We can’t expect ill-educated, poorly-parented teahadists in their insular gated communities to achieve their full human potential as long as well-paid professional propagandists are willing to make excuses for their bad behavior. Isaac Chotiner at TNR calls out one such apologist:
Reihan Salam, in a column today:
One thing that is undeniably true is that American conservatives are overwhelmingly white in a country that is increasingly less so. As the number of Latinos and Asian-Americans has increased in coastal states like California, New York and New Jersey, many white Americans from these regions have moved inland or to the South. For at least some whites, particularly those over the age of 50, there is a sense that the country they grew up in is fading away, and that Americans with ancestors from Mexico or, as in my case, Bangladesh don’t share their religious, cultural and economic values. These white voters are looking for champions, for people who are unafraid to fight for the America they remember and love. It’s unfair to call this sentiment racist. But it does help explain at least some of our political divide. [Emphasis Mine]
… My question for Salam is this: how racially insensitive does one have to be to prefer an America with segregation because he or she saw other advantages to 1950s society? What possibly could outweigh the disgusting racial status quo of the 1950s (I am leaving out the status of women and gays)? To wish for a return to that America, I would argue, one has to be so racially insensitive that bigoted seems like an apt descriptor. The alternative answer, of course, is complete solipsism.
Well spoken, Mr. Chotiner. And that reminded me that I had yet not gotten around to linking to New York Magazines’s feature article on “God in the Basement of the Empire State Building“:
Each spring, the King’s College, a Christian school occupying two floors in the Empire State Building, hosts a series of lectures and debates on a single theme. This year’s theme is villainy. In a windowless basement room, Dinesh D’Souza, the college’s newly installed president, is delivering his remarks to a student camera crew, two potential donors, and about 30 undergraduates. In keeping with the college’s dress code, the students wear business suits.
__
“I want to talk a little bit about what I call the unique villainy of Barack Obama,” D’Souza, 50, says with a grin. “In my view, it’s the villainy of nondisclosure.” Obama campaigned as a standard liberal, D’Souza says, but actually is a vehement anti-colonialist. “For Obama, the radical Muslims are on the right side of history—that’s why he is so unnaturally solicitous toward them.”…
__
An austere young man asks, “Doesn’t the villainy of deception sort of pale in comparison to Obama’s moral villainies, such as supporting the abortion agenda or even the redistribution of wealth, stealing from the rich to give to the poor?”
__
“In a sense, yes,” D’Souza concedes, and later says, “Frankly, I don’t think Obama cares that much about the poor. What he cares about is bringing down the people at the top … In my opinion, Obama’s animating energies are negative.” By now the two potential donors have left the room looking ashen. Chris Ross, an employee of the college who is “facilitating” my visit by never leaving my side, winces slightly every time I write something down. As he escorts me out of the building, he says, “Remember that President D’Souza speaks for himself, not for the school.” …
Jewish Steel
Flabbergasting. That’s a crazy kind of president to have.
iriedc
D’Souza speaks for the voices screaming in his head.
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
Hey, I’d vote for complete solipsism. But I’m OK with either one, whichever you decide. It doesn’t matter as much as the obvious destruction it will bring.
A Mom Anon
Ok then… WTF is so bad about being anti colonialist? I might be wrong(as I often am,lol),but wasn’t this country founded by anti colonialists?
John Puma
As potential donors slink out of the room the reporter is told: “Remember that President (of the school) D’Souza speaks for himself, not for the school.”
With a president like that who needs an anti-colonialist to bring destruction. What we have here is a case of “villainous” definition of college president.
——————
On a side note: can someone PLEASE explain to me WTF is the big problem with anti-colonialism? Wasn’t this country literally born of fierce anti-colonialism?!? And, of course, the dread “Kenyan anti-colonialism” is “anti” the same master our founders overcame.
debit
Wasn’t the anti colonialist thing one of Newt’s dog whistles from a year ago? Come on, man, keep up with the times. Also, too, I’d love if someone asked what that meant, exactly. As I recall, Newt couldn’t answer that either.
brent
Salaam knows what every apologist for racists knows which is that if they can make the argument about defining racism in the nebulous region of what the “racist” intends, then they stand some decent chance of getting away clean. I think this from Jay Smooth from a few years ago is a passably good way of thinking about the issue.
I said this on Yglesias’ post about Salaam’s thoughts, but its really pointless to get into an argument about who is or isn’t racist. What matters is that the people that he is talking about are advocating policies which deliberately exclude and degrade other people based on race or ethnicity. Those policies and their advocacy are unacceptable.
So if Salaam really wants to play the “But are they really racist?” game, he can do so on his own. We shouldn’t help him waste our time with that half-witted garbage.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I believe in guilt by association.
If the foo shits, wear it. Dinesh is covered in foo. From head to toe.
Poopyman
I’d be careful about making the assumption that the founding fathers were anti-colonial. I think they were perfectly fine with a colony supplying a needed commodity – like tea. The caveat here is that I haven’t seen any direct evidence one way or the other on this.
Reihan Salam baffles me, even though I recognize he embodies a cognitive dissonance common to the RWNJs. I can’t put myself in his shoes and see how he manages to view his world. Empathy failure, I guess.
D’Souza is another case. And by case, I do mean pathological. The man is scary.
Villago Delenda Est
D’Souza is projecting there like the octoplex down at the mall over Memorial Day weekend.
He is utter fucking scum.
arguingwithsignposts
“anti-colonial” = against American “exceptionalism.” It’s a term that sounds bad in a Luntzian way. It’s like claiming a Christian practices “liberation theology.”
polyorchnid octopunch
@A Mom Anon: No, it was founded by colonists.
Samara Morgan
wallah, i relly hate Reihan Salam. But you know what?
for once the little creep isn’t lying.
the teabaggers aren’t racists as much as they are NATIVISTS.
and they are pretty uniformly white (non-hispanic caucasian) CHRISTIANS.
did you know Reihan is a MOOZLEM?
he never says it, because the teabaggers would run from him like scalded cats, and NRO would fire his ass.
Like i said when i made the pompous little poseur cry, i dont want to stop people from blogging…i want to stop them from LYING.
check out Salam’s “Realservatism” post.
and this epic comment.
and fanboi de Bores response. :)
hahahahaha
Amir Khalid
I just re-read Reihan Salam’s column. I am still incredulous: here is a man of color offering an apologia for white racism. How blind he is.
wrb
But he’s the tool of the plutocrats!?
Villago Delenda Est
One of the Koch brothers once said that the problem with Obama is that he’s an “egalitarian”.
You know, like that Jefferson (“all men are created equal”) guy.
MattF
A little factual history might help here. It was all the way back in the ’50’s that the South first got educated the hard way about its own racism– and by the Federal Government, no less– and all those darned commie demonstrators like MLK. And then, yeah, the DFHs arrived in the ’60’s, but so did fire and murder from the diehards. Anyone who is still pining for those good old days has some explaining to do.
arguingwithsignposts
@Toker Chan:
Well, I guess he’s got you pegged.
arguingwithsignposts
@MattF:
Well, it might go back to the *18*50s.
Samara Morgan
@brent: they aren’t really racists…..they are WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIVISTS.
but Reihan will never admit that in a thousand thousand years.
Because in America that is a bigger turn off than racism.
Samara Morgan
@arguingwithsignposts: yes….i destroyed TAS the Glibertarian Hivemind, and now..im coming for youuuu!
arguingwithsignposts
So now the Toker-Chan has appointed herself queen of the muslim identification squad. How imperial of her.
Woodrowfan
remember D’Souza came from an upper class Indian family that was on top (as far as Indians went) in British India. Their position was toppled by anti-colonialist, i.e., those “inferior” Indians who demanded their freedom. D’Souza identifies with the ruling class because his family were part of it and he still hates anyone who he thinks threatens the right of “the right people” to rule..
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
In that respect, he’s a lot like Michelle Malkin, who, if her “side” were fully successful, would be relegated to being a “comfort woman” for foot soldiers of the new order she advocates.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: hes not just a gunga, hes a maftoon– hes a MOOZLEM.
but he never says it public.
kth
I’m having a hard time seeing what value this Manhattan bible college adds to the vast right-wing conspiracy. The Bush admin showed that you could staff much of an entire Cabinet with graduates from third-rate evangelical-affiliated schools, but there’s no shortage of such places already. I’m guessing that the appointment of D’Souza, who has only a bachelor’s degree, is one last grab at the rim before this college swirls down the drain for good.
geg6
Why bother with the shitstorm that follows calling someone a racist? I just always tell people that their comment, behavior, or policy position is racist. And when they get all butt hurt and claim they are not racists, I can honestly and logically say that I never said such a thing. It almost always stops them in their tracks and makes them think for a minute. Well, almost anyway. Unless, of course, they are as dishonest pieces of shit like D’Souza. Talk about self-haters.
Samara Morgan
@arguingwithsignposts: i have emails from when Reihan and i were “friends”.
But Cole won’t let me publish them here.
I have mails from the Derb and Dr. Manzi too.
i kinda respect that about Cole.
but he’s going to to have to have to eat about Libya pretty quick here….we shall see how he comports himself.
:)
arguingwithsignposts
Wiki: “Salam is a Muslim. He has also remarked that “I am not an expert on Islam” and “I wouldn’t say I’m a very religiously observant person”.[6]”
Is this like being born a Catholic makes one, whether one observes it or not?
arguingwithsignposts
@Samara Morgan: “Cole won’t let me publish them.”
What, Cole prevents you from setting up a blog? Wow, Tunch is more powerful than even I imagined.
Villago Delenda Est
@arguingwithsignposts:
My thought exactly. She knows no one will every visit her blog. Which is why she wants to find an audience here.
Unfortunately for her, samples of her product assure failure.
John Puma
@Poopyman:
You suggest the founders weren’t necessarily anti-colonial.
Have you read the Declaration of Independence?
Or was that just for PR purposes?
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid:
I am still incredulous: here is a man of color offering an apologia for white racism. How blind he is.
Isn’t that also the case with D’Souza? And Michele Malkin among others?
They do not want to realize their role in the political game — they are tokens, they are pointed to as if they are exceptional examples of what is possible if only you toe the conservative line. IIRC, D’Souza’s family was wealthy and well placed because they followed the colonialists in Gao.
Samara Morgan
eat crow, LOL.
but i do unnerstan about not wanting to turn into fucker Carlson.
relly i do.
arguingwithsignposts
You know who else was an anti-colonialist – James Monroe!
Ramiah Ariya
@arguingwithsignposts – It is, if you are born in South Asia, and I think most of the east. For example, I am a Hindu even though I am an atheist.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
How come that other maftoon gets to be a Muslim in your eyes, but I don’t, huh? Huh? THIS IS NOT FAIR!elebenty1!!
aimai
@Woodrowfan: D’souza comes from an echt colonialist creation–the Catholic Southern Indian who is partially Portuguese. He doesn’t identify with the rest of India,which pretty much rejoiced in anti-colonialism by throwing the motherfucking british out. Because the D’Souza type families lost their comprador position.
He is a truly execrable person. He reminds me of the many fine posts Slactivist has written on the horrors that come when a self professed christian deludes himself that he is not bearing false witness against someone when he tells obvious lies.
aimai
arguingwithsignposts
@Amir Khalid: Maybe you need to show her your long-form birth certificate.
BTW, how are you any more captivated by the West than Reihan fucking Salam?
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: Good strategy.
Zifnab
When so much of your audience is white, you call people racists or white nationalists or what have you at your own peril.
Salam is trying to address the root problem of bigotry without calling anyone a bigot. That’s a delicate dance.
aimai
@Woodrowfan:
Oops, I see you beat me to it.
aimai
Villago Delenda Est
@arguingwithsignposts:
There is the entire “cultural Catholic” “ethnic Jew” sort of thing going on, where you’re not really into the entire religious scene, but it’s “tradition” associated with your family and the culture they’re a part of. There are non-observant Muslims out there who knock back a beer, just like there are non-observant Jews who chomp into a bacon cheeseburger. It’s a spectrum of involvement.
Woodrowfan
@aimai:
Thank you. I didn’t remember it was Gao, but I knew it was one of the colonial enclaves.
aimai
@Zifnab: @Zifnab:
Well, he’s asserting the “root problem of bigotry” is nostalgia for an America untroubled by racial strife. But that America never existed since, as we actually know, the country was troubled by class, ethnic, and racial strife from the get go but *especially* in the post war period. The only people for whom this wasn’t true, and obviously true, were children of white people in a protected social class in the 50’s. And no one can make them young again–which is what they really are longing for. Not the world of America in the 50’s but the world of the child they were, protected by mommy and daddy, fed and cossetted instead of old and bowed. Too bad. So sad. But no one can transform their fantasies of a world that never was into a reality for a future world. Nostalgia, as Alan Moore argued in the Watchman, is incredibly dangerous as a political motivation.
Anyone who doesn’t point this out, when he has a chance as Reihan Salaam did, is making a huge mistake. You can’t explain modern tea party bigotry, let alone deal with it politically, if you don’t acknowledge that its a fantasy built on a lie, a child’s desire to remain powerful in a scary world.
aimai
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: wallah…you cant be a maftoon unless you are a muslim.
if you are a muslim, you are a maftoon. But im not sure you are a muslim.
You seem to me to be denying the First Pillar, and you wont discuss it.
what a muslimah to do?
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: You were expecting logical consistency from her? How cute.
Samara Morgan
@aimai:
exactly, white (NHC) christian nativism.
do you know who else was a nativist?
Anders Breivik…..and Hitler.
:)
wrb
@Amir Khalid:
Happens
He sounds very like a Cuban-American friend who is horrified by any suggestion that he live anywhere in this country other than Little Havana. He dislikes and is uncomfortable in the other “uptight” American cultures. I had a Russian friend that made a similar argument.
Their arguments came down to preserving cultural diversity and preventing homogenization “yea like we Cubans are going to start listening to Karen Carpenter.”
I could see a midwestern Keiloresque Lutheran making a similar argument. “So I want to live in a town where we compete to grow the biggest tomato- what’s it to you?”
Just passing on their arguments, not sure where I stand.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
I’m in a LOL loop with that last comment.
Samara Morgan
@Zifnab: hes trying to avoid calling them white christian nativists.
everone tries to deny the FACT that one of the major parties in America is wholly religio-racial in make up.
you guys wont even acknowledge it.
jeffreyw
@aimai: Well said, I have the same thoughts but am unable to give them wings as you do.
arguingwithsignposts
@Samara Morgan:
Who around here has denied it?
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus: pointing to the lack thereof does not equal expecting it. :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Good fucking god! You can’t swing a dead cat in here (sorry, cat people) without hitting someone who thinks and acknowledges that. Try reading what people actually write, not what the voices in your head say they wrote.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid: You expect fair? From that corner? You are a hoper, sir.
@Omnes Omnibus: Exactly that. Thank you for pointing that out in an adamant fashion.
Villago Delenda Est
@arguingwithsignposts:
Someone demonstrates, on a nearly daily basis, serious reading comprehension problems.
Somehow she imagines I am a Christian fundamentalist glibertarian type who yells “America, fuck yeah!” repeatedly.
sb
Anyone–and I mean anyone–who takes D’Souza seriously as a sentient being capable of any action resembling that of a human being gets what they deserve. That includes each and every student of whatever college was foolish or deluded enough to call him president.
Samara Morgan
@wrb: my habbibi Aziz Poonwalla calls these guys cobos….colonized browns.
Samara Morgan
@arguingwithsignposts: no one ever argues substance with me here….because i kick your weak asses evertime.
you just all sling adhomsm and whine about i cant read and how mean i am.
:)
slightly_peeved
@Amir Khalid:
Fax her your credenza.
JGabriel
Dinesh D’Souza:
As President, isn’t Obama the “people at the top”?
I think D’Souza’s logic needs some work.
.
arguingwithsignposts
@Samara Morgan:
Fixed that for ya.
I never said you were mean, and I don’t think anyone else has either. I said you were a cyberstalker with a closed mind who refuses to acknowledge that the world might be more complex, and problems different than what you’ve constructed in your addled brain.
cudlip
Amir Khalid
Upon further reflection, I guess a Bangladeshi-American can be a conservative making excuses for white racism, just like a gay person can be a Log Cabin Republican.
@Samara Morgan:
Is that really how things around here seem to you?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Zifnab:
Fix’t.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
Chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.
There are some, yes.
Samara Morgan
and as an ex-fan of Reihan Salam, this has to be my favorite thing he ever wrote– Salam-Douthat stratification on cognitive ability in Grand New Party— page 154.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Amir Khalid:
When you’re on the top of the shitpile, that’s all you can see. m_c has been crowing about being on the top since day one.
Cudlips, know your place and be humbled by teh 1337ness that is m_c! Or ignore the incessant stream of mostly incoherent ranting.
Your choice. I chose the latter.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: yup.
its all shoot the messenger all the time.
JGabriel
Dinesh D’Souza:
I can’t hate those fundie racists because they’re just so fucking winsome.
.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Shorter Salam & D’Souza: Hey guys, we’re on your side! Please don’t shoot us.
Seriously, D’Souzaphone is so much of a fucknugget he’s beneath notice. But Salam’s suggestion that TeaBaghist voters (particularly older ones) are just now looking around and realizing gosh, America is no longer like the America they grew up in is … well, it deserves its own special Felony Bullshit award.
As for the ethnicity of the two men: They wouldn’t be the first brown people to the discover that even though THEY identify as white (or at least not black), people with a less worldly outlook take them for some species of n!gger.
Not that I’m suggesting we demonstrate this fact by stuffing the two gentlemen in sacks and dropping them off in the hills of Kentucky. Oh my word, no. That would be mean.
Samara Morgan
@Odie Hugh Manatee: false.
i came here after the Palin pick forced me out of my hereditary turf…because of this post.
i thot you guys were heroes.
but anymore i think you are goats.
Samara Morgan
and unbright goats at thet.
John Puma
@aimai:
Great analysis. I would make one modification to your comment:
“a child’s desire to remain powerful in a scary world.”
I don’t think a child necessary feels powerful. These baggers want to return to the time they felt unthreatened, in the natural ignorance of the scariness of the world enjoyed by children of a protected class.
Perhaps I must change my charges of “proud and aggressive ignorance” to “desperate and aggressive ignorance.”
gex
@aimai: Well said.
@Amir Khalid: Exactly. If you are in a position such that you are essentially insulated from the bigotry against your kind, you can do those things. It seems to me that LCRs are almost entirely white and male (and wealthy).
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Samara Morgan: “but anymore i think you are goats.”
And that’s all you are looking to get here; goats.
Not this one. Go look for another. Mine’s resting. :)
chopper
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
it’s like watching some crazy religious jerk speaking in tongues. only they actually think they’re speaking in some ancient secret language that only they and god know and that makes them better than you.
debit
I don’t know why I even bother asking anymore, but why do you guys engage her? You’re just helping her to threadjack, which is her only fucking goal.
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai:
It’s always the idealized past that never existed. Much of the popular appeal of fascism is this right here. We’ve got to get back to that past, away from the corruption of the state we’re in now. Back to simpler, more wholesome times.
drkrick
@John Puma: The Founders were colonialists who, discovering they were considered second-class subjects of the British empire and were unable to change that, decided to settle for independence from their erstwhile colonial sponsor. A true anti-colonial revolution in the 1770’s would have been led by the Indians and aimed at returning control of as much of the North American continent as possible to them.
Samara Morgan
@chopper: its internet speak. or chanese if you like . ol ppls no speakee.
@debit: how am i threadjacking by linking the Realservatism post where i made Reihan Salam cry, and pointing out he is muslim, a maftoon and a cobo?
this post is about Salam and D’Souza. they are both gungas.
i dunno what D’Souza’s religion is because i have never had an email convo with him about it.
The other folks that are wilin out about how they hate me are threadjackers.
not me.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: I think because at some point people stop answering her, she thinks she’s won. In reality we just hope she goes away. (Note: I will not be commenting further on this point to ANYONE.)
Samara Morgan
@PurpleGirl: you can always mail Cole to ban me.
sometimes that works.
drkrick
Here’s what I don’t understand about Samara: She posts about pie all the time and then some of you put these crazy fake quotes in her mouth about Islam and how smart she is. I don’t know why you’re all so determined to make a fan of baked goods look so bad.
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: nativism, not fascism.
Samara Morgan
@Odie Hugh Manatee: goats or cudlips. it makes no difference.
drkrick
@PurpleGirl: So let her think she’s won and walk on by. There aren’t many life lessons in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” but Arthur’s handling of the Black Knight was pretty much spot on.
rachel
@drkrick: Pies are not always baked. Fresh strawberry pie with a graham cracker crust, anyone?
(I will admit that the crust is better if you toast it a bit, but you don’t have to.)
rachel
@drkrick: Mutter, “You’re a loony,” under your breath and walk away? It works pretty well for me.
Amir Khalid
@PurpleGirl:
I’ve seen more than a few threads where the last few comments posted (of 200+) were m_c’s. I find myself thinking of a football player all alone in a stadium — match long since over, floodlights turned off, fans gone home — kicking the ball into an empty goal again and again.
Samara Morgan
@drkrick: danny and i had a convo about that– the pie filter is a form of community shunning.
In a way, BJ is a lot like Fox News.
Hacktivist hero Julian Assange–
cleeks pie filter is a stopband filter for dissenters.
you are all only interested in displaying peergroup values.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: i have other things to do than post on blogs. sometimes i dont see responses until the thread has gone to the next page.
rachel
@Samara Morgan: LOLOLOL!
Joey Maloney
I got that far, then I had to go lie down for a while before I could finish reading.
Villago Delenda Est
@drkrick:
“I’m invincible!”
“You’re a loony”
Keith
They left out the part where the student whispered to himself, “I hope Obama stays president for 5-6 terms so that my credits in anti-Obamaism will mean something after college.”
Samara Morgan
Cole brought on Kain and de Bore to avoid being an echo chamber…but BJ is an echo chamber anyways. Kain and de Bore were never anything but panderbots that toed the community line, farming pageclicks on their way to a paid gig somewhere else.
The one front page guy that was not part of the community echo-chamber, that nice jewish boy, you cudlips drove him off.
well go for it.
drive me off, get me banned, i dont give a shit.
i dont want to be part of your community.
sukk on that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan:
Not everyone uses the pie filter, so be careful with your generalities. Further, don’t you claim to have a “safe” that you “drop” on people? How is that not same thing?
Comrade Dread
Someone should mention to them that the top tax rates in the fifties were in the 90+ percentile, and call them racist soshalists.
Though, I’m sure the irony would be lost on them.
aimai
@Villago Delenda Est:
Jon Stewart’s interviewers had a marvellous bit on this exact point. They asked people in ascending age order (first people in their thirties, then forties, then fifites etc…) what was the “best time to be alive” and they got totally phony descriptions of “life in period X” which, as it turned out, was always receding into the past. If someone said “the 70’s” they went and interviewed someone who was an adult in the 70’s and that person remembered the financial crises, wars, political upheavals, etc.. and said “No, not the 70’s, the golden age was the fifites!” so the interviewer would go out and interview a yet older couple who had been middle aged in the fifties. That couple would say “oh, no, the fifites were terrible! It was the thirties that were great!” and so on until the interviewer was interviewing couples so old that no one was older than them. It turned out that each couple though that the period during which they had been 8 years old was the best–precisely because they were too young to really grasp what was going on in the wider world.
aimai
Villago Delenda Est
@Samara Morgan:
Oh, look, I’ve been “corrected” by the Black Knight.
Woe is me!
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Now she will point out to you that she is caucasian.
Linda
@ a Mom Anon:
Yeah, but they were white anticolonialists. It makes all the civilizing difference.
Seriously, this is not about making excuses. This is about a failure to see reality. The Tea Party people are crazy. As Schaeffer said, they love this country, but it’s the way a stalker loves their victim. When they can enjoy the idealized victim in their head, they’re o.k. When they are crossed by reality in any way, they feel justified to hurt the object of their affections. That’s why these patriots were ready to collapse the economy of the country a couple of weeks ago. Conservatives would have to admit they have linked up with the crazy, and don’t want to. When Taibbi called them crazy right after the elections, David Gergen clutched his pearls and called him an elitist. But Taibbi was right.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: its different because im not part of the community.
im pruning my readlist, not shunning.
JR
“i [sic] dont want to be part of your community.”
OK! Thanks! G’bye!
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai:
8 is about right. When I hit 11, MLK and RFK were murdered, the cops rioted in Chicago, and Tricky Dick won the Presidential election.
Also, Beatles breakup rumors were circulating fast and furious.
The age of innocence was gone.
Samara Morgan
@Linda: they also would have to admit the white christian nativist component.
because not all white christians are teabaggers, but all teabaggers are white christians.
Villago Delenda Est
@JR:
…and don’t let the door hit your bony ass as you leave!
Supernumerary Charioteer
Somewhat surprised nobody’s made public note of this, but:
When did agreeing with King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham make you the good guy?
Keith G
Wow.
While I get the greater point that Chotiner would like to make (and I agree), this was not the vehicle to make it. Thus given the context, but this was one of the most asinine things I read all week.
Most folks seem to shrink and personalize their perceptions of their long ago, halcyon past, limiting it to concrete if somewhat “enriched” memories congruent with family mythology.
Ascribing to the majority of these some knowing cultural/political commentary as Chotiner implies is absurd.
slight grammer edit
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: @JR: oh, i didnt say i was leaving.
i just said i wasnt interested in being part of your community.
but please, do mail Cole and ax him to ban me again.
ichi, ni, san!
Caz
Nothing D’Souza said is outrageous, and, in fact, it is mostly true. That you don’t agree with the truth or choose to deny it doesn’t make it any less true.
Elie
We’re all just frightenned apes, running,charging and screaming at each other, waving bones and sticks…
No matter who does it or why, it never feels good for long and the entropy that it signals is just about loss and weakness.
We have enough brains to organize and develop a psychological/social/political frame for our biological brain impulses. But not enough brains to escape the g forces of the territorial primate that keeps us violent and unable to learn permanently from mistakes except through the snail crawl of evolution.
Dinesh and the other just claim to be in the “white” chimp clan that to their minds, is or should be “on top”. This psychological need trumps the reality of their brown skins and culture/religion. Who cares? There are black folks like that too. In either case, they are not acting out of the best impulses and logic of the evolved brain of homo sapiens, but of the primate brain that is common to all of us – emotional, fearful reflexes rather than thought, ready for a fight even as we run away in defeat.
Have been watching “Witness” — the account of Katrina filmed by amateur film makers who were in the catastrophe. My God — even 6 years later it is profoundly sad and we have learned so little from any of it.
Scamp Dog
Hey, I’ll put in a good word for the 1950s.
Despite the soshalistically high income taxes (thanks, @Comrade Dread!), we had high economic growth rates, and income inequality was declining (actually, that’s probably a result of the high tax rates). There were also much higher levels of unionization, another force for equality.
Times were good for white people, but they were also getting better for blacks as well–they picked up enough money and independence that they could put up a fight for their rights in the 1960s. You can’t take chances on a fight like that when your backs are against the wall.
So I don’t think the ’50s nostalgia is necessarily racist, but I’d guess that the right-wing nostalgists don’t remember the high taxes and unionization, since they seem to be against both of them.
Elie
@Scamp Dog:
They just want to break up the system so that the “coloreds” can’t reap any benefits from it — hence the need to destroy the same government and other institutions that helped them… its like the Germans and the Confederates burning down the barns and killing all the animals so that the incoming army can’t take any benefit.
Judas Escargot
@JGabriel:
Actually, I think that was a slip into unintentional honesty on “Distort Da-Newza’s”* part. A lowly President is supposed to know for whom he truly works, for he was only elected by the little people. We canaille should just be grateful that we’re sometimes allowed to vote, and that those votes are quite often counted (more or less).
(*apparently this was his nickname up at Dartmouth)
Glen Tomkins
The Rubber Room
““Remember that President D’Souza speaks for himself, not for the school.” …”
Well, if that’s true they need to get Mr. D’Souza a nice room where he can be alone and speak just to himself, rather than let him speak to a public assembly of students, donors and TV cameras.
aimai
@Scamp Dog:
50’s nostalgia,to the extent that its nostalgia for your own remembered childhood in a time of relatively high wages, good retirement, etc…etc…etc… doesn’t have to be racist. What turns it into racism–outright racism–is when you conflate your personal experience of a segregated world that seems good with the belief that all times after that were a falling away from perfection because of the passage of the civil rights act. That’s what we’re really talking about here–the 50’s were a golden age retrospectively because the civil rights act, open housing, anti segregation, and the vietnam war and reaganism came in and changed things. For some people things got a little better and for a lot of people things got worse. Not because of the civil rights act but these motherfuckers blame it for the big divide.
aimai
Hal
I wonder how many of Salam’s Teabagger friends would actually even consider him a real American? Just like the Log Cabin Republicans, towing the line for, and endorsing, a party and candidates that are overwhelmingly homophobic. These people don’t care about there best interests, they’re far more interested in being seen as original thinkers not easily labeled. It’s more important for them that they are seen as an anathema to the common meme than actually supporting candidates or ideas that might be far more beneficial to them.
b-psycho
@Caz:
D’souza:
Unless the method of catering to radical Muslims that D’souza is thinking of is open-ended war long after any defensible reason has passed (which gets used by those extremists as evidence for their position), he’s full of shit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Scamp Dog:
Nostalgia is always very selective in what it celebrates. Human memory is like that. We remember the good times, but seldom recall the bad ones. The guys down at the VFW hall don’t recall their buddies getting their faces turned to go, they recall the great time they had in the brothel prior to that.
Mustang Bobby
There’s a place in central Florida called The Villages. It is a huge retirement community, 98.9% white, and the epicenter of Gov. Rick Scott’s electoral base; he had a budget signing ceremony there earlier this year. It was like a North Korean parade with pre-printed signs for school children to wave and little flags for the rest of the attendees. His staff and the local sheriff’s office made sure that only the right people showed up; the few residents who are nominal Democrats and showed up with anti-Scott signs were escorted off.
The short version of that is that these people are living in fear. It mostly of their own making, based on stereotypes and the belief that because something is different, it is inherently a threat. The “champions” they seek are the folks who will point to the “others” and blame them for all their problems, be it unemployment or the drought in Texas. It’s irrational, but it’s human nature, and there is always someone out there who will exploit it for monetary gain or political power.
I have relatives who were born and grew up in South Africa in the 1950’s and ’60’s. Their description of life there then sounds like The Villages today.
Citizen_X
Ooh, ooh, can I play Darth Vader? Failing that, Dick Cheney.
“Villainy?” Really? WTF, do these people live in a melodrama? (Don’t answer that.)
Samara Morgan
@Elie: speak for yourself, Elie.
im the bratty kid outside the intellectual cage throwing popcorn at the apes.
Samara Morgan
@Mustang Bobby:
its not irrational.
all western democracies are having their electorates colonized by immigrants and the children of immigrants.
its demographic evolution, and it will result in the END of white (NHC) christian electoral power in America.
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen_X:
Hey, they are the children of Reagan, who think that everything they see in the movies is real.
gex
The fact remains that Lee Atwater, Paul Weyrich, Ken Mehlman, and Michael Steele have all publicly said that the GOP campaigns using racist memes. It is no coincidence that the Democratic party has not carried the white male vote since the civil rights act.
A lot of that crap was coded, so the people biting on it are free to feel like they aren’t racist. But just because you don’t realize a racist appeal for your vote is what sways you doesn’t change the fact that a racist campaign is what you responded to.
Mustang Bobby
@Samara Morgan:
Yeah, that’s been going on for a couple of hundred years now, including my ancestors. So far so good.
And when I said “it’s irrational,” I was talking about pointing to “others” and blaming them for all their problems. That’s not rational, that’s panic-stricken.
Samara Morgan
@Mustang Bobby: i think that is the paradox of democracy.
giving power to the immigrants.
:)
And that is why Bush’s Manifest Destiny of Missionary Democracy Among Muslims failed.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
all western democracies are having their electorates colonized by immigrants and the children of immigrants.
its demographic evolution, and it will result in the END of white (NHC) christian electoral power in America.
I totally agree, Samare – immigrants and descendants of immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to have political power in America. If you’re not at least 50% Native American, you shouldn’t get to vote or hold office.
And by Native American, I do indeed mean the guys who were there before Colombus showed up.
Samara Morgan
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
si semper freetraders.
:)
Villago Delenda Est
@Mustang Bobby:
You’re dealing with the poster girl for reading comprehension fail. It made perfect sense to me both before and after the explanation, but I’m decidedly pessimistic that miss “only I am not stupid, everyone else is!” will gather your meaning.
Samara Morgan
@Villago Delenda Est: its not irrational…..what the old white christian nativists fear is coming to pass.
they are being gradually disenfranchised, first from culture, next from academe, and finally from the electorate.
and in 20 years one of four humans will be muslim.
how many old white conservative christians will there be?
Opie-jeanne
@Villago Delenda Est: At age 8 I learned about the brutality of Bautista in Cuba. My parents had me watch a film that had been smuggled out of Cuba showing people being shot and their bodies falling into a ditch. I think they thought I was old enough; it was a numbing experience, and I still remember the shock I felt. I never felt that safeness again, never took for granted that my family could always protect me.
Nerull
Why do we let an obviously crazy stalker derail every single thread?
Binky the perspicacious bear
How do they propose to get around the fact that the folks at King’s College, and conservative evangelicals propounding wealth theologies, are fundamentally and constitutionally anti-Christian?
How do you get around the statement that “it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle?” I mean, barring the snarky retort that rich people can buy big needles? The anti-Christ in the Bible is said to come in an attractive form and will be persuasive such that he leads nations in war. How is this not the GOP?
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I tend to be pretty nostalgia-free, possibly because my mother died of cancer right around when I turned 8 years old. I’ve never had much of a sense that the world was safe and Daddy could make everything better like the teabaggers seem to.
Opie-jeanne
@Mnemosyne: I decided quite a few years ago that the here and now is pretty much the best time. I think my intense appreciation of the present began when I started doing genealogy and understood just how difficult life was before now.
I was visiting Valley Forge, walking through Washington’s winter quarters (the nice house, not the camp buildings). And a man turned to
e and said something about how wonderful life must have been when back then because things were so much simpler. I gaped at him for a moment and then pointed out just two advantages of the 20th century: penicillin and the Salk vaccine. I don’t think he appreciated the intrusion of reality into his fantasy world.
Mnemosyne
@Binky the perspicacious bear:
IIRC, they argue that the “eye of a needle” isn’t a real eye of a needle, but a metaphor that refers to a very small gate located somewhere in the walls where you could unload a camel and have it crawl through on its knees. The fact that there’s zero evidence that such a gate existed, or that it was ever referred to as the “eye of a needle” is apparently beside the point.
I always find it fascinating that the very people who insist that the Bible is literally true when it comes to Genesis manage to come up with elaborate metaphors to explain the things that might actually inconvenience them in their everyday lives if they followed the very clear teachings in the Bible.
elftx
@Elie:
Well said !!
But I have always viewed Katrina as the “elitists” allowing a form of genocide.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, that’s the rationalization I’ve heard for why Mammon worship isn’t a bad thing, even though that damn commie Jesus says it is.
These people are so disgusting with their intellectual dishonesty. They reject the actual teachings of Jesus with every breath they take.
Observerinvancouver
@A Mom Anon: I pray for the day someone asks Newt Gingrich to explain that.
steve
The tards didn’t think through this line of reasoning. The founders of the US took up arms against colonialist Britain. Was George Washington less of a vehement anti-colonialist than Obama?
rikyrah
These white voters are looking for champions, for people who are unafraid to fight for the America they remember and love. It’s unfair to call this sentiment racist. But it does help explain at least some of our political divide.
I’ve said it before and will repeat it: they long for the world of Mad Men, wrapping themselves in the delusion that they were big fish in a big pond. When, in actuality, it’s not hard to be a big fish, if 80 percent of the other fish are shoved into a can of sardines.
Yutsano
@steve:
Washington was a good solid real Merikan patriot. Obama, therefore, is not. Get it right hippie.
Mike G
Just like Republican Jesus did in the Bible.
Sly
@A Mom Anon:
Google “Mau Mau Uprising” and you’ll soon see where D’Souza’s argument is heading.
The American Revolution was a proper rebellion in the eyes of Western culture, because it managed to liberate local elites from the control of imperial elites while preserving the basic socioeconomic order of the old regime. This was perhaps the fundamental dilemma of the Revolutionary Era across the Atlantic world; whether or not revolutionary sentiment would lead to a positive outcome for local elites who chafed under foreign control like in the American Revolution, or a catastrophe for local elites like in the Haitian Revolution.
This dilemma, of course, has very blatant racial overtones. White revolutions are organized, intellectually driven, and worthy of emulation. Black revolutions are haphazard, savage, and must be feared. D’Souza certainly follows this dichotomy, rationalizing his praise of the Indian Independence Movement as an example of how a savage people successfully co-opted the superior civilization of their oppressors in order to gain liberation. Anything not rooted in that superior civilization is, ipso facto, savage.
Bruce S
Dinesh D’Souza is a D’Douchebag.
I hate these fuckers. They are beyond redemption.
Harvard Smarytpants Reihan Salaam needs to learn the positive value of shame…
Hillbilly Heroine
Whenever a rightwing a–hole says something racist and is called out for it, and the inevitable refrain of “I have black/brown/whatever friends” is heard, I think of the D’Souzas and Salaams of the world.
Their job is to be somebody’s black/brown/whatever friend, and provide cover for them.
Samara Morgan
@Bruce S: well at least i made him cry.
:)
Samara Morgan
@Nerull: go back to the LoOG sockpuppet.
Tehanu
…moral villainies, such as … stealing from the rich to give to the poor…
What part of “Behind every great fortune is a great crime” does this idiot not get? I used to live in Beverly Hills and I’m here to tell you, my neighbors there were mostly moral idiots — that is, the ones who weren’t amoral idiots. Maybe the American mythos of getting rich through honest endeavor used to be true, at least for white Protestant males. But we’re rapidly turning into a country where the only way to get rich is to rob and exploit everyone else — and these morons are all worked up about the “villainy” of Robin Hood? I’m so fucking sick of these greedheads.