I was just about to link to this! I was horrified, but not surprised.
He can't be more raging, right-wing, or nutty than Ultimate Warrior.
I am in the best place in the universe, one that can only be inspired by the divine. A Dodgers- themed Motorhead cover band is running through it's set, all wearing jerseys while singing slightly modified lyrics to a crowd of Chicano headbangers/baseball fans.
Speaking of which, my companion tells me that the MLA is in Los Anggeles this year. Can this possibly be true?
It amuses me to think of Gallagher as Jesse Colin Young's second career
Huh. Wikipedia says he was born at Fort Bragg, NC. I guess he's come full circle.
I suppose that new, imaginative right-wing nuttery is as rare as new, imaginative comedy.
Hey, it happens to everyone, you unsympathetic shower of Chi-tino immigrant homos.
There's lot's more where that came from.
Like this, for instance.
G: I ask these cops. If the kids already have their pants mostly down and they're facing a wall, how do you know they're not about to pee on the wall? Because this is what you do with homeless guys. You would catch them with their pants half down and you would get them for indecent exposure and public urination. And the cop told me, you can't arrest them until you see the "brown round."AVC: What? What's that?
G: That's your dick. I guess everybody has a brown dick.
9: Sometimes I wish standup comedians would either stop giving interviews or give interviews about something other than how difficult and dangerous standup comedy is.
Gallagher in the morning with the Juggalos, what could possibly go wrong? Roadtrip!
August 15 11th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos
Cave in Rock, IL
Tickets available at www.juggalogathering.com. This site contains all the information for the show. This show is an early morning show!
Not since the first years of the Clinton administration has a White House had to debate whether to give precedence to stimulating the economy or reducing budget deficits. Now, as the recovery shows signs of faltering, that debate is playing out within the Obama administration, with a twist compared to the 1990s: the economic and political teams have switched sides.
While President Bill Clinton's political advisers favored more spending and tax cuts coming out of the recession of the early 1990s and his economic team pushed to start reducing deficits, in President Obama's circle the opposite is true. Political advisers are channeling the widespread public anger at deficits while the economic team argues that the government should further spur the economy to avert another recession.
Serious question: Am I having a Pauline Kael moment, or what? I know literally one person who has expressed concern to me about deficits. Everybody I know is worried about their jobs, and quite a few people have mentioned government spending favorably. And I'm talking about my social circle, not my professional one.
Or is this just strategically drummed up right-wing hysteria? Because somehow none of the news stories about the the deficit or the debt seem to mention ENDING THE WARS as a potential solution.
134:(head down, nostrils chuffing smoke, eyes going red and whirly at the red cape just waved by witt)
Ummm....Calculated Risk thread on Illinois and California I just read (not posted because it has 400 comments) contained some pretty serious anti-semitism, with extreme pushback ("my father was a tailor, not a banker")
Ofg course, what interests me, to whatever extent it does, is Gallagher's audience paying to be drenched with rage and spittle, openly and enthusiastically
Wait a minute. Could there be an opportunity here for trolls?
Has Bob just identified our favourite commenter?
Serious question: Am I having a Pauline Kael moment, or what? I know literally one person who has expressed concern to me about deficits.
If you talk often enough about public anger, the public might just get angry.
13: It's not just you, most polling shows the priorities reversed despite the incessant drumbeat in the traditional media For instance, the WaPo had an article a couple of weeks back which included this gem:
Democratic leaders agree with those goals. But with midterm elections approaching and public anxiety about deficits rising, many rank-and-file Democrats are increasingly unwilling to support additional deficit spending.No evidence of "anxiety" other than that trumpeted by pols, well-heeled media types and hacks like the Peterson Foundation folks. "Tough choices" is their mantra--touching the military would be too "easy".
13: And that article is a mess from the start, by the time Clinton got in the US was further along in the recovery from a much more mild recession.
Truth is, Democratic Candidate X has your sure vote against frothing wingnut, doesn't she?
So the marginal vote that gets her elected is 2-3 SDs to the right of you, and that person supposedly cares about deficits.
You can't expect politicians to work and sacrifice for votes already in their pocket.
Same thing goes for the war. People here gonna vote for Palin in 2012 in Obama is still in Afghanistan? Or get evil, and vote Green? So the only FP votes Obama has to worry about are the ones to his right.
People care about deficits if they think deficits are why we have high unemployment. Also, people care about immigrants if they think immigrants are why we have high unemployment. The Washington insider solution is "Okay, I'll meet you halfway and do something about the deficit. The only tiny drawback is it will actually make unemployment worse rather than better, but we know how important this deficit issue is." Win-win from the point of view of the aristocracy, which includes every Senator except maybe five.
I think you are right about unemployment, ned, but not about immigration. In fact, I think almost any time someone mentions job loss in reference to immigration, it is a cover for racism.
Vaguely to 22, I believe that now that Jim Henley has stopped referring to himself as a libertarian (?), and Will Wilkinson has gone insane on immigration and birthright citizenship, I officially know one sane, humane libertarian. And he's related to me.
13: Or is this just strategically drummed up right-wing hysteria?
Yes. There are admittedly members of the public -- chiefly Tea Party types -- who are freaked out about the deficit (recall the woman I encountered at the Post Office who declared loudly and in a doom-saying voice that we were all, well, doomed, and should abolish Social Security, even, for that's how bad things are).
The media attention to anti-deficit fears isn't particularly new; I'm surprised you haven't noticed it before.
I put a great deal of blame on Republican lawmakers, as well as those Dems (Ben Nelson? WTF dude?) who are apparently paying more attention to the midterm elections than they are to good policy. The NYT article seems prepared to point to a failure on Obama's part to put forward a strong enough stimulus message; the suggestion seems to be that the public would get the idea if only Obama pushed hard enough, in the right direction. There may be something to that, but it's such an easy diagnosis: think harder about it, please. Obama is not and cannot be MagicMan.
now that Jim Henley has stopped referring to himself as a libertarian
I ... was not aware of this. So now he's what? Huh.
3: MLA 2011 will indeed be in L.A. in early January. If I am lucky, I'll be there doing job interviews and passing out from stress every five minutes.
So now he's what? Huh.
I believe that's a good summation of his current ideological self-image.
||
Hawaiian Punch has been napping for nearly four hours. Jesus, sweetie, I knew you got overtired during the week. But wow.
|>
She will wake up and be 4 inches taller! It'll be weird, but that's how kids are.
I'm trying to decide whether to poke around Henley's blog to see what the no-longer-a-libertarian business is about. I don't suppose anyone would be willing to provide a hint? I mean, I would love to read something like: Yo. I've realized this is problematic. Here's my new thinking ....
You know, I honestly don't know quite how to counter the Tea Party movement. This from the NYT is really a bit much, and I don't know what's wrong with this country.
I honestly don't know quite how to counter the Tea Party movement.
Try improving the economy.
9: There's lot's more where that came from.
There is, isn't there? Like this!
If you can go out in public with your underwear showing and your pants below your butt; if girls can wear a top that shows their bra as part of the fashion; if kids are getting tattoos that cause you to react because of the size of the tattoo and the colors of the tattoo, extending their earlobes, you know, bone through their nose -- all of these things work because they're wrong. It's the wrong thing to do, and they're trying to get a reaction out of people, and the reason people react is because it's wrong.
Man. He's pretty clear what he's about. I continue to be amazed - all you have to do is elect a black president and racist stereotypes are blurted out of random mouths until you've heard them all twice over in just a couple of months. I really hope this is some kind of final death rattle of public racism.
m, thanks gallagher
OT: my friend's getting married tomorrow, and is childhood (or college? or something) friends with the deaf actress from Weeds, who's in town for the weekend wedding events. I am 80% sure I am going to call her Megan at some point and be totally mortified.
33: Sure, but that's a sop. The idea that a number of people (not a huge number) would lose their freaking minds to go all originalist -- thinking somehow that that's an answer -- is just mind-boggling.
It's obviously been naive of me to have thought that we were a little more informed than that. Every once in a while I'm just shocked by the Tea Party narrative. I really don't like to think that the general public is a herd that's docile as long as it's fed.
Benen on the importance of Dem electoral participation, with the concluding remark:
But that means the party has quite a bit of educating to do over the next four months, because if Pew's research is correct, the Democratic rank-and-file has no idea how devastating the elections might be.
Michael Lind had a nice summary comment about the libertarian/originalist ideas the Tea Party puts forward:
But if it bothers you that cafeterias and stores and hotels and gas stations since 1964 had been unable to refuse service to blacks, or Latinos, or Asians, then you cannot complain if people speculate about your motives.
Lind is an odd guy, but he can hit the nail on the head sometimes.
32, 36: For starters that article contains a whole lot of speculative bullshit on the part of the author; Brooksian NYTimes heartland political pulse narrative creation at its worst . The media narrative on what the Tea Party really is" morphs continually. There is no grassroots movement that gives a damn about originalism other than as coded racism or "it was all better when I was growing up in the 50s-ism" or "a man who looks like me on TV told me so-ism".
39: So you're saying I should relax? Maybe I can just yell at the NYT for the article.
There is no grassroots movement that gives a damn about originalism other than as coded racism or "it was all better when I was growing up in the 50s-ism" or "a man who looks like me on TV told me so-ism".
This strikes me as enough of a problem.
40: No don't relax, they'll still be used to fuck up the country big time, but it is a bit of a false flag operation.
38: Thanks for the link. It's a good piece.
36: Every once in a while I'm just shocked by the Tea Party narrative. I really don't like to think that the general public is a herd that's docile as long as it's fed.
But no one is paying attention because things are going along well enough except for the economy. It's just not that terrible out that other than the employment situation. So everyone is unhappy with Congress. In this context Dem's are happy so they have nothing to oppose.
As for the Tea Party people, well, those are just Republicans. If you're familiar with the right-wing, then that originalist stuff is what the Republicans have been saying all along. They don't believe the right side won the Civil War, they don't believe in the New Deal in any way, shape or form, and they certainly don't believe in anything from the 60's, certainly not civil rights.
The big change is that white Southerners aren't living through a depression so they don't need the money from welfare so much, so everything gets blamed on black people. So we have a black president and look, it must be because of welfare. & etc.
It's nothing new; the libertarian types have been arguing for this all along.
m, see old SF books
38: I recall Black Like Me making a huge impression on me when I read it as a kid. My feelings about it evolved to somewhat mixed as I matured. I recall it being a pretty big deal at the time although I do not recall being aware of the aftermath for Griffin.
the libertarian types have been arguing for this all along.
Maybe so. I'm disgusted in any case.
37: I like this look at those and various other polling numbers over at Daily Kos. This bit was perhaps the most interesting:
For those who prefer a Democratic-led Congress:
Do you prefer Democrats because...
You support Democrats policies 49%
You oppose Republican policies 48%
For those who prefer a Republican-led Congress:
Do you prefer Republicans because...
You support Republican policies 31%
You oppose Democratic policies 64%
There's certainly some opportunity in there if the Dems play it right.
The chart that matters for most everyone except the media.
46: Maybe so. I'm disgusted in any case.
If you can lay hands on a copy of The Probability Broach (wiki) by L. Neil Smith, you will find all of libertarian fantasyland laid out there for your reading pleasure. That's if you want to know what dragon they're chasing, which is handy if you want to understand how Rand Paul can say he wouldn't vote for the Civil Rights Act of '64 and how he can say that without thinking about black people at all.
Supposedly less government == paradise and why wouldn't black people love paradise, eh?
I can't manage to be disgusted because the entire thing is so far out to lunch. It is a fantasy that people believe in even though it's been tried over and over again and it never works well.
m, i guess that's the definition of insanity
Quoting from 47 (I'm not going to stick italics html tags on every line):
For those who prefer a Republican-led Congress:
Do you prefer Republicans because...
You support Republican policies 31%
You oppose Democratic policies 64%
I haven't read the entirety of the Kos thread, but my first reaction to this is actually not good: it suggests that Dems should go centrist/moderate Republican (as opposed to extremist Republican) in order to win over conservatives disaffected from their own party.
This is just at a first glance.
all of libertarian fantasyland laid out
"The liberal cabal has fat-cat favors from cash rich Political potentates funding their takeover of America. They suck at the rear tit of the Global Elite and gleam secret kickbacks from the Mortgage Moguls Obama bailed out with your hard earned tax dollars. In a nutshell, what about us? We fight with pennies, many times marching empty handed against immeasurable odds! All the while the Left-Wing Socialcrats bask in obese pools of ACORN type booty."
Jeez, Apo, are you trying to make me cry?
I WELCOME FAT-CAT FAVORS AND SECRET KICKBACKS AND ACORN TYPE BOOTY.
*Obese pools* of ACORN type booty.
What does an acorn type booty look like? And how about obese pools, how do they differ from slender ones?
I suspect a deliberate suggestion of Hottentot imagery.
Oh, I think you know what that means, teraz.
This is from the guy who was photographed with a "Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar." sign. He is a very controversial figure within the movement.
Yeah, I'm not so down with the obese pools.
51: all of libertarian fantasyland laid out
Appppoooooo. That's libertarian *reality*. I said libertarian fantasyland! So you, yes, you can climb in the head of those wacky guys and understand exactly what they think. God, Guns and Gold baby!
He is a very controversial figure within the movement.
He's an embarrassment that threatens to get worse, since he's an out and out racist and they know it. It's great. We need that dude front and center 24-7. I almost want to send him money to help D election prospects.
50: it suggests that Dems should go centrist/moderate Republican (as opposed to extremist Republican) in order to win over conservatives disaffected from their own party.
Yeah, except they'll never ever stop hating on Democrats because Democrats are black. There's no one to win over that way.
m, i don't think there is, anyways
Yeah, except they'll never ever stop hating on Democrats because Democrats are black
That's overkill, max. The figures come from a poll that there's no reason to think focuses on the Tea Party or southern white -- or at this point southwestern white -- electorate. These are, I hypothesize, people (white people, probably) who've swallowed the OMG Socialist! rhetoric. They may have libertarian leanings. The country is increasingly leaning, in a very confused manner, that way.
That's overkill, max.
I'd love to believe that but after what I've heard over the last 18 months I don't believe it. Regardless of their other leanings, every supporter of the Tea Party/Republicans/whatnot wants to go back to when the US was better, and the one commonality is the agreement that that was back before the Kennedy assassination. That is, before the Civil Rights Act, before Medicare/Medicaid, Fair Housing Act, the whole nine yards. So, they may not identifiably hate black people, but in practice they sure don't like blacks.
The country is increasingly leaning, in a very confused manner, that way.
There's a lot of talk but I don't see much in the way of any real support for economic libertarianism. Or for civil liberties. I see the same people saying the same stuff in front of a new 'movement', and what they actually want to do is as unpopular as ever. Opposing Obama because of the economy - that's (probably) popular.
And the big time fireworks have started. Whee!
m, happy fourth of july everyone
You fatcats didn't eat your plankton, and now it's mine! Mine!
That's overkill, max.
I honestly don't think it is. The depth and tenor of the rage about demographic transition is breathtaking. You can see it in the hyper focus on "legality" and "purity" among the extremists. Every president faces scandal and detractors, but tonight again at the supermarket there was a tabloid, staring me in the face with a giant headline "proving" the illegality of Obama's presidency. This stuff wouldn't have so much traction and staying power if it weren't resonating with a group of people.
I think it's that some of the people granted honorary whiteness -- the sons and daughters of the Italian, Irish, Jewish immigrants of the early 20th century -- are so outraged that the Democratic party has become identified with people of color that it feels like a personal affront to them. The country as a whole is accepting outsiders as if they were insiders! This alone is terrifying to them.
They're reacting at such a gut, fear-based level because they sense the inevitability of the population change (immigration or no, the country is becoming less and less white) and they are projecting madly: What would they do to groups they hated if they were in power? That's what those groups will do to them.
And no amount of actually having a black president, who is not actually carrying out policies of hatred toward them, will shake them from this certainty.
65: Gosh. Really? I mean, I know. But I really find myself struggling to (want to) think that that's not really it.
The period during which America was in love with itself (the 50s, say) coincided with a period during which it was highly segregated and racist. I want to think that these things were coincidental, so people are confusing them historically. What people want (I want to say) is the American dream and all that jazz; in the absence of that, during this rather horrifying recession, they rather dim-wittedly think that a return to white America will somehow restore the dream.
I'm not sure why I'm fighting the idea that the Republican resurgence is grounded in racism, which I think is what you're willing to say. I should gesture toward corporatism.
I can't speak for max, but I'm not talking about a Republican resurgence. I'm talking about a smallish but very vocal and modestly (on occasions remarkably) powerful group of older white people.
They're not nostalgic for a time that never was; the bigotry and "knowing one's place" back then for them is a feature, not a bug.
There's a much larger concentric circle around this group, including I consider my friendly acquaintances or even friends, and I think they are primarily just motivated by economic fear. I don't think they have any particular animus towards people of races other than their own, and I think they'd be very happy with a U.S. that combined some of the better features of the 1950s with the increased social liberalism (gay rights, black president) we have today. These are the people I find common ground with praising Elizabeth Warren.
But the other folks -- I dunno. The more I try to have conversations and understand, the more convinced I get that there isn't anything there to undersand. Hatred all the way down, and a particularly ugly kind of zero-sum thinking.
the more convinced I get that there isn't anything there to undersand. Hatred all the way down, and a particularly ugly kind of zero-sum thinking.
This is what had me upset and somewhat flailing earlier today: I don't know how to talk to these people.
Okay. I'll think about this, in any case.
Obviously there are some scary crazy people dressing up in tri-cornered hats and various other colonial-revolutionary accoutrements that are meant to convey an emotional affinity with the neo-classical elegance of Washington's stately home at Mount Vernon, and/or with the fervid excitement of Paul Revere's ride (there's a bit of confusion on this point, I suspect: slow, sleepy stateliness? or actively armed militiaman patriotism? no doubt the latter is supposed to secure a return to the former, or something like that). Many (or probably most, sure) of these historical re-enactment types are quite rabidly racist and xenophobic, and quelle surprise. But are these tea party people anything more than a vocal (and, let's face it, media-savvy) fringe minority?
That's a genuine question, by the way.
What makes me nervous is when Democrats/Democratic sympathizers want to dismiss or reduce all expressions of economic anxiety to simple racism, full stop, and end of story. I somewhat dimly and murkily suspect that this is wrong, in "objective" terms (well, "objective:" who's the object of which subject and etc?), and I somewhat more confidently suspect that this is politically/electorally suicidal: if Democrats can't figure out a way to effectively address these economic concerns, there's another party (the membership of which includes at least a minority of scary crazy people, and I emphasize the conditional of the 'at the very least') waiting in the wings, and ready to pounce at the earliest available opportunity. It's easy enough to reduce all of your opponents to crazy racism; the real challenge is to inoculate yourself against such craziness by offering actual, and actually sane, solutions.
To return to the main theme of this thread: I had seriously never even heard of this Gallagher person until about half an hour ago. Guess I've been living under a rock all these years.
67: I can't speak for max
You did an excellent job of speaking for me. ;-)
They're not nostalgic for a time that never was; the bigotry and "knowing one's place" back then for them is a feature, not a bug.
I'm thinking of Rush Limbaugh who has been on about this stuff from the moment Obama won. Everyone had to buy guns to avoid being robbed and then they were worried about the guns being stolen and then you got Limbaugh talking about how the country has been going downhill since Kennedy was elected. Republicans/conservatives endorsed this stuff with, at best, silence and, at worst, outright cheering.
And that barely gets me out of January 2009. Everything since then has been more of the same and worse - old white people going on all about how the President (a black man) is stealing from these old white people. Medicare, death panels, etc. etc.
In this context Gallagher wouldn't even rate mention except supposedly he used to be a hippie. Well, and excepting that if there ever was a political correctness that caused these guys to hold their tongues it's dead as a hammer.
68: I don't know how to talk to these people.
I don't think you can. If you're dealing with an old white person who loves Rush Limbaugh you can pretty much forget talking to them because they hate you and want you (and me) to die, or at least move to France. There's just no point to the conversation; you have to understand them, yes, but only so you can fight them.
I understand the libertarians well enough that nothing Rand Paul is going to say between now and November is going to surprise me unless it involves him blowing off libertarianism for political gain, which he's already done several times.
We, as Democrats, have go to figure out how to survive the election so Obama can lead the way to a big victory in 2012. That's the only thing to do.
m, obama really is a replay of reagan you know, and reagan wasn't doing so hot in the middle of his first term
I don't know how to talk to these people.
There's no point in talking to them. Your worldviews are not reconcilable.
never even heard of this Gallagher person
Wow. He was practically inescapable during the 1980s. Also, he generally came off as a fey hippie, which makes the current incarnation all the weirder.
Pwned twice in the same comment.
From an NYT article on the IB program.
Some parents say it is anti-American and too closely tied to both the United Nations and radical environmentalism.
Say what? No memory of anti-Americanism or environmentalism, let alone radical environmentalism.
OT (35): update. I did not call her Megan (yet) and I did tell her all about my fear that I would call her Megan. Then she laughed at me and so did I and so now I am over it. Awkwardness around minor celebrities: conquered.
73: over here IB is a sign of old fashioned snobbish schools (generally private) that don't trust the new NCEA system*. (That and the Cambridge exams.) Learning that they're a sign of radical environmentalism will be a real shock to the good burghers of Fen/dal/ton, I must say.
Good grief, that's nuts.
* Introduced by a Labour Government, new-fangled, politically correct, insufficient emphasis on old-fashioned learning when learning was proper, too much trade education, not mean enough, etc etc.
The school my daughters go to is an IB school, they are in the PYP, which is for primary school. There is a certain amount of "let's not render the planet uninhabitable going on, but, well...
I thought everyone used hat pins back then (with their tricornios).
Good grief, that's nuts.
It has the word "international" in the title. That's all an ignoramus needs to know.
69
... I had seriously never even heard of this Gallagher person ...
Ditto.
69: But are these tea party people anything more than a vocal (and, let's face it, media-savvy) fringe minority?
Define "minority." Sadly, their message seems to be spreading, at least where anti-deficit fears are concerned.
One of the Sunday talking head shows (This Week, Jake Tapper's show) was actually interesting this morning for the number of times people pointed out that falsehoods were being spread. Cynthia (?) somebody clearly stated that polls actually show that the public is more concerned about job creation -- i.e. additional stimulus spending -- than about deficit reduction, so that the Republican talking point alleging public alarm over the latter is, erm, misguided. She suggested that the public is "confused" about the difference between short- and long-term deficits, however, and is increasingly being pressed toward the conviction that we can't afford any spending at all, like now, not at all. Which isn't necessarily the case. Further suggestion that Obama might do well to highlight the difference in order to, you know, combat confusion.
Meanwhile the Republicans suck, Michael Steele is an idiot (Tapper actually said "That's crazy talk"), John McCain is prevaricating about the crime rate in Arizona, and nobody knows what to make of it all.
Also I had never heard of Gallagher either.
81: Y'all probably missed the Piña Colada song too. That's why your despair isn't total.
he generally came off as a fey hippie
I dunno. Even early in my childhood, I picked up on the fact that his entire schtick at the time was "See, the DIFFERENCE between MEN and WOMEN is..." It's only a short step right to get to "See, the DIFFERENCE between FAGS and STRAIGHTS is..." etc.
My impression was the same as apo's. The guy who made me sit through a Gallagher video swore he was the modern-day Lenny Bruce.
Y'all probably missed the Piña Colada song too.
I did not. Great, thanks Biohazard. I believe I need to put some music on. Really anything but the Piña Colada song will do.
I got rid of it by loading "Many a new day" from Oklahoma on top of it. R&H wrote great songs earworm overlays.
You know how you can get a really serious earworm infection? Spend an evening at a piano bar. Half the showtunes I know are now vying for attention inside my head.
Oklahoma? I was thinking Kansas. (Actually I have paperwork to complete, so this isn't too much of a problem right now.)
When I think unwelcome 80s earworms, I think of Christopher Cross's "Sailing" to be honest. There's always "Jesse's Girl" as well.
Yikes! Now I've caught "Bad Moon Rising" from YouTube. That will teach me to look things up".
[Anyone besides Gary remember Nearing's "The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom"?]
Has anyone linked to this Gallagher-related awesomeness yet?
("I'm going to call you Big Eyes")
Has anyone linked to this Gallagher-related awesomeness yet?
Ow. Ow. Ow. That was so painful to watch. It wasn't funny but it must burn something horrid.
m, gah
66:
The period during which America was in love with itself (the 50s, say) coincided with a period during which it was highly segregated and racist. I want to think that these things were coincidental, so people are confusing them historically.
Yet it makes no sense to see the fifties' white picket fence dreams as anything but a backlash against the social gains made by women and African-Americans during World War II and the general fairly liberal politics of the immediate post-war period, does it? It was always dependent on racism and sexism to keep "the colored" and wimmen in check so that Ward Cleaver could have his suburban dream.
69:
What makes me nervous is when Democrats/Democratic sympathizers want to dismiss or reduce all expressions of economic anxiety to simple racism, full stop, and end of story. I somewhat dimly and murkily suspect that this is wrong, in "objective" terms (well, "objective:" who's the object of which subject and etc?), and I somewhat more confidently suspect that this is politically/electorally suicidal
For the Democrats this will be difficult, because how critical can they be of the systemic reasons for the crisis when they themselves are part of the system. A rightwing party can agitate against foreigners, a leftwing party against bankers, a neoliberal party with a bit of social conscience can't do either, really.
See also http://www.leftycartoons.com/who-to-blame/
66:
The period during which America was in love with itself (the 50s, say) coincided with a period during which it was highly segregated and racist. I want to think that these things were coincidental, so people are confusing them historically.
Yet it makes no sense to see the fifties' white picket fence dreams as anything but a backlash against the social gains made by women and African-Americans during World War II and the general fairly liberal politics of the immediate post-war period, does it? It was always dependent on racism and sexism to keep "the colored" and wimmen in check so that Ward Cleaver could have his suburban dream.
69:
What makes me nervous is when Democrats/Democratic sympathizers want to dismiss or reduce all expressions of economic anxiety to simple racism, full stop, and end of story. I somewhat dimly and murkily suspect that this is wrong, in "objective" terms (well, "objective:" who's the object of which subject and etc?), and I somewhat more confidently suspect that this is politically/electorally suicidal
For the Democrats this will be difficult, because how critical can they be of the systemic reasons for the crisis when they themselves are part of the system. A rightwing party can agitate against foreigners, a leftwing party against bankers, a neoliberal party with a bit of social conscience can't do either, really.
See also http://www.leftycartoons.com/who-to-blame/
66:
The period during which America was in love with itself (the 50s, say) coincided with a period during which it was highly segregated and racist. I want to think that these things were coincidental, so people are confusing them historically.
Yet it makes no sense to see the fifties' white picket fence dreams as anything but a backlash against the social gains made by women and African-Americans during World War II and the general fairly liberal politics of the immediate post-war period, does it? It was always dependent on racism and sexism to keep "the colored" and wimmen in check so that Ward Cleaver could have his suburban dream.
69:
What makes me nervous is when Democrats/Democratic sympathizers want to dismiss or reduce all expressions of economic anxiety to simple racism, full stop, and end of story. I somewhat dimly and murkily suspect that this is wrong, in "objective" terms (well, "objective:" who's the object of which subject and etc?), and I somewhat more confidently suspect that this is politically/electorally suicidal
For the Democrats this will be difficult, because how critical can they be of the systemic reasons for the crisis when they themselves are part of the system. A rightwing party can agitate against foreigners, a leftwing party against bankers, a neoliberal party with a bit of social conscience can't do either, really.
See also http://www.leftycartoons.com/who-to-blame/
66:
The period during which America was in love with itself (the 50s, say) coincided with a period during which it was highly segregated and racist. I want to think that these things were coincidental, so people are confusing them historically.
Yet it makes no sense to see the fifties' white picket fence dreams as anything but a backlash against the social gains made by women and African-Americans during World War II and the general fairly liberal politics of the immediate post-war period, does it? It was always dependent on racism and sexism to keep "the colored" and wimmen in check so that Ward Cleaver could have his suburban dream.
69:
What makes me nervous is when Democrats/Democratic sympathizers want to dismiss or reduce all expressions of economic anxiety to simple racism, full stop, and end of story. I somewhat dimly and murkily suspect that this is wrong, in "objective" terms (well, "objective:" who's the object of which subject and etc?), and I somewhat more confidently suspect that this is politically/electorally suicidal
For the Democrats this will be difficult, because how critical can they be of the systemic reasons for the crisis when they themselves are part of the system. A rightwing party can agitate against foreigners, a leftwing party against bankers, a neoliberal party with a bit of social conscience can't do either, really.
See also http://www.leftycartoons.com/who-to-blame/
That's right Martin, people want to read your deathless prose four times in a row.
