Blogging Against the Politics of Fear, Racism, and Republican, Right-Wing Authoritarian Personalities. "You can't not know. You can't not care."
I worked hard to get Obama elected and it pains me that so many oppose him out of deep-seated fear and racial hatred.
Frank Schaeffer wrote an excellent article about how he used to be on the GOP-side of things, sending out shock troops much the same way the corporate lobbyists for the insurance and drug industries are doing today. He points out that much of what is going on is directly traceable to Obama’s race.
Here are some excerpts and my thoughts follow. I encourage you to read the whole Frank Schaeffer article at the link above.
The Republican Old Guard are in the fix an atheist would be in if Jesus showed up and raised his mother from the dead: Their world view has just been shattered. Obama’s election has driven them over the edge.
Consider Former Congressman Dick Armey. Several far right foundations and the multitrillion dollar health-insurance industry have teamed up with him to organize the far right foot soldiers of the Republican Party to intimidate people speaking on behalf of health-care reform…
Having failed at the ballot box, having watched their Fox News-organized “tea parties” fizzle the intimidation tactics which the Republicans have embraced are being used in a well-financed, top-down orchestrated fake grass roots campaign by corporate interests to try and protect the profits of the insurance business.
How Can The Right Stoop So Low?
I think I know what happened to him, Gingrich and the rest: They can’t compute that their white man-led conservative revolution is dead. They can’t reconcile their idea of themselves with the fact that white men like them don’t run the country any more — and never will again. To them the black president is leading a column of the “other” into their promised land. Gays, immigrants, blacks, progressives, even a female Hispanic appointed to the Supreme Court… for them this is the Apocalypse.
The last presidential election (to paraphrase Bart Simpson) “broke their brains.” What else could explain their embrace of intimidation — rather than discourse — over the health care debate and such unsavory moments of madness as the Republicans accusing Obama and Judge Sonia Sotomayor of racism, knowing full well that they’d just destroyed their chances with the Hispanic community forever?
I think Frank Schaeffer hit the nail on the head when he stated that the almost irrational behavior of the GOP is the result of White Men losing their faith in, well, White Men. They finally have begun to doubt that God Himself is White.
Even though it hurt them politically, the GOP could not help calling Sotomayor a racist. GOP Senators, one after the other, discussed how fearful of this nominee for the Supreme Court they were, based not on her record of almost twenty years on the bench, but on some off-hand remarks about a “wise Latina woman”.
Daily, the GOP members fail to distance themselves from the remarks of Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh, even though these men are responsible for a shrinking GOP. They know that they should repudiate these spokesmen, but their inner White Man won’t let them.
I have noticed that White Men are particularly good at mobs and thuggish behavior as long as they have sufficient numbers. White Men are not typically very brave (I know because I am one). Thus, the Health Care debates at Town Hall meetings are a perfect forum for them to demonstrate their talent for mob violence, and to oppose anything they don’t understand.
Yes, these White Men live in fear, and it causes them to hate. Hate causes them to lash out in a desire to eliminate anything that might be a threat. These White Men are to be pitied, as the finger has now written on the wall that they have been weighed in the balance, and found wanting …
Yes, Democrats have their problems too, most of them pertaining to money and selling out to corporate interests, but hey, they are mostly White Men too.
