During yesterday’s confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan, it was unsurprising to see the GOP come out in full force. After all, she is a liberal, though mostly a centrist, and the GOP wants to do everything it can to discredit her, even knowing full well that she will be confirmed regardless.
But did they attack her on her merits? No. No such different and shocking news as that to report. Instead, they attacked Thurgood Marshall.
Justice Marshall, he of Brown vs. Board of Education fame. The first Black American in history to ever sit on the highest judicial body of our entire nation.
That Thurgood Marshall. The Justice Marshall who ended Jim Crow Laws in America before he even became a Supreme Court Justice.
Jon Kyl perhaps best summed up the Republican point of view: “Justice Marshall’s judicial philosophy, is not what I would consider to be mainstream.” Naturally, Jon Kyl must be ignorant of lesson plans in probably every high school in America which teach the decision of Brown vs. Board of Education. I would call that “mainstream”, as well as the notion that separation between “Coloreds” and “Whites” is not exactly a good thing.
Or maybe I’m wrong. It appears that I might very well be, because it appears that the mainstream of the conservative movement has now been out in full force with weapons which we thought of as relics of the past.
Setting aside the first year of President Barak Obama’s administration, let us instead just focus on the last few weeks. Starting with Health Care a scant few months ago, we had a gaggle of “GOP Activists” heckling Black Congressmen with public shouts of “Nigger!” as they walked out into the street, followed by shouts of “Faggot!” for Rep. Barney Frank.
We’ve had one of the Tea Party leaders, Dale Robertson, caught in a picture with a sign with the word “Niggar” in plain public view, talking about Obama. Evidently, Mr. Robertson may not have heard of Brown vs. Board of Education as can be attested to by his feeble attempts at spelling.
We’ve had the Arizona State Legislature, Republican controlled with a Republican Governor, passing a law which amounts to asking people with brown skin for evidence that they were born in the United States.
We’ve had the John Birch Society sponsoring the Conservative Political Action Commitee which was once ostracized for being a nutjob conspiracy-laden and racist organization.
We’ve had the Texas Board of Education, currently laboring away to re-write our children’s history books, trying to remove Justice Thurgood Marshall from lesson plans (as well as downplaying or removing Thomas Jefferson’s role as a follower of the Enlightenment in favor of Calvin). They also removed any mention of “minority soldiers” who earned Congressional medals for their valor.
Not feeling the need for the GOP to stop there, the Governor of Virginia went on record and said that he didn’t think that the issue of slavery to be a significant aspect of the Civil War. And then not to be outdone by that little upstart, the Governor of Mississippi, the former Chairman of the RNC, actually had this to expound upon the issue of slavery: “To me it’s a sort of feeling that it’s just a nit. That it is not significant. It’s trying to make a big deal out of something that doesn’t matter for diddly.“
Then we had the wonderful moment in which Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, the big Tea Party candidate, duking it out with Rachel Maddow on his take on how the 1964 Civil Rights laws went too far. His view: If somebody wants to refuse service to anyone, for whatever reason, including the color of their skin, that’s their right.
Naturally, a firestorm errupted from some “Mainstream Americans” about this and he reluctantly appeared to back away from that statment. But that wouldn’t be Jon Kyl’s “Mainstream America” because many in his party, or political bloggers and commenters from that aisle, were busy trying to defend Rand Paul’s statement so loudly that they didn’t actually hear Mr. Paul “retracting” for yet another day or so after the fact.
Next, we had the massive whopper of Glenn Beck telling America that race relations were doing just dandy in George Washington’s time (completely ignorant of the fact, it would appear, that President Washington himself owned slaves). Then, having to actually rub salt into the wounds, he went on to add that everything would have been fine and peachy if the Civil War hadn’t come up and bit our wonderfully insouciant progressive outlook of the time in the posterior.
It doesn’t end there, of course. Lately, we’ve had former Senator Rick Santorum talking about how Obama really isn’t part of the “American Experience”. One might wonder why. Should he “go back to Kenya”, Mr. Santorum?
These are just a handful of examples from the vast expanse of the last several months, of course. But even if they were not interspersed with hundreds of other examples, one would only be able to rationally conclude that Race is a real problem for the Republican Party.
Thee biggest flaw according to these backwards philosophers, it would appear, would be that the United States has progressed far beyond 1860. Naturally, anyone who doesn’t appear to agree can never be called a “Conservative” and is to be shunned. One must ascribe to this “new” zeitgeist that the earth is only six thousand years old, that there is no global warming whatsoever, that science is out to destroy their way of life (and perhaps it is at this point), and that the Civil War was a great injustice towards humanity, to say nothing of the erradication of Jim Crow and the eventual election of a Black President.
Bear in mind that these examples demonstrate the vast swathe of current Republican and Conservative “thinking”. We are not talking about just a few lone wolves at a protest who show up because they want to have their insane theories on display; rather, we are talking about the top tier of the politicians and pundits who sway their masses with their ideology.
These leaders aren’t playing with fire to appease the masses any longer, they are setting the fire with flaming torches to disused rags that they have dug up from the past to try to gain power in the most horrific way.
What amazes me is that some people do not appear to be swayed by any amount of argument on behalf of this subject. They willingly go blind into the chanting masses and repeat after themselves that they are not part of a racist movement. But the fact is that they are. Today, for a person to be a Republican means for them to be part of an inherently Racist movement. A movement which would not only bar scientific knowledge from the classroom, but also now any advances in our post-slavery and separatist history. It means covering your ears, closing your eyes, and chanting “I’m not listening” to whatever evidence is presented to you.
Well, whatever your delusion, it is fairly easy for an impartial judge to see the Republican Party for what it is today: a racist, backwards, mysoginistic movement which wants to take us back to the pre-Civil War era. Their Golden Era appears to be one before Evolution, before Germ Theory, before legal abortions, before any advances in science and technology, and most certainly before any “Colored” person was considered to be equal under the law.
That is where the Republican and Conservative movement stands today. And, I’m sorry to say, I’m not buying any excuses. If you march with the “Tea Party” who want to erase progress, then you are endorsing their platform.
On the subject of platforms, one last statement: The Tea Party is National Socialism. It is a “grass roots” movement which has been inundated with flag-waving separatism by the “common man” who is rejecting the “elite” politician for a Utopian ideal from the past which never was. And it is being used by skillful politicians who talk up a great deal about race and a “new science” which rejects “junk science” for what they consider to be “science” in their favor. It wants to chase away scientists it considers to be a threat. It talks consistently about how elites have destroyed what they consider to be “real American values” and rejects anything outside of their inner circle as “unamerican”. It uses the terms which agrees with the idea of “God With Us” emblazoned on the sleeves of many of its participants. It talks about guns and revolution, and the legitimacy of certain Americans to call themselves American. It favors conspiracy theories about dark “cabals” controlling the world banks and government. And all done under an economic depression where the dollar has been devalued and frustrated people are easily manipulated.
If that description doesn’t agitate and disturb you in a very explicit way, then you really have no business marching, or making any political commentary until it does. Because that is where our country is currently headed, and that is what the Republicans have now pandered to and made “Mainstream”.
Time for the rest of us to wake up.
