Who's More Racist and Violent? Democrats or Republicans?
78As usual with our public discourse in America, it's the absolute wrong question - but it's a hotly debated one!
A listing of some recent incidents is all it should take to answer the question. But I want to say, first, that I don't necessarily disagree with everything the teabaggers and the Republican party represent. More on that in a minute.
First the events in question:
Sarah Palin calls for the tea partiers to "reload." Texas Governor Rick Perry states that Texas could secede from the USA. A protester wearing a gun holds a sign that says "It is time to water the tree of liberty" (a reference to Thomas Paine's "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants") outside of a town hall meeting with Obama.
Ted Nugent holds up a machine gun onstage, and while the crowd cheers he says "Obama suck on this!" And amazingly, Sean Hannity approves (see the video below).
Glenn Beck compares Obama to Mao, Stalin, and Mussolini, and rewrites history to link modern democrats with Hitler and other totalitarian dictators.
It looks to me like the Republicans have won the race to be stupider and more violent. Yes, the left had the Weather Underground - 40 years ago. Find me a democratic governor who's calling for secession, or an anti-Bush protest with guns. Go ahead! Post links in the comments section - if you can find such things.
But like I said, it's the wrong question.
And, like I said, I agree with many of the things that the protesters
are saying. Take these guys, for example:
Except for the part about socialism, I agree with what those signs say. While I doubt that we voted the same way in the past few elections, I bet I could have an interesting discussion with these folks.
But then there's this picture:
I have no idea what's happening between those two men, but the guy with the sign doesn't look happy.
Are These Folks Right to be Pissed Off?
f you aren't asking the right questions, you'll never get the right answer. While the racism and violent rhetoric is obvious, the left/right division is artificial.
The Vietnam War was started (practically speaking) by a Democratic president (JFK), and continued under his Democratic successor (Johnson).
That war killed
- 58,159 US soldiers
- 3 - 4 million Vietnamese
- 1.5 - 2 million Laotians and Cambodians
It cost $686 billion in 2008 dollars.
It was considered unpatriotic to question the war effort.
Reagan was a popular Republican president. Under his watch the national debt nearly tripled, going from $907 billion dollars in 1980 to $2.6 trillion in 1988. By the time Bush Sr. left office in 1992, the debt was more than $4 trillion.
President Clinton, a democrat, slowed the growth of the debt and oversaw a long period of national prosperity - but he also signed NAFTA, which resulted in the loss of 3.6 million manufacturing jobs in the US, and an increase in sweatshop slave labor to produce cheap goods.
George W. Bush talked a good game, but he doubled the debt again, started two wars that have yet to be won, and left the country with the greatest recession since the 1930s.
Take a look at the chart below. The orange line represents the income of the richest 5% of Americans. The red line on the bottom is the lowest 20% of wage earners. You'll notice that their wages have been basically flat since 1947.
Our government does not work for us. It never has.
Nominally, we live in a democracy, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
In practice, the US is a plutocracy.
The tea partiers have every reason to be angry, and they are 100% correct when they say that the government doesn't represent them.
So What's the Right Question?
There are two questions we Americans need to be asking ourselves and each other:
How do we take control of our lives?
What do we really need to be angry about?
I don't believe that holding signs and making threats of violence is going to do any good. In fact threats of violence will only make things worse, as they piss off the people in power and scare off people who might otherwise agree with you.
That doesn't mean that Thom Paine and the other revolutionaries were wrong about the need for a vigilant and armed citizenry. It just means that we need to not be stupid about when, where and how to use violence.
I don't believe that voting is going to do a whole lot of good at this point - although it's better than not voting, and it's more effective at the local level.
And I believe that we need to stop hoping for the glory days of the 60s, when everyone was employed, had a car and a decent future.
The 21st century is going to be different from anything we have ever experienced as a species.
Stop looking back at a glorified, mythical revolutionary past.
Stop thinking that 18th century political ideas can meet 21st century problems.
Stop dreaming that the powerful will ever willingly give up their power.
And you guys who are talking about revolution and watering the tree of liberty?
Get a clue. You have no chance against the weapons of the richest, most powerful people in human history. Do you want to see what modern civil war looks like? It's not like a TV miniseries.
It's like Palestine, or Iraq, or Congo.
Is that really what you wish on your families and neighbors?
Thanks to Bradford Daly for letting me use his photos.
- Fox News "war games" the coming civil war - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
With Obama in office for four weeks, Fox convenes military and intelligence officials to analyze -- and call for -- violent upheaval against the tyrannical federal government. - Fox News Anchors Call for Revolution - Glenn Beck War at Fox News - Esquire
Glenn Beck wants to scare the living daylights out of you with talk of an American uprising, and Esquire.com's weekly political columnist thinks that's more than a bit medieval.
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A good hub Bill!
Fox news is just now most popular according to last statistics. Nothing against them. But that style shows some thing is going down in USA.
Very good advises from you what is to be done. valid for all countries not just USA! (I practically live in both India and USA).
Also good advises from lovemychris. Strength in USA is in community work and feeling, simplicity of thinking and style. Though I am not so sure about small banks. They had busted at a faster rate.
You know it's a good thought provoking Hub when you want to spend time dwelling on a response. The quick reactions are:
1) The pendulum swings. What once was perceived as violence motivated by Democrats is now being perceived as violence motivated by Republicans, with neither being a correct perspective. It all comes back to people and individuals.
2) Plutocracy? Or elective oligarchy? What we've become doesn't matter. What we want is representation. Our country was founded on representation, and we're always most troubled when we feel like we're losing that representation. The powers of our government are supposed to be constitutionally limited. When we lose that, representation and democracy are lost too.
3) Racist parties and movements? I hope not, but the media sure does seem to be spinning it that way. I think that’s’ the winners/losers mentality bleeding through, blind to the underlying sense of dissatisfaction with our representatives. Don't forget, the media take sides too, and it affects both their perceptions and their portrayals of what is happening.
It’s a good thought provoking Hub.
Interesting hub. My take on all of this is that politicians on both sides have fallen down on the job and need to be replaced. As for the anger on the part of so many people, frankly it's understandable. People are paying attention to what is happening in Washington and not liking what they hear. The fact that they are listening is a good thing. As for the networks, they forgot the tenets of journalism a long time ago. The news is biased. It is not reporting, it is commentary. As for Fox, they do present both sides of the story. I suppose it explains why their rating are up and he so called mainstream ratings are falling.
LovemyChris: thank you for the comments. I agree wholeheartedly that we should shop local, buy local, and do everything we can to strengthen our own communities.
Thank you Soumyasrajan. I haven't watched TV for many years. I distrust CNN just as much as Fox news. But it does seem like Fox is fanning the flames a lot more than the other TV stations.
Fitnezzjim - thanks for the comments, I don't have much to add to what you said!
Thanks Breakfastpop. It might not be a bad idea to fire everyone in office and start over clean.
this five start question hub great work man god speed thanks
William
Your posts are much better then your forum responses.I enjoyed reading this, but of this; what is it that you are saying? We are best to sit down and shut up or just roll over and die? Truth, or the closest we can come to it, does have a value.
Hi CJ. I'm not saying to roll over - but I might be saying that we need to step away.
I think all the power we need can be found in ourselves and in our local communities. We have just handed all that power away to corporations and government, whether for convenience or for fear of "terrorists" who, statistically speaking, are less of a threat to us than the highways.
It's time to reclaim our personal and local power.
Could your city or town feed itself without Wal Mart or Krogers or whoever? That's power.
Good thought provoking hub!
I tend to agree about that lack of examples of democratic leadership calling for secession - but then again why would they? Liberal democrat philosophy has been getting stronger and more politically correct over the years only because the USA was strong enough to support this unhealthy aberration. This strength came from hard working, tax paying conservative ventures in general. The other side of that argument is practicality. If Texas was to leave the USA, it would succeed and prosper – no problem at all except for the USA losing of such a great asset . Why ? because Texas is real and is built of a solid foundation of the strong, real business. If an ultra liberal state was to leave, then its citizens would either starve or beg the USA to send it $$. Even past soviet leadership admitted that Conservatism is what “gets the trucks rolling every morning”.
I seem to recall far more violent protests by "ethnic" (non white) organizations. The same reality applies to crime. I mean why do you think racial profiling started anyway? It happened because it simply worked most of the time. Just look at the news any given day- specifically regarding violent crime –which race and sex for that matter is usually being arrested?
Both political sides are racist and violent. However I feel the dems version of this is more detrimental to the country long term.
"I think all the power we need can be found in ourselves"...The perfect statement. Throughout history...the people have always had to make it right for themselves in the end. Most politicians and reporters are clowns in corporate makeup. We just need to quit watching the circus and plant a garden. :)
Unfortunately Mr. Wilson the dumbing down of the electorate is a powerful foe.
What is sorely needed is more than a two party system. In my estimation Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin. They take different roads in creating the perception of what they are but they always end up in the same place. In the pockets of the corporations at the expense of the American people.
If I am to be truthful I will say simply that the United States doesn't really exist anymore. Our borders are wide open and on paper we are basically being carved up into companies within companies. Oh it's happening slowly but it's happening. We are a company and it appears that the downsizing has begun. The elimination of departments. The offering of severance packages as it were etc...
If you want to know what is going on in government "follow the money."
Both of these parties have sold the American people out and have no interest in what is good for America so much as what is good for their individual greed.
I am hoping to become very rich so I can unplug from this big fat lie called America.
I love the line in your response: "Could your city or town feed itself without Wal Mart or Krogers or whoever? That's power."
That should be the title of your next Hub.
I think that the Tea Party people have suffered for some of the people that they have attracted. I am sure that lots of Tea Party folks had good intentions but the bigots and crackpots chased a lot of nice people away.
film critic - it could be your next hub too... :)
Dolores - I kind of like the ideals that the Tea Party espouses, but from the beginning I saw people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as its figureheads and couldn't support it.
Good Day William R. Wilson
Well done. I voted this up for useful. You are quite right, I think, in expressing the need for the population to move to a more useful dialectic in analyzing and seeking solutions to our social, political, and economic problems.
What is needed, I think, is an analysis that takes social class into account and how this relates to the power structure in America. I recommend the work of a sociologist called William Domhoff. He did a study of the ruling class and published a book called "Who Rules America Today?" in the eighties.
In fact you could simply watch a ninety minute, detailed interview he gave, on what must have been some kind of public access cable shannel in the 1980s, called Alternative Views. This interview can be seen on YouTube, of course. Its fascinating analysis and information, and goes a long way in explaining why politicians are not really talking to the population; political campaigns and their rhetoric are really the playing out of an internal debate happening among the ruling class (I'm sure you've noticed how very narrow the range of so-called political debate is in our country).
You mentioned the Vietnam War. Noam Chomsky, among others, points out that the discussion among the "responsible," "respectable" chattering classes involved tactics. The debate didn't cover the fundamental issue of 'Should we be in Vietnam or not?' Rather the debate between the hawks (they were gung ho about the whole enterprise, victory was always right around the corner; America's credibility was at stake and so forth) and the 'doves' (who weren't sure the United States could 'get away with it,' thought the enterprise was a "strategic blunder," a la Barack Obama in his 2002 speech against the Iraq war, which got him mistaken in many quarters as an "anti-war" candidate) was conducted on a slim tactical basis. The idea that the war was fundamentally wrong and immoral was too sentimental for tough-minded "realists."
Its like this on every issue. And this is why Chomsky makes the point that both parties are actually to the Right of the population as a whole. The question should be: How can the population make politics work for the majority of us, not just the elites?
Also, I want to say that in many ways I think artificial left/right divides are created, which create false scarcity. For example, take this bailout of the big financial institutions. Trillions from the public treasury went to rehabilitating these banks and other institutions.
But observe how state and local governments all over the country are slashing budgets and dramatically cutting back on social services. The financial elites have had their banquet and they're leaving the rest of us to fight over the crumbs that fall from their table. This is what I mean by artificial left/right divisions and false scarcity.
Anyhoo, good job.
As blake4d would say....
Keep on hubbing.
You have addressed many topics in a spirited way. This , also is a much needed hub. But our society has always looked for an easy way out. Your passion shows but may not get through to a lot of people. I firmly believe that a great deal of hidden racism is brewing below the surface of a great deal of people when talking about the current administration. Fox news IS not fair and balanced. It is probably the most skewed "news" outlet where the reporters have egos the size of elephants and always make themselves part of the news. This is not journalism but merely a side show. Ted Nugent shows grave disrespect for the office of the presidency and Hannity is so biased toward the Republican side of issues that people must be blind to listen to him. Thank you for an interesting hub.
It hit me where we really differ when I read this line:
"Stop thinking that 18th century political ideas can meet 21st century problems."
This is the heart of the disagreement between progressives and traditionalists.
To progressives, people before just weren't as smart as us; the truth always changes; human beings are getting better and better.
To traditionalists, the Founding Fathers of America were a unique group men, of the sort never before gathered together, who had studied the human heart and human governance that discovered and latched onto timeless truths, timeless because the human heart is the same. Technology progresses, science progresses, but people are people, then, now, and in the future.
Good comment James.
To some extent you are right. The founding principles of this nation are good ones. The fundamentals of human nature never change. These two things are correct.
But we also face completely unprecedented problems today. Global warming is a global problem. It cannot be solved by a single individual, or by a single nation.
The same can be said of Peak oil, or impending global water shortages, or any other of a host of looming environmental problems. These are all global in scale.
Technology today, and how it can be used to control and manipulate the masses, is unlike anything ever seen before. The concentration of the world's wealth in the hands of just a few is also unprecedented.
I have no problem with the founding principles of this nation. I might take some issue with your exceptionalist claim that the founding fathers were unique in some way. Smart? Wise? Very good men by the standards of their time? Absolutely.
But I doubt that they would have any better idea than anyone living today how to deal with the problems we face.
I imagine there is some way to keep the universal truths recognized by the constitution and apply them to our current situation. I'm not at all saying we need to get rid of free speech or the right to bear arms or anything like that.
But I -am- saying that if we don't start thinking outside of our mental prisons, terrorists vs. freedom lovers, Americans vs. illegal immigrants, black vs. white, communist vs. capitalist - if we don't leave those false dichotomies behind, we will find ourselves at the mercy of the most powerful among us, in a world where water and food and oil are becoming more and more scarce.
In that scenario, the Constitution of the United States, wonderful as it is, will be discarded like so much toilet paper as soon as it gets in the way of the powerful.
Fox News should be ashamed of itself. It lies about Democrats, and Republicans fall for their BS. I don't know who's worse. Fox News or the idiots who watch that network. At least CNN and MSNBC give you both sides of politics. FOX seems to only broadcast right-wing propaganda to keep it's already sinking ratings afloat. Nobody interesting watches FOX anyway.
Excellent, thought-provoking hub.
voted up and very useful
Only time for a short reply, but these are the issues on my mind as well. I've thought for a long time that the important question is how do we get control of our own lives. I think it has absolutely nothing to do with changing "them."
Thanks for reading Jen! I volunteered for Obama and was hopeful after 8 years of Bush but his change has been incremental at best. The economy, GDP, unemployment, government spending - these things don't really affect most Americans on a day to day basis. Real unemployment - factoring in things like people who are employed part time only, or who lost their jobs and had to take lower paying work, or people who kept their job but lost their benefits - these things have been slowly increasing since the Clinton years. Unemployment, as it's measured, is just a meaningless abstraction.
The real question is, how do we take care of ourselves and our neighbors. The US and its governmental system is broken. Change will only happen at the community level. Grow a garden and get to know your neighbors! Best to you.
lovemychris Level 5 Commenter 2 years ago
Hmmm, you give a lot to think about. It's almost if the powers that be put this animosity out there....Tea-Bag movement was DEFINATELY taken over by Fox hounds...sniffing for opportunity. Get the people all riled up, let them kill each other off.
I say we just go on about our business...in our own communities. Start there.
Stop supporting the goons. Turn off Fox. There is an International boycott of products made by Israel going. You can google to find out what those products are. And if you see stupidity, call them on it!
Like these seniors screaming about "their money", when they are all on SSI and medicare...come on!
Stop turning on each other for the benefit of the plutocrats!
Put your money in small banks. Shop local and small.
I don't know what else...but great blog William!