james_nicoll

Surely they couldn't be that mad. Not the leadership at least, no matter how much maniacs might feel that the country hasn't been right ever since we stopped limiting the vote to White Men With Lots of Property.

Why would they deny a good Republican housewife the opportunity to vote as her husband directed her?

Of course that's their goal. And once voting rights are repealed due to gender, then it's in like flynn to deny them on the basis of skin color, parents' region of origin, etc. And then, and only then, will this country be all is used to be, can be and should be, which it always has been, WHITE MAN'S COUNTRY! I know this to be true because Owen Wister told me so.

Love, C.

"Jesus loves me best, this I know/Owen Wister told me so"

Ann Coulter has been tossing that idea around in public for a long while now.

She is herself a fine argument for it, too.

I don't want to know. I do not want to know.

Is that the only amendment they are planning on appealing?

19th, and 1st, 4th through 8th, 13th through 16th, possibly 17th, 21st, 22nd, 24th, and 26th. I think that's it - the others seem to be ones they are in favor of or neutral on (or are too arcane for me to decipher from a short description).

Not necessarily all at once, mind you. But those are the ones that have things they really don't like for one reason or another.

--Dave

I hadn't really considered it, but it does seem to make sence of all the wierdness if you consider it a dog whistle directed to the anti-feminist movement.

Whites are afraid of the future on several levels. They fear the future of their ethnic groups due to them becoming a minority by 2050 or sooner (based on informal census data it could be early as 2030). That "White Rule" is going away and therefore they're afraid of the future. There's a article about White Masculinity that deals with this issue and that Obama's entrance into the WHITE HOUSE has caused them to re-evaluate their courses of action. They're afraid of being wiped out of existence and that fear has lead to the rise of 755% of hate groups since he took office.

Additionally these groups are spurned on by religious zealotry and hate to keep them opposed to any reasonable course of discourse or valid actions of intelligence. They want to roll back the US Constitution to it's roots of the Bill of Rights and strip away everyone's rights who's not "White, Christian, or a property owner" as a way to return us to our old ways. Women's Sufferage is just a token issue, they want everyone's rights gone except theirs. They want the pre 1950s back, where they were the top of the food chain and no one challenged them or spoke back against them. Where their "crimes" were overlooked because of skin color and connections to political power.

It's a sad statement, but as a sociology major I've watched this stuff and read about it for years. My Religion and Politics class really deals with this issue and IL Nazism is our next topic to cover with our own state having a Nazi run for GOP office and most likely will get the nod too.

Yes, conservative white men (also conservative white women) ARE afraid of the future -- and with a good reason. Time is not on their side. Here is what I think is a good summary of the situation GOP found itself in:

http://nymag.com/news/features/gop-primary-chait-2012-3/

And that's why I am not concerned about "Handmaiden's Tale" becoming relaity -- we are looking at last gasps of a dying ideology, not at the ascending one.

I find it very funny to read blogs like this one, and then read some conservative blog -- even a relatively sane one like www.transterrestrial.com. On both there are tons of people (not necessarily the hosts) convinced that "other side" is taking over, and world (or at least US) is descending into tyranny.

Conservative white men who follow "dog whistle" do not have a goal of repealing 19th amendment, or ANY long-term goal -- in part because they see liberals/multiculturalists/feminists/whatever as having huge and frightening goals, and within hairbreadth of reaching them. They are fighting a rearguard action because thay are terrified.

And you guys are just as terrified of them. It is downright funny.

Yes, I am terrified of people who can cut off my access to reproductive health resources. And no, I don't see anything remotely funny about that.

Absolutely. My reproductive capacity is nominal at this point, but I have three kids who are either of reproductive age or bloody close. It's very, very personal to me.

And you seem to think they haven't already haven't done damage. Texas and Virginia aren't the only ones. And there are laws saying doctors are allowed (not sure if compelled, that'd be easy to overturned I'd think) to lie to women about findings in tests that might cause them to abort, including dying or dead fetuses. Already Catholic hospitals refuse to treat ectopic pregnancies and are known to delay transferring the patients to places that will.

You're subscribing to a false equivalency.

Most of the things that the Right is terrified of have little or no basis in actual reality. Obama isn't coming for their guns, the New World Order is not at hand, church freedoms aren't being abrogated, climate change is real, evolution isn't remotely controversial to anyone with a fact-based worldview, etc. Those memes are driven by conservative politicians and media figures to drum up the energy of their voting base.

Most of the things that Left (such as it is in the United States) is terrified of are straight from daily mainstream conservative rhetoric, GOP party platforms and legislative proposals. They really are working very hard to criminalize homosexuality, limit minority voting rights, deny access to women's health, stunt children's education... not to mention the entire social, economic and military track record of the last Republican administration.

This is not a case of each side being spooked by equivalent imaginary boogeymen, not by a long shot.

Perhaps I did not make myself clear. I am not subscribing to a false equivalency. I am well aware that the things that the Right is terrified of have little or no basis in actual reality -- but that their looming loss of power, entirely due to demographics, -- is quite real.

OTOH, specific things the American Left is terrified of are real in the sense that GOP is really working on them, but not in the sense of there being any chance of them to actually come to pass. It is "mirror positions", not equivalent positions.

Really, read the article I linked to. It describes the whole thing much better than I could.

Actually, I am reading it. Fascinating stuff. And thank you for correcting my misinterpretation of your point.

The GOP has been passing voter ID laws, personhood laws, de-funding women's health care, encouraging pharmacists to refuse to dispense medication for which the customer has a legal prescription, revoking collective bargaining rights, and generally really passing a huge steaming pile of really horrible shit. Hard to see that as not real.

Note that most of what you just listed failed to pass. And in case of collective bargaining rights, caused really bad (for GOP) voter backlash.

It's real enough. Just not durable.

No, that's all stuff that HAS passed, in many states.

It hasn't all passed here in Minnesota, but it has passed in many places. (And there's a right-to-work law that's looking likely here, and a voter-id law being pushed pretty hard, and an anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative that's up this fall.)

Those are all actual laws in various states, Ilya.

There are challenges to them, but they passed, signed, and went into effect.

Every time I hear the words "states rights", I reach for my whuppin' stick.

Bruce

That's a Civil War era dog whistle for racist laws. Now used for other things too.

Also, it's more durable if Democrats adopt it for their own: note Obama's failure to end torture and his embrace of the "President doesn't need to follow the law, if it's IMPORTANT" precedent, not to mention launding as the Best Thing Possible a distictly conservative health plan conceived not long ago by a current Republican presidential candidate. Also, every time the Republicans lurch right, the Democrats follow right along: I won't be particularly happy if by the time the Republicans implode into a regional fascist party with no chance of national power, the Democrats have ended up somewhere well to the right of Ronald Reagan.

Bruce

There is that.

I noticed quite a few people took umbrage at my optimism. I still think I am right in the long term, but yes, Republican party can still do a lot of damage in the short term -- and "Democrats lurching to the right" is IMO single greatest long-term danger.

OTOH, specific things the American Left is terrified of are real in the sense that GOP is really working on them, but not in the sense of there being any chance of them to actually come to pass.

Huh. I've just spent an hour reading the bills the Kansas Legislature has passed today hoping no one would notice, and that hour of reading tells me you are completely fucking wrong on this one.

I should correct this to say that these bills are being sent to the legislature, not yet passed; that said, some of the bills sent to the KS House Friday are merely continuations of previous bills already enacted, like the "no food stamps for citizens born in the US but who have one parent who we think might be an illegal" law.

The problem is that as long as you do have the uberrightwing nutter screaming out their lunacy, they drown out the far quieter and far more dangerous sane rightwingers that are actually in charge in the US and elsewhere, leaving them that much freer to carry out their plans.

I was looking for this article which provided more insight on why the whole fear of the end of "White Masculinity!". http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com/2012/03/rush-limbaugh-and-crisis-in-white.html

Chauncey DeVega has pretty deep insight on why the White Conservatives are flipping out and going into a more radical direction than before. Why Obama's entrance into the White House is making them fear the future so strongly. The other thing is I've been watching these hate groups for decades and seeing how they've risen up during Democratic Presidency and then fall back down when Chimpy's reign of terror took over. That many hate groups fell away because they had George with Guns, God, and Jesus on their side to win the day over the fear of the "other" this time being "colored" with evil religion that even the Jews were on the side of Jesus this time against the dreaded Muslim hordes.

Now they're freaked out that Obama's a secret Muslim to destroy the USA and turn it into their worst nightmare where Whites are treated as they treated the minorities for centuries. Of course they're fearful. If you remember a while back that stupid movie "White Man's Burden" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114928/plotsummary
This film was written by a racist Scientologist who wanted to show the world what would happen if the minorities ever came to power and how the world would be literally turned upside down. While many people raved about this as a wonderful example of race relations turned on its head.

Newt Gingrinch and his fellow Conservatives back in 1996 saw this as a warning sign of things to come if a African-American was elected to high office. There was at a time the possibility of female African-American President before Obama, but the times were wrong and had she ran odds are she'd not survive to the primaries or to take off against Chimpy in 2000 election, sadly because Al Gore was chosen instead and failed to win (even if it was a rigged election by two methods people shuffling and data manipulation by Diebold Industries).

I was looking for this article which provided more insight on why the whole fear of the end of "White Masculinity!". http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com/2012/03/rush-limbaugh-and-crisis-in-white.html


I like it. Matches well what I see.

"ironically, while black folks and other people of color have seen the decimation of their middle class, and levels of unemployment approaching 30 percent or more, it is white people, and white men in particular, who are most pessimistic about their futures and economic security."

I do not find it so ironic. If you are on top and things are undeniably changing, then the only place you can go is down.

Wait, am I doing it wrong? I'm a white, property-owning, male; am I supposed to be in terror of how I'll be treated in the future?

(I vote for Keith Ellison when he's up for election, too; I guess that's bad for me too then?)

(Okay, I AM a bit nervous -- if too much GOP gets in, the way citizens get treated could be very bad.)

I'm white as well, I grew up in a moderately Conservative household (Eisenhower Conservatism). My father was a Progressive and my mother a Southern Baptist Conservative. When my father died, she went off the deep end and turned into a FOX News fan and literally lost her mind to common sense and normalcy. She now thinks Obama's a threat to national security and wants either Santorum or Newt to win the White House next. Actually she wants Jeb Bush to "man up" instead, but she takes the lesser evil. Her pastor openly supports that idiot Santorum and I've heard them preach about the "return of Jesus" in these "End Times" (aka End of the World Nuts).

I shifted to being a left wing Libertarian. I support the right of fire arm ownership, pro-death (especially: Rich, White Conservative Bankers on Wall Street),minimum pervasiveness into the bedroom and "sun downing" outdated taxes that are there for no reason other than to make politicians rich (that many Southern States are still paying for the Civil War, and the tax money should be going to preserve historical sites and not some idiot politicos war chest).

What absolutely boggles my mind is that, twenty years ago, many of these End Times folks would have regarded the Pope as the Antichrist, and here they are supporting a Catholic for the presidency.

Word.

I'm old enough to (barely) remember the hubbub around the fact that John Kennedy was Catholic. Apparently some folks thought that meant he would be taking orders from the Pope.

Or maybe that was just around here in the deep South. But I was a very unpolitical child, so the noise around it had to be significant for me to notice it.

Even then I thought "Why would people even think that??"

I can't decide if this is progress or the opposite. Anti-Catholic prejudice gets trumped by generally horrible retrograde tendencies.

That may be because many of them don't know he's Catholic.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-gop-primary-poll-religion-20120314,0,7506882.story

I don't know why that never occurred to me.

Man, if by some bizarre chain of events he got the nomination, strange things would happen. They're on track to nominate a Mormon instead, but everyone knows he's a Mormon.

"Yes, conservative white men (also conservative white women) ARE afraid of the future -- and with a good reason. Time is not on their side."

Can't they just remove "white" from that sentence and be good again? Plenty of folks of all complexions are conservative.

>Plenty of folks of all complexions are conservative.

Sure, but those who aren't white get hit _now_ with plenty of crap for Being Of Other Complexion Than White While Breathing, almost no matter where they are. They usually don't have time to spare for being afraid of the future because they're busy coping with what's going on in the present. The conservative whites who (as mentioned above) are Currently On Top, and who want to sliiiiide back to times when they were Even More Securely On Top, don't generally have that issue.

--Dave, an invisible minority member

I think they're going down, but they can do a lot of damage on the way down, especially in states where they actually do completely control politics at the state level. It's like a scorched-earth retreat that will take the United States decades to shake off.

Not the last gasps, yet. The movement is more like an enraged, wounded animal.

True, but whiteopia is where the big batallions of wackaloon conservatism come from, and black or hispanic conservatives are unlikely to be too troubled about becoming part of a majority, even if they decry its voting habits.

Bruce

When I'm feeling realistic, I know that Republicans do not actually plan to try to repeal the 15th or 19th amendments; it would be too difficult, political suicide. Far easier merely to implement ID laws and such and make it prohibitively difficult for people to vote.

What they can do is run riot at the state level.

unfortunately, yes - all part of their terrified and hopefully vain attempts to keep control of the culture