What Is It About Righties and Hate?

They can’t help themselves. It’s a syndrome. For that matter, what is it with righties and reality?

On a lighter note — the Saturday Cartoons.

Update: Here’s a little more on righties and hate — Dave Neiwert has been writing about the “new racism,” which is pretty much the “old racism” dressed up to look like social commentary. Yesterday he noted that CBS News has been forced to turn off comments on Barack Obama stories on its web site because the stories were attracting too many racist comments. Dave comments:

This resurgent racism likes to cloak itself in the pretense of rebellious individualism standing up to the oppression of overbearing “political correctness,” or else in academic-sounding terms that fling about misinformation regarding the sciences and sociology to construct a pseudo-rationale for what they euphemistically like to call “race realism.”

But pull the cloak aside, and the same old, decrepit racism of a century ago is there, festering like a decaying zombie who refuses to die.

And as the summer goes on, and the presidential campaign picks up steam, and Obama solidifies his already formidable position as a front runner … well, expect to see a lot more of those zombies crawling the streets of our public discourse.

Awhile back some guy at BBC radio asked me if America was ready to elect a black president. I said I didn’t know. I’d like to think we are, but I could be mistaken. On the other hand, I suspect the majority of die-hard white supremacists vote Republican, anyway, meaning that if Senator Obama is the nominee his race wouldn’t cost him many votes.

And Dave is probably right about the zombies. If Senator Obama is the nominee, I expect to see a return of the overt, full-frontal racism that was mostly banished from mass media in the 1960s. Not that racist hate speech ever went away, of course. But the prime-time bigots figured out how to cloak racist hate speech as “humor” or as “unbiased commentary,” often accompanied by much winking and nudging. If in the fall of 2008 presidential nominee Obama is cruising to an apparent victory, I ‘spect a whole lot o’ desperate bigots will drop the pretense and say, plainly, what they really mean. It could get ugly.

Update 2: On righties and Darwin:

… it’s always heartening to hear conservatives returning with childlike wonder to the great intellectual debates of the 1880s. …

… As for Darwin’s later work on vegetable molds and climbing plants, though, I think there are many relevant lessons there for anyone seeking to understand the rise of the New Right.

Too droll.

3 thoughts on “What Is It About Righties and Hate?

  1. Somewhat related, I came across this article that talks about how conservatives live for dirty politics:

    …Character assassination, sabotage, and deception and subterfuge are not incidental to conservative politics but central to it. To them, politics without such things doesn’t even feel like…politics. Catch them in a relaxed moment, and they freely admit it – with relish.

    And

    …this was why Richard Nixon’s White House specifically recruited dedicated conservatives to do his dirty work – “good, healthy right-wing exuberants,” as he described the likes of Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.

    And

    …One of them, another YAF founder, M. Stanton Evans…. quipped, “I didn’t like Nixon until Watergate.”

    There is some sort of militant self-righteousness going on here, that is no doubt going to find fuller expression against Obama as his star rises. They’re simply bullies and they like it.

    As for Darwin’s later work on vegetable molds, we saw some of that on display in the GOP debates, where the candidates were alternately invoking St Ronnie while trying to out-Neanderthal each other. I guess it’s progress that only three of them don’t believe in evolution.

  2. If Obama does become the front runner, all this hitherto semi covered up stuff may well expose its naked underside to the world. It’s going to be an interesting presidential race.

  3. Maha,
    I’ve come to a realization in my old age. I was wrong.
    I tried for years to convince righties to come to the light, to avoid the “Dark Side;” to convince them that they were wrong. Well, it turns out it was me who was wrong all along.
    I’ve come to the conclusion that they live to hate, live for hate, and hate for life…
    They have tragic flaws. They’re afraid. Of change. Of the different. Of “Us!”

    Here’s soemthing I wrote in a diary while ago:

    Fascists try to separate the world into “Us” vs. “Them.”
    Realize that in their eyes, we are the “Them.”
    And in some respects, they’re right. But while we’re not a part of their “Us,” neither are we, their country-mates, their “Them.” We need to redefine their “Them” for ‘them.’ Their “Them” is our “We.” We are “We!” As in “’We, the People”
    And so, the battle as I define it is this: “We” vs. “Us.” WE! We must stand together and stand strong, for they are among ‘us.’ They always have been. They always will be…
    And this is our battle; the struggle we must engage in. To fight history while learning from it. If we are to win, we need to take the high road; the road less traveled…; We must to try to climb the summit of human achievement without putting on the comfortable old shoes of Fascism; without the crutch of Theocracy; without the totalitarian Sherpa guide in common man guise.
    If we look to any of these, we won’t reach the summit of the mountain of hope, but, instead, fall into the valley of despair. A pit with a deep slippery slope from which no future generation may be able to climb.
    Like Sisyphus’ rock, future generations will have to start up the hill again. And, with each generation, the slope will grow steeper, and steeper…

    I don’t think we, as humans, have reached our summit yet. But we can’t look back now. That is Conservativism.
    Liberalism is looking forward. Maybe we need to realize that there is no summit – only a higher goal that we can achieve the better we get. And a loftier one yet, tomorrow… Yes, maybe this Everest can never be flagged. But think of the goal. When asked why we try, we can say, “’Because it’s there.’ If we aim to reach high enough. It’s there…”
    To look back will not help us regain some mythic pillars of righteousness. To reach back to the past will only accelerate the worst that was in us in it and is now with us in the present. To look back is to not only see our past gaining on us, but to see it slinging past us and leading us into oblivion.
    Instead of the righteousness most seek, our ancient hatred of others and ourselves may turn us into pillars of salt.
    Nuclear salt.
    And the world will be adrift with our ashes and awash in our ghosts.
    Ashes to ashes…
    Dust to dust…

    It doesn’t have to be.

    Conservativism is ‘Fear thy neighbor.’
    Good fences make good neighbors.”
    Liberalism is ‘Love thy neighbor.”
    Eliminate the fences, and good neighbors will come.

    Our future need not to turn to ashes, but to the stars.

    “You may say I’m a dreamer…” Or, that I need to “up my med’s!”
    🙂

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