more power. Libertarianism rigs the game in their favor - white people's favor. You are advocating for inherently racist policy." Him: "You're crazy." I'm hopeful I can connect the dots for him. Maybe if they have kids he'll wake the hell up.
Any reference to white supremacy is conspicuously absent from the neo-liberal vernacular. Liberals are no less elitist than their conservative counterparts. They have a stake in white supremacy in that it functions to preserve the status quo, the rigid class structure. This is not to condemn liberalism. Its all we've got absent a viable left. But the persistent vacuum on the left allows conservatism to morph into all manner of carnival mirror image.
Cord Jefferson sounds like Johnathan Chait and Bill Cosby when they say lets not talk about racism. Exposing racism is not negative, self censoring is. Whitewashing is routine in journalism and it amounts to ignoring the obvious. Happy talk often covers up a multitude of sins. As long as folks are victimized by racism it must be acknowledged.
Unlike the bumbling Eric Cantor, Dave Brat is an articulate anti-intellectual intellectual like Ted Cruz, Greg Abbot, and Dan Patrick. After early missteps TP is fielding its deep bench of sophisticated fascist irrationalists. Liberals have yet to show a pulse.
I don't think he is saying not to talk about it. He is pointing out how exhausting it is to have to write about such matters all the time. I have some thoughts in a longer post later today/tomorrow.
You are correct about Libertarianism. Libertarianism uses as its unit of analysis the isolated, atomic, rational, know-all, individual in the context of a sterile metaphysical experiment. But, to apply Libertarianism to the real world is to violate every aspect of their economic theory. In the real world, one must start with power differentials between groups (however defined) and asymmetric information. If you start in the real world where African Americans have been disenfranchised, disadvantaged, persistently subjected to legal deprivations, and violent subjugation, Libertarianism has no answer to the question, So what is to be done? As Coates argued forcefully and correctly, even excluding the period of slavery, since Jim and Jane Crow and Judge Lynch, the entire power structures of the United States have been aligned against black people. There is no Libertarian theory that can cope with those historical facts.
The signal crisis of the epoch is the displacement of liberalism by libertarianism.
Ron and Rand Paul are aggressive racists.
Indeed The TP has regrouped and launched their own version of "Revenge of the Sith" , I'm still trying to figure out who is playing the Senator Palpatine/Darth Sidious role.
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