To Erickson, this is oppressive bigotry:
If the GOP plays for keeps on this, they’ll keep a party no serious person would support in the system because the signal they’ll be sending is that the party is exclusive.Look, I think Republican establishmentarians are going to get their butts kicked by (many of) the party's own voters if they go through with this plan. Also, I can't believe the establishmentarians will be able to agree on someone by convention time. They dithered last year instead of settling on a preferred candidate, and even with the doomsday clock winding down, they still can't pick a favorite.
Trump, though I do not like him, has brought swarms of people into the GOP. Putting out a “No Trump voters allowed” sign is Jim Crowing the GOP -- a convention equivalent to segregated water fountains and delegates.
But, Erick, this is not Jim Crow. This is not a dominant group denying basic human rights to a dominated group in every area of public life, with the denials enforced by the very real threat of brutal mob violence. No one's being lynched. No one (at least in the Republican primaries) is even being denied the right to vote.
This isn't even like the Democrats' refusal to seat the integrated but mostly black delegation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964. The black Mississippians represented by the MFDP were still being denied the right to register to vote; it sure seems to me that Trump voters are being allowed to vote, and to select delegates who can go to the convention and vote. I think outflanking the Trumpites at the convention will enrage them, but if it happens, it'll be because they're being outvoted. Fair and square.
But in Erickson's post we see two common conservative themes. One is that it's unfair for conservatives to lose, ever, even if the other side has more support. But we're right! they insist. Therefore, we should win! They have more voters, but we have more of the right kind of voters! Um, no. It doesn't work that way.
The other is that it's really unfair for groups other than white Christians to be able to invoke what's been done to them in the past. Why do they get the moral high ground just because they were brutalized? We want some moral high ground, too! We're jealous! White conservatives are obsessed with seizing other people's moral high ground. Abortion is "second Holocaust." Gay marriage is sending Christians to "the back of the bus."
To some extent, Erickson is trolling us with this. To some extent, he's sincere. Conservatives want to be the victims. Erickson even wants conservatives he doesn't like to be the victims. Victimization is strength.
11 comments:
Thanks a lot, Steve!
By writing about the MFDP, you've proven to them that it's not the party of Lincoln which is racist, it the DemonCRAT party! 😉
Seriously, a great post.
PS: I'd love it if the multi-chined moron either took his toys and his legion of sociopathic boobs, and went home amd didn't vote, or called for the GOP to split.
If the consequences of a GOP President weren't so dire, I'd be really enjoying this quite a bit!
I took it as Erickson trying to extract toxicity from the term 'Jim Crow', by equating it to some dubious at-worst intraparty poltical tactic. Do that could be an useful investment towards the R party's pending new feature attraction, Return Of The Son of a Re-birth Of Intolerance.
Looks like the days of the Retards turning and twisting progressive touchstones to their own benefit are drawing to conclusion. Can't keep calling the lefties NAZI when you've publically sucked Fascism's dick.
Are you sure he's human? Or in fact that any of them are human? I realize it was merely a literary device when George Orwell concluded Animal Farm with 'in the end the animals couldn't tell the difference between the pigs, and the humans (paraphrased) but seriously... look at that fat ass. Fat belly, fat cheeks, chins and jowls, fat ankles, calves and thighs, forearms, upper arms, look at those tits!!!. Look at that hairless pink skin, prone to sessions, boils and cancers, and that flat, pudgy upturned nose. And all of them hold on to their little pee-pees like maybe they're gonna' lose it. I can't even imagine what those rooms smell like at the end of the day.
I am laughing, at white "superiority".
Never forget how important martyrdom is to Christians. It's of course more prominent among Catholics, what with their official pantheon of sufferers for their faith, but Protestants of a certain kind also need to feel oppressed by the heathen to be justified as among the righteous. And if they can't find any actual oppression, well, by their God they'll gin some up.
I see it more as a form of stolen valor when wingnut Bullies and oppressors seek to co-opt the courage and sacrifices of people who suffered their bullying and overcame it. Guys like Erickson do it cynically and consciously, I believe. Ammon Bundy's recent <jailhouse ramblings regarding his commonality with Rosa Parks and MLK's Letter From a Birmingham Jail appear to me to be delusionally sincere.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/ammon-bundy-really-does-think-his-armed-occupation-is-like-rosa-parks-and-womens-liberation/
Good point, petrilli; I think it complements mine in the sense that there's a need to bask in someone else's glory, to win those accolades for suffering without having actually undergone the depths of it. "Those people are admired and praised for their ordeals! Why shouldn't I be too? I'm just as worthy as they are!" I note there was at least one Malheur "patriot" who was exposed as a stolen-valor poseur.
Petrilli, If the next president were to pardon ol' Ammon, he'd get back to work closing the gap between daddy Cliven's broof 13 and his own sub-brood of 6, and the when their next male child arrived, out of admiration & gratitude for the presidential pardon, they'd name the baby after the new president, so - Ted Bundy.
I was pretty disgusted with its jail house flatulence, but not at all surprised. I've been listening to these dipshits so long I could have done it for him and save the reporter some time and trouble.
Never really thought about the stolen value, though as a (Vietnam) veteran who is not at all proud of what I have done there is nothing that pisses me off more than seeing a bunch of assholes who no doubt didn't do the things I have done prancing around in a parade or pan-handling a street corner because they think they're something fucking special. I think you're on to something there.
Great article Steve,
I'd like to add this ...white privilege is "willful ignorance" and always accompanied with amnesia!
1) willful ignorance of what factually happened in the past by white people for the exclusive benefit of white peoples.
2) amnesia ...often a "collective" forgetting about factual events in the "recent" past. Example: GOP/Republican/Bush?Cheney governance 2000-2008. Clearly and undeniably the worst Presidency in 200 years or more.
Short list:
-Was NOT elected but selected to POTUS by SCOTUS.
-Squandered a 50-60 Billion dollar surplus
-Worst attack on US soil in American history AND had CIA warning in advance.
-Started America's longest running war.
-Sold lie of WMD's and then Invaded a sovereign country.
-As Chief Executive mismanaged Katrina endangering millions of Americans.
-mismanaged economy 800,000 job losses per month.
-Failed attempt to privatize Social Security.
-Nearly crash US economy.
-Gave those that crashed the economy 100's of billions of -US taxpayer dollars on the way out the door.
-Orchestrated the largest transfer of wealth in human history.
-Destabilized the entire Middle East and Northern Africa.
Example 2 of "collective" amnesia : "Bush keep US safe!"
-Who was POTUS in Nov 2001? Answer:Bush
All of the above is Example 3 of "willful ignorance" accompanied with amnesia.
-When was "9/11"? Answer Nov 11, 2001.
Maybe Ammon Bundy, if he gets any hard time, and is sent to USP Coleman to serve it, could sing his sad song of Federal victimization for Leonard Peltier and see how much applause he gets.
All the more so as Leonard is innocent.
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