Don't hate the player…
Is there an opposing correlation for the story of Rip Van Winkle? Seriously, if you had been asleep for the past 20 years and woke to read the news these days, you’d think the “Northern War of Aggression” played out to a much different outcome 160 years ago:
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has issued a proclamation that “quietly declared April 2010 Confederate History Month, bringing back a designation in Virginia that his two Democratic predecessors — Mark Warner and Tim Kaine — refused to do.”
When pressed for an explanation of this patently ridiculous and tone-deaf play for voters on the farthest end of the Republican spectrum, McDonnell replied that:
the move was designed to promote tourism in the state, which next year will mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the war. McDonnell said he did not include a reference to slavery because “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.“
So McDonnell’s brilliant PR strategy to honor the sesquicentennial of his state is to celebrate its secession from the Union. Now that’s one edgy, political chess maneuver there. Not.
Between this latest Uptighty Whitey maneuver and the continuing misplaced (and conspicuously stoked) rage of the Teabaggers at having to suffer the indignities of being governed by the country’s first black President, it’s no small wonder that this country appears to be coming apart at the seams.
After the initial high of Obama’s election, there is now a changed atmosphere in the country. Violence is an inescapable companion to racism. And violence, or violent outbursts racially motivated, are certainly on the increase in the U.S. Threats against President Obama have increased by 400% since President George W. Bush left office, the highest numbers on record.
What makes this situation particularly worrisome is that they come not only from fringe elements in society. Thinly disguised, they also originate from certain political leaders who seem intent on creating an atmosphere of violence and disrespect around the President and the presidency.
Of course, having Nativist, minority vote-suppressing asshats like Hans von Spakovsky infiltrating state electoral boards isn’t going to help race relations any.
I realize that the interwebs have been inundated with a wealth of navel-gazing theories on the source of the Teabagger frustration and anger, but I think this post (at a motorcycle forum of all places) is particularly apt:
[I]t ain’t just President Obama. It is a lot else: If your job can be done on the Indian sub-continent, who are you better than? If China can launch a spaceship, who are you better than? If the world looks at the mighty Dollar as little better than an American Peso, who are you better than? If an immigrant can work your ass into the ground, and do it smiling for a lot less money, who are you better than?
Because all this hate, all this violence – it’s not all about race, per se. It’s about the consumptive death of the self-aggrandizing myth of American exceptionalism. And while for the small-minded, it’s easier (and more emotionally satisfying) to point fingers at the historically vulnerable, we have no one but our failed political system to blame.
