ricncaric

Marjorie Greene: GOP Spokeswoman

The Democrats should stop treating Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, the Republican National Committee, and Ronna Romney McDaniel as “Republican leaders” or “GOP Spokespeople.”

Yes, these figures are members of the Republican Party who hold offices in Congress and the national party, but they no longer represent “Republican opinion” and are not particularly significant for understanding the internal dynamics of the Republican Party.

You know who is significant for understanding the Republican Party—Marjorie Taylor Greene!!!

The Republican Party consists of one thin layer, a larger layer of inertia, and an extremely thick and active MAGA layer.

The thinnest elite layer is the configuration of office holders and big business titans. Think the alliance between Mitch McConnell and the Business Roundtable.

Along with the elites, there’s the layer of small government, cut taxes, and deregulation Republicans who have a marginal preference for the McConnells but are just fine and dandy with supporting Trump and everything associated with Trump. That’s probably 35% of the GOP voting public. However, that constituency is also politically inert and therefore not a dynamic force in the Republican Party.

That leaves MAGA Republicans who broadly divide into the highly overlapping spheres of the conspiracy world, the religious right, and gun culture. That represents a heavy majority of Republican voters, 95% of the dynamism in the Republican Party, and also serves as the political base for Donald Trump.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is the most prominent spokeswoman for the MAGA majority of the Republican Party and therefore the most prominent spokeswoman for the Republican Party. Of course, she’s not nearly as important as the Lord God Trump but I bet Donald Trump looks to Greene’s pronouncements to help him understand the MAGA base and how he should pander to it.

When Greene goes, the Republican Party is already there.

Greene speaks at a white nationalist event because the GOP is a white nationalist party.

Greene proclaims that Catholicism is Satanic because the GOP believes that Catholicism is satanic.

Greene believes that women are the weaker sex because Republicans believe women are the weaker sex.

Greene thinks that anyone who is pro-gay rights is a “groomer” because that’s the position of the Republican Party.

All of Greene’s pronouncements should be thought of as the official position of the Republican Party.

The Joy Reid Model for Democratic Communication

Like many activist Democrats, I’m chronically dissatisfied with the messaging of the Biden administration, the Democratic National Committee, and the lib/left media more generally. Much of the communication reads like public service announcements, there’s not enough anti-GOP partisanship, what partisanship exists (“And no Republicans voted for this”) has little bite, and none of the more effective messages get amplified.

Both the Biden administration and the DNC have improved over the last month but recent tweeting by MSNBC broadcaster Joy Reid provides an excellent model for what official Democratic communication should look like:

1. An Aggressive Attack. My guess is that Joy Reid did not mean this as “Democratic messaging” but it’s excellent Democratic messaging all the same. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida used three black kids as props for his most recent anti-CRT announcement and Reid aggressively called him out for child abuse barely qualifying the statement as “tantamount to child abuse.” The anti-CRT announcement was another high point of DeSantis going after teachers and corporate training but Reid saw an element of racial abuse in the staging of the event and called him out.

2. Creates Controversy. When I accessed twitter this morning, Joy Reid was trending and there was an article about Reid’s accusation on the Fox News web site. As has often been the case with controversies pushed by Trump and the GOP, the Fox News headline served to spread Reid’s message:

MSNBC’s Joy Reid calls photos of Black kids at DeSantis event as ‘child abuse’

Yeah, the headline was that big!

In other words, Reid’s attack on DeSantis “made news.” One could say that Reid’s tweet would be even more effective if the “controversy” was reported by the New York Times and Washington Post or taken up by CNN, other MSNBC shows, and network news.

But one of the benchmarks for Democratic communication should be that it needs to “make news.”

3. Forcing A Response. Another benchmark for successful Democratic messaging is forcing a defensive response from the propagandists of the right and this is another area where Joy Reid’s attack was successful. In answer to Reid, DeSantis flak and superstar homophobic bigot Christina Pushaw tweeted:

“I was working at this event and helped with the set up. My colleague talked to all the kids beforehand & told them what the issue was & what bills @GovRonDeSantis was signing. Hundreds of people attended this event; those ~50 who ended up on stage freely chose to stand on stage,” Pushaw wrote.

4. Follow-up. Because the mainstream media views the right-wing as having a monopoly on controversy, the Democrats have a hard time getting their message amplified, such a hard time that the Biden White House needs to focus much more of their time on amplifying Democratic messages. It will be interesting to see if Joy Reid will address the controversy on The ReidOut tonight. But she did follow up with another post in the thread:

Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid, @JoyAnnReid

Apr 22 That sure looks like T. Willard Fair in the background. But I’ve been told by a trusted source that these were not Miami Urban League kids, standing there looking like they were at the dentist. Any Florida journalists have insight into this?

That prompted more discussion in the thread which brought out more facts.

4. Audiences. This kind of messaging doesn’t just serve to attack the Republicans. It gets Democratic messages to independent and moderate voters and also provides encouragement and support for Democrats. Democratic elites often get hung up on the idea of identity politics and campaign against the idea of politics as “teams.” But white conservative identity is the main thing driving GOP support for Trump, ideas of violent insurrection, opposition to Covid relief measures, etc. The Democrats need more identity politics, not less.

Is Florida Joining the Right’s War on Trans Teens? Maybe Not Yet

Today, Florida state health officials released official guidelines on treatment options for trans teens recommending against physicians recommending social gender transition, puberty blockers, hormones, or gender affirming surgery for anyone under 18.

These guidelines are vaguely reminiscent of the Texas initiative to criminalize health care for trans teens. That’s especially the case because the strictures are directed against doctors rather than trans teens themselves. But there is a also strong difference. The Florida guidelines are recommendations that do not carry the force of law and do not define gender affirming health care. Doctors will not be punished for following the federal Department of Health and Human Services

Research demonstrates that gender-affirming care improves the mental health and overall well-being of gender diverse children and adolescents.1 Because gender-affirming care encompasses many facets of healthcare needs and support, it has been shown to increase positive outcomes for transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents. Gender-affirming care is patient-centered and treats individuals holistically, aligning their outward, physical traits with their gender identity.

There are several possible motivations for Florida’s actions. If Kevin McCarthy can make craven gestures to Donald Trump, it’s understandable Florida health officials might be just as craven to Gov. Ron DeSantis and “nullifying” the federal recommendations could be a way to curry favor with the Governor. It might also be that Florida health officials want to contribute to the sense of confusion and fear developing among trans young people and their families. Truthout has a discussion of the possibility below.

News about the statement could add to the heightened sense of fear felt by young people and their parents as the rights of trans and nonbinary youth come under attack in Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and other GOP-led states, Charles said. Activists and journalists should approach far right disinformation carefully.

As Adam Serwer says, “the cruelty is the point” with American conservatives. However, where the rulings of TX Attorney General Ken Paxton create a system of cruelty for trans young people, Florida’s anti-trans “guidelines” are more of a gesture.

A Reign of Terror in Our Future?

Republicans like Mark Kelley, Republican governor’s candidate in Michigan, are gradually one-upping themselves into promising a reign of terror if elected.

Quoting from Adrian Cole writing for The American Independent:

“On Monday, real estate broker and Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan D. Kelley posted a video to his TikTok account to say that if elected, he would charge state school boards with felonies if they refuse to remove “sexually explicit content” from Michigan public schools.”

“One of the biggest problems in Michigan public schools is the sexually explicit content that is being offered and available to students in our schools across the state of Michigan,” Kelley says in the video. “Parents are showing up all over the state at school board meetings expressing their concerns, requesting that this type of material be removed from the schools, and a lot of times it falls on deaf ears to the school boards. Kelley said that if elected governor, he would take “swift action” to charge any school boards that failed to remove such material from their schools with felonies, citing a 1978 Michigan law that made it a felony to disseminate “sexually explicit matter to a minor.” Those convicted under the law can face up to two years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both. This law was amended in 1999 to extend its reach to the internet.”

Mark Kelley advocates this as a way to show that he’s tougher than the usual MAGA Republican. But white conservatives are getting to the point where executions without trial are within the realms of their imagination.

The GOP: The “(White) Boys Will Be Boys” Party

The story of host Jesse Watters courting his current wife Emma DiGiovine in 2018 while she was an intern for his show Watters World at Fox News reminds me a lot of my town’s Kim Davis of refusing to grant licenses to gay couples, having a child by her third husband five months after her divorce from her first husband, and then making her second husband into her fourth husband fame.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1515485452312186887

Fox News, The Five

The basics of Watters’ story were that he was married to his first wife Noelle (Inguagiato) Watters and was the father of twins, he started courting Emma DiGiovine (now Emma DiGiovine Watters) by letting the air out of all her tires and then offering her a ride. As soon as their affair started, the lovely couple reported their romance to the Fox News brass and they reassigned DiGiovine (now Watters) to ghoul Laura Ingraham and her show “The Ingraham Angle.”

Apparently Noelle Watters was neither amused nor inspired by the love story of her husband and his husband’s mistress and immediately filed for divorce. And who can blame her.

But my main point is that guys like Watters are part of what weak Republicans, independents, and moderates like about the Republican Party. There’s a kind of instinct to see Republicans as the “(white) boys will be boys” party and to view these kinds of frat boy stunts as “funny,” “brave,” “harmless,” and above all entertaining. The presence of guys like Watters gives the Republican Party and conservative movement cover for the zealotry of the anti-abortion movement, the religious right, and MAGA. It’s like “Republicans can’t be all bad” as long as they’re associated with irreverent and fun guys like Jesse Watters.

In various ways, conservative activists call for a return to the 50’s, but figures like Jesse Watters provide a real connection to the bad boy white male entitlement of the time.

That’s a deep cultural asset for Republicans.

The Mourning, the Resentful, and the Bitter

Josh Hawley, Ketanji Brown Jackson, @MSNBC

In her @Salon article comparing the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings to the confirmation hearings for Thurgood Marshall, Margaret Russell of Santa Clara University views the Republican senators who badgered Judge Jackson as acting in a manner similar to the racist Dixiecrats who questioned Justice Marshall during his confirmation hearings in 1967.

Like the Dixiecrat senators — Democratic senators from the South who believed in white supremacy — who grilled Marshall about his views on crime, the present-day Judiciary Committee Republicans have repeatedly insinuated that Jackson is soft on crime for performing her job responsibilities as a defense lawyer and trial judge in a manner that has been shown to be well within the mainstream of these legal roles.

Prof. Russell focused on Republican fear-mongering about crime and Critical Race Theory and she didn’t indicate whether or to what extent contemporary conservative Republicans share the belief in white supremacy so characteristic of their Dixiecrat forebears. However, what leading Republicans, GOP affiliated groups, and Republican voters think about race is an important issue in American politics. For “Portia Vaxxed and Boosted McGonagal” writing on twitter, conservatives are afraid that they would be treated the same way they treat “others,” meaning Black people, other racial minorities, undocumented immigrants, and LGBT folks.

Thinking about the issue in relation to the hearings, I believe a closely connected set of racist attitudes can be identified for conservatives which is distinct from the liberal racism discussed by Robin DiAngelo in White Fragility.

Persisting White Supremacy. In the contemporary context, white supremacy is a centuries long-standing belief that Black people are inferior to white people in intelligence, morality, and overall civilization, and are therefore rightfully excluded from occupations, subject to surveillance, harassed by police, and followed by store security. That belief is expressed in scholarly writing like The Bell Curve and by prominent defenders of The Bell Curve like journalist Andrew Sullivan, police officers celebrating the murder of black men like George Floyd, and the legions of “Karens” trying to monitor or exclude black people from parks, public pools, stores, and other places. Out of the public eye, these persistent racists use the n-word prolifically, tell racist jokes, make derogatory racial comments about black entertainers, athletes, and politicians, and share a sense of solidarity with white family members, friends, and co-workers who do the same. The main historical reference is the segregation system of the post-Civil War White South but 20% of Republicans believe that emancipation from slavery was a mistake. For hard-core racists, a culture of white supremacy is important to them even if they say they don’t really mean it, give “color-blind” excuses, or say that Blacks are the ones who are “really racist.”

Resentment Over Moral Criticism. White supremacists resent being morally criticized for racism even more than they enjoy participating in racist socializing. They get upset at being called racists because of the widespread moral stigma attached to racism by “official” public ideology in the United States. For Tucker Carlson of Fox News, his resentment of being called a racist is so intense that he cited it as his first reason for preferring Vladimir Putin and Russia over the Democrats and the United States as the beginning of the Ukraine crisis. “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia?” White supremacists view themselves as anchoring American society, as “the people,” but being called “racist” casts them outside the mainstream as condemns them as evil, bad, ignorant, and in fact marginal to the larger American society. The core of the resentment lies in white supremacists recognizing both that the official ideology of the United States is “rejection of racism” and that the official ideology is appropriate. However much white supremacists dodge, dissemble, and fight against it, they agree with the official ideology, know their own cultural marginality, and already have a resentment of that marginality before any of their critics remind them. In other words, white supremacists resent being called out for the immorality they already know in themselves.

Bitterness over Black Advancement. The bitterness over black advancement has a long history going back at least to the 1820’s and comes in many forms, but exploded into American society with the election of Barack Obama and the flowering of birther conspiracies that emerged in the racist backlash against his election. But white supremacists harbor a great deal of bitterness over any black achievement or mainstream notoriety and express that bitterness in diatribes over black athletes, black politicians, black musicians, black actors, and black business people. They spit out “wealthy athlete” or “wealthy celebrity” in a way that emphasizes their contempt for black people being wealthy or famous in the first place. The most recent example of that bitterness came out in a Charlie Kirk diatribe against the first black woman Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson

Charlie Kirk: Well, KBJ – Ketanji Brown Jackson – is what your country looks like on critical race theory. KBJ is your country on CRT. KBJ – Ketanji Brown Jackson – is an embodiment of the tyranny that we currently live under. She’s an ideological, unintelligent, yet confident fanatic . . . What do you get when you start to platform and implement critical race theory into every single corner of American society, in your corporations, in your schools? Your children and your grandchildren are going to have to take orders from people like her. And what’s amazing is that she kind of has an attitude too. You, look carefully at some of those videos, she kind of just she’s like, what? Why are you answer – why are you asking me such a question, Senator? She feels entitled to this position. Why wouldn’t she? It’s not like she got this position based on her qualifications. It’s not like she was selected based on her qualifications, it’s not like she was selected because of her amazing rulings. Of course not.

Charlie Kirk knows his audience. So the bitterness runs wild. Jackson doesn’t deserve to be on the Supreme Court (“it’s not like she was selected based on her qualifications”). Jackson is “an unintelligent, yet confident fanatic.” As a black woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson is undeserving of a Supreme Court seat and Charlie Kirk is bitter about it, but Kirk is also bitter about the nature of the society that could appoint a Black woman like Jackson. According to Kirk, Jackson is a product of the most evil dimensions of American society, “an embodiment of the tyranny that we currently live under.” Jackson is what you get “when you start to platform and implement critical race theory into every single corner of American society.” In this sense, Ketanji Brown Jackson stands for all the black and women who have a consciousness of being black (being “woke” in what is now conservative terminology). Not only is Kirk is bitter about that but he is also bitter about the impact of the advance of black people on the lives of future white conservatives–“Your children and grandchildren are going to have to take orders from people like her.”

“Fear of a black boss”–that’s one way to express the bitterness of white conservatives over the mobility of Black people in American society.

The Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings: Brief Dynamics

With the hearings on the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court complete and confirmation pretty much in the bag now that Sen. Joe Manchin (sometimes D-WV) has expressed support, it might be safe to make a two or three points.

Definitely a BFD. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court is a big effing deal. It’s a big deal to Judge Jackson for breaking another ceiling for black women, a big deal for black women, a big deal for the Court to have a more dynamic figure on the liberal side, and a big deal for American national identity. Since the Civil Rights Era, the United States has changed from what historians call a White Republic or White Man’s Republic to a Multicultural, Socially Liberal Nation. At a time when black women have become more of a force than ever, Judge Jackson’s nomination represents both 70 years worth of progress and the expectation that continuing to fight will bring about real change.

Intensified Backlash. But it’s been the case since Barack Obama’s election as the first black president that progress has brought about intensified backlash. Judiciary Committee hearings were dominated by the vicious and racist smearing of Judge Jackson’s perfectly ordinary sentencing in pedophilia cases by Ted Cruz (Insurrection R-TX), Josh Hawley (Insurrection R-MO), and Lindsey Graham (Toady R-SC). But as Amanda Marcotte discusses in Salon, Republican senators also spelled out a radically conservative agenda for the current 6-3 conservative Court majority. Once the Court wipes out Roe v Wade as expected, conservatives will move to overturning the Griswold v CT (1965) decision establishing a Constitutional right to privacy in relation to contraception for married couples. Given that the Obergefell decision that established a right to gay marriage was based on the right of privacy, conservatives would expect to overturn that as well. Just as the U.S. has coalesced into a socially liberal nation with large majorities in favor of abortion rights, contraception, and the right to gay marriage, conservative politicians and their religious right constituencies want to establish an extensive system of sexual coercion.

A Fragility. But white conservatives are not the only constituency interested in what Elizabeth Warren calls “Big Structural Change.” Since Justice Amy Barrett’s appointment establishing the 6-3 conservative Court majority, there has been enough buzz among Democrats about “expanding the Court” that Ted Cruz and other Republicans made it a campaign theme in the 2020 election. That buzz is now loud enough that Mitch McConnell (Establishment R-KY) made it his primary criteria for announcing his upcoming “No” vote on Judge Jackson’s nomination. Conservative politics has a frantic “we must turn back the clock now while we still have a chance” character that also reveals the fragile character of their position. As American society becomes more multicultural, black women like Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson can be recognized for having “amazing American stories” (paraphrasing Ben Sasse) while white conservatism is mostly about preventing American stories from happening. It’s not a solid position.

Conservative Activism III: Controlling the Liberal Field

The Vise: A third version of conservative activism involves establishing religious right demands as a form of partial social control that is total in the religious right’s areas of concern. With trans teens, the goal of Texas policy is to prevent trans children and teenagers from making a full transition and Texas state government seeks to exercise total control over all parts of a trans teen’s social environment that could aid in that transition. In Texas, first Attorney General Ken Paxton and then Governor Abbott declared health care for trans teens (puberty blockers, hormone therapy, gender affirming surgeries, etc) to be a form of child abuse, then ordered the parents of trans teens to be investigated by the Department of Family and Protective services, and finally stipulated that medical personnel and teachers who do not report such procedures were subject to criminal penalties. Likewise, “there are similar reporting requirements and criminal penalties for members of the general public.” Previously, the conservative “war on tran kids” was limited to “discriminating” against trans women by preventing trans women from using girls bathrooms and participating in women’s sports. What Texas proposed was treating normal medical care for trans teenagers as the crime of child abuse on the part of parents and also criminalizing any support for trans teens by medical people, teachers, friends of the family, and the like. Starting from their bigotry against transsexuality, Texas Republicans designed a system that controls trans teens by criminalizing the most important forms of support that can be given them and thus also serves to control liberal parents, teachers, and medical personnel by criminalizing their efforts.

Generally, people on the left think of social issues like transsexuality in terms of the natural rights of self-determination and the denial of those rights by conservatives. But it’s important to recognize that there are systems of control involved. In the case of transsexual teens, the system of control contemplated by the Attorney General and Governor is “partial” in the sense that it only affects one aspect of teen life. Trans teens are as free to go to school, work at various jobs, shop, and hang out as cis teens. They’re also free to wear clothes, do make-up, and adopt personal manners according to their gender as they define it. But Texas seeks “total control” over efforts to make a physical gender transition and Texas policy is to isolate trans teens completely from the environment of family, medical, and institutional support needed to address trans health issues. Where racial segregation once exercised direct control over the black population of Texas and other Southern states, Texas is shaping a totalitarian environment for trans teens by exercising direct legal control over families and other support networks. By exercising coercion direction on sympathetic family, medical, and social service constituencies, Texas expect to prevent trans teens from engaging in gender transition altogether.

The other dimension of control is unpredictability. Texas District Judge Amy Clark Meachum has both blocked Gov Abbott from enforcing his directive on trans teens and indicated that parents suing Gov. Abbott would likely win at trial. However, the families of trans teens and their medical providers are still on edge because Attorney General and conservative political warrior Attorney General Ken Paxton has indicated that he will continue to investigate trans families. Given the threat of continuing investigations, trans parents are facing an unpredictability about what they can and can not legally do which is intended to make them more cautious and serves as a mechanism of control.

The Texas abortion law took a complementary tact even further by mandating civil lawsuits as it’s enforcement mechanism. That is also the case with the Texas abortion law. The two main provisions of the Texas Heartbeat Act of 2021 are outlawing abortion procedures after six weeks (when fetal heart activity can be first detected) and relying solely on enforcement by private individuals through civil lawsuits, rather than having state officials enforce the law with criminal or civil penalties. Where Texas Republicans did not outlaw transsexuality in the case of Governor Abbott’s messages on the treatment of trans teens, they did outlaw abortion after six weeks. The Texas heartbeat act specifically stated that women had no “right” to seek abortions in the first place–“Sec. 171.206. . . This subchapter does not create or recognize a right to abortion before a fetal heartbeat is detected.” Even though the Heartbeat Act acknowledges that the Supreme Court recognizes a right to an abortion, the state of Texas explicitly refuses to recognize such a right and considers any abortion to be a kind of crime even though it’s not forbidden by that law.

It’s within a logic of defining abortion as inherently criminal that Texas developed its vigilante enforcement mechanism. “Fetal heartbeat” bills from other states had already been overturned by the courts before they could go into effect and Texas sought to evade Supreme Court review by keeping state government out of enforcing their abortion ban and thus making it more difficult if not impossible to sue the state.

Any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local government entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person who: 1. performs or induces an abortion in violation of this subchapter; knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the coasts of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter. If a claimant prevails in an action brought under this section, the court shall award: 1. injunctive relief sufficient to prevent the defendant from violating this subchapter or engaging in acts that aid or abet the violations of this subchapter; 2. statutory damages in an amount of not less than $10,000 for each abortion that the defendant performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, and for each abortion performed or induced in violation of this subchapter that the defendant aided and abetted; and 3. costs and attorney’s fees.

As was the case with trans teens, the Texas Abortion Law seeks to exercise legal power over both the family support network and liberal social institutions providing support for women seeking abortions. However, where the Texas Republicans exercised the direct power of the state to prevent trans teens from transitioning, they’ve decided to rely on private lawsuits to enforce the ban on abortions after 6 weeks. “Any person . . . may bring a civil action against any person who” who performs or knowingly aids in performing an illegal abortion as defined by the Texas Heartbeat Act. If the plaintiff prevailed, they would be able to collect “statutory damages in an amount of not less than $10,000 for each abortion aided by the defendant. According to Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, “the Texas legislature … deputized the state’s citizens as bounty hunters” empowered to prosecute “their neighbors’ medical procedures.” Sotomayor stresses the surveillance of the women receiving abortions, but the direct targets of the law are the doctors, nurses, family members, women’s groups like Planned Parenthood, and insurance companies that provide various kinds of aid to women receiving abortions. They are the ones who are liable. In essence, the Texas Abortion Law gives conservative abortion opponents the right to keep wide swaths of the Texas population under surveillance. According to Judge Robert Pittman, Texas turns private citizens, i.e., conservative activists and conservative organizations, into “state actors.”–

The State chose to deputize them; the State chose to remove any requirement that they suffer an injury to bring suit (an injury is almost always required to bring suit); and the State chose to incentivize them by automatically awarding them damages of at least $10,000 if their suit is successful.”

In seeking to deprive trans teens and pregnant women of human rights, conservative activists have started to create a vision of a “conservative order” in which government and activists combine to coerce not only the direct targets of laws but also the various support networks for the left, women’s, racial minority, and sexual minority constituencies. To deny rights to large sections of the American population, conservatives are starting to work out ways to apply coercive power to what will turn out to be the majority of American society.

Conservative Activism II: Safe Spaces!

Conservative Safe Spaces: Conservative campaigns against Critical Race Theory (CRT) have the defensive dimension of creating safe space for white conservatives as American institutions become more multicultural and socially liberal. “Critical Race Theory” is a mostly a law literature that is studied in law school and focuses on the problem of white supremacy continuing in the law and society beyond the passage of Civil Rights legislation during the 60’s. Before being known as “Critical Race Theory,” much of this literature was known as “Critical Legal Theory” and I scheduled the Critical Legal Theory collection and several of the essays for my political theory classes at Morehead State University in Kentucky. Some of the essays like Cheryl Harris’ “Whiteness as Property” were daring and innovative, but the underlying premise that white supremacy had continued beyond the Civil Rights Era was hardly a revelation and I stopped using the text for lack of contemporary interest.

However, much of the sentiment behind the anti-CRT legislation is to make public education safe and comfortable for white conservatives.

A reference to one of the authors of the Texas bill banning CRT, Rep. Steve Toth, in a KERA television story on the legislation, explained the issue:

Toth’s legislation takes on CRT without ever naming it. He says the new law is aimed at teaching complex subjects like slavery and racism without making white children feel guilty.“ You can’t teach that one race is better than the other,” Toth said, describing what’s outlined in HB 3979. “You can’t teach that one gender is better than the other. You can’t discriminate either… and say that one race or one gender is responsible for the ills of the past.”

The key to the Texas anti-CRT bill is on page 5 where it mandates against requiring or making part of a course anything that leads to a result that “(vii) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual ’s race or sex.” The bill also mandates that slavery not be taught as anything other than “deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.” This formulation also mandates against the concept of “systemic racism” accepted by the Democratic Party, liberals, and racial minorities and lashes out against the 1619 Project in particular. But the strictures on “discomfort, guilt, anguish, and distress” speak to an important motivation for conservatives–their discomfort at living in a society where white conservative views have been widely condemned and marginalized despite the fact that white conservatives are still more than 40% of the population. That sense of marginalization isn’t resolved by the anti-CRT education bill either. Outside the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Federalist Papers, there’s very little on which white conservatives can hang their hat in the history offerings cited in the bill. Whether it’s Frederick Douglass on slavery, Martin Luther King on segregation, the Declaration of Sentiments, or Chicano sources like Cesar Chavez or Dolores Huerta, a very large chunk of the recommended curriculum is arrayed against the heritage of conservatism and white domination. The Texas anti-CRT bill huffs and puffs, but they still can’t get away from the fact that white conservatives in the United States have no honorable history.

Conservative Activism 1: Don’t Forget Us!

As the Ukraine war grinds into its fifth week, the American right is taking the Russian attack as an opportunity to restart, push, or bring to conclusion a number of their pet initiatives. It’s all disgusting and outrageous and I’m as outraged as anyone. But instead of just being outraged by the conservative minority’s “harrying” of the rest of America, I want to illustrate the right-wing ambitions that are operating simultaneously in the Trucker’s Convoy, the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in Florida, and the recent attacks on LGBT people for “grooming.”

DON’T FORGET US. Imitating the recently disbanded Canadian truckers convoy, right-wingers in the U.S. tried to organize several convoys with the hope that they would converge on Washington, D.C. for President Biden’s State of the Union speech on March 1. The whole effort flopped, but protesting truckers and other right-wingers did set up camp in Hagerstown, MD, rebranded themselves as the People’s Convoy, and have been circling the district trying to disrupt traffic and drum up support. The original Canadian Trucker’s convoy was about protesting vaccine mandates while also harboring a core of fascists seeking to overturn the Trudeau government. Given that vaccine mandates have been lifted in the U.S., the American convoy no longer has that objective and is now mum about what their goals are.

So what does the People’s Convoy want?

The Convoy reminds me of a remark made after the 2020 election by Fox and Friend’s Ainsley Earhardt that conservative voters being concerned about being “forgotten— “they are confused and heartbroken that their candidate didn’t win and they don’t want to be forgotten.” In fact, people in the multicultural, socially liberal blue cities live as if conservatives don’t exist, have come to the conclusion that rural white conservatives are bigots if not fascists and traitors, and would just as soon forget “Left Behind America.” In many cases, the liberal and lefty types most hostile to rural conservatism are those who grew up in rural areas themselves and left for more liberal environments as soon as they graduated from college. That’s certainly true in my case.

In this light, there’s an element of the People’s Convoy that just wants rural white conservatives to be noticed, appreciated, and in some way respected by the denizens of a blue city like Washington, D.C. Certainly the People’s Convoy has been noticed while they drive around the city, but most of what they’ve gotten from D.C. commuters is middle fingers–lots of them.

Not being treated with any respect, the leaders of the trucker’s convoy are now talking about jamming the 911 lines with reports of people giving them the finger. Being very sensitive, they’re responding to local hostility by engaging in a “little” regional harassment of slowing down rush hour traffic, making noise in Washington streets, and making D.C. law enforcement work overtime.