How Did I Miss "National Weekend Of Bigots?"
Were there parades? Or mass executions in the town square?
I have no burning desire to grant more attention to the idiotic, bumbling racists, anti-Semites, and xenophobes in America. Still, the reality is that we have a serious problem, y’all. And, yes, this problem comes to us, in part, courtesy of one Donald John Trump.
No, Orange Jesus didn’t invent racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, or any other means White Conservative Christian heterosexuals use to justify elevating themselves above “The Other.” He certainly permitted them to roam freely around the cabin, though. The reprobates were out in force during Barack Obama’s term as President, but they really hit their stride once Mango Mussolini announced in 2015 that he was running for President.
White Makes Right, eh? But sometimes, it’s not just White Conservative Christian heterosexuals. When it’s the “National Weekend of Bigots,” it becomes the game the whole family can play, and we learn that Whites are the only ones with black hearts.
It was the “National Weekend of Bigots.”At least, that’s what Ana Navarro called it Monday on “The View.” It was as good a description as any for the soul-draining drumbeat of hate that dominated weekend headlines. You had the Black rapper Ye, nee Kanye West, on Twitter threatening to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” who, he complained, have “toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone who opposes” their “agenda.”
Then there was Marjorie Taylor Greene, a white congresswoman from Georgia, telling a mostly white audience that, “Illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you, replacing your jobs and replacing your kids in school and . . . they’re also replacing your culture.”
Meantime, Nury Martinez, a Los Angeles city councilwoman of Mexican heritage, was heard on a secret recording disparaging people from Oaxaca as “little short dark people” and calling a Black child a “monkey” in need of a “beatdown.”
None of this is anything new, of course. Americans have always resented those who look, think, act, or speak differently. We resent what we don’t understand- different cultures, languages, skin colors- it’s a long and depressing list. Sometimes that resentment gets out of hand (think of the burning of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street or the Wilmington massacre), but it’s always there, often just below the surface.
Tommy Tuberville, a white senator from Alabama, warned a white audience that Democrats “want reparations” for slavery “because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”
It was enough to make you wonder if someone’s been tampering with the nation’s water supply. But that’s a dodge, isn’t it, the idea that this baseness, this sordid profanation of our common humanity, must be the product of something external? It isn’t, of course. Indeed, the only thing that makes “The National Weekend of Bigots” stand out is the very fact that all that hate was concentrated into just a few days and — as is so often the case lately — felt no need to express itself covertly. Dog whistles are so 2007.
This campaign cycle, Republicans have nothing positive to offer- no alternatives to what Joe Biden and Democrats are already doing. Sure, they’ll tell what’s wrong, how awful things are, and how incompetent Biden is (he’s a Democrat, after all) but they have nothing to offer to improve things. Why? Perhaps because they’re too lazy or intellectually bereft to do the hard work of developing policy options of their own.
And so Republicans do what they always do- fall back on fear-mongering, racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia. By working to create an atmosphere of fear and unease and blaming Democrats for it, Republicans hope to create a backlash that will lift them into office.
But here’s the problem with that strategy, and it’s something that’s bitten Republicans in the ass whenever they’ve been elevated into power. They learn all over that power without a plan for governing is a recipe for a clusterf**k. For whatever reason(s), Republicans never seem to learn from past mistakes. And they also don’t understand that power gained through fear and anger means you’ve set a high bar, and will inevitably fall short.
Meanwhile, perhaps we should consider that the biggest problem with racism isn’t racism. WTF??
[O]ne of Tuberville’s colleagues, Rep. Don Bacon, told NBC News he did not believe the racist comment was a racist comment, but did advise the senator to “Be more polite.” Because, yes, that’s the biggest problem with hate — it’s so darn discourteous.
It is not at all surprising that Navarro’s National Weekend of Bigots comes amid a National Era of Enforced Amnesia in which historic memory is vandalized, and any attempt to reflect on the trials of our tribes is barred from the public stage lest someone’s feelings be hurt. That’s how you get Holocaust memoirs banned by schools and shacks that once housed enslaved people turned into B&Bs.
That’s right, Senator; being from Alabama, you should know that we like our racism to be a bit more…polite. George Wallace was so 1960s, if you know what I mean.
And didn’t you make millions coaching black athletes? I wonder what they think of you now?
Yes, we like our racism and bigotry with just a wee bit more plausible deniability- you know, something that you can deny if someone ever questions your motives. It might sound like racism, but it also allows you to deny that racism was your meaning or motive and still get your message across to your audience.
It’s called a “dog whistle,” and you clearly need to learn how to be a bit more subtle in how you broadcast your virulent racism.
It’s how you wind up with history books that tell lies sitting in school libraries and classes that tell truths removed from the curricula. It’s how you get putatively smart people believing incredibly dumb things: like Rick Santorum saying of America before the colonizers arrived, ”There was nothing here,” or Nikki Haley saying of immigration, “We’ve never in the history of this country passed any laws or done anything based on race or religion.”
When amnesia is that profound, who can be surprised that we get weekends like the one we just had? Note that it’s been over 50 years since the one and only time this country sought to deal in a serious and sustained manner with its racial baggage. We’d rather impose ignorance instead.
And when you do that, can hatred be far behind?
It’s why White Conservative Christian heterosexuals claim they don’t have a hateful bone in their body in one breath and in the next rail against those they think are looking for reparations.
Bigotry isn’t just the words one uses when speaking; it’s the attitude one lives with and the way one unconsciously elevates themselves over “The Other.” They may not even understand that they’re a bigot because it’s ingrained. Perhaps no one has ever pointed it out to them.
And, as if that isn’t bad enough, Rep. Marjorie Trailer Greene (R-GA) is defending “free speech,” the absolute right of the Far-Right to say whatever’s on their minds no matter how sick and offensive it may be.
But even the Far-Right has its limits. They certainly don’t want to be offended. They have feelings, too.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is defending Infowars host Alex Jones in the wake of the nearly one billion dollar civil judgment against him for defamatory claims he made on his radio show about the parents of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, arguing that he is facing “political persecution.”
But while she argues that “freedom of speech” should allow Jones to avoid the consequences of defaming those kids’ parents – even as it inspired his followers to harass them and allegedly pee on the child victims’ graves – her most famous intern, Milo Yiannopoulos, is telling his followers on Telegram that the U.S. should ban blasphemy and “institute meaningful penalties for insulting, irreverent or contemptuous language about Our Lord.”
Ah, so the American Taliban wants to make it a crime to speak ill of their God? The one in which Americans like me don’t believe? So where are the free speech rights in that?
Or does the Far-Right only believe in “free speech” when it’s convenient for them?
As if that question is anything but rhetorical.
One father of a six-year-old boy who was killed in the shooting said that Jones made his life a “living hell,” that his fans harassed him in the street, shot at his home and car, and made threats against him for years.
“As time went on, I truly realized how dangerous it was,” the father said during the civil trial. “My life has been threatened. I fear for my life, I fear for my safety.”
Greene was enraged that the jury would order Jones to pay damages in the defamation case.
“No matter what you think of Alex Jones all he did was speak words,” she tweeted yesterday after the verdict was announced. “He was not the one who pulled the trigger. Were his words wrong and did he apologize? Yes. That’s what freedom of speech is. Freedom to speak words. Political persecution must end.”
No, Alex Jones isn’t responsible for what some of his possibly mentally unstable followers did. He did, however, light the fuse. And he did nothing to bring down the temperature of the situation. He could’ve asked his followers to leave the families alone. He could’ve stated that his words represented his opinion and were in no way a call to action against the families. He could’ve used less inflammatory language.
He chose to do none of those things, even when he became aware of what his words were inspiring some of his followers to do to the Sandy Hook families. So in that sense, he is responsible for metaphorically pouring gasoline on an already raging fire.
Just as you cannot yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater, you can’t knowingly prod your followers to commit acts of violence.
Ah, but let’s not forget that free speech is only for White Conservative Christian heterosexuals, silly wabbit.
While Greene was arguing for such an expansive definition of free speech that includes immunity for deliberate defamation, someone from her office was saying that the U.S. should ban free speech when it comes to criticism of religion and God.
“Christian nationalism will succeed only if we are honest about the profound structural failures in the American system, and are prepared to do something about them,” Greene’s intern, Yiannopoulos – who identifies as ex-gay – wrote on the rightwing social media platform Telegram. “This will involve the commission of some pretty gigantic offenses against ‘American conservatism.’ For a start, we must be prepared to say that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are hopelessly broken, because of course they are.”
“You will know America is serious about saving itself, and that it has absorbed the scale of the undertaking, when you see a president adding his signature to revivified blasphemy laws, which will prevent the open promotion of sedition, institute meaningful penalties for insulting, irreverent or contemptuous language about Our Lord, and moreover restore to general society an understanding that words matter, they carry consequences, and they may not be capriciously and arbitrarily redefined by mentally unstable graffiti artists with PhDs,” he wrote.
“The wide disputational berth granted by the First Amendment and the destructive potentialities of the Second are privileges that can only be granted to Christians…. No other belief system produces individuals capable of responsibly wielding such daunting, awesome freedoms.”
“You cannot grant these powers to the citizenry without also requiring that every elected official and federal employee is a churchgoing Christian and that the nation explicitly identifies itself with Jesus Christ and governs in a manner informed by the Church,” he wrote.
“[P]rivileges that can be granted only to Christians?” I can’t begin to understand what Yiannopoulos is basing his argument on, but it’s certainly not the language of the Constitution or any writings of the Founding Fathers. The Constitution was meant to be a secular document to guide a secular government. Yet Milo Yiannopoulos sees no irony or misstep in arguing that ONLY Christians can “responsibly wield…such daunting, awesome freedoms.”
Nowhere in the Constitution does it state we should be “requiring that every elected official and federal employee is a churchgoing Christian.” Or that “the nation explicitly identifies itself with Jesus Christ and governs in a manner informed by the Church.” This sort of religious bigotry is flat-out wrong and has no basis in the Constitution or Constitutional law.
Perhaps Yiannopoulos should read the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, or the Treaty of Tripoli- all of which establish American governance as secular.
Reviving blasphemy laws would be blatantly unconstitutional and violate the very “free speech” rights Yiannopoulos demands for himself and his fellow Christian Nationalists. But those rights apply to ALL Americans and can’t be separated out for only one demographic group. So that in and of itself would be a violation of the 1st Amendment.
It seems that MTG and Milo Yiannopoulos want an America where they and people like themselves have unquestioned political control. They want rights guaranteed by the Constitution but don’t necessarily want others to have those same rights.
Is that an America ALL citizens deserve? Of course not; it would look like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale. Besides, not all Americans are White, Conservative, Christian, and heterosexual. I’m only two of four; does that make me “less than"?”
It sounds like “National Weekend of Bigots” was a helluva lot of fun, eh? I’m sorry I didn’t find out about it ‘til after the fact. Man, why does nobody ever tell me about these things??
