We’ve spent a lot of time examining the homophobia and racism of the right, and what we often fail to remember is that part of the reason they are so hysterical is because they are losing the debate. Society is changing, as it always does, and they simply can not deal with it. And this freaks them out.
I watched the next to last episode of Worst Chefs tonight, and as always, it was a great show. I just LURV Anne Burrell. But aside from my mini-crush, what struck me was that as part of the next to last challenge, the worst cooks had to cook for their significant others. This year, Kelly, an African-American woman, was cooking for her white husband. In Season 2, there was a lesbian couple in the next to last show.
This is what freaks them out- they are losing the debate on the ground, and it heightens their hysteria. I’m used to mixed marriages, I’m used to same sex couples, I’m used to single moms and every other kind of “non-traditional” family that is out there. I don’t think they are “non-traditional families,” I think of them as families.
But this is really why the right is freaking out- they can not accept this. It is not their version of normal. So while their viewpoint on what is normal is way out of sync with what is happening on the ground, expect the remaining dead-enders to continue to get louder and louder as they get less and less relevant to the reality of America.
Single parents, divorce, inter-racial marriages, gay marriage- these are not only the future of America, they are the current reality. And I think they make us stronger as a country.
David Koch
Their culture is in their final death throes.
Suzanne Holland
I think you are dead on right…..what I simply can not understand, as a very old female, is what they are so terrified of?
CT Voter
Cornering a rabid beastie is dangerous, and the election of one Barack Hussein Obama did that. Things’ll get uglier. Er, things ARE getting uglier. Or the ugliness is now more in the open?
O/T: I like, so far, the new site.
And with that, goodnight.
Punchy
The bible is a damn par’ful drug, and they’ll continue to feed their addiction as shit around them changes. And bitch about it they will, to hell with logic and compassion and equality, etc.
Sigh.
OzoneR
@Suzanne Holland:
Of them treating white people the way we treated blacks for centuries.
Rathskeller
I would add to that the right-wing folks have been receiving a non-stop series of propaganda from various channels for decades now. In the popular Left Behind series, homosexuals were literally possessed by the devil. The Mormons wouldn’t ordain blacks to the priesthood until 1978. Prominent people have been booted from the baptist leadership for daring to suggest that Jesus had more on his mind than abortion.
If this is what you believe, then what appears in the newspapers and on TV must literally seem like insanity, and Santorum is here to save you.
Martin
@Suzanne Holland: Losing power. You don’t see that, because as a woman you never had it. But as a white male, I know that in all the laws that this land has written not one has ever discriminated against me, and further, plenty were written to make sure I got the job I wanted instead of you or anyone that looked like Trayvon Martin.
Civil rights means my advantage wanes. I’m actually going to have to work for it just as hard as everyone else – and that just can’t stand. Go ask any true conservative about whether or not it’s a level playing field, and they’ll insist that no, it indeed is not. White males can’t get a fair shake in this world. Black women hold all of the power.
Seriously. They’ll say that.
freelancer
14 words, rebuked.
If you’re making a big bugaboo about “social conservatism” and how you are “socially conservative”, you’re a fucking bigot. End of story.
Chris
@Suzanne Holland:
I’ve said many times before that movement conservatism is more properly a subject for psychiatrists than for anyone in the political field. Unfortunately, there’s no adequate way to treat it like that.
lacp
People have been writing obits for wingnuttery and its historical predecessors for a long time. Now I’m hearing that 2012 – or maybe 2016 – is their last hurrah. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Yes, there are fewer of the true believers (they’re nowhere near 27% – that number includes a lot of simpletons as well as the dedicated wingnuts), but they’ve got as many fellow travellers as ever. Wingnuts will continue to impact our culture and day-to-day lives as long as they continue to function as useful idiots for the 1%. And that’s going to be a long, long time.
OzoneR
@lacp: The 27% doesn’t mean anything if they’re 50% of the people who show up on election day.
If the Democratic primary in Illinois-10 last week proved anything, its that progressives are unreliable voters. That’s why they don’t win; elections or debates.
Citizen_X
@Suzanne Holland:
I don’t know, but I’ve always agreed with John Cage: “Everyone is afraid of new ideas. I’m afraid of the old ones.”
Jewish Steel
I wonder, to what degree our do wingnut friends see the world without the modern lens of psychology?
That is to say, don’t see people and their motivations, behaviors as a products of biology and society but rather some magical God shit instead?
That could explain a lot of weirdness, I think.
WyldPirate
I don’t have any problem with your premise that conservatives are scared of societal changes nor do I have any problem with interracial or gay marriage, but tons of single parents and divorced parents and their kids struggle in the low-income area I live. It’s one of the most impoverished counties and these folks in general are facing a lifetime of struggle with little to no prospects of improvement.
Jewish Steel
@OzoneR: Huh. What a weird district. Goes D for the past 3 presidents but elects Mark Kirk?
I was born in Lake Forest Hospital, myself.
Catsy
We’re not going to get rid of bigotry overnight. There will always be assholes and people with repugnant, hateful opinions about those who are different in some way unacceptable to them.
But they can be marginalized, and it is already happening. Racism isn’t dead in this country by a long shot, but you can’t run for political office (explicitly, anyway) on a platform of White Power anymore. You have to hide it, dress it up, lie about it and obfuscate it underneath layers of code, and with the Internet even that is getting much harder to get away with.
The same is happening to homophobia–the sea change in marriage equality over the last decade alone is proof of that. And the more gay people get married, the more Americans get exposed to the shocking revelation that their families aren’t meaningfully different from anyone else’s.
It is exactly what the bigots feared, and they were right to fear it.
ETA: Gack, this new editor really sucks. It doesn’t return you to the last page when you save, and worst of all it is stripping all extra carriage returns and whitespace and that makes paragraphs a nightmare of unreadability. It really takes talent and unspeakably shitty code to fuck up a carriage return.
Karl The Crap Blog Detective
And yet they keep winning because loads of chucklefucks are sitting on their asses during the elections because “politics are dirty” and “both parties are the same, mannnnnn”.
Bubblegum Tate
I agree with all of this, including the Anne Burrell lurv. When I hit the lottery, I’m gonna have Anne Burrell come over and hang out and cook and drink. She’s awesome.
Suzanne Holland
@OzoneR: Ahhh maybe it’s as simple as that….
Suzanne Holland
@Martin: I agree with you as far as a white woman with no power, but I think that terrifies them also…a white woman who knows herself!
Suzanne Holland
@Citizen_X: Yes, very ttrue…. My generation terrified of changes! So sad, really, but it’s a fact.
Suzanne Holland
I’m old enough to have lived in the south during segregation..and yet, I’m cheered by the fact that to the kids in their 20’s, 30’s thirties, color, race mean nothing! The bigots are truly dying out!
Brachiator
Just because it’s on the tee vee don’t mean it’s real. That is, this is part of the wingnut argument, that the dirty sozualist Hollywood libruls are ramming un Christian perverted values down the delicate throats of Real Americans.
The wingnuts may yet win, because pansy libruls refuse to understand that societies rarely transform peacefully, and that Demographic shifts do not necessarily insure that a furious minority will not successfully impose its will on an unorganized majority.
Also, too, libruls refuse to understand that the upcoming generation is not uniformly nor reliably more understanding about race and gender than are conservatives. Tories and conservatives keep winning elections all over the developed world. The reason for this is not just because the mainstream media is bamboozling people.
And funny thing about history. There are numerous examples of the ruling class, losing their grip on power, eagerly betraying their countries, even though it means that they themselves will lose power, as long as they can hang onto a few luxuries and a sense of their own superiority.
Consider all the Super PAC money going to Newt, Santorum and Romney. Even though these guys are about the worst the GOP could come up with without propping up Sarah Palin, the money guys will back the Republican candidate to the hilt. And it is becoming more clear every day that they would rather see the country destroyed than watch it become something that they cannot understand.
.
Allan
Chris Rock covered this with Oprah.
dead existentialist
John, that’s an overreach. More interesting and humane, maybe.
Um, it’s this whole dissolution of what constitutes what it means to be American that is driving the goofy fucks farther a field and rending our great nation asunder.
A person’s first inclination is for self-affirmation, which requires one to associate with one of ones own “kind”; overcoming that is a learned behavior. A large portion of the population doesn’t want to be bothered with learning that behavior because it requires effort.
This is why it is easier to be a consumer instead of a citizen. It is why it’s gotten so easy to hate our fellow countrypeeps, and why we’re doomed to suffer their stupidity forever and a day.
ETA: Fix the fucking “return” feature!
Death Panel Truck
“LURV”?
Seriously? Cole, you’ve got to stop trying to appeal to 14-year-old girls. You’d better do it before the gym teacher calls the police.
opie jeanne
John, I seriously believe that Vinnie on Worst Cooks is a ringer. Bobby Flay gave him the fish-eye (ho ho) about it last week when he let it be known that filleting a fish was a skill he possesses.
I can’t see Kellie taking down Vinnie next week, unless Vinnie does something incredibly stupid.
That guy tonight was going to stuff pork chops with cucumber. He has learned nothing in the weeks he has spent on the show, kind of like the chick who thought vanilla is a good flavor for fried chicken.
Glix
I watched tonight’s episode of WCinA and didn’t realize that one couple was bi-racial. Now that you pointed it out, I remember him as a rather large man who said her lobster dinner was like eating in a restaurant.
samara morgan
and yet…John Cole did his absolute personal best to forge an alliance with the Glibertarians.
kumbayah my lord, kumbayah.
;)
russ
the other day in discussing oil prices with a relative who is rabid right wing he says that if prices do not come down we should invade Iran and take the oil and I say, Oh just steal it and his answere was no just take it. Good logic there, duh.
samara morgan
@russ: from monolithic communism in Vietnam to monolithic Islam in OIF and OEF.
America: not the good guys, not even the better guys…..the stupid guys.
Death-to-Israelshariah law in Egyptian constitution.Jamey
Black people cook like this …; while white people cook like THIS. Amirite?!
What’s that old expression about anecdotes and data?
Keith G
Of course Cole’s statement is generally correct (been said by others, Maher etc.), but one addjustment needs to be noted:
Some on the Right are like this, certainly a majority are, but many are not. I live and work among many secularized (or at least non-Bible thumping) conservatives. They have no issue with social change. When given a chance, I confront their smugness, since they are willing to support hateful ideologues in order to get a lower tax bill.
beatty
As much as I’d like to believe it, I’m not so sure your thesis is right.
Here’s why.
Quote: “In the famous St. Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai, there is an icon which shows two robed Christian saints getting married. Their ‘pronubus’ (official witness, or “best man”) is none other than Jesus Christ.
The happy couple are 4th Century Christian martyrs, Saint Serge and Saint Bacchus — both men.”
There are many other instances in the article of homo unions recognized by the Church / State up until the 18th Century. Which gets me thinking about the old pendulum swinging theory.
debbie
“Single parents, divorce, inter-racial marriages, gay marriage- these are not only the future of America, they are the current reality.”
You only have to watch Judge Mathis to know this is true. They may not get along, but they are together.
Lee
It is even better for the younger generation.
My two daughters (12 & 15) find it hard to fathom that someone would get harassed for dating/marrying someone of a different ethic background.
When we watch something on TV and it addresses the institutionalized racism of our past, we have had to work to convince them that it was true.
With sexuality they understand the problems, but they think it is stupid. They have friends with 2 moms, 2 dads, single moms, single dads, grandparents as caregivers, etc.
This is in wingnut red North Texas.
Want to know what upsets them the most? Divorce. They know what it does to kids and they get quite upset when they hear of friend’s parents getting divorced.
Michael
It’s not just that they’re losing an “argument,” it’s that they’re losing the majority/plurality political advantage, and the power that comes with it. The scariest thing is the idea that white Christian men will just be one voting bloc amongst many, rather than that special group of people to whom all politics must cater.
Barry
@Suzanne Holland: “I think you are dead on right…..what I simply can not understand, as a very old female, is what they are so terrified of?”
A much more comfortable world where white males (straight, and of the proper religion) were lords of their world. You might get the sh*t kicked out of you at work (by a white male), but when you got home you were in charge. When you went to church, straight white males were in charge. And similarly everywhere else.
SteveinSC
Open thread, o.k. I’ll open with:
Murderer Patsy FallguySaint Bales might have been afflicted by mefloquinine and TBI. Or maybe not. It’s a privacy act thing if he took it or not, dontcha know. Lovely family, loves dogs and Eye-rakis, can’t imagine why he did it. So says Mark Benjamin (porte-parole, Pentagon lick-spittle, whatever.) I say maybe it was like the wrag-heads thought, multiple assassins, drunk and on a rampage. Final test: In which federal resort/prison will Saint Bales spend a year and then be released?mcd410x
The modern conservative movement is the cry of many who can’t adapt to the rapid changes of life. It’s a group of rabid dogs with its back to the wall and attacking anything near.
If it weren’t such a bunch of assholes, it would be sad.
Hal
Watch the sister channel, HGTV, and you’ll see a large number of gays, lesbians, interracial couples etc. Last week, a gay couple in LA were looking for a larger home for the child they were about to adopt, and a few weeks ago, an african-american gay couple were looking for a bigger place. (Though they wanted a bigger place to throw fabulous parties, but still…)
Now if they can just air Rupaul’s Drag Race in primetime on one of the big 3…
daveNYC
@OzoneR: Simpler than that. Change. Some people just get used to things being a certain way and are unable to adapt when those things change.
I’d sympathize, if they weren’t so distructive in expressing their fear.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Lee:
I have a pair of sons of similar age and it is the same story with them.
The number of multi-racial friendships amongst their group is, by the standards of when I was growing up, simply astonishing, and to them it is no big deal, frankly I’m not sure they are even aware that these friendships are crossing racial boundaries. And homophobic bigotry is looked upon as not-cool and a sign of emotional immaturity when encountered amongst their peer group, and as something repulsive when it comes from adults.
And they stand up for each other too, there is a very impressive ethic of anti-bullying which has developed amongst these kids.
They give me hope. If this is how it is with this generation, and amongst kids in an otherwise rather conservative school environment, then the bigots are losing ground fast.
Ben Cisco
@Keith G: As well you should – you are who you roll with. If you let the NeoConfederates toss poo everywhere to get a lower tax bill, you might as well BE ONE. That should be driven into the skull of every so-called “non-crazy” conservative in the country, preferably with a large fish.
.
Personally, I think the “moderate”, “secular”, and/or “non-crazy” conservative has gone the way of the sewer gator, but I’d dearly love to be proven wrong, even at this late date.
matryoshka
Last Thursday, a guy sitting behind me on the train was yammering to his seat mate while I was trying to read. I was trying to screen him out until I heard him say “There are fake Republicans called RINOs and then real ones, like me. I’m a Tea Party activist.” His seat mate asked some question (which I didn’t hear) and then the yammerer burst out with, “All Democrats should be shot on sight.”
That really got my attention. I spun around and said, “I’m a Democrat. Are you going to shoot me?” and stared him down. What followed was a discussion of sorts in which he trotted out every tired position of his kind: unions are preventing me from getting rich; we’re a soc1*a*list country now; my kids’ teachers make too much; whine whine whine. He wanted me to know he was a big shot business man. He had a house in Moscow; he’d lived the Middle East; he lived in wealthy Lake County, IL. But when I asked him to specifically tell me how unions were hurting his business, or how we were more Russian than Russia, or how shooting people who disagreed with him would make us any better than the Middle East, he had nothing. Ditto when I pointed out to him that there was no way in hell his kids’ teachers made six-figure salaries–as a former teacher I know this, and teacher salaries were a matter of public record, in case he didn’t know. Oh, he said, he meant the principals and vice principals. He had four kids who, it turned out, were all grown and had kids of their own. It was hard to help all his kids these days, and he and his wife hadn’t been to the theater in ages because it was so expensive. They might even have to take the train next time! (Or, I suggested, you could sell your house in Russia.) The conversation went on for 45 minutes, and he apologized by saying, “You really weren’t supposed to hear that (shooting threat),” to which I said, “I’m glad I did because now I know how dangerous you Tea Partiers really are.”
The thing that has stuck with me for days now is the fact that underneath all his complaints, there were no actual facts in evidence, only a tantrum in progress–and possibly a dangerous one. Yes, absolutely, they’re losing the debate on the ground because that’s where reality is.
satby
@matryoshka: It’s all a tantrum in progress; being fact free is a feature, not a bug.
Deb T
@Suzanne Holland:
Ditto. Good commentary John.
Deb T
@CT Voter:
I just wonder when Obama wins a second term how much the vitriol and hate will escalate??? I mean one term could be a fluke, but a second term makes them serious. Think about how horrified they were when Clinton won his second term. They were sure they had him with all the sexy stuff.
Deb T
@Martin:
Yes, I think as women we don’t really understand the true threat some white men feel. The though of brown skinned people becoming the majority must be terrifying.
I’ve been watching a lot of old TV shows from the late 50ies and early 60ies. It amazes me how the assumption of white male authority is simply taken as a given. Even when women or non-white men are given a primary role, it’s almost always with the white man’s permission.
Pangloss
Funny that you use a cooking show to illustrate the point. As recently as the mid-1960s, just about every meal served in America was some variation on meat and potatoes; Italian and French foods were considered exotic. Now all sorts of people routinely eat dishes they would have NEVER considered before: sushi, Indian, Thai, ceviche, soft-shell tacos (as opposed to hard shell), Ethiopian, etc.