[A little birdie pooping all over the blog brought this old blast from the past to my attention recently. He is so consumed by it that rather than just link to it I thought I would post it up front and center for him. I was going to save it just in case Republicans take the House come November. I wrote this primal scream the day after Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom Delay took over the House of Representatives. Hard words that hold up well 16 years later! Some things never change.]
The White Mongrel Class
There are basically two kinds of conservatives, those who don’t got it and blame liberals and minorities for it, and those who got it and only care about keeping it that way.
Historically referred to as Blue Collar Workers, euphemistically regarded as the Salt of the Earth, recently referred to as Reagan Democrats and since the 1995 Republican takeover of Congress, henceforth named The White Mongrel Class; it is these folks who are most responsible for the recent American descent as the world leader in Right-wing crapism.
Most American wage earners have gone from well paid hard work in the mills to low wage part-time hours in the malls, spending their days on the lowest wrung of the service ladder ever more immersed in the grand capitalist scheme of insatiable materialism, or to use the more conservatively correct term, supply side economics. Whether in the mall, at fast food joints in their silly uniforms, or behind the counter in any number of service oriented jobs, the frivolity of stuff has not only become the center of our lives, but is now responsible for leading us all into a life of ever smaller incomes, hopes and thoughts.
With little education, suffering economic and personal fears, and manipulated by such an effective GOP propaganda machine that November 1994 exit polls showed 47% of the voters believed welfare and foreign aid were the two largest Federal budget outlays (together they add up to less than 4% including food stamps), 38% of the voters making under $15,000 a year voted Republican. They could be given a period of understanding I suppose, but after decades of punching the voting cards for the very people kicking them in the head, I must admit my sympathy has thinned to the degree that I have little concern in now referring to them as the properly named White Mongrel Class.
The tools conservative movers and shakers have used to such great success in keeping these nitwits sucking up to them on all fours are simple, and though I am sure they have been extensively explained by Joseph Goebbels, there is no harm in briefly running through them again:
Flag wavin’ and Bible Thumpin’ – These have been the primary propaganda tools used for millennium by the wealthy to keep the uneducated, ignorant working class on all fours with their pants around their ankles. In fact, this is so much the historic basis of the conservative success in turning these people against their own self interest, it really needs no further comment other than to express wonderment as to just how far people can bend over.
Do we have a deal for you Bubba! First we are going to pass laws to put your pot smoking brother in one strike you’re out zero tolerance Hell for the rest of his life and the hereafter. Then we’re going to let your a whole boss do whatever he wants to you. Next we are going to reduce any and all government help on your behalf. And lastly, we want to give you a couple of machine pistols so that you can more efficiently remove your fellow employees, friends and loved ones from the gene pool.
Resentment – The words you are reading here are a valid example of their complaint concerning the issue of liberal elitism, but what the Hell, someone has to say this. GOP propaganda has directed a seething hatred of liberals through two areas: the green-eyed monster of jealousy and the many facets of political correctness.
It goes like this: "Damn know-it-all elitist la-de-da liberals thinking they know everything. I got me a GED, I work in the mall, live in a nice trailer, got a Big Friggin’ Gun, can count to almost 40 and know better than all those stinking college educated liberals what’s best for me, my family and my country!" Of course people who gain masters or doctorates in a specific area, practice that expertise for decades and after years of research write books on the subject are all idiots with no ability to understand a damn thing, unless of course, they have found the Lord or work for a conservative think-tank. And on it goes, "I know more about life than any of these do-goodin’ liberal elitists, I have a real life! I know more about the government than any of these college graduates educated by the Marxist University Establishment. I get the real news, the truth, from unbiased sources like Rush Limbaugh, Paul Harvey, Matt Drudge, the NRA and Fox News!"
Guilt – When we see the White Mongrels all jumping up and down like baboons screaming for more executions and bigger guns, all the while striking out at our poorest; wouldn’t you know, some liberal comes along and has the gall to say that jumping up and down like baboons screaming for executions and bigger guns, all the while striking out at our poorest, is not the best advertisement for selling American values; traditional, Christian, family or otherwise. This of course is just what they want most not to hear, and Heaven forbid if they should hear it, they get madder, hate more, and become even more entrenched conservative lunatics than they were before. This is also the reason they have such an insatiable hatred of the media, for it too on rare occasion tells them things they can’t stand hearing, the truth.
The Pickle Problem – This problem is as old as humanity itself; those closest to the bottom of the pickle barrel are always looking for the pickles on the very bottom to pick on. This is best expressed on TV talks shows when the Klan or the Aryan Nations get to have their say when it soon becomes obvious that adding up the IQ’s of the entire family or group on stage never quite surpasses room temperature. Our new collective politic blames the poor, not only for their own misery, but ours as well, with race being the issue and Affirmative Action its vehicle.
The lie here is twofold. First that white males are losing rights (they are not, they are only losing some small degree of White male privilege) and the second lie, that the unfairness caused by the endemic racism in this country both past and present, is irrelevant to the perceived unfairness Affirmative Action brings to the more privileged. The problem here is insurmountable. Though Affirmative Action is intellectually and morally correct, with all the Fortune 500 companies declaring it a success and the major impetus of moving millions of people of color into the middle class, it makes no difference, it has become the prime generator of the downward sinking pickle problem.
Abortion – No better example of the White Mongrels than abortion. If it were not for the bombings, the arson, the murders, and the pain these righteous hypocrites cause to so many women, doctors and health care workers, this issue would be actually funny. Logic, reason and common sense have taken a back seat to what not a few Right-wing lunatics (posing as preachers) have wormed into these inbred nitwits’ empty noggins. There does not exist a more flagrant hypocrisy in American politics, for not only are these the very same people who do everything in their power to decry sex education and deny distribution of birth control devices, they are also the people who, while screaming about individual freedom, advocating the death penalty and getting the damn government out of their lives, are in the same breath denying women their individual rights. This is not about a $20 license, this – besides execution and incarceration – is the most basic right the State can deny a woman; control of her own body and future. To force a woman into a dangerous illegal abortion, or else take 20 years of her life to bring up a child she does not want, is to deny women not only their liberty, their freedom, their civil rights, their legal rights, but their basic human rights as well. This is not a complicated issue at all, it is simply that the rights of real people trump the rights of potential people.
Gungoonery – This is the second emotional cultural issue which is not funny in any context, or entertaining and is the major cause of violence in this society. It is about two things; making a profit for the firearm industry and getting more conservative votes by playing on people’s fears – small minded people in dire need of metal in hand to compensate for their lack of mettle in character. It is probably the single most important reason the House of Representatives was taken over by the Lunatic Right in 1994.
Gays & Lesbians – Of all these hot button issues this one is the silliest of the bunch. What do two people of the same sex loving one another have to do with anything at all? It’s just bigotry for the sake of bigotry.
So What To Do? I found myself at the end of this article without a clue. Compromise with them? Clintonize, so they can advance their selfish conservative crap a happy step at a time rather than in turbo mode? Sock it to them like this article and make it worse? Leave them alone and hope they wake up when the GOP sticks it to them any deeper? In my quandary I read this to a professional friend of mine who is far more the touchy-feely type liberal than I.
"So, I got the article done, it’s nasty and will be poorly received, and to top it off, I can’t seem to come up with any effective way of solving the problem."
"There isn’t any. Shoot em!"
[both giggle]
long pause
[both giggle]
"Hypocrite!"
"Rhino rounds!"
long pause
[both giggle]
Hanging up, I realized I was once again in my life closing in on that line leading from activism to militancy, from liberal to leftist. The last time I stood there, the issue was more well defined, even as a very young man I realized early on that militancy need not be pursued because the people would (and did) eventually come around as the war in Vietnam took more of a toll on their personal lives.
Now the issues are too general:
The pride we take in our growing disregard for each other.
Technology keeping us to ourselves.
The promotion of self interest above community.
Reliance on answers from religious dogma rather than reason.
Following the buck wherever it leads.
Resulting in us all drawing ever more inward.
Putting any of that on a placard and marching down the street is absurd. Where is the specific emotional issue needed to at least begin the turnaround? It should be capital punishment – the illogical premise that to reduce violence in our society it is best to set the example by tying up unarmed human beings to be dragged down the Green Mile through that one-way door, strapped down and commit the ultimate violence upon them. Of course it won’t be that issue, for besides the gungoonery, it’s our most honored of our American/Traditional/Christian/Family values. I suspect the change will only come after these nitwits go too far and we suffer some major cataclysm causing people once again to take to the streets.
As to the tenor of this article, I’ll be dipped in Newt-poop if anything I say can do any more damage than liberals hiding under their beds for the past 20 years have done.