Of course I do, and reject your idea that it’s primarily fueled by racism… And here in Northern California rural areas are hardly minority free.
@gracchus: yikes. I can’t speak to Texas, only Northern California.
I didn’t say primarily. Also, that aspect is less about racism than it is about white supremacy.
I think you meant to @navarro about Texas. But I’ve been in the Redding/Shasta/“State of Jefferson” area and the stuff I overheard there from conservatives is similar to what he’s heard in Texas.
7 Likes
Oops, indeed I meant @navarro, apologies. And in my experience all that talk about white supremacy and racism being a primary concern of people living in rural areas is just a way to demonize and trivialize their needs. They have far bigger concerns than caring about any of that. Not talking about Texas of course, I have no experience with the dystopia that @navarro is describing. But the Republicans I know couldn’t care less about any of that stuff, and have more close daily interaction with minorities than most of the people I know in San Francisco.
1 Like
Just because you are blind to systemic racism and white supremacy doesn’t mean it isn’t front and center of every single person you’re citing in your post.
Rural voters, in particular, are voting very much against their self-interest by voting for 45 and his cronies. By far more so than suburban Republicans. So why exactly do they vote for them? Deductive reasoning says the only thing left is racism.
16 Likes
I wonder if, in all their weak sauce disagreement with Trump and vehement hatred of liberals and democrats, that they’ve ever stopped to consider what we actually stand for. But don’t let facts get in the way of hate, hype and a good fake story, nosiree. I also wonder how well you’ve represented the left in your conversations with them. The left is not who needs to bend and change now. If you’re paying any attention at all to the news, you would see the right wing hate machine is in a fake news rage right now, and it is preposterous and ridiculous to suggest that it’s really the left who should change to reach the right. No dude. You got it exactly backwards.
Also, I lived rurally for decades. There are reasonable people everywhere. But there are also unreasonable people everywhere, too. Since when have liberals gone into the countryside and taken people’s weapons? Never. That’s fake Fox News hype your friends are buying. As I said, rural people who are staunch Republicans are choosing to remain fed a diet of misinformation. It’s a choice. It’s rooted in the racist agenda and has its tentacles and a thousand disguises. But it’s ultimately a choice. You can go get informed or you can stay insular and not really examine reality or other people.
13 Likes
and texas isn’t monolithic, the town of around 2100 i grew up in was probably the least racist in general of anywhere i’ve lived in texas but that was by virtue of the fact that around half the population was african-american due to a historical accident which meant that by the early to mid 70s, once we had desegregated, half the students and teachers were black and local politicians had to be able to work for black voters in order to get elected and re-elected.
meanwhile the east texas community of 12,000 where i began my teaching career 26 years ago was by far the most racist. it was the kind of place where the white teachers would freely use the “n” word if no black teachers were present in the room. i created some hard feelings when i asked people not to do that with one teacher decrying what he labeled my “politically correct bullshit” to other teachers. of course he never brought it up to our black principal.
the town of 28,000 i’ve lived in since 1998 is sort of midway between the two. overall though, once reagan started pandering to the racist south, the texas republican party has earned a well-deserved reputation for racism. indeed, given the national g.o.p.'s messaging and policies over the past 40+ years it’s hard to understand how you’ve missed it.
15 Likes
They did make an attempt to hide it, more for deniability on the part of conservatives than for anything else. Lee Atwater confessed the basic strategy back in 1981:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N-gger, n-gger, n-gger.” By 1968 you can’t say “n-gger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N-gger, n-gger.
They continued abstracting and adjusting in the decades since, progressing naturally into the rhetoric of “rugged individualism”, until it became second nature for conservatives and their apologists to claim it was never about white supremacy.
So, bringing it back on-topic, the GOP is adept at shifting with the wind in terms of moving the goalposts to allow its supporters to cover for its true and malign motives.
14 Likes
It plainly was a real concern during segregation, though, and the people who supported that aren’t even all dead yet. I wonder when exactly racism would have so completely disappeared as an important aspect in American politics, and why?
12 Likes
I’m not blind to it and neither are the Republicans I’m discussing, and in my admittedly biased opinion you’re simply wrong and needlessly dismissive to call them racists to the core.
Their vehement hatred of liberals and democrats is largely a reaction to being told they’re stupid and/or racists by them. And they have a point.
It bears repeating: many of them are as outraged as we are, or at least sensitive to, the right wing alternative reality machine at the moment.
But I think I have a solution! Something everyone can agree upon: I’ll start an exchange program. In the country will be an “Adopt-A-Libtard” campaign, and in the cities will be “Adopt-A-Hick”. And peace will be upon us, one cultural exchange “student” at a time. Just in time for the holiday season.
I’m sorry - what’s the difference between someone who repeatedly, knowingly supports openly racists policies and a racist? Do we have the subatomic imaging technology to visualize that difference?
Doing self-harmful things to cause perceived outrage among others because of their perception of you proves their fucking point.
You’re talking about the Lincoln Project-type folks, who were perfectly OK with all of the racist bullshit, gerrymandering, voter suppression from GOP administrations of the past, and openly cheering on the racist brutality of police right now. They aren’t upset about Trumpism (they created it); they are upset that 45 and his cronies are saying the quiet part loud. They are upset that all of their subtle machinations of the past 40-60 years are being laid bare and disassembled in public.
17 Likes
I’m sure that there are a lot of Republicans who don’t consider themselves racist even though they voted for Trump. They may even believe that white supremacy and/or sexism had nothing to do with their support for him. Some doubtlessly even recognize his racism and sexism as a problem and tell themselves that they voted for him and continued to support his party despite those qualities instead of because of them.
But here’s the thing.
I bet almost none of those Republicans would have voted for a Black person or a woman who had Trump’s background, qualifications and demeanor. But they would also not admit, even to themselves, that the candidate’s race or sex had anything to do with their decision making process. Instead they’d say “I don’t think that candidate would be a bad President because they a PoC/woman, I think that person would be a bad President because they are manifestly unfit for the office!”
And the kicker is that it would be very easy for Republicans to convince themselves and others of this because anyone with Trump’s background, qualifications and demeanor WOULD be manifestly unfit for the office. They’d say “I would feel the same way if a white man ran with the same record ran for office,” and they might even believe to the bottom of their hearts that it was true, but of course they’d be wrong.
14 Likes
Seiously, it’s such a white privilege position to take to say “oh someone isn’t racist because I don’t believe they have a heart black as coal and filled with racism fluid”
Racism is actions and outcomes. If you always vote for the guy campaigning on fucking over non-whites, that is you being a racist no matter what is in your heart.
Like, if you stole a bunch of shit out of the grocery store, you’d still be a thief even if you were starving.
Racism isn’t solely an attitude, it’s the consequences of actions.
16 Likes
it’s might seem like a nitpick but permitting is entirely a local and state issue. and that’s on their own republican leadership, not “big government” and the democrats.
it’s important because the right has a long history of contradicting reality to stoke fear of “the other” - with reagan, fox news, rush, jones, trump, etc. so your off the cuff example of onerous regulations fits right in, part and parcel.
fixing shed building regulations isn’t going to do a thing because it isn’t even a thing that the federal government can fix
i dont know how to deprogram republican supporters and disabuse them their fears because talking about actual facts doesn’t address the underlying fear of straight white folk losing their control over society.
heck, i cant even reach my own family through the manufacturered self indignation they’ve been spoon fed these last twenty or thirty years
12 Likes
Seems too obvious to mention, but the Republican party runs in state and local elections as well.
My cultural exchange program is sounding better and better. Lots of these Republican voters aren’t white or are married to people who aren’t white. The political spectrum is vastly more complicated than the single issue of racism.
Ironically there are plenty of real socialists who support their right to have guns.
- To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.
Karl Marx - Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, London, March 1850
So maybe not Marxism-Leninism or Orthodox Marxism, but some form of Libertarian-Socialism? That could cover your big three, unless there was some other reason stopping them.
12 Likes
And even if it was, that’s not what’s really bugging them, and that’s also not really what zoning regulations are about. It’s not about a neighbor wanting to build a shed; it’s about a neighbor wanting to build a lead smelter that will poison me and my kids, but is kept from doing so by “socialist regulations.” It’s never just a fucking shed.
And if you think those people can’t be racist, jeez-o-peez, you really should back away from this conversation slowly before you hurt yourself. Look up Sheriff David Clarke, FFS.
15 Likes
And yet EVERY SINGLE TRUMP VOTER decided his racism was not a deal-breaker.
18 Likes
Such is the nature of our ridiculous 2 party system: they’d vote for any Republican candidate, even though many of them hate Trump. Just as I voted for any Democratic candidate even though I’m far from happy with Biden. Edited to add: I have a friend who accuses me of being a corporatist for voting for Biden. I of course disagree, but he has a point.
But I bet you do see the difference. Which I suppose makes you more morally aware than all the damn enlightened centrists I have veen having to deal with.
3 Likes
I appreciate your cuteness here, but it belies the flawed unstated major premise in all your arguments here- that city people have no experience with country people. In my experience there is way more cross-pollination than cartoons would have us believe. All of my city friends moved here from small towns or rural areas, as I myself did.
To your other point, I also know 50 Republicans (mostly extended family). My dad and his best friend are the type you describe- ranchers with a love of the environment. The other 48 are openly racist Christian Dominionist Trump voters who like to tell me how much I’ll be burning in hell for being trans. Tell me again how I’m supposed to listen to their fee fees?
The problem is that, as others have stated, their motivations are not what they think they are. My dad says what you said- he hates gun regs because the nearest police officer is an hour away, so he needs his 11 guns. Well, guess what? There hasn’t been a crime within 50 miles of him this year. We leave our keys in the cars and he hasn’t locked his doors in 25 years. So what he says is his reasons aren’t real. What he is deeply afraid of are the Natives that live nearby because my dad, though I love him to death, is a racist. He also happens to just really like guns.
Republicans say they want X, but vote for Y again and again and again. At some point the Democrats will figure this out and stop offering X because it doesn’t work. You are advocating offering 2X because surely that will work.
20 Likes
