Liberal Voices

Racism and the presidential election

With Barrack Obama having a real chance of being the Democratic nominee for president, the issue of racism in American culture is quite important for several reasons. First, considering past history, will it be a smear and attack issue in the general election, and secondly, is Obama really electable?

Relating to the first question, race is already an issue in the primary election. Hillary Clinton, who saw her chances for the nomination begin to dwindle, must have considered Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, manna from heaven when his chant, “God damn America” was heard in the media over and over again.

But it is Clinton advisor, Richard Goodstein, also a professional lobbyist, who has used smear tactics in attacking Obama on Fox News, regarding Wright and Obama’s church contributions.

Nevertheless, many pundits believe that Obama’s historic speech regarding race and his relationship with Wright has, at least for now, saved the day.

And the radical right media has strafed the Obama campaign, including Fox TV News (Noise, according to Keith Olberman) and those of the Rush Limbaugh stripe. Their spurious and racist comments and images are designed to ambush their willing audiences with a fear/resentment-inspired negative image of Obama and his campaign.

Youtube has compiled a sample of the most recent Fox News videos and quotes from commentators like O’Reilly, Hannity, and a number of minion FoxNoiseians. On the left are the comments and on the right are the stereotypes and fears that they serve:

Spurious Remark

Stereotypes/Resentment/Fear

The reason he is considered such a big deal is because he is a black candidate.

Resentment against affirmative action, seen as unwarranted favoritism.

Half of the kids under five years old are minorities. Black folks having babies without being married.

Indiscriminate breeding of Blacks. Underlying engenics issue of spreading inferior genes. White paying for welfare, etc. Blacks are non-family oriented.

Look what they did with the Dome. They turned it into a ghetto.

Excuses Katrina neglect of black victims. Blacks seen as a culpable destructive, even criminal element, maybe even deserving.

They will get up every day and kill someone and have chicken at KFC.

Lawlessness of Blacks and favorite food stereotype. Feeds fear of large Black men.

Obama's middle name is Hussein. He is a Muslim.

Association with al Quaeda and extremists.

Trinity Church in Chicago is where Obama calls home. Are they worshipping Christ? They are cultish.

Association with unfamiliar religion, including Islam.

The stereotypes and the fears associated with them have been real in American culture for many years. Many feel that the Republican party has bet its ascendency on utilizing stereotypes, resentment and fear, especially in capturing southern states. Resentment of LBJ’s Great Society and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s gave the new conservative movement a common cause and a rallying cry.

People have become weary with cries of racism, but vestiges have always been there. The adjectives to describe Black people have not changed too much since the 1930s, including lazy, superstitious, ignorant, loud, poor and criminal. Mocking black language is also a favorite demonization method, something already used by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, relating Obama to rap, trash-talk, basketball, and laziness.

Media’s contribution includes television depicting blacks as poor nearly twice as often as the true incidence: actually account for 29 percent of poor but are depicted as poor in excess of 50 percent of cases, and lawlessness is often associated with blacks in cop shows. According to Lawrence Grossman, former president of CBS News and PBS, TV newscasts "disproportionately show African-Americans under arrest, living in slums, on welfare, and in need of help from the community.”

Paul Krugman in his new book, Conscience of a Liberal, provides some background on the conservative movement and its utilization of racism from the inception of William Buckley’s National Review and on. Many politicians only had to utilize stereotypes and fears that were already there and which the media helps to perpetuate.

In 1957, the National Review published an editorial celebrating a Senate vote it believed would disenfranchise blacks. Even in a speech in 1964 supporting the candidacy of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan was using small-government rhetoric to tap into white backlash. The code for white resentment against civil rights forced by the Democratic administrations and liberal courts was becoming “states’ rights.”

Later during Reagan’s 1976 run for the Republican nomination, he made his mark by grossly exaggerating a case of welfare fraud in Chicago, introducing the term “welfare queen.” No one needed to be told her race. In 1980 he began his campaign with a speech on states’ rights at the county fair near Philadelphia, Missisippi, the town where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. Southern whites got the message.

George W. Bush’s capture of two terms as president has often been related to disenfranchising non-felon Blacks in Florida in 2000. Several methods of Black disenfranchisement were used in Ohio in 2004.

During his two terms as president, his total exclusion of the poor and in many cases minorities, while showering the rich with tax cuts, deregulation, and subsidies speaks volumes. Accordingly, it seems to be no accident that veterans and hurricane Katrina victims have been forgotten.

The neo-conservative hold on the Republican Party seems to be continuing with John McCain’s unwavering support of an unpopular war, a change from opposition to support of continued Bush tax cuts for the rich, and a willingness to use terrorist scare tactics.

Does this mean that John McCain will continue the smear and fear tactics of the Karl Rove / Dick Cheney / George W. Bush White House? Will that be his answer to the candidacy of an intelligent, eloquent, black candidate, that is, if Obama wins the nomination?

Laugh all the way to our bank

Never being accountable means not having to say you’re sorry, even about the economic mess you helped to create. Though Bush’s messes are not just economic, the media focus is now the taxpayer bailout, regarding a subprime folly that he owns.

In fact, the media-leaked FBI prostitution wiretaps and the New York Republican Assembly’s immediate call for impeachment of Eliot Spitzer relates to this crisis. Spitzer was a vocal critic of the Bush administration and Wall Street’s handling of past (Enron) and current financial market crises. His removal quieted their most avid critic.

But history tends to repeat itself. Reminiscent of taxpayer bailouts is the savings and loan debacle during Ronald Reagan’s deregulated watch. Reagan, of course, is one of Bush’s neocon predecessors, oft-mentioned by many with moist eyes.

No one seems to remember the savings and loan mess he left, or the Iran-Contra deals which nearly brought his impeachment. In fact, Bush brothers (Jeb and Neil) and John McCain (part of the Keating Five but less culpable than the others) had roles in the S&L scandal. That fiasco cost the taxpayers well over $100 billion in 1980 dollars.

Once again, the bailout is coming, courtesy of American taxpayers. It has already begun with the fed underwriting (up to a $300 billion guarantee) the extremely irresponsible greed-fest of Bear Stearns, a firm often described as a bad economic citizen.

Unbelievably, a corporation that weathered many economic storms, including the great depression, is being sold to J.P. Morgan at somewhere around 7 cents on the dollar.

Now we must point out that there are a host of bad economic citizens out there who, like spoiled children, have not been held accountable by anyone in our neo-conservative government.

Like permissive parents, our leaders – and we must say that the Democrats have been somewhat complicit -- have not imposed the rules of good civic behavior. The result began with the meltdown of companies like Enron, Global Crossing, and Tyco. Now add Countrywide and Bear Stearns. The current tide of sub-prime failures will ebb higher and will bring continued bailouts.

Now maybe it is unfair to make a personal analogy while we’re talking about irresponsible corporations, but our president seems to have had a permissive and privileged life similar to our unregulated corporations.

Even before George W. Bush became Texas’s governor, he was a welfare recipient of Texan taxpayers, for his Texas Rangers stock ballooned in value after given a new stadium through a Texas sales tax increase. George soon after divested himself of Ranger stock, we might add with a tidy profit.

But as governor, George did share wealth and influence with others. He represented CEO Ken Lay and Enron Corporation by showering favorable legal changes and creating corporate deregulation for Ken’s corporation. Seemingly in return, Enron showered Bush with almost $1 million in campaign funds.

Now as president the Decider, who was a big business gambler always rescued by friends and family, is using our money to the tune of trillions of dollars to fight a war he lied us into, and to top that off, cavalierly condones spending our money to prop up irresponsible companies like Bear Stearns, but refuses to do the same bailout for those who are losing their homes.

A few days ago, a Gail Collins op-ed in the New York Times was commenting on a Bush address to the New York financial community. His attitude was so totally nonchalant that Ms. Collins had to wonder, “what the international financial community makes of a country whose president could show up to talk economics in the middle of a liquidity crisis and kind of flop around the stage as if he was emcee at the Iowa Republican Pig Roast.”

If anyone was looking for reassurance or evidence of a steady hand steering our ship of state, the scene was more like a carefree sailor on shore leave stumbling into the room.

For most of seven years many have trusted this Crawford sailor on intellectual leave to handle the vital affairs of state. The belief of Alan Greenspan and his friends in the Bush administration that the market is always right and regulation always a bad thing is even now the crutch holding up Bush policy (pretending bailouts are part of the market), but under a new fed chairman. All Bush has left is a sophomoric attitude.

And as for the George W. Bush analogy, there are many parallels between Bush’s exploitation of family, friends and Texas taxpayers and the many corporate favors BushCo has showered upon friends in the form of deregulation, tax cuts, subsidies and lobbyist legislation.

According to Paul Krugman, the U.S. savings and loan crisis of the 1980s ended up costing taxpayers 3.2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of $450 billion today. For sub-prime, Krugman suggests taxpayer payouts in the neighborhood of Japan’s post-bubble cleanup: 20 percent of GDP, or $3 trillion.

So add taxpayer bailouts to the singular tax-cut litany of Bush domestic policy. Other than that, his public appearances prove that he still believes his intellectual bankruptcy can be salvaged through charm, including a song and a dance.

World without empathy

In a column a few days ago Chris Hedges, columnist and lecturer, said that war creates a world without empathy. Hedges has a good point, but I believe that America’s shortfall in empathy goes deeper than that, for war is just one manifestation of its causes.

The dictionary defines empathy as the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another. A feeling of connectedness with others is an important ingredient of empathy.

But in the personal and political spheres of American culture, a severe disconnectedness exists. This lack of connection is pervasive in our frenetic urban life, touching family, business, community and government.

Families are separated. Businesses estrange themselves from investors and consumers. Communities build walls. Government leaders serve lobbyists and themselves, and thus have less congress with the people they serve.

Furthermore, the neo-conservative ideology, which has been on the rise since Reagan and which has dominated our government for the past eight years, is patently unfriendly to this connectedness.

Internationally, it has worked to alienate friends, threaten perceived enemies, refuse diplomacy and unilaterally make war.

Domestically, our leadership fosters division, cynical and ruthless competition, materialism, and an insensitive self-reliance. It’s been a sort of keep counsel with yourself and to hell with your brother.

We have seen corporate corruption and corporate meltdowns come from regulatory neglect. We have seen a corporate greed-fest.

Global outsourcing has taken jobs from Americans and/or lowered wages. Our leaders have encouraged unbridled dogfights in the market place.

Conservative leadership has spouted family values, while advocating greed and materialism. It speaks private charity while vilifying the poor. It speaks war with peace and freedom euphemisms, a double-speak that leaves you logically and rhetorically aghast.

Sensitivity to the interests of others is effete, bleeding-heart liberalism, and everyday concern for the interests of the vulnerable is tiresomely politically correct – qualities neocons raucously ridicule.

In fact with the bunker mentality of Republicans, Democrats are timid, even squeamish, about mentioning reforms that are sorely needed, like a one-payer health care system, a more fair tax burden, homelessness, poverty, and rising wages for workers.

They actually fear the ridicule and cringe from defending the interests of their base.

Then there is the war: wasting lives and soaking up resources needed for so many other American needs.

But the Bush war legacy seems to be continued with the candidacy of John McCain, perhaps as a continuation of neoconservative goals. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank and a prime driver for the Iraqi war, epitomizes neoconservative militaristic goals:

·    Remake America in the image of an imperialistic nation prepared for global domination.

·    National security has priority over our rights.

·    Spend more for defense.

·    Intervene in the affairs of evil countries – hence abandon the more Christian, isolationist mentality of the founding fathers.

·    Infiltrate and hold high often unelected government positions.

Long before neo-conservative prodding and a war-determined Bush administration deceived us into the Iraqi war, a disconnectedness was strengthening in our culture, but we have failed to counteract cultural forces that were leading us in that direction.

Neoconservative think tanks have been around for a long time, but a ruthless push for neoconservative dominance with its militant agenda began after the humiliating defeat of Barry Goldwater.

Emboldened by the Reagan years and Reagan’s adoption of neocon ideas, the think tanks proliferated during and after his eight years.

We can easily attribute the growing bunker mentality of American government and peripherally apartheid direction of our culture to the power and money being filtered into neocon thinking, a philosophy which has bought its way into American culture.

Unity and compromise, especially in the George W. Bush years has been replaced with division, polarization, and antipathy. Religion, sexuality, race, poverty, science, and education have been twisted into and around the neoconservative agenda.

Wedge issues like gay marriage, prayer in the classroom, academic freedom, separation of church and state, abortion, sex education have all been twisted to maximize division and foster bitter antipathies.

America puts adults in prison rather than deal with the myriad of problems faced by those growing up in our society, for one percent of American adults are in prison, more than any other advanced country. A judgmental chasm separates us.

Testimony to a continuing stellar intolerance and division, are recent comments of an Oklahoma lawmaker, Sally Kern. When she was asked about the most potentially harmful phenomenon or issue threatening our nation, it was not our use of torture on suspected terrorists. It was not hawks in the White House. Believe it or not, it was homosexuality. It is America’s worst scourge, she said.

Such emotional issues and their negative ramifications have been exploited to gain votes. How connected can a polarized society be and where is the room for compassion?

The world without compassion came after cultural changes that neoconservative forces exploited and helped enhance to achieve their own goals. War was one of these goals, a war to benefit their own. War is only one of its deadly achievements.

From a widespread lack of empathy comes an inability to appreciate the special needs and difficulties of the underclass and various out-groups, comes the ideological rational of the militarist, comes the sexist and homophobic attacks, the unilateral decision-making, and the flailing incompetence of international relations.

Yes these are all expressions of neo-conservative policy. For every cynical act of allegiance, there is a rationale, a euphemism, a doublespeak worthy of Orwell’s connected world, but rather than connected to people, it is connected to a unified agenda of raw and ruthless power.

Wise Americans understand that if you feel empathy, you know how to talk to your enemies.

For the soul of America and for our survival, we must seek that compassion.

Smears of the front-runner

Barack Obama wearing a turban and sporting a middle name of Hussein – he must be a double agent or even worse, an undercover terrorist. Furthermore, Youtube pictures him not saluting the flag; a video showed that in my forwarded email from a friend. So it must be true.

Ridiculous? I’m afraid not. Simple folk, not simple-minded folk, are impacted by these images being paraded before them. We call these charges, these negative images, smears because they are unsubstantiated attacks which smear or soil the target of these assaults.

60 Minutes reporter, Steven Kroft, interviewed an average Ohioan, Kenny Schoenholtz, who is facing a lay-off – the prospect rendering him fearful and vulnerable. Because of the smears, Schoenholtz was troubled about voting for Obama.

Schoenholtz said, “Well, I'm hearin' he doesn't even know the National Anthem, you know. He wouldn't use the Holy Bible. He's got his own beliefs, got the Muslim beliefs. Couple issues that bothers me at heart.”

“You know that's not true,” Kroft remarked.

“No. I’m just…this is what I've been told,” he replied.

It will probably be enough to swing his vote to Clinton. The goal is like that of the defense attorney in the courtroom: spread doubt by heaping negative images on the opposition. It fosters a looming doubt.

Bill Maher on his program, Real Time with Bill Maher, derided these false images: a Muslim characterization of Barack Obama and the image of no-hand-on-the-heart heathen during a pledge of allegiance to the flag. But this was on HBO with a program few Americans watch.

The tactic has always been effective, but it is now made more powerful through science. It is obvious to any who pay attention that Karl Rove did it to Ann Richards, Al Gore, John McCain, John Kerry, Valerie Plame, Ambassador Wilson – any opponent of George W. Bush, in fact.

Ann Richards, who ran against Bush for Texas governor was painted as a lesbian. Al Gore’s team planted a recording device in Bush campaign headquarters, Bush operatives said. Al Gore told lies. John McCain fathered a black child (a widespread whisper campaign) – actually his adopted Bangladesh daughter. The swift-boaters depicted Kerry as dishonorable. Ambassador Wilson revealed the Hussein “nuclear weapons” lie, and his wife Valerie was outed by shadowy Bush people.

Where does science come in? You need to set up the desired perspective or frame of reference. Conservative think tanks have done just that. They have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a unified approach, disbursed by conservative spokespeople. The object was to change the perspective of voter thinking.

George Lakoff, a Berkeley professor of linguistics, has devoted most of his career to the study of metaphors and the human brain.

In his bestselling book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, he posited that Americans experience their politics through the metaphorical frame of family. This has been the presumption of social scientists employed by conservative think tanks. That is why Republicans associate themselves with family values.

Thus with a great unified endeavor led by think-tank leaders, neoconservative talking heads, media sources, politicians, and subsidized book writers like Ann Coulter have universally scribed a negative message into the image-prone brains of Americans, most especially the voters. Through multiple media sources, this message is spread by means of endless repetition.

Linguists like Lakoff and Noam Chomsky can easily recognize the message of family and certain hypnotic words, many family-oriented and many actually meaning the opposite. Pro-life, tax relief, death tax, clean air (meaning pollution), no-child-left-behind, peace (object of war), and freedom (once a goal of Iraq) are a few.

Lakoff mentions the metaphor of family, but the family image is also enhanced by related images, for example, images of God and country. So Bush’s justification of a pre-emptive war has subtly used religion as the reason for the war: a religious war against “evildoers,” a sort of subliminal message provided by Bush’s speechwriter, Michael Gerson, himself an evangelical.

Showing the power of religion, a University of Minnesota study a few years back found a profound prejudice against nonbelievers. Almost half of two-thousand randomly selected Americans – many saying they weren’t religious – would disapprove of their child’s wish to marry an atheist, compared to less than twenty-five percent disfavoring Latinos.

What we must admit is that smears are effective. Most evidence proves that American voters are affected by these techniques.

Recently neo-conservatives have used a sort of one-two punch against American voters.

First, you condition them, mostly through repetition, to share underlying prejudices: big government is inefficient; liberals always engage in taxing and spending; business is always more efficient; and Republicans will keep us more secure.

Second, you repeat hypnotic words contributing to the desired persuasion over and over again, endeavoring to smear your opponent with images and words that can do the most damage based on your opponent’s strengths and vulnerabilities.

Being the frontrunner for the Democrats, Barack Obama is the target for both McCain and Clinton. We have seen smears that are airing through the web, the conservative media and through video, whenever possible: Obama wearing a turban, sources exhibiting his middle name of Hussein, video of him supposedly not honoring the flag (they were playing the National Anthem), and no flag pin in his lapel. In addition, McCain strategists accuse him of aiding the enemy (al Qaeda) by opposing the Iraqi war.

In this way they are associating him with non-family values: unpatriotic, consorting with the enemy, a non-believer, etc. – and you appear not to be attacking his race, which is taboo.

It has worked, and the Texas and Ohio primary seem to prove it is still working.

Get used to it or don’t let yourself be fooled.