You may remember a quote from a few months back in which a business owner talked about how good it feels that in the Toddler Era he feels free to say the f-word for homosexuals and the r-word for the mentally disabled — it’s liberating!
I’m quite sure if I said he was an a-hole and a homophobic bigot — both of which appear to be true — he would be pissed off rather than celebrating my freedom not to be courteous. It’s Wilhoit’s law — they want their side free of restraint and protected from consequence but nobody outside their own camp gets the same treatment. That translates in speech to the freedom to toss off racial slurs or insult people but anyone calling them on it is shutting down free speech. Case in point, I have seen right-wing arguments over the years that because of liberal politically correct, woke, thought-policing, they can’t say the n-word! It’s the biggest example of cancel culture ever! Of course, they can say it and they do, but they’ll be criticized for it — and they think they should be able to punch down without anyone ever punching back up.
That’s part of what fuels the endless cries of voter fraud: this is their country, rightfully belonging to property-owning white Protestant men like it was when the Founders approved the Constitution; when Thomas Jefferson said all men are created equal, he didn’t mean anyone else! Their votes should count, nobody else’s.
They want us back to the 1950s (for the enlightened ones) or the 1800s (the reactionary ones) when WASP men were in charge of everything and nobody noticed or brought up bias — it was accepted that was the way it was. It was not in fact accepted and people did bring it up but the voices weren’t so loud (I made the same point back in May). In Paul Campos’ words, “For Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett, and for hundreds of like-minded federal judges, America is a white supremacist country, and the Constitution is therefore a white supremacist document, and must at all times be interpreted to the extent possible — which is very considerable! — in the light of this fundamental underlying interpretive principle, which naturally includes all the other varieties of extreme cultural reaction (misogyny, money worship etc) that are integral to protecting white supremacy. Anything else is simply a theft of sovereignty from the [white] People.”
That supremacy includes the freedom to treat the lesser genders or races like shit.
As Paul Krugman says, the 19th century robber barons were horrible people but they felt obligated to pose as respectable members of society, keeping their bad behavior under wraps (though a lot of what we’d consider bad behavior, such as racism or abusing workers, was acceptable at the time). Now the gloves and the restraint are off. Consideration for lesser mortals? Screw ’em. Let them eat cake.
Similarly bigots and misogynists see no need to hide how much they hate people who are not them. A number of conservative Muslims showed up at the Texas GOP Convention this month. While conservatives are normally willing to ally with anyone on the right — fascists, Nazis, theocrats — it turns out they drew the line at Muslims. They had no hesitation letting their hate flag fly, telling the Muslims they weren’t Americans and couldn’t be trusted ever: even if they seem nice and law-abiding “if they get power, they’ll cut your head off as believers of Christ.” White Christian Republicans, of course, routinely shriek about violence to their enemies, death to gays, but That’s Different.
Rep. Brandon Gill (one of those shitting on James Talarico as not manly enough) then defended the convention attendees, declaring that America cannot tolerate “cultures that have very different ideas about freedom of speech, religion, separation of church and state, the dignity of women, the role of women in public life.” If I pointed out that all of this applies to the Religious Right and suggested that should affect their status in America, Gill would doubtless be screaming. And it does apply to the Religious Right, a large portion of whom think freedom of speech and religion are theirs alone, church and state should not be separated and women have no role in public life. Plus, of course, religious conservatives are the groomers they pretend they hate.
Then there’s their angry insistence that immigrants can never be real Americans like they can — not even a fourth generation American is American enough. Except of course, the Toddler of the United States is only second-generation and they like him fine. And black Americans, who’ve been here since before 1776, will never qualify. It resembles the way that Americans of a century ago set strict laws on who qualified as white or colored — a single African-American grandparent or a great-grandparent, say — but found workarounds to exempt respected white people. In one case the judge concluded that the grandparent might have had some white blood, which meant the person under consideration might be less than one-quarter black — case dismissed!
This ties in to their proposal to end birthright citizenship: “To prove you’re American, you would need to maintain—and produce on demand—an unbroken documentary chain of legitimate transmission from yourself back to some original conferring event. Every link must hold.” America will be remade in the image of the communist states we once despised, a place where anyone in authority can demand “papers, please” or we become a non-citizen (only it will be a lot more paperwork). As Mother Jones says, “the American dream is the idea that in the United States, people’s fate is determined by their own merit, not the status of their parents. But the executive order would create a caste of people who inherit a lesser status from which there could be no escape.” Except of course, anyone the powers that be approve of — this won’t be formally stated but some people simply won’t face the harsh scrutiny others do.
We can see it in the way revoking women’s right to vote has gone from the fringes to something they’ll openly discuss. Or the way they’ve gone from “no woman will be punished for getting an abortion” to pushing to prosecute them for murder. Or stop people even talking about contraception. Or “Whiskey Pete” Hegseth axing women and POC from being promoted to admiral — in his world view, giving someone like that authority to order white men around would just be wrong.
Much like this discussion of the racist British far right points out, the white supremacists have the advantage of a clear vision and a fierce commitment to achieving it. That makes them look decisive and determined which can appeal to a lot of people. As Jamelle Bouie says, we need a vision of our own, not just cleaning up the Toddler’s mess. As I said at the link, fighting for the equal rights of all Americans and gutting the power of those who hate equality might qualify. Until we can make that a reality, we must also push the white supremacist creed back to the fringes of society. Eventually, we banish it.
The founders had a cramped concept of “We, the people.” We can do better. We have to.
