The years of Obama-bashing have helped bring racism, sexism, and all the other "-isms" of hate out of the shadows

"The United States has never been "post-racial" as some would claim . . . . That said, prior to the emergence of Obama, outward expressions of virulent racism had been increasingly muted and forced underground by decades of hard work. . . . What has happened in the intervening years of the Obama presidency has been nothing less than a great unleashing -- the legitimization of racism and racist expression."

-- Bob Johnson, in "Conservative demonization of Obama
allowed racists to crawl out from under their rocks" (Daily Kos)

by Ken

Last night I indicated that I meant to come back to Ian Welsh's post yesterday, "In Light of Eric Garner," in which he urged us: "Understand this, if you understand nothing else: the system is working as intended." He argued that the Staten Island prosecutor case who succeeded in getting the grand jury to bring no indictment in Garner's death --

made the decision that the system wants: police are almost never prosecuted for assault or murder and on those rare occasions that they are, they almost always get off.

Donovan did what the legal system wanted him to do.

As for the police in question, well, they did what the legal system wants them to do, as well."

Where are several points here I wanted to come back to.

(1) THE PROPOSITION THAT "THE POLICE IN QUESTION
DID WHAT THE LEGAL SYSTEM WANTS THEM TO DO"

To argue this proposition, Ian works from "a transcript of [Eric Garner's] last words":

“Get away [garbled] … for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. Why would you…? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn’t do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me (garbled) Selling cigarettes. I’m minding my business, officer, I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. please please, don’t touch me. Do not touch me.”

”I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” he said, as officers restrained him.

"Defenders of the police," Ian says, will say that Garner "was non-compliant."

Non-compliant.

If a police officer tells you to do anything, you do it immediately.  If you do not, anything that happens to you, up to and including death, is your problem.

The legal system exists, today, to ensure compliance.

American oligarchical society rests on people not effectively resisting.  All gains now go to the top 10%, with the rest of society losing ground.  Incarceration rates blossom in 1980, which is also the year that the oligarchical program is voted in and becomes official.  (Trickle down economics can be understood no other way.)

Any part of the population which is inclined to resist, must be taught that it cannot resist.  Get out millions to demonstrate against the Iraq war: it will not work. Protest against police killings of African Americans, it will not work.

Nothing you do will work.

You will comply, and you will learn that resistance is futile. . . .

What's more, society finds the right people for its front-line compliance enforcement. Ian notes that "most of what police are paid is in social coin":

[T]he right to demand immediate obedience and fuck people up; the solidarity of the blue line; the feeling of belonging and power, is what makes the job worth having for (probably most) of the people who are now attracted to it.

Being a thug; having social sanction to be a thug, is enjoyable to a lot of people. Since that’s what cops get to do, those are the sort of people who tend to be attracted to the job. The police are the biggest toughest gang around, and belonging to them has most of the rewards of gang life, without the dangers of going to jail.

(2) THE FACT THAT PEOPLE "OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM"
REALLY NEED TO LEARN THE FUTILTY OF RESISTANCE

"The more outside the mainstream you are," Ian says,

the more you will learn it. African Americans, Latinos, poor whites (in that order.) Those who are fundamentally authoritarian, but somewhat opposed to the system (like the Bundy ranch) are treated more carefully (though the militia movement has its martyrs). But the fundamental lesson of life is to do what your lords and masters tell you to, and to not protest any law or order, no matter how nonsensical, trivial, or unjust it is. . . .

Compliance when given specific orders and learned hopelessness about protest or organizing are the aims. Ordinary citizens must understand that they cannot change the system if elites do not agree with the changes they want made If they try, they will be arrested and receive a criminal sentence, meaning they can never again have a good job.

In this system the wolves or goats identify themselves. An injustice is committed, people protest and the most aggressive protestors (which doesn’t always mean violence) are arrested. Certainly the organizers are. Those people are, as a result, usually destroyed economically even if they aren’t locked up for years.

The system is doing what it is meant to do. It teaches compliance, it teaches hopelessness and it identifies those who will not obey laws that don’t make sense (marijuana possession, for example), or who will fight or organize against the system and then it destroys them economically and often psychologically through practices like solitary confinement and prison rape.

The system will not change until those who want it to change have the raw power to force it to change, because it does serve the interests of its masters by destroying or marginalizing anyone who is actually a danger to oligarchical control of the system.

(3) THAT RACE ISN'T AN ACCIDENTAL COMPONENT OF THIS

The paragraphs I quoted above in connection with society finding the right people for its front-line compliance enforcement, and paying them mostly "in social coin," is preceded by this:

Race is an effective tool in this system, dividing the lower classes (and almost everyone is lower class now) against each other. No matter how bad a poor white’s life is, well hey, he ain’t black. He or she can feel superior to someone, can have someone to kick down at.

In this connection, in last night's post I also recommended I also recommended Bob Johnson's Daily Kos post "Conservative demonization of Obama allowed racists to crawl out from under their rocks," which argues just what the title suggests. I doubt that many DWT readers will need much persuading of the point that "the United States has never been 'post-racial' as some would claim," notably in the context of a black president in the White House.

Bob points out during the 2008 election campaign "the ugly racists in conservative leadership . . . spent months stirring racial resentment and fear based on Obama's 'otherness.' " He offers assorted examples, including "racist fear-pandering by anyone and everyone associated with Fox News," which collectively "set the stage for what was to come: nearly seven years of unending racist attacks, both overt and subtle."

And the effect, he says, has been "nothing less than a great unleashing -- the legitimization of racism and racist expression," which has undone such progress as had been made through "decades of hard work" that came before, whereby --

outward expressions of virulent racism had been increasingly muted and forced underground by decades of hard work. The most vicious racists had crawled under rocks, spewing their loathings in private or secret among others who shared their views.

And Bob describes and documents some of the ways in which the right-wing pols and media, despite earnest protestations to the contrary, have systematically exploited the race card to expand and consolidate political power. He points out, for example:

The rise of the Tea Party during the health care debate, no matter how contrived or staged, was simply the organizing by right wing power brokers of those holding racial resentments. The Tea Party provided racists with a sheepskin, euphemistically labeled "dissent," as a way to publicly espouse their virulent racial hatred.

On the Right, it's a win-win. For the troops who support the cause, it's more of Ian's payment "in social coin" -- a class of people to feel superior to. To the part of the country already infected with the virus of racism, the "vindication" of the killer cops in Ferguson and Staten Island is cause for celebration, bringing them more proudly, confidently, and visibly out in the open.

And for the oligarchs who exploit these sumbitches, it's legions of sumbitches to exploit. As Bob puts it:

Conservatives have fostered this retreat to gain power. It's a cynical strategy laced with abhorrent consequences for us all. It may take a long time to put that genie back in the bottle.

IT'S NOT JUST RACISM THAT THE RIGHT PROMOTES

As Howie noted in an October 22 post ("At The Root Of The Republican Party War Against Women -- Primitive Southern Baptists"), I have been kind of obsessed with a piece by Thomas Powers in the October 9 New York Review of Books, "Texas: The Southern Baptists in Power."

Formally, the subject at hand is the rise of the Southern Baptists to political control in Texas, enforcing an agenda of virulent racism, sexism, and homophobia. But of course it's not just Texas, and it's not just racism. This chunk of the Powers piece that haunts me:

The goal of “the Christian Right” as it waded into American politics was not vanilla concern with good government, but something gem-hard and Bible-based. The word “inerrant” is unfamiliar to most Americans, who take a softer view of religion than Southern Baptists. Dressing up for church, helping the poor, praying for peace, the sweet hope of marriage vows, the solace of ashes to ashes and dust to dust at the graveside—that seems to cover it for most Americans. Southern Baptists have an iron spine forged in a hotter fire: they believe salvation is what the universe is all about; the way to be saved is spelled out in the Bible; you can trust the Bible because everything in it is true, and that includes the story of Eden—woman’s role in man’s fall.

At the SBC’s annual meeting in Kansas City in 1984 the fundamentalists pushed through a resolution barring the ordination of women “because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall.” With this measure the fundamentalists closed a perfect loop. Women were not allowed to be “over” men, which means they cannot teach men where religion is concerned, which means they cannot be ordained and serve as pastors, which means they cannot challenge the interpretation of the biblical verses that confine them to a secondary status. Driving the resolution was a fear held in common with their fundamentalist brothers in the Muslim and Jewish worlds—fear of the loss of control of women.

Increasingly, now, the "mainstream" world that Ian Welsh sees the oligarchs defending so relentlessly looks very much like the primitive view of mankind Thomas Powers describes in his piece. And it's open season for all the "-isms" that target the groups that stand defiantly outside their mainstream. From the hate-mongerers' standpoint, the cool thing is that different "-isms" have stronger appeal to different target groups, and they happily reinforce one another. Once you're free to hate one group, you've got a free pass to hate any other one.


WE'RE SEEING THE RESULTS IN THE FORM OF
"ABHORRENT CONSEQUENCES" ALL AROUND US

We see the results in the form of "abhorrent consequences" all around us. It's been a while, notably, since contempt for and hatred of women could be expressed as openly as it has once again come to be. Does anyone believe that the orgy or rape happening all around us -- on campuses and in the military, for sure, but everywhere else as well.

Which is why it seemed to me at the time important to try to correct the nearly universal misunderstanding of what poor Todd Akin mean with his clumsy reference to "legitimate rape." It was obvious to anyone who looked at what he actually said that he wasn't saying that rape itself is in any way "legitimate." He was, instead, distinguishing what he takes to be an extremely small number of real, or "legitimate," rapes relative to the large number of claimed or supposed rapes. This is an increasingly prevalent view on the Right: that all those women who are crying "rape" weren't really raped. They're just trying to get back, for disturbed reasons of their own, at men being men (and boys being boys), doing to women just what God created women to have done to them.

This is also why, incidentally, the apparent fiasco of the Rolling Stone University of Virginia gang-rape story is a disaster. Among people looking for proof that the vast majority of claimed rapes aren't "legitimate" rapes, it will be taken as final proof.

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