The General US Politics Thread

The fundgelical attitude towards abortion and the reasons behind that attitude can be explained by two nausea inducing words Quiverfull movement

Quiverfull is a symptom not a cause. If you want the root of the fundies - especially the Southern Baptists - opprobrium to abortion you don't look at the Bible, or women, or contraception, or Christ, or God. What you look at is (of course!) race.

Yep, movement conservatism in the United States is firmly rooted in racism. It's undeniable when you look beneath the hood.

Why do these things always circle back to racism? That's horrible!

Ah racism, as American as apple pie, baseball, and invading countries for bullshit reasons.

Sometimes I don't think we'll ever scrub it out of the system entirely.

In fairness, the fear of "otherness" is part of the human psyche and is unlikely to ever be rooted out entirely. You see it in other places, such as the violent anti-Muslim sentiment in parts of Europe. It's just that in the United States, we have institutionalized it to the point where it owns a full half of the national political debate and refuses to let go, largely by dressing itself up in other guises.

Only in America are so many people so adamantly in denial that their basic politics are racist. That's what makes it so hard to root out; it wears so many guises that appear reasonable on the surface. That's the legacy of Ronald Reagan, folks. He made it acceptable to be racist in America.

edited 21st Apr '14 7:42:19 AM by Fighteer

Basically people refuse to believe that there are ways of being racist other than wearing white sheets and wanting to exterminate all people of X group. Sometimes I think we became too caught up in trying to fight back against the likes of the Nazis and the KKK that we forgot the actual slave owners didn't intentionally kill their slaves most of the time. They oppressed them in other ways.

edited 21st Apr '14 7:36:10 AM by Kostya

@Garcon

Well, 600,000 Americans - most of them white - lost their lives trying to rid the nation of the slavery of African-Americans. There's that. It seems that Northern America doesn't take nearly as much pride in that sacrifice as the South does in their failed attempt to uphold white supremacy. It is rare to see the 34-star flag of the Union in the North, whilst the St Andrew's cross^note Who the fuck gave them permission to use that? Scotland should sue! of the planters is ubiquitous. It says a lot that much is made of the white supposed "victims" of Sherman's brilliant Georgian campaign, whilst the suffering of the slaves in the decades when African-Americans were treated as chattel is brushed under the rug.

So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train,

Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main!

Treason fled before, for resistance was in vain,

While we were marching through Georgia!

I'd say that was Nixon. And was it ever not?

edited 21st Apr '14 7:46:57 AM by Achaemenid

As I said, the greatest legacy of Ronald Reagan is that he made it acceptable again to be racist in America, by pretending you're doing it for moral reasons.

I'm not really sure how it's supposed to be hidden. The rhetoric on the Republican (I'm not going to say conservative) side is pretty obviously racist even without slurs if you actually pay attention. How else is saying blacks and Mexicans are too dependent on the government and become to lazy to care about working supposed to be taken. It's just relying on old stereotypes without calling anyone a nigger or wetback.

edited 21st Apr '14 7:59:13 AM by KBSL

It's supposedly about them being lazy and immoral, not them being non-white. Of course, white moochers get a free pass (as long as they vote Republican), so it's about race by implication.

Nixon got it started but Reagan rode to power on the image of the "welfare queen".

edited 21st Apr '14 8:10:47 AM by Fighteer

Well, it's also not just race, but also region/economy. The mental image of the "white moocher" (as you call it) is more akin to a farmer fallen on hard times.

The main difference here is that they have identified a cause for misfortune in one mental image but not in the other.

...but then again you could say the reason is because they're not looking hard enough.

edited 21st Apr '14 8:19:05 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

When a white person falls on hard times, it's the fault of the system. When a black or Hispanic person falls on hard times, it's their moral failings. Whites who vote Democrat are lumped into the latter group because they are siding with the enemy; they are class/race traitors.

Back on the wealth oligarchy thing, Krugman takes a look at a paper that examines class preferences and their effect on public policy, concluding that both Republicans and Democrats respond to elite interests over the general public interest most of the time. However, he does note that Democrats will try to sneak in public interest things when nobody's looking, like the surtax on the wealthy in PPACA.

edited 21st Apr '14 8:44:56 AM by Fighteer

Unless you're a member of Occupy, remember? Then you're a shiftless slacker, regardless of race.

I don't know if the entire Republican rhetoric can be reduced to racism. It seems too simple and easy to me

edited 21st Apr '14 10:25:12 AM by Xopher001

Well sexism and homophobia also inspire a lot of it. Religious zealotry also plays a part for some elements of the party.

edited 21st Apr '14 10:30:04 AM by kostya

But a lot of people vote republican for differnt reasons than those. You can't just say that the people you don't agree with are racist, sexist, and homophobic and conclude your argument like that. That's not sound logic; it's more akin to ad hominem

edited 21st Apr '14 10:32:02 AM by Xopher001

The reasons can be boiled down to that though. People that vote Republican because they oppose LGBT rights? Homophobic. People that vote Republican because they think people on welfare are lazy? Racist. People that vote Republican because they think women shouldn't be allowed to get abortion? Sexist. People that vote that way because they're anti-Evolution in schools? Religious zealots.

They don't have to be consciously bigoted but the views of the party are undeniably bigoted so anyone that supports the Republican Party for those reasons is in some way a bigot.

What reasons do you think a person would vote Republican without being bigoted? The only one I can think of is if they agree with Austrian economics or something but that's not really any better since many of its theories have been debunked.

The welfare one isn't necessarily racist, in practice it usually is, but I've seen and read things by people talking down about and bashing white people who happen to be on welfare or live in housing projects irregardless of race. The latter also had some anti-immigrant sentiment as well (though it was about Italy, not Mexico like you would expect).

I'd caution against attributing racism to people who believe in free-(as in free-for-all) markets.

I've noticed that some undercurrents of libertarianism are popular among the geeky sorts of people who are relatively uninterested in politics due to a sense of disillusionment. Got a friend who generally doesn't give a damn about politics; when pushed for an answer, he supports things like gay marriage rights but also supports economic non-interventionism as a general idea. Such people tend to have more of an anti-establishment view of things.

I think that, if you're willing to explain to them (nicely and respectfully of course) how the economy by itself has inherent tendencies to screw certain people over, in the absence of government intervention, they might be willing to agree with more progressive economic policies.

Kostya, your committing an Association Fallacy in your assertion that every republican is a bigot

I do notice something. This might be a bit premature to call, but Democrats seem lockstep in theory than the Republicans at this point. The Democrats are essentially pushing on Healthcare, Wage Hikes, and legalizing Same-Sex Marriage across the country. And for the most part, while it's not 100%, Democrats seem far more in union to following Pelosi, Reid and President Obama. And frankly the part still seems capable of disciplining members better than the Republicans at the moment.

The Republicans and their voting core might vote in lockstep to block Democrats, but really at this point, the party is incoherent. The Tea Party wants to bounce Mc Connell and Boehner. The Party can't discipline its members due to the loss of pork items in legislation lately, or the errant members are being funded by deep pocketed sugar daddies. Outside of blocking legislation, the party at a national level can't even form any meaningful legislation it works around besides "Repeal Obamacare".

That's probably going to have a ripple effect on any Presidential nominations, especially when Republicans keep trotting themselves as prize ponies on display.

While people are right on the Big Money thing, even Big Money (at least the sane members of Big Money) knows when social pressure is going to make its goals impossible. They're going to have to budge on Same Sex Marriage and on wages. (As far as wages go, the moment Mc Donalds gives in is going to be the sign the fight on that is effectively over.)

Maybe I'm overoptimistic, but I think we're reaching the death throes of the Reagan Revolution as it reaches its inevitable conclusion. The question, though, is how long will those throes last. And how ugly will they be before they end.

KBSL: True. I suppose it would be better to describe it as classist with some racist undertones when it comes to certain people.

Xopher: Okay, not every Republican is a bigot. After thinking about it more I admit I was wrong on that count. That doesn't change the fact that the overall party platform is inspired in a large part by bigotry which means everybody who supports it is a white moderate at best.

edited 21st Apr '14 10:51:49 AM by Kostya

Technically not true, the flag of the Union is the flag of the same country that exists today so America always flies the flag of the Union. They could maybe make that point more often. It would be relevant to arguments about flag burning- "People died for that flag your burning" "Yeah, they were shot by the people flying the flag on the roof of your car.".

Anywho, what I wanted to post about was this:

Bear with me for a paragraph: I was reading an article today about the idea that the removal of lead from petrol/gas is responsible for the fall in crime in Western society over the past several decades. So many factors that are supposed to effect crime seem not to correlate when compared across several countries but the timing of the changes matches up well with the removal of lead. Lead is known, even in low doses, to lead to lower IQ's and heightened agressions in infants born after in utero exposure. Now in the article, one biological criminologist opposed the idea on the basis that people go into crime for particular specific reasons, it's not just a matter of brain chemisty. Now that's a pretty crappy counter-argument particularly in this case but I'm going to use the weakest response to that because of how general it can be- a lot of social phenomena, no matter how complex the motions may appear, come down to very broad pressures placed across society and then because society has so many members and so many moving parts (and because the human mind itself is likewise and can rearrange itself to accept different ideas), on the whole it will move to release those pressures.

Often when we look back in history, historians ascribe mass social changes that must have involved some complex string of actions to a broad, simple, usually economic effect- sugar got cheaper; gin got more expensive; we had wood and they had steel.

So yeah, sometimes it can be just that simple. People dislike the "other", they can feel needlessly under threat and feel moral anxieties and these are all emotional pressures that will push on society to form a response.

We failed to get universal healthcare in the New Deal because whites refused to desegregate hospitals. It's really that simple.

There is certainly a variety of elements to modern reactionary conservatism. Part of it is the evangelical Christians who insist on Bible + Creationism + No Abortions, but you'll note how much of that group is white. Very few black or Hispanic congregations send their members out to vote for the rich white guy because of his stance on religion.

Part of it is the worship of wealth, hands down, but you'll note that the proportions of women and minorities in the top 1 percent are vanishingly small compared to their proportions in the general population.

Part of it is the Objectivist-Libertarians who don't give a crap about fairness or equality as long as they get to stand atop the pile. Funny how few minorities fall into this group; maybe it's because they're usually the trodden-on.

Part of it is poor, ignorant whites who buy the party line and vote for policies that hurt their own interests so long as "those other people" don't get any advantages, which is fundamentally racist even if they've learned not to say it out loud.

Part of it is simple fear of change, but the status quo favors rich white males.

So, regardless of whether you, as an individual, are racist, classist, or sexist, if you support the Republican party, you support policies that are both explicitly and implicitly racist, classist, and sexist.

edited 21st Apr '14 11:28:01 AM by Fighteer