A few days ago, my good friend Mr. Chap scribed this piece of conventional wisdom in which he suggests that African-American loyalty to the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party is based upon that party's perceived commitment to the cause of Civil Rights.
Before I take Chap apart at the rhetorical joints (just kidding!) it is necessary to put this relatively simplistic explanation into it's proper, historical context, one that goes beyond the assertion of an affinity based upon single-issue advocacy.
I don't see a correlation between Civil Rights and overwhelming democratic support so much as I see a perverse kind of Stockholm Syndrome.
It is necessary to point out these three, irrefutable, historical facts regarding the Modern Democratic Party:
1. The Modern Democratic Party is the Bastard Child of Segregation; it is an ancient pig given a new shade of lipstick.
2. The Modern Democratic Party has been invaded and infected by Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists of all kinds who have turned the brand name and party apparatus to their own ends. They call themselves ‘Progressive’, but their ultimate goal is, indeed, anything but. They are not (and have never been) what they have claimed to be, and the proof of this has been in the results of decades of failed policies and programs.
3. The Modern Democratic Party is not concerned with issues of equality or fairness, or in building a better society: it is interested in reordering society in a manner which suits the tastes, opinions, and requirements of the Elite at its top. They are not Politicians as much as they are Managers. They deliberately engage in a a process of division, propaganda, the manipulation of voting blocs and emotions. Matters of race, sex, gender, and so forth, are only important insofar as they can be made to serve the overall cause: re-ordering the planet according the Libtard’s personal preferences and attitudes, making people live the way you want them to, and by establishing/protecting the Collectivist system which makes it all possible.
Now, in Mr. Chap’s piece, he makes reference to Barry Goldwater and his opposition to the 1965 Civil Rights Act, and associates conservative rejection of the Act with the Black Exodus to the Democratic Party. He’s only half-right, however, but doesn't explain why Goldwater conservatives rejected the Act; they believed that it threatened to establish a dual social system dripping with double standards within American Society that would be antithetical to Constitutional Rule and Civil Society…and they were right. Affirmative Action, The War on Poverty, The Great Society, The Welfare State, and the destruction of the African-American nuclear family, all can be argued to have sprung from The Civil Rights Act of 1965. What Goldwater wanted, but couldn't’ get added to that law was, basically, the addition of a simple sentence (paraphrased), and even this is a gross simplification:
“…And this applies to everyone, equally….”
Barring that concession the Law wouldn’t get any Conservative support, and thus was born the myth that Conservatives don’t give a shit about Civil Rights, and voted against the Act out of racism. In fact, more democrats – actual sheet-wearin’ Old Klan dems like Robert Byrd, and old-money Southern patricians like Al Gore, Sr. – voted against it than did Republicans!).
The greatest Lie of Civil Rights legislation, and the Social Welfare system it spawns, is that it's always promulgated as a matter of equality, or undertaken in order to address a grievous historical wrong. This is a trite response to a greater historical question which has never been adequately examined, because doing so would shatter some of the more cherished myths of American History.
The Great Question of the Civil War was not the institution of Slavery, per se. Slavery was most definitely on it's way out as a matter of simple Progress. The issue was what to do with 4.5 million people who would soon be made economically redundant by the Industrial Revolution. The Cotton Gins, Steam Engines, Railroads, Mechanical Planters and Reapers, were making the keeping of slaves an archaic and expensive proposition that could no longer be economically justified, moral issues aside.
What to do with all those people, mostly uneducated, bereft of property, with few skills beyond the farm, and possessed of legitimate axes to grind? The stated causes of the Civil War (an argument over the expansion of Slavery into the West, Abolition, or even some notion of a United Nation) are mostly superficial. The issue was the potential effect of releasing all those otherwise-under-control people without any safeguard against violent revolution or revenge. They couldn’t be exterminated (that ran counter to Christian ideals, but slavery didn’t? Go figure), and they couldn’t be deported or repatriated to Africa (the American experiment with Liberia proved both very expensive and problematic) and no one wanted to pay for the deportation, anyway.
Reconstruction after the Civil War only managed to re-establish much of the pre-War status quo under Yankee guns, ironically instituting the main war aims of the Southern Secessionists (the Separation of the Races by law and force, protection of Southern Whites), and then creating animosity that went beyond mere questions of occupation. What the Confederacy couldn’t accomplish by War, its Enemy achieved in the name of civil peace and reconciliation.
Reconstruction, therefore, actually begat Jim Crow and laid one of the foundation blocks for the future welfare state which would trap many African-Americans in a cycle of government-provided subsistence-poverty and dependence, and future electoral manipulation. The Confederacy may have lost the War, but won the most important Battle.
Dixiecrats of the 19th and 20th centuries were more than happy to keep Jim Crow alive, then, but over time found themselves obligated to occasionally sweeten the pot in order to maintain this artificially-maintained peace. These overtures were either mostly symbolic (a slew of Civil Rights legislation which has probably done more to discourage equality), economic symbolism (a growing array of benefits-with-strings-attached programs, set-asides, and quota systems marinated in graft), or strictly-political skullduggery (engaging in class or racial warfare whenever necessary).
The process was intensified by the 1960 Presidential election, when John F. Kennedy barely squeaked out a win over Richard Nixon with as few as 20,000 popular votes. JFK would soon prove to be a rather weak President and his electoral prospects in 1964 seemed bleak. Kennedy would need more votes to widen any potential margin of victory, and so avoid a repeat of 1960. There was but one place to get those extra votes; amongst those racial minorities that previous democratic candidates had ignored or sought to keep down. Thus was born the union of the democratic party to the Civil Rights movement, and the genesis of the JFK/RFK mythology.
This met with much resistance within the party, and would ultimately destroy the old-line Democratic Party from within: as it spoke of equality and inclusion, fairness and freedom, it found itself obligated to include ever-more radical elements, from both racial minorities and progressive Whites, which would eventually push both the Scoop Jackson and George Wallace-type democrats out of the party. The democratic party of 2011 bears no resemblance to the democratic party of 1950 or 1900. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 had the practical effect of being the Old democratic party’s suicide note.
But this did not automatically spell change for the better.
The 1970’s saw the party transform from the party of Self-Serving-Patrician-Racism, and morph into the Party of You-Poor-Baby-Patronizing-Smiley-Face-Racism, as every conceivable complaint in American Life was spun into a ’movement’ (complete with it’s own mythology, psychiatric justification, sociological underpinnings and revisionist history) which could be directed by Progressive doofuses masquerading as crusaders ‘for the little guy’. Such a political system must, by necessity, devolve into a system in which everyone is regarded as a Victim of ________. People are no longer divided as much by political philosophy as they are by self-categorization; we now divide upon race, gender, sexual orientation, educational level, personal wealth, age, ethnicity and religion, and real political affiliation becomes ever-less important as both parties get further and further away from their stated beliefs.
Each new constituency calls out for government fixers and creates the Voting Blocs (and the money that comes with them) and which politicians will fight to the death over. This gives otherwise talentless hacks (politicians and bureaucrats) the ability to dispose of trillions of taxpayer dollars, affecting the law, people’s living standards, public attitudes, quality of life, and behaviors in the process. This process is hidden behind a confusing web of alphabet-soup agencies, commissions, Blue-Ribbon Panels, cabinet posts, Federal Departments, Sub-committees, etc., to ensure no one will ever discover the true scoundrels or their true motives.
The constituencies and issues are played one against the other, as needed. Progress, where any is made, is mostly incremental, and occurs around the margins of American Life. Racial Animosities continue to fester, but now the Progressive Racists with burnished Civil Rights and Welfare State street cred, are increasingly able to project that animosity upon their political opponents while keeping the con going.
The modern democratic party has turned this tactic into an art form, and in the process have created a system wherein people now expect to be rewarded and paid attention to for simply being alive and able to vote! It justifies and perpetuates this system by telling people what they want to hear, or better yet, what the directing brains WANT them to hear, the better to instill the fear and dependence required to continue to keep anyone from learning the truth.
Problems become intractable. No one’s life changes dramatically. No one’s circumstances are ever improved very much for the exercise. Much energy, money, and time is wasted for no visible result. This is by design, and it is to our detriment as both citizens and human beings. This is both the legacy of the Old Dixiecrats, and modus operandi of the New Progressives.
I would hazard to say that the reason why African-Americans cleave to the democratic party the way they do is because it tells them what they want to hear: that they are victims, entitled to the fruits of other people’s labor, and that this is justice. It requires nothing from them except for reflexive electoral obedience. In return it has encouraged sloth, dishonesty, ignorance, bastardy and crime, and created state-run ghettos-cum-concentration-camps, and calls it compassion. It has destroyed the educational system by pandering to unions and influencing curriculum away from traditional core subjects, ensuring generations of functional illiterates that can be more easily manipulated and frightened. The democratic party defends this sorry and disgusting state of affairs by claiming it's ideological enemies are racist, reactionary, closet-Klansman douchebags who want to see African-Americans hanging from trees, or starving in the streets.
It's no wonder the democratic party should claim to be the defender of the poor and downtrodden: it does such a good job of creating them, and then keeping them that way, after all.
The Modern Democrat does these things because he needs to exert control over people’s lives in the same way their Confederate forebears did, and for much the same reasons; the only difference now is that the New Confederates wear smiley faces, spout boilerplate socialist bullshit, and profess to ‘understand’ everyone and everything. African-Americans were just an easy target of opportunity for these New Democrats; welcome to your New and Improved Plantation.
A common lament I often hear from my Black Friends is that despite what some would agree is visible progress in terms of equality in America, there’s some things which they believe have never changed. Part of this is undoubtedly true – the democratic party requires a near-constant sense of discontent simply to survive, after all – but what truly amazes me is how there seems to be so little ambition (amongst those complaining loudest!) to make an effort to change their own circumstances.
It’s always someone else’s responsibility to ‘pay for…’ something, or to ‘level the playing field’ on their behalf, or ‘give us justice’. which often has little to do with Law and Order. They‘re expecting someone else to do the job for them (and why shouldn’t they? It’s how they’ve been trained by a Patronizing Democratic Party; responsibility is always someone else’s job) and they’re putting their hopes, more often than not, into the same democratic politicians who created this very mess by cynically telling them only what they wished to hear: you’re owed, you’re a victim, it’s not you’re fault, and you shouldn’t have to do A, B or C to get it. Vote for me and just wait for the checks to roll in, don't vote for me and Watch the Bad Guys take it away.
There's Another Way of Doing Things -- the way illustrated by people like Herman Cain, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, or Walter Williams, that is, the route of personal responsibility and success through achievement -- but somehow this becomes unacceptable. I’ve heard this proven program of personal success ridiculed as ‘Acting White’, and derided as ‘Not Authentically Black’, that it’s ‘Culturally insensitive’ and always in ways which are patronizingly disgusting. That this system works doesn’t appear to matter; a concept of personal success divorced from government hand-out or action, sans racial acrimony, or without an element of class or racial envy, becomes a literal impossibility.
Nathan Bedford Forrest would be proud. What he hoped to achieve back in the day has been achieved without the need for Midnight Terrorism in a Bed Sheet and Bad Public Relations. The amazing thing about this state of affairs is that not only will people be extraordinarily unaware of what they’ve done to themselves, but display the most incredible, and reflexive, loyalty to their oppressors in the process. It's almost as if they're saying "Thank you for fucking up my Life...may I please have some more?"
Throughout this essay I have generalized greatly. I know this, but it was necessary for illustrative purposes. However, one has to only look at the results of the last 40 years of so-called Liberal Progressivist policy -- compare it to the things the Confederates said and did about African-Americans 160 years ago -- and you'd discover that much hasn't really changed. Then honestly consider the results of modern democratic party policy, and you'll probably arrive at the same conclusion that I have: either it’s all just been run by successive generations of complete idiots, or this is all going exactly to plan.
I’m going to say something that's even more unpopular but it’s a future possibility that must be considered. This country is broke. It’s so broke that even if we sold everything of value in all 50 states and then prostituted our daughters to the Red Chinese, we still couldn’t cover our debts. This state of affairs was brought about by poor government policies and a lack of oversight and discipline. We The People are extremely anxious about the future. The rise of the Tea Party is a direct consequence of this anxiety, and it has brought with it a new belief that the established parties no longer serve the will of the governed and therefore must be reformed or replaced. Great social and political change is coming in the very near future. Common conventions about the purpose, power, and activities of the American Government which existed before are all about to change radically.
Government funding for a variety of social programs is going to disappear as funding for the entire apparatus of the Welfare State ceases. The edifice of Affirmative Action will be pulled down. The Double-Standards that have been erected by liberals around matters of race will be erased. We can no longer afford to keep them, and the people who have paid for them up until now wish to be relieved of this unfair financial burden. This is not conjecture; it is going to happen. History says it will. The America that emerges from this process will look quite different than what stands now. Now there's real money at stake.
The democratic party will need to change if it is to survive, and it will probably do so by ejecting its radicals and purging itself of all the old divide-and-conquer political rhetoric of the past. It will jettison its romantic attachment to the Entitlement State. The generation that remembers FDR and the Great Depression will soon be gone (and exiting much faster under Obama Care, I reckon).The democratic party will be moving to the right, and taking a far-more Centrist view of Civil Rights, and become more conservative by necessity. It will begin to resemble the Party of Reagan more than the Party of JFK with each passing day. With the continued funding of the Welfare State at current levels an impossibility, the rationales to keep it, even in much-reduced form, become logically and ethically indefensible; it will all be gone within a decade, maybe 15 years, at most.
Those who wish to remain with the Party of Patronizing You-Poor-Baby-ism, the illogical attitudes, the unrealistic expectations, the backhanded racism disguised as Social Justice, and the deliberately-fucked-up policies designed to keep people fat-dumb-and-happy-but-on-a-leash -nontheless which it represents, are bound to find themselves in extremely dire straits in the very near future.
It's perhaps time for some re-evaluation of old allegiences and re-think some deeply-held positions which have been rendered null and void by deep economic crisis.
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