Populism Is the Tinder, Racism Is the Spark
David Brooks, that paragon of reasonableness and civility, has written a cogent and historically informed column in The New York Times in which he argues that the current protests against President Obama and his health reforms are not the product of racism, but are really the manifestation of a familiar populism that has many times over the decades chased America’s elites back behind the safety of brick walls and wrought-iron fences:
Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated. His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals. In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector. Given all of this, it was guaranteed that he would spark a populist backlash, regardless of his skin color. And it was guaranteed that this backlash would be ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top — since these movements always are, whether they were led by Huey Long, Father Coughlin or anybody else.
What we’re seeing is the latest iteration of that populist tendency and the militant progressive reaction to it. We now have a populist news media that exaggerates the importance of the Van Jones and Acorn stories to prove the elites are decadent and un-American, and we have a progressive news media that exaggerates stories like the Joe Wilson shout and the opposition to the Obama schools speech to show that small-town folks are dumb wackos.
“One could argue that this country is on the verge of a crisis of legitimacy,” the economic blogger Arnold Kling writes. “The progressive elite is starting to dismiss rural white America as illegitimate, and vice versa.” It’s not race. It’s another type of conflict, equally deep and old.”
Well, all that’s very incisive, but it sounds a little like Meadow Soprano in the episode where she said that her father and his friends “bring certain modes of conflict resolution from all the way back in the old country, from the poverty of the mezzo-giorno, where all higher authority was corrupt.” Soemtimes you really have to spread the intellectualism on thick to cover up the obvious.
Brooks is certainly right that there’s a massive amount of anger about the bank bailouts, and the fact that Obama has yet to make those bankers pay a public pound of flesh for the rescue has hurt him. And it’s true that paying for health care reform on top of the debts we’ve just incurred feels dangerous. But when a South Carolina Congressman who’s a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and who fought to keep the confederate flag flying over the statehouse shouts “You lie!” at a black president at the moment he’s talking about the issue of providing health care to illegal immigrants (from Mexico and Guatemala, presumably, and not Canada), to drag out the nation-old conflict between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians seems, well, willfully obtuse. You know, not bright. Dumb.
Look, not everybody in Germany who voted for Hitler was an anti-Semite. There were conservatives, monarchists, Catholics, and anti-communists who were upset and angry about Germany’s condition. But the anti-Semites were the source of the Nazi party’s energy. A lot of those conservatives and monarchists thought Hitler was a buffoon, a commonplace Jew-baiter who could be controlled once he got into power. How did that work out?
Yes, there is a lot of unhappy populist tinder sitting around. The racists, however many they actually are, are lighting the matches. And the GOP is confident it can ride the inferno back into power.
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Now that E-Verify is becoming a nationwide verification application to extract 20 million plus illegal immigrants from businesses. It is now growing in aggressive performance for placing true US workers in the job line and outing illegal labor. This operation should now extend to certainly more purposeful uses? That means not just federal contractors but everybody who draws a pay check? Should a health care reform pass all obstacles in the House and Senate chambers, it could have an invaluable function of checking people who are not only applicants for jobs, but health care reform registry. Illegal immigrants are already getting free emergency hospital care and–WE–pay for it. In the future it should be considered to vet a person’s nationality status, when applying for a mortgage? The United States banking system, financial institution were all but swept away on a deluge of corruption that has very sinister undertones in an organization called ACORN.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform now is under state and federal investigations at this very moment. Other involved institution impacted both Freddie Mac/Freddie Mae and a scheme incorporating underhand minority lending practices. But you might not have heard any of this, from the liberal media about the massive illegal alien mortgage accusations. The whole debacle was the involvement in a corrupt enabling banking industry and ethnic lobbyists, using unethical methods, along with Bush administration to guarantee loans for low income and people that could not possibly afford mortgages. Didn’t Wall Street, the government regulators learn anything from the Savings and loan crisis in the 1980?
GOOGLE—Michelle Malkin, she has her own blog and also Google illegal immigrants—mortgages—home loans. Find out about the shady deals which had a massive impact on the 2009 real estate crash. In Addition read how we as citizens and legal residents can demand permanent E-VERIFY. Tell the politicians in Washington at 202-224-3121 It’s about time they worked for the USworking man/woman, instead of paying-off favors to the wealthy business lobbyists? NUMBERSUSA & JUDICIAL WATCH has more answers about corrupt lawmakers and the issues that effects us all. HELP AMERICA SURVIVE. BETTER START COUNTING YOUR PENNIES, BECAUSE IF THE DEM’S PASS ANOTHER AMNESTY–WILL HAVE MILLIONS OF MORE DESTITUTE ILLEGAL ALIENS AND FAMILIES TO SUPPORT!. THE BUSINESSES THAT HIRE THEM WILL NOT! If the Democratic leadership forces through a path to citizenship or blanket AMNESTY–the US will also have irreversible OVERPOPULATION guaranteed and massive hikes in taxes to support illegal alien families.
Hello brittanicus,
That was quite a posting. Thank you for capitalizing most of the last paragraph, I would have missed you points had you done otherwise. Those illegal immigrants / minorities are quite the bunch of rascals are they not? They just cannot keep their hands out of the cookie jar can they, the cookie jar owned and paid for by “us”, the real non-Kenyan born US citizen. This is so because whenever a non-white / undocumented alien purchases an item in store, the management does not collect sales tax. Similarly, since these individuals do not earn any income, they do not pay any income tax, since they do not own any property,they do not pay any property tax, and neither do they pay rent to any landlord who might pay those same taxes as well.
In response to another comment. See in context »Yeah, gee whiz, ever wonder if maybe our economic policies and “free trade” agreements might have something to do with illegal immigration? Do you think flooding the Mexican market with cheap (US government-subsidized) corn, thus forcing Mexican farmers out of business, might be a factor in the massive increase of illegal immigration since the passage of NAFTA? It’s not rocket science, it’s pretty simple cause and effect. If we don’t want illegal immigrants, we need decent trade policies. Since we don’t seem interested in decent trade policies, it’s safe to conclude that our leaders don’t care much about illegal immigration, excepting when they can get some hateful simpleton riled up about it.
But I’ll be sure to call my senator, thanks for that.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Malanowski,
Thank you for a well written and thought out posting. What is certainly true is even if a white Democratic candidate had been elected in November and if he or she had proposed health care reform, many of these same people would be against it just as fervently. The key phrase here is “many of”. President John Kerry’s proposal for health care reform would not have had as many fervent opponents or opponents at all. It is possible the Rep. Joe Wilson would have shouted “You lie” to him as well, but maybe not. I certainly doubt anyone would be calling him a crypto-Muslim or suggesting that he was really born in France or Ireland.
Further, racism in the United States has always been and still is inherently “populist”, in the sense that the ordinary white people, especially in the rural south, have often been the most energetic and violent defenders of racism. These are people for whom white supremacy has been their only “leg up” in life and that advantage, tiny as it sometimes is, is what they are defending. However, racism’s main opponents have not been the “progressive elites” but rather the Black populations, other non-whites, and just ordinary white people. At the risk of reveling how incredibly old I am, I can remember when the elite opponents of racism where the one’s saying “Go Slow” and “Now’s Not the Time”. The movement against racism was not lead by any elite but from the people who faced racism.
Mr. Brooks is attempting to maintain a long tradition of viewing the opposition to racism as some sort of liberal New England effort to lord it over the common people of the south and condescend to tell them how to live their lives properly. “We don’t need no damn Yankees telling us how we ought to live” shouted by the salt of the earth of the South to the limousine liberals of Boston is the condensed image the conciliators of racism would like to project. Of course “live their lives properly” involves actually enforcing the constitution, allowing all people to vote and live a decent life, not just the Supreme Whites. It is just an effort to turn the defenders of racism into cultural victims of some imagined elite.
BTW, what does any of this have to do with Meadow Soprano?
I agree completely with your point in the hands of some other president, these proposals would have met opposition that would have demonized him in some other way. All you need to do is look at Clinton to see how the right tried to delegitimate him with sexual issues–things Newt Gingrich and others were guilty of themselves!
What does this have to do with Meadow? Just that she, like Brooks, intellectualized away the obvious.
In response to another comment. See in context »