Friday rant: what you sowed edition

[n2doc]

By Tom Toles

Anybody feeling particularly sorry for the GOP “establishment” because their voters are being unruly? I put this in the “deal with the devil” department. You can put it wherever you like.

Let’s begin with the “Southern Strategy” from the Nixon era. This followed the landmark passage of civil rights legislation that put the nation where it should have been from the very beginning. The GOP saw an “opportunity” to flip the South from Democratic to Republican, by appealing to what, do you think? Yes, the Democratic party alienated a huge swath of its voters by, well, doing the right thing. And they paid a big price for it. And the GOP responded, how? By seeing an opportunity, not to bind up the nation’s wounds, but to perfect dog whistle politics and stoking, fueling, encouraging the politics of resentment. Resentment against the idea that we needed to become one nation with liberty and justice for all. Way to go.

Continue on with the pandering to a stripe of religious conservative with a weakness for theocracy, a stripe the GOP elite had no real love or use for except at the ballot box. Then top it off with taking a genuine conservative skepticism of large government and manipulating that into a total giveaway to a tiny fraction of extremely rich, and by golly, you’ve created yourself a real time bomb there. Tick tick.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tom-toles/post/friday-rant-what-you-sowed-edition/2012/02/16/gIQACIy5HR_blog.html

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. over the decades, little has changed, except for the targets of hatred

The Chinese were considered subhuman, and relegated to working at shit jobs, laying rail under horrific, slave like conditions, or latrine duty and/or laundry.

The Irish were blackballed from any jobs or land ownership, so they took the crumbs they could - the lowly job of policing.

The Poles were ridiculed, insulted, and made the butt of jokes, even though they produced the finest mathematicians in the world, and helped break Nazi codes to win WWII.

The Jews were attacked, spat upon, and considered trash of europe, not just once, but many times.

We've moved on to the Muslims. Blacks in the South have become too entrenched and part of society to be that much of a target. But Muslims? Evil, terrorist, strange diets, weird name for god, - they are the perfect targets for abuse and racist attacks.

At some point, that will pass, but the ability to attack, to hate, to accuse - those never go away. They simply shift their focus.

[JHB]

2. It's even starker than that...

...tell me this isn't perfectly in line with an anti-Obama (or any Democrat) ad:


http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/Cartoon_Corner/index3.asp?ID=31&TypeID=1

A conservative political cartoon from 1860, caricaturing Lincoln's supporters that he'd bring to Washington:
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Description: Abraham Lincoln's supporters are portrayed as radicals and eccentrics of various stripes. The satire is loosely based on an anti-Fremont cartoon from the previous presidential race, "The Great Republican Reform Party" (no. 1856-22), also issued by Nathaniel Currier.

Here Lincoln, sitting astride a wooden rail borne by Horace Greeley, leads his followers toward a lunatic asylum. Greeley instructs him, "Hold on to me Abe, and we'll go in here by the unanimous consent of the people." Lincoln exhorts his followers, "Now my friends I'm almost in, and the millennium is going to begin, so ask what you will and it shall be granted."

At the head of the group is a bearded man, arm-in-arm with a woman and a Mormon. He claims to "represent the free love element, and expect to have free license to carry out its principles." The woman looks at Lincoln, saying "Oh! what a beautiful man he is, I feel a passionate attraction' every time I see his lovely face." The Mormon adds, "I want religion abolished and the book of Mormon made the standard of morality."

They are followed by a dandified free black, who announces, "De white man hab no rights dat cullud pussons am bound to spect' I want dat understood." Behind him an aging suffragette says, "I want womans rights enforced, and man reduced in subjection to her authority." Next a ragged socialist or Fourierist, holding a liquor bottle, asserts, "I want everybody to have a share of everybody elses property."

At the end of the group are three hooligans, one demanding "a hotel established by government, where people that aint inclined to work, can board free of expense, and be found in rum and tobacco." The second, a thief, wants "the right to examine every other citizen's pockets without interruption by Policemen." The last, an Irish street tough, says, "I want all the stations houses burned up, and the M.P.s killed, so that the bohoys can run with the machine and have a muss when they please."
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Look at the line-up. It could have been done yesterday by a Freeper: The "leftist" president promising givaways to his followers; a "sexual deviant" (then: free lover, now: gays), a flighty person obsessed with celebrity or charisma; a "religious deviant" (then: Mormons, now: secularists); a grasping, uppity minority; a "feminazi", a "soak the rich" commie; criminals, shiftless layabouts, and terrorists.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. When you have a chance, take a trip to

Illinois' capital. The Lincoln museum is one of the new generation of museums, lots of electronics, visuals, and more. But, damn, it works. A great place to go for children of all ages.
The newspaper room is unbelievable. The trashtalking they did against Lincoln makes Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter look like Miss Manners.

[cbrer]

4. The GOP, among others

Are merely using the fact of human nature that it's easier and more reflexive to hate strangers than love them.

[ellisonz]

5. Nailed it. n/t