governmentality

Colbert on the Whole Negro/Reid Thing 1/11/10

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Buchanan: Traditional Americans Losing Their Nation

Two days ago, Pat Buchanan wrote a column ("Traditional Americans Are Losing Their Nation") for the ultra-conservative WorldNetDaily that is wrong-headed at best and, more likely, irresponsible.

In it, he made the Oath Keepers appear as the "Traditional Americans"--whatever that means. But who are the Oath Keepers?

According to Buchanan:

Formed in March, they are ex-military and police who repledge themselves to defend the Constitution, even if it means disobeying orders. If the U.S. government ordered law enforcement agencies to violate Second Amendment rights by disarming the people, Oath Keepers will not obey.

Well that sounds kinda nice, right? I mean, too bad they didn't decide to form, say, during the Bush administration.

"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here," says founding father Stewart Rhodes, an ex-Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer. "My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them."

Or, maybe because they've got the guns not for disobeying, but for creating violence.

Rhodes continues.

"We say if the American people decide it's time for a revolution, we'll fight with you."

Which American people? How many? And I thought it was about the Constitution, anyway. Oh, wait...it's not just about disobeying; it's about revolution.

But Buchanan thinks this has nothing to do with race. How strange.

Instead, it's the fault of progressives.

Progressives are the folks who, in the 1960s, could easily understand that urban riots that took scores of lives and destroyed billions in property were an inevitable reaction to racism, poverty and despair. They could empathize with the rage of campus radicals who burned down the ROTC building and bombed the Pentagon.

Nonetheless, for Buchanan, the alienation and radicalization of white American was well in the works and Obama even acknowledged as much with his oft-cited campaign misstep about Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion. 

And then Buchanan's sermon:

In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.

They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on – then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.

They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.

They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books, win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500 corporations and banks.

America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.

Let's say most of these things are true. To some degree or another they are. But let's back up to the point where Buchanan says "In their lifetimes..."

Exactly, Pat! In their lifetimes. So why after Obama only being in office for two months did they form this group? While the Bush administration did everything they could to shred and burn the Constitution (real, live tyranny of the executive) before our very eyes, the folks who would become the Oath Keepers were completely fine with what was happening.

Just to return to Buchanan's last line:

America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.

If they have been slowly losing their country "In their lifetimes," what made them spring into organizing action now? What was the straw that broke the camel's back?

A black president. 

Shame on you, Pat Buchanan, for egging it on.

What Year Is It? Interracial Couple Denied Marriage

A white justice of the peace in Louisiana denied an interracial couple a marriage license. I re-read this report several times because I just couldn't get over the candor with which Bardwell spoke.

His attitude: What's the problem? I've been doing this for 34 years.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

[...]

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

Read the full report here.

More on the Obama Assassination Facebook Poll

Zimbabwe's Land Reform Program or De-Whitification?

Part 2 of Investigative Voice Article on Kalki666, the White Supremacist

Here is part two of the piece published Tuesday at Investigative Voice.

As I recounted in part one of this series, tracking down a white supremacist who had repurposed content from my blog had lead to the most unlikely of places, Wheaton College, a well-known liberal arts school that had minted some of the most influential conservative thinkers of our time. 

Of course taking the next step presented a bit of dilemma. The Wheaton Colleges of the world don’t exactly have a white supremacist complaint hotline. So I decided to take it straight to the top: Wheaton’s longtime president, Duane Litfin. 

Read the full report here.

Investigative Voice Article on Kalki666, the White Supremacist

For a different take and a fuller picture of my ongoing battle with white supremacist Kalki666, take a look at part one of a two-part series with Investigative Voice.

One evening my political blog had been receiving a number of visits from a link from another blog I didn’t recognize, so I decided to take a look to see who had linked to my post. 

The result was not only unflattering, but troubling as well. 

A white supremacist, with a screen ID and blog called Kalki 666, found a post I had written critical of Israel and decided to repurpose it for his anti-Semitic agenda. For an hour, I poured over Kalki’s posts—more than I do with most blogs.

Read it all right here.

Racism Review on My White Supremacist, Kalki666 Story

Jessie Daniels at Racism Review covered my ongoing story with white supremacist Kalki666. Read Daniels for smart cultural criticism about race (and a number of other things).

Since I like compliments, I'll quote that part of the article, Fighting Cyber Racism.

For my purposes here,  I want to highlight that in order to effectively fight cyber racism, you need people who are 1) committed to the value of racial equality,  2) web-savvy and 3) willing to take action.   McDuffee embodies all these qualities as an individual.   On what might be called the structural side, you need laws and policies in place that regard hate speech as unacceptable (as the college did in this case), and officials that are willing to take action against these sorts of violations (as the college president, campus and local police did).

McDuffee’s encounter with this white supremacist illustrates several of the points that I make in Cyber Racism,  chiefly that the threat from white supremacy online is less a threat of “recruiting” and more a threat to ideas and values of racial equality.    McDuffee’s encounter also illustrates that the political struggle for racial equality is one that requires us to be committed, web-savvy and willing to take action and demand a response from institutions and organizations that may be unwitting perpetrators of white supremacy.

Read the full piece here.

Fahgettaboudit: The Beer Summit

Some stories are worth forgetting.

Last week, before President Obama had his presser where he talked about the Henry Louis Gates case (and then retracted what he said), I suggested we move on. 

What President Obama considered a teachable moment, has now become a photo-op.

Fine. All three of you should have a beer together, if that's what you want. But this doesn't need all the attention it's getting.

And we certainly don't need the rundown of beers selected by Obama, Gates and the Cambridge policeman. Nor did we need the clarification that President Obama will not, in fact, be drinking a Budweiser, but rather a Bud Light.

But that's mostly because it's just sad our president is drinking Bud Light.

Chicagoist: The Writer, The White Supremacist, and The Western Suburbs

Karl Klockars of Chicagoist (part of the Gothamist media group), interviewed me yesterday regarding my battle with white supremacist Kalki666 (Merrill Sech).

The podcast is available at Chicagoist.