Cross posted at Conceptual Guerilla.
If you're thinking about staying home from the polls next year . . . because Obama isn't sufficiently progressive to suit you, you might want to consider the consequences of a GOP victory next year. If Republicans control the White House and Congress:
1. They're going to privatize Social Security and Medicare.
2. They're going to repeal the minimum wage.
3. They're going to undermine if not outright destroy, public education.
4. They're going to repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
5. Once that is accomplished, Republican controlled state legislatures are going to bring back literacy tests.
For those of you who doubt this agenda, they're already doing it. They are passing restrictions on access to the polls as we speak, even as Paul Ryan proposes his voucher plan for medicare. Presidential hopeful Michelle Bachman says people need to be "weaned off" of Social Security and Medicare, and says that eliminating the minimum wage would create jobs . . . a claim for which there is zero evidence.
As for specifically repealing the voting rights act, that subject is already being discussed..
Here is the money quote from a story that was linked at Daily Kos about the California Redistricting Commission. The emphasis is mine.
One of the key Tea Party talking points is that race and ethnicity shouldn’t be taken into consideration at all by the commission when it comes to drawing political maps.
“A lot of conservatives feel we’ve made remarkable progress on race in America through the civil rights movement,” says Salaverry, whose father’s side is Latino. “It’s time to move on and become a post-racial society, but unfortunately because of the Voting Rights Act and well-funded ultra-left wing activist groups, we won’t.”
Similar complaints have been made by Tea Party groups at redistricting hearings in the South, Texas, and other states, says Anita Earls, executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a civil rights group based in Durham, N.C. “They are very strident,” she says. “They’ve been pretty strongly anti–Voting Rights Act.”
The Tea Party is now lobbying against the voting rights act. You will see more and more of this. Why? They are going to repeal it . . . and bring back things like literacy tests.
The reason I know they will pursue this agenda goes beyond looking at what they are already doing, and even what they are saying. Everything the far right is doing now, and everything I predict they will do if they win in 2012, are things they must do. They are chess players in zugzwang. They are caught in a perfect storm, painted into a corner on at least two fronts. They are fighting for their very survival, and their actions are completely predictable. Their agenda is mandated by the weight of their position.
Since the early 1950's, even before Buckley founded the National Review, conservatives have been defined by xenophobic paranoia. The list of "alien others" is long. Communists, socialists, liberals, "fellow travelers," blacks, "minorities," "radical feminists," dirty hippies, atheists, the Russians, "secular humanists," and most recently Mexicans, and radical Islamists. "Did you know they want to establish a caliphate over the WHOLE WORLD, and impose SHARIA LAW on America? I hear they've already started."
This is the expression of something very simple and easy to understand. When you cut through conservative rhetoric and get to the bottom line, what you find is nothing more nor less than the defense of "white privilege" -- a privilege that has been steadily eroding since the early '50's with the advent of the civil rights movement.
Indeed, Buckley's founding of the National Review in 1955 was likely inspired by desegregation. What was going on in 1955 to cause Buckley to suddenly wake up to some grave new threat? What threat? The New Deal was 20 years old. Truman's Fair Deal was in the rearview mirror of history. Republican Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House, and the most earth shaking new federal initiative on the horizon was the Interstate Highway system. Surely William F. Buckley wasn't alarmed at the creeping socialism implicit in limited access highways.
What had him bothered enough to need to stand "athward history," was something else entirely. The previous summer in 1954, Earl Warren delivered the opinion of a unanimous Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. Desegregation was the game changing issue . . . one that would lead to a new reallignment 13 years later after Nixon inaugurated his "southern strategy."
But maybe you doubt that the tea party represents virulent bigotry. Consider a few simple questions, which let the air completely out of their "less government, more freedom" rhetoric.
Do tea party believers in less government oppose the use of torture by US military forces? No.
Do tea party believers in less government believe in basic due process for accused "terrorists?" No.
Do tea party believers in less government support your right to sleep with whomever you choose? No.
Do tea party believers in less government mistrust the police and the military? No.
What exactly do they mean when they use the word "tyranny?" That's easy. "Taxes." But that's not quite accurate. What they really mean is "spending" . . . which they use interchangeably with "taxes."
Do tea party believers in less government object to paying for two wars in the middle east? No.
Do they object to paying to imprison 2.4 million people . . . a higher percentage of our population than any country on earth? No.
Do they object to a single dollar that supports a military larger than the next 9 largest militaries COMBINED? No.
Do they object to spending to support the CIA, FBI, DEA, Secret Service. or any law enforcement agency? No.
Are they particularly offended at examples of procurement fraud such as the 12 billion dollars that was flown into Iraq and promptly disappeared? No . . . well, okay, if you ask them they might give you some lip service, but only if you ask them.
What spending do they object to?
Ahhh, that would be "redistribution." But do they really object to "redistribution?"
Do they object to "redistribution" to rich people in the form of interest payments to wealthy bond holder's like George W. Bush? No.
Do they object to interest payments to the Chinese Communists? Only when a Democrat is in the White House . . . and even then they mostly give that lip service.
How about subsidies to oil companies? Do tea party believers in "less government" believe in believe in ending those? No.
Agricultural subsidies and price supports? No.
What redistribution has these tea party believers in less government up in arms and ready for 'revolution' to end this tyranny . . . IT'S TYRANNY, I TELL YOU!!!"
Food stamps. AFDC. WIC. School lunches. Section 8 housing.
That's pretty much it. That's what all the fuss is about. They don't care about giving money to rich people. They don't care about military spending beyond any conceivably legitimate defense need. They're not concerned about abuses of power by police officers, federal agents, or the military.
Tyranny means spending tax money on "minorities." They don't care about anything else. I have interviewed dozens of them for my upcoming film. "Welfare" is their bottom line.
Bigotry has consequences. Four years ago, John McCain, working with George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Ted Kennedy on the Democratic side of the aisle, came up with an immigration reform to gradually fix our immigration system. It provided a "guest worker" system, included a path to citizenship, and also included sanctions for those who came here illegally. It did not provide "amnesty."
That did not stop Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, and the rest of the tea party right from going ballistic. The ensuing reaction made one thing clear. Tea partiers do not want ANY path to citizenship for ANY Mexican immigrants.
Karl Rove, for all of his reptilian ethics, understood the weight of demographics. He understood that the Republican Party could not remain the party of white privilege. To preserve its viability as a national party, capable of winning national elections, they were going to need some of those Hispanic votes . . . not impossible in light of the socially conservative Catholic religious sensibilities of large numbers of Mexican immigrants.
The bigoted reaction of Limbaugh, Boortz, and the tea party cult has pretty much foreclosed the possibility of winning over any substantial number of a growing number of Hispanic voters.
The ugly demographic truth is that white folks are losing political power, as their population declines relative to blacks and hispanics. If you are motivated by preserving "white privilege," you are destined to lose . . .
. . . unless you do something about it.
At this point, there is exactly one strategy to them. They simply have to shrink the non-white electorate. Even that won't be enough. Nonwhite American must be kept in check using the age old weapons of poverty and ignorance. An educated, increasingly prosperoous non-white population will not tolerate being denied access to the voting booth.
Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, and every tea partier in America knows this. Resegregation is their only hope . . . and they're going to try it. That's what happened after the Civil War. The forces of white privilege managed to keep the south an oppressed, impoverished back water for 100 years. The people pushing this agenda today are the great grandchildren of the very same people who did it back then.
If you are planning to stay home next year, because President Obama isn't sufficiently progressive, and isn't doing enough to suit you, you might want to consider the alternative. It isn't pretty . . . and they're already doing it in states they won last year.
This diary was written while taking a break from post-production for "Megadittoes: The Tea Party Cult." Stay tuned for clips and segments . . . just a few days away. Nobody anywhere in the media has taken as close a look at the tea partiers as I have.