This Shit Doesn’t Happen in a Void

Shakes here…

A topic about which I write with some frequency at my place is the role played by conservative media shills as conduit between conservative extremists and their mainstream representatives in the conservative movement, putting an acceptable sheen on radical turds and passing them along into the epicenter of movement thought. It’s one of the most important services provided on behalf of the increasingly socially radical GOP by the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Michelle Malkin, and it’s the primary reason—even greater than their mendacity, their hubris, their general loathsomeness—that I despise them.

To wit: Via Paul the Spud, Michelle Malkin recently commenting on the Spanish National Anthem (non)issue, singing a refrain that has long been a standard in her collection of greatest hits: “Whose anthem, whose flag, whose country is it, anyway?” You’re only a patriot if you sing the National Anthem in English, dammit—a barely cleaned-up version of the the smugly issued, “This is America; speak English!” that gets barked at even people with thick accents (like my Scottish immigrant husband, whose native language is English) by xenophobic idiots who apparently don’t realize we are a nation of immigrants. Then, yesterday, President Bush on the same topic: “[T]he National Anthem ought to be sung in English. And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English, and they ought to learn to sing the National Anthem in English.”

“Learn how to speak English!”—a contemptuous shorthand for only English-speakers are real Americans—has been screamed at immigrants for decades by nationalistic tools. Malkin and her cohorts gussy it up a bit, and frame it as a “national security” and “economic” issue associated with undocumented (mostly Hispanic) workers. Bush and Co. turn it into a policy issue. Suddenly, my grumpy old neighbor’s muttered “Damn furners!” has become the basis for a federal initiative. It’s not that there aren’t legitimate security concerns to be considered, for example, but the real impetus of the policy is turning out the base vote by appealing to prejudice.

Yesterday, I spent nearly the entire day writing about a case in a predominantly white Houston suburb in which two white teens—at least one of whom is known as a white supremacist—beat, sodomized, stabbed, and poured bleach on a Hispanic teen while shouting racial epithets, because, they allege, he had “tried to kiss a Hispanic 12-year-old girl at a party,” a claim investigators have not yet confirmed. The teenage victim remains in critical condition, hovering between life and death, after his attackers kicked the PVC pipe they had used to sodomize him so far up into his body that he was left with “major internal injuries and organ damage.”

Investigators are suggesting that because the two perpetrators were using drugs and alcohol, a fight was simply inevitable and race isn’t a factor—even in spite of their shouting racial slurs during the attack and at least one having a history of parading around with swastika-emblazoned flags through his neighborhood on Martin Luther King Day.

And all I can say is: Get real. This shit doesn’t happen in a void.

When we read that nearly 20% of American high school students experience physical assault on the basis of sexual orientation, and a doctor who performs abortions—and was already shot by a radical anti-choicer—has become the target of a campaign to hold him “accountable for his actions that have caused untold misery and loss of life,” and a Hispanic teen is beaten and raped within an inch of his life by two white teens as they hurled racial epithets at him, we must necessarily consider what forces legitimize such actions in the minds of the perpetrators. And we need look no further than the GOP and their ever-so-helpful message enablers, as each incident is representative of one of their key wedge issues: gay marriage, abortion, and immigration.

When real people are used as fodder to garner votes born of bias, those real people are inevitably endangered. Politicians and their well-paid water carriers cannot continually demonize a group of people and then claim naivety that the fuckwit homophobes, radical anti-choicers, and racists on whose votes they are dependent for their continued supremacy actually treat those groups as demons, monsters under the bed who threaten our very way of life. We should expect nothing less for a disingenuous wedge issue designed by the likes of Karl Rove to exploit the prejudices of the GOP base to translate into action that leaves victims of policy also victims of violence.

The GOP, now so inextricably dependent upon bigotry to put them (and keep them) in office, is no longer a legitimate political party. They are a collection of hatemongers who overtly seek to convince poor white bigots that they are privileged, and that their privilege can be used to oppress the weak, convincing them with the help of their loyal enablers that life would be better if only gays and feminists and racial minorities weren’t around. They use these people’s hatred of others to mask the real reasons life sucks for poor whites—tax breaks for the rich, rewarding companies who offshore, largesse toward corporations designed by lobbyists at the expense of Americans’ pocketbooks. As long as the gays, feminists, and racial minorities stand between the GOP and their poor base with targets on their backs, the GOP will continue to hide behind them, shouting, “Ready, aim, fire!”

This shit doesn’t happen in a void.

There used to exist a gap (some might argue quite a small one; I think it was bit greater than that) between extremist conservative elements and the insitutional GOP, but a bridge has been built by those willing to transfer and legitimize extremist thought, to turn prejudice into policy. On 24 hour cable news networks, on talk radio, in newspapers, in blogs…they serve as channel and filter, moving so much fetid sewer water through until it comes out drinkable on the other side for those who are desperately thirsty and not especially picky.

O’Reilly, Coulter, Hannity, Malkin—we often treat them as jokes, but they are not amusing. They are translators of a vicious language that would not have a place in the public sphere were it not for their careful redesign.

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David Neiwert at Orcinus regularly delves into this topic with passion and eloquence, which is why he is one of my favorite bloggers (even though I nearly always manage to spell his name wrong). If you’re not a regular reader, check him out.