Do why are the areas of the country that have been Dimokkkrat controlled plantations for years, all SHITHOLES of expensive govt controlled failed schools, rising violent crime, & wastelands of drug abuse?
I find your essay misidentifies parties that haven existed for over a century. Certainly, the Democratic Party of the mid 1800's was the segregationist party and Republicans were the abolitionists of the same period. But historically, the "party of Lincoln" hasn't existed since Nixon's "Southern Strategy" effectively redefined and realigned the parties prior to the '68 election. The race-agnostic dreams of Republicanism (of the middle 20th century) died on the altars of "Law and Order" and "Modern States' Rights", giving us the political alignment we know today, 150 years after the events cited in your essay.
Singling out one party for systematic racism in the US is like calling one end of the swimming pool "wetter" than the other.
Nixon won the South not because he agreed with them on civil rights -- he never did -- but because he shared the patriotic values of the South and its antipathy to liberal hypocrisy.
When Johnson left office, 10% of Southern schools were desegregated. When Nixon left, the figure was 70%.
Richard Nixon desegregated the Southern schools, something you won't learn in today's public schools.
Add to the fact that Nixon lost the south in 1968 the fact that Jimmy Carter won the south in 1976, the fact that Bill Clinton won Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia in 1992, and the fact that the Republicans didn't win the south in the Congress until 1994, and your suggestion that the Southern Strategy somehow realigned the parties prior to the 1968 election seems a little hollow. Besides, leopards don't change their spots.
The political transition that turned the south red over several decades was not a political calculation. Rather, it was a latent response to a socioeconomic shift that saw the Democratic Party power base move to the major urban media centers -- none of which (apart from Washington DC) were in the south.
The combined power of network TV and the commercial advertising model (representing a cultural impact measured in trillions of dollars) did much to eliminate -- or at least significantly dilute -- the cultural stigma of racism in the second half of the 20th century. Network TV and the commercial advertising model (again, measure in trillions of dollars over five decades) effectively ended cultural racism.
The specific appeal to and reliance on systemic racism, however, remained as a staple Democratic Party calling card and support mechanism in the major urban media centers, never more so than today in the confluence of state-sponsored default addiction and the institutional tyranny of digital scale. Today, institutional America is a one-party Democratic town with totalitarian power. Mission accomplished.
No one in their right mind would claim that racism doesn't exist on both sides of the political aisle, but the Democratic Party's claim to systemic racism is unique among American political parties now and in the past. All-of-government policies that throw open the southern border, promote equity (instead of equality) across all institutions, oppose school choice, and stand back while young black men murder each other in generationally Democratic inner cities, are pretty clear indicators that their power base still relies on the essential ability and desire to control the lives of brown and black people. Systemic racism is an ends-justifies-the-means mechanism, and has always been big business for the Democratic Party. Just follow the money.
Apart from that primary party characteristic rooted in systemic racism, it's hard to distinguish the modern Democratic Party from the Republican Party of the 1960s, and (more surprisingly) vice versa. Again, leopards don't change their spots. They're just now re-emerging in the sunlight with the demise of above-the-line legacy media and the concomitant ascent of below-the-line digital alternatives.
But as Donald Trump would say, there's fine people on both sides. Thanks again for taking the time to read my work and comment, Doc.
Good stuff. Some of the history of the white & black (& other colored) chess pieces.
Since that’s what the segmented masses are to the would be rulers, pieces, I think terms like “racism” are for consumption by the colored pieces being paid (your addiction thesis again) to consume themselves/others. Just narrative for those who read the lines, but not between them.
I knew a Northern Italian (descent) with the Southern Italian name Campana. Second generation, his parents landed in Detroit. Twenties-thirties-forties time frame. He told stories of the strange fruit that dangled from street lamps “up there” in those days.
My stepfather was also from Detroit. More stories.
My point (which includes derivation from personal experiences, “down south,” that I won’t go into) is that the frictions aren’t completely manufactured. For lack of a better term, there are “cultural” differences that churn at the margins.
And the stories told, & the stories I lived & could tell, resound honestly that the diversity ideal is a strength the same way the capitalism ideal is. Sounds good on paper, in academic halls & editorial cubicles, but is otherwise mostly MIA. Narrative & mythos.
And however wide or narrow those margins are they are as plate tectonic fault lines. Which the chess club organizers capitalize upon.
Another story. My family happened to be living in SoCal at the time of the Watts rioting. When the local police responded to query “what is acceptable self-defense, should it become necessary?” with the answer that amounted to use your non-dominant hand & tie the other behind your back, it was white flight to TX time. Because of, informed by, stepfather’s rough experiences in Detroit.
(TX was a different place, in the 60’s. Not different now. Because progressive progress has progressed.)
Public education. John Taylor Gatto is go to guy for that history, that intent, that progress. It has degraded all. Fools Prussian Where Angels Fear To Tread, call it.
Love this, Andy. Many thanks. No doubt, yesterday's utopian theories typically resolve in today's dystopian realities. There are in fact functional cultural differences at work, mostly manifest in tribal self-defense mechanisms. The combined impact of network TV and the commercial ad model promoted both diversity and capitalism. There's a reason why P&G spends twenty billion dollars on advertising every year. There's a reason why Pfizer owns the legacy media. As long as they promote diversity and capitalism, no one will bother to lift the hood. That's why the primary purpose of commercial mass media is to support the mechanism of addiction. In the end, addicts care only about one thing: their next fix. Fools Prussian indeed.
Ha! Ginger (can’t really use “monarch” can I?) butterfly flapped his vocal cord-wings south of Richmond (cuz the South finally did do it again) & the walls came tumbling down, Jericho-like.
How long before Cleo subverts Anthony’s tune to flog blue jeans, or something? And the Queen puts a “Sir” in front, like Jagger’s, or an OBE in back, like Tommy Shelby’s?
Thanks for reaching out. While I share no love for either major political party, I reserve a special disdain for the Democratic Party -- currently the most powerful and dangerous political institution on the planet.
Thanks, reante. Much to chew on, as always. Systemic racism is indeed a primitive power mechanism, perhaps an innate one, as nothing -- per your observation -- seems all that new about its current manifestation. Between the guarantee of generational poverty imposed by corrupt inner-city school systems, murderous black-on-black crime, and the systemic abortion of more than twenty million black babies since Roe v Wade, it's the same lethal Democratic Party plantation mentality at work across the past two centuries.
Your view of course is much more anthropologically attuned than mine, and thus more forgiving in its way. The only reason I republished this essay was because I believe the Democratic Party is far too powerful and far too dangerous in every measure -- its capacity and lust for violence not least.
Fall Guy determinism lets the Democratic Party off the hook too easily, and doesn't credit them nearly enough for their unshakable willingness to keep their racist spots intact at any price. Maybe every empire needs a systemic villain just to remind them of their own oral traditions. One thing, however, when the villain is there as a reminder to change direction, quite another when the villain represents the only acceptable direction.
Very likely I'm not as anti-civilization as you. That said, I'm not an actor in the red/blue farce except to the extent my obvious disdain for the Democratic Party currently exceeds my disdain for the Republican Party. I agree with your general assessment that the TINA-phase narrative of the elites is essentially over; it explains, in part, why the rise of state-sponsored default addiction as a compliance mechanism is now necessary, and why naked institutional tyranny is suddenly required to enforce hegemony. It also explains why there is no real effort by elites -- now exposed -- to retard the decline in the quality of life. Why bother when their power is all but absolute?
Also agreed this is spiritual warfare at root. Do I detect a hint of faith when you suggest our true human natures aren't yet lost forever? Whence comes this sudden rush of wings afar, young man?
Dims have always falsely claimed R's are the villains. In reality it’s the failed
policies of the Dim Party that have kept blacks down. Massive govt welfare
has decimated the black family. Opposition to school choice has kept them trapped in failing
schools. Politically correct policing has left black neighborhoods defenseless against violent
crime.
Do why are the areas of the country that have been Dimokkkrat controlled plantations for years, all SHITHOLES of expensive govt controlled failed schools, rising violent crime, & wastelands of drug abuse?
I find your essay misidentifies parties that haven existed for over a century. Certainly, the Democratic Party of the mid 1800's was the segregationist party and Republicans were the abolitionists of the same period. But historically, the "party of Lincoln" hasn't existed since Nixon's "Southern Strategy" effectively redefined and realigned the parties prior to the '68 election. The race-agnostic dreams of Republicanism (of the middle 20th century) died on the altars of "Law and Order" and "Modern States' Rights", giving us the political alignment we know today, 150 years after the events cited in your essay.
Singling out one party for systematic racism in the US is like calling one end of the swimming pool "wetter" than the other.
Southern strategy is another dimokkkrat LIE.
Nixon won the South not because he agreed with them on civil rights -- he never did -- but because he shared the patriotic values of the South and its antipathy to liberal hypocrisy.
When Johnson left office, 10% of Southern schools were desegregated. When Nixon left, the figure was 70%.
Richard Nixon desegregated the Southern schools, something you won't learn in today's public schools.
Thanks for joining the conversation, heidi. Hard for kids to learn anything about desegregation in school when no one is teaching desegregation.
Coercive govt control monopolies of education, healthcare, welfare, etc., corrupts & rots it. Not sure why anyone thinks govt cares about them.
Thanks for reaching out, Doc. Much appreciated.
Add to the fact that Nixon lost the south in 1968 the fact that Jimmy Carter won the south in 1976, the fact that Bill Clinton won Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia in 1992, and the fact that the Republicans didn't win the south in the Congress until 1994, and your suggestion that the Southern Strategy somehow realigned the parties prior to the 1968 election seems a little hollow. Besides, leopards don't change their spots.
The political transition that turned the south red over several decades was not a political calculation. Rather, it was a latent response to a socioeconomic shift that saw the Democratic Party power base move to the major urban media centers -- none of which (apart from Washington DC) were in the south.
The combined power of network TV and the commercial advertising model (representing a cultural impact measured in trillions of dollars) did much to eliminate -- or at least significantly dilute -- the cultural stigma of racism in the second half of the 20th century. Network TV and the commercial advertising model (again, measure in trillions of dollars over five decades) effectively ended cultural racism.
The specific appeal to and reliance on systemic racism, however, remained as a staple Democratic Party calling card and support mechanism in the major urban media centers, never more so than today in the confluence of state-sponsored default addiction and the institutional tyranny of digital scale. Today, institutional America is a one-party Democratic town with totalitarian power. Mission accomplished.
No one in their right mind would claim that racism doesn't exist on both sides of the political aisle, but the Democratic Party's claim to systemic racism is unique among American political parties now and in the past. All-of-government policies that throw open the southern border, promote equity (instead of equality) across all institutions, oppose school choice, and stand back while young black men murder each other in generationally Democratic inner cities, are pretty clear indicators that their power base still relies on the essential ability and desire to control the lives of brown and black people. Systemic racism is an ends-justifies-the-means mechanism, and has always been big business for the Democratic Party. Just follow the money.
Apart from that primary party characteristic rooted in systemic racism, it's hard to distinguish the modern Democratic Party from the Republican Party of the 1960s, and (more surprisingly) vice versa. Again, leopards don't change their spots. They're just now re-emerging in the sunlight with the demise of above-the-line legacy media and the concomitant ascent of below-the-line digital alternatives.
But as Donald Trump would say, there's fine people on both sides. Thanks again for taking the time to read my work and comment, Doc.
Good stuff. Some of the history of the white & black (& other colored) chess pieces.
Since that’s what the segmented masses are to the would be rulers, pieces, I think terms like “racism” are for consumption by the colored pieces being paid (your addiction thesis again) to consume themselves/others. Just narrative for those who read the lines, but not between them.
I knew a Northern Italian (descent) with the Southern Italian name Campana. Second generation, his parents landed in Detroit. Twenties-thirties-forties time frame. He told stories of the strange fruit that dangled from street lamps “up there” in those days.
My stepfather was also from Detroit. More stories.
My point (which includes derivation from personal experiences, “down south,” that I won’t go into) is that the frictions aren’t completely manufactured. For lack of a better term, there are “cultural” differences that churn at the margins.
And the stories told, & the stories I lived & could tell, resound honestly that the diversity ideal is a strength the same way the capitalism ideal is. Sounds good on paper, in academic halls & editorial cubicles, but is otherwise mostly MIA. Narrative & mythos.
And however wide or narrow those margins are they are as plate tectonic fault lines. Which the chess club organizers capitalize upon.
Another story. My family happened to be living in SoCal at the time of the Watts rioting. When the local police responded to query “what is acceptable self-defense, should it become necessary?” with the answer that amounted to use your non-dominant hand & tie the other behind your back, it was white flight to TX time. Because of, informed by, stepfather’s rough experiences in Detroit.
(TX was a different place, in the 60’s. Not different now. Because progressive progress has progressed.)
Public education. John Taylor Gatto is go to guy for that history, that intent, that progress. It has degraded all. Fools Prussian Where Angels Fear To Tread, call it.
Love this, Andy. Many thanks. No doubt, yesterday's utopian theories typically resolve in today's dystopian realities. There are in fact functional cultural differences at work, mostly manifest in tribal self-defense mechanisms. The combined impact of network TV and the commercial ad model promoted both diversity and capitalism. There's a reason why P&G spends twenty billion dollars on advertising every year. There's a reason why Pfizer owns the legacy media. As long as they promote diversity and capitalism, no one will bother to lift the hood. That's why the primary purpose of commercial mass media is to support the mechanism of addiction. In the end, addicts care only about one thing: their next fix. Fools Prussian indeed.
Many thanks, as always.
Ha! Ginger (can’t really use “monarch” can I?) butterfly flapped his vocal cord-wings south of Richmond (cuz the South finally did do it again) & the walls came tumbling down, Jericho-like.
How long before Cleo subverts Anthony’s tune to flog blue jeans, or something? And the Queen puts a “Sir” in front, like Jagger’s, or an OBE in back, like Tommy Shelby’s?
The democrat party must be damned to the hell to which it belongs.
Thanks for reaching out. While I share no love for either major political party, I reserve a special disdain for the Democratic Party -- currently the most powerful and dangerous political institution on the planet.
Thanks, reante. Much to chew on, as always. Systemic racism is indeed a primitive power mechanism, perhaps an innate one, as nothing -- per your observation -- seems all that new about its current manifestation. Between the guarantee of generational poverty imposed by corrupt inner-city school systems, murderous black-on-black crime, and the systemic abortion of more than twenty million black babies since Roe v Wade, it's the same lethal Democratic Party plantation mentality at work across the past two centuries.
Your view of course is much more anthropologically attuned than mine, and thus more forgiving in its way. The only reason I republished this essay was because I believe the Democratic Party is far too powerful and far too dangerous in every measure -- its capacity and lust for violence not least.
Thanks again for the terrific work.
Fall Guy determinism lets the Democratic Party off the hook too easily, and doesn't credit them nearly enough for their unshakable willingness to keep their racist spots intact at any price. Maybe every empire needs a systemic villain just to remind them of their own oral traditions. One thing, however, when the villain is there as a reminder to change direction, quite another when the villain represents the only acceptable direction.
Thanks, my friend.
Very likely I'm not as anti-civilization as you. That said, I'm not an actor in the red/blue farce except to the extent my obvious disdain for the Democratic Party currently exceeds my disdain for the Republican Party. I agree with your general assessment that the TINA-phase narrative of the elites is essentially over; it explains, in part, why the rise of state-sponsored default addiction as a compliance mechanism is now necessary, and why naked institutional tyranny is suddenly required to enforce hegemony. It also explains why there is no real effort by elites -- now exposed -- to retard the decline in the quality of life. Why bother when their power is all but absolute?
Also agreed this is spiritual warfare at root. Do I detect a hint of faith when you suggest our true human natures aren't yet lost forever? Whence comes this sudden rush of wings afar, young man?