I do admit I find it fantastically amusing that the GOP is having a feces-hemorrage over the latest proclamations of crackpottery spilling willfully from the lips of their latest "Uber-Patriot" [re: "Winger","Grifter","Slacker","Moocher","Deadbeat"/"Confederalist Nut-Bagger Extraordinaire"] who has managed to splil forth with even more of his Crackpottery-ness.
Although some in the GOP are rapidly back-peddeling away in abject terror [Hannity: "Beyond Repugnant", Rick (Niggerhead Ranch) Perry "Reprehensible", Rand (Repeal-the-Public-Accomodations-Act) Paul: [It's] "Offensive" ], because now that theyh've been "exposed" for being adjencent-ish to Bundy's underlying Racialist views they've begun to Panic at the Disco - but unfortunately all of that is completely missing the point.
The problem with Cliven Bundy's views isn't just that they're anti-Black or even Racist per se - (Cliven, deeply misguided as he is, clearly does not blame Black people for their difficulties, he's blames The Government for it) -it's the fact that they are virulently Anti-Fact, Anti-U.S. Government, Pro-Confederate, Pro-Insurrectionist and that they happen to be exaclty-in-line with mainstream Republican/Tea Party thinking.
Let's all agree that the core tenent of the Tea Party which has the Republican party trapped in a Vicious Stranglehold is that the Federal Government is Bad, m'kay? It's just Bad, Bad Baddy Bad. It can't do anything right. Nothing. Privatization is always better, even when it comes to the handling Military Functions whether it happens to be KBR [who had a tendency to mess up the electrical wiring in our soldiers showers and electrocute them] or Blackwater [who - uh, well - Massacre.]
If something isn't wrong, or just not quite as good as it maybe should be - it's always the Government's fault. Even when, in Mr. Bundy's case he's decided not to pay the incredibly low grazing fees that the Federal Government charges for over 20 years, he's repeatedly lost in Federal Court over it and when the Fed's finally get fed up enough to collect on his $1 Million Debt, he calls his buddies and pals and they threaten violence in retaliation.
Up until yesterday, THIS GUY was a darling of the Right.
But now that he's said this, not so much.
"The question is: Are they slaves the way they are, the way they live, slaves to charity and government subsidized homes?" Bundy said. "Are they slaves when their daughters are having abortions and their sons in the graves and prisons?"
"This thought goes back a long time over the years," he said.
Of seeing black people in their government-subsidized homes in Las Vegas, he said: "I thought, 'Would they be happier if they was home, talking about the South, where they come from? Would they have been home with their gardens and their chickens and their children playing around them?'"
"Would they? That was the question I ask, and I ask you: Would they be happier?"
The thing that people ignore - because the optics of a out-of-touch sexagenarian white guy grifter waxing away on the ills of the "negro" tends to be a bit distracting - is the fact that he's not criticizing black people,
He's Criticizing Government Subsidies [while ignoring the fact that he's been
benefiting from a Government subsidies for 20 years] -and also
The Abortion - which he says has "trapped" them in a situation of dependency. Instead of a safety net, they are
stuck in a hammock. Isn't that pretty much how Paul Ryan tends to put it, particularly a few weeks ago when he used the theories of a White Nationalist to justify his "
Poverty Trap" Rhetoric?
“We call it a poverty trap,” he explained. “There are incentives not to work, and to stay where you are.”
...
“That’s this tailspin or spiral that we’re looking at in our communities,” he told Bennett. “Your buddy Charles Murray or Bob Putnam over at Harvard, those guys have written books on this.”
“Which is, we have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities in particular of men not working, and just generations of men not even thinking about working and learning the value and culture of work,” Ryan opined. “So, there’s a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.
And how different, really, was what GOP Virginia Lieutenant Governor hopeful E.W. Jackson said last year about "
Slavery being Better than Welfare" to either Ryan or Bundy?
Virginia Republican lieutenant governor candidate E. W. Jackson said that the American government has been worse for "the black family" than slavery was during an event on Wednesday to celebrate Juneteenth, the holiday marking the end of slavery. "In 1960 most black children were raised in two parent monogamous families," Jackson said, according to the Virginia Daily Press. "By now, by this time, we only have 20 percent of black children being raised in two-parent monogamous families with a married man and woman raising those children. It wasn't slavery that did that. It was government that did that trying to solve problems that only God can solve, and that only we as human beings can solve."
Yes, of course because the Government isn't of God or of Humans. It's just this
Dark Force thing out there "doin' stuff".
Evil stuff. BOOGAH BOOGAH!!
And how different was what Wingnut Hyper-Christian Darling Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty said about Black people being "Happier" and more "Godly" before "welfare" and coincidentally, the end of Jim Crow?
"I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person," Robertson told the magazine. "Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field. ... They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, 'I tell you what: These doggone white people' -- not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues."
Yes, now that the Black People have Entitlements and Welfare - they are a sad, sad, sorry, lot. Unlike - y'know -
before that when they sang anything [
EXCEPT THE BLUES WHICH THEY INVENTED] all the time.
You had Dr. Wingnut-Presidential-wanna-be Ben Carson who said Obamacare - was Slavery.
"You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery," Carson, who is African American, said Friday in remarks at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. "And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control."
Yeah, in my history book it says that "Slavery" was Government doing nothing to
Prevent Private Business from making people subservient to their PROFITS for a few hundred years - but, yknow, that could've been a typo.
You had Alan West who said that "Welfare is an Insidious form - of [you guessed it] Slavery"
Our party firmly believes in the safety net. We reject the idea of the safety net becoming a hammock.
For this reason, the Republican value of minimizing government dependence is particularly beneficial to the poorest among us…. Conversely, the Democratic appetite for ever-increasing redistributionary handouts is in fact the most insidious form of slavery remaining in the world today, and it does not promote economic freedom.
I'm thinking that the actually ongoing
Modern Day Sex Slavery and Human Trafficking of 20.9 Million women, young boys and girls is somewhat worse than the psuedo-Slavery of reliable access to $35/per week worth of edible food, shelter and sometimes healthcare even when you happen to be poor - but maybe that's just me.
You had Presidential Candidate Newt Gringrich saying that Obama was the "Greatest Food Stamp President" we'd ever seen.
Newt Gingrich has been pushing the line that Obama is the “food stamp president.” On first glance, the numbers back him up: There are now a record number of Americans receiving food stamps, with about 46 million participants in 22 million households. But that’s mainly because there’s been record poverty levels, not because President Obama has taken major steps to make it easier to receive food stamps from the government.
Yes, Never mind the fact that the Welfare Rolls went up due to rising unemployment in the wake of the 2008 Stock Market Catastrophe that occurred as a result of Conservative Free-For-All Banking Policies under our then President GEORGE. W. BUSH! The only reason Newt could even attempt to make this claim is because
there weren't any Food Stamps during the Great Depression when Conservative economic policies fostered THAT particular Stock Market crash.
You had Rick Santorum and his "Blah People" moment.
Formerly surging GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, now struggling, is trying to deny ever saying, “I don’t want to make black blah people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” Even though the day after he appeared to make that familiar old GOP argument, he didn’t deny it. What gives?
He didn't deny it because he
believes it, whether it's Black people or "Blah" People.
You even had a back-bencher CPAC Panelists who said...
“Abortion has been worse on the African-American community than the slave trade or Jim Crow,” said Robert Woodson, a panelist at a sparsely attended Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) panel on reaching out to more diverse voting populations.
And
that ladies and gentlemen, is how a Mainline GOPer tries to make a heart-felt outreach to minorities, showing how much that they really care - they really do - to help bring more and more doubtful minorities snuggling happily into the Conservative Fold. Brings a tear to your eye doesn't it?
Ok, alright - stop laughing.
Now this is just what I could come up on my own, based on memory and Google, but Media Matters has even more examples.
Rush Limbaush
"It won't be a matter of whether you have coverage or don't have coverage. What'll matter is that all of us will be slaves; we'll become slaves to the arbitrary and inhumane decisions of distant bureaucrats working in Washington where there's no competition, nobody you can go to if you don't like what you hear from the bureaucrats that you have to deal with."
Glenn Beck...
[pogressive polices create] "slavery to government, welfare, affirmative action, regulation, control,"
And Glenn Beck...
"big government never lifts anybody out of poverty. It creates slaves."
And Ted Nugent
the Great Society programs were "responsible for more destruction to black America than the evils of slavery and the KKK combined."
And well, you get the idea.
So now Bundy is saying that he's not a "racist" - it was the New York Times and the Media that made his statement "Racial".
In an interview with conspiracy extraordinaire Alex Jones, Bundy said he would appreciate it if The New York Times retracted their story.
"I would appreciate that. I think they should do that," Bundy said. "They're making it a racist-type thing. I'm not racist."
Yeah, uh huh, so says the guy who also claims that the
Minority Groups are "Against Us". Hm, I wonder why that might be?
I guess they just really really like their sweet-sweet Government Slavery-Crow-Subsidy-Fare there Cliven.
The point here is that whether it's Mr. Bundy, or Mr Ryan, or Mr Gingrich, or Mr. Santorum, or Mr. Nugent, or Mr. Jackson, or Mr. Carson or Mr. West or Mr. Limbaugh or Mr. Beck or Mr. Woodsen - they All Believe in a dire apocalyptic view of inevitable Government Slavery Doom that is worse than the worst thing that could have ever even have been imagined to have possibly happened to anyone, anywhere, anytime - not even in a parallel sub-space quantum negative zone dimension of FrackTose 7!
They're all saying essentially the same thing that Bundy is saying: Government is really, really, Really Bad... m'kay?
They're all DELUDED. Government is only as bad as we let it become. So is Private Industry. Neither is perfectly good or perfectly evil. In fact it's only the good of a strong Government that can counter the selfish evils of a run-away corporation and vice-versa. We need them both at each others throats so their too busy to pick our back pockets.
The important thing to remember is this: Contrary to all these Conservative Slavery-Fantasies, Real Slavery In America was 100% Privatized.
It's not an accident that they continually claim that Government is the Source of Slavery and I think this particular form of Slavery Tourettes comes from the fact, as I mentioned above, that Slavery was the creation of Private Industry. Private Companies changed the rules, and used their influence and power to change the law to allow their Pursuit of Profit to Override the Rights and Humanity of their Workers. That's what SLAVERY is. A Slave is a WORKER with no Protections. Protections which are supplied and supported by the law through Government. True Slaves are Owned By a Company or an Individual, Not by Government.
Yet, when it comes to preventing that scenario from being truly re-enacted it's Republicans who wish to give Corporations more and more power to limit and control the wages, hours, conditions, safety, benefits, health care and the pensions of their workers. The fact is that the more worker protections - and the government regulations that enforce those protections - that are eroded, the more and more we really do slip slowly back into wage slavery and debt entrapment while increasing consumer risk and environmental destruction. Being "dependent" on Government benefits isn't the Poverty Trap, being Financially indentured into a Hellish Dangerous Shitty Penny-Wage Job with Endless Debt is. Slavery is Being Walmartized. And it's not like private industry has really done anything to stop or decelerate that erosion - the "Free Market" has had 400 years to fix this on it's own and has FAILED - only Government [and sometimes Unions] have. Unless it's Republican Government ala Reagan/Bush and their economic acolytes where the opposite happens, because when they say they want more people "working" - particularly black people - they don't mean they want them in a good job, just that they'll be working and helping improve the profit Of Someone Else while getting less and less out of it for themselves. They scoff at the idea of "Income Inequity", but that's exactly where the Real process of slouching towards slavery lives, in the workplace and the ever shrinking paycheck.
They talk a lot about the "Value of Work" but they don't seem to see a wit of value in the Workers. All they see is the need to increase company profits and shareholder value, and you do it by dramatically lowering the overhead created by your workforce - your wage slaves - while the main thing standing in your way is that pesky Government with it's regulations and taxes and minimum wage and medicare and social security and now Obamacare, so all of that has to be demonized and crushed into a fine powdery mist under your heel. That's the Conservative Mantra, it's what they LIVE for. That's who they are. The GOP is the Lickspittle Boot Lackeys of the the Modern Day Privateer Wage-Slaver.
The one thing that's surprising with their response to Bundy now is that so many of them are so "Offended" by his "Reprehensible", "Repugnant-ness". That for once - for ONCE - they feel the need to object to it. Finally, we've found the one Conservative whose verbal diarrhea has sent the party over a bridge too far when every previous time they just ignored it, or denied it, or cheered it on.
Now they're trying to reel it back - Now They're Embarrassed - but once everyone sees, or remembers, just how many of them feel exactly the same way that ole' Cliven does, as people notice that their next rabid anti-Government Welfare/Slavery rant are merely echoes of Bundy, will they be able to truly slip quietly out of the Bubbling Tea Party Hot Tub of Scalding Government Hate without catching something electorally infectious? And festering?
I should certainly hope not.
Vyan
2:17 PM PT: Can't Believe I forgot this one:
Palin prefaced her comments by saying the comparison “isn’t racist,” according to the Des Moines register. “Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China,” she explained. “When that money comes due … it’ll be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to beholden to the foreign master.”
Palin went on to describe conservatism as a philosophy concerned with “moving the poor and the underemployed out of poverty and out from the shackles of dependency on government.” While that definition might be a nice spin on conservative ideology, Americans’ “dependency on the government” doesn’t quite match up with the reality of U.S. slavery — which, by the way, had a pretty clear definition.
Yes, it had a pretty clear definition - which wasn't being beholden and "shackled" to Government, it was being beholden and
shackled to Private Business. They like to call this "Free Enterprise", but they usual fail to mention that
Your Freedom as a worker, is the Enterprise they're really talking about.