Post-Election White Rage

Now that the election is over and it is settled who will be President for the next four years a little bit of disappointment from supporters of the losing candidate is only to be expected. That's normal. I am old enough to remember how bitterly let down some people were when Reagan beat Carter and four years later turned Mondale into his personal well lubricated hand puppet. And the Bush smiting of Dukakis also left many people in my circles of family and friends wishing that things were otherwise. But if you're a mature adult sooner or later you learn that things don't always go your way. If you happen to grow up as a minority in America you learn that lesson a bit more quickly and thoroughly than seems right, as you are seemingly always outnumbered and always outgunned. Your political or aesthetic choices or styles are usually not what is popular in the cultural or political marketplace.  If you happen to raise this issue with the majority, say expressing concern about the relative dearth of black faces on mainstream magazine covers the usual response is something along the lines of majority rules, so shut up and deal. And in our society that is a honest and valid statement.

But life goes on. So people didn't agree with your position this time. That doesn't mean that life is over and you fall into a pit of despair and depression. It's only politics after all. It's not life and death, right? You move on with your life and maybe work harder to bring people around to your point of view next time. I mean it's nothing to start bawling over or hang your head down in despair is it? I have voted for plenty of presidential candidates that did not win and more than a few that had virtually no chance of winning. That's life. You make your decision and work to get people to agree with you and hope that many people can see the obvious sagacity of your choice and convince others likewise. If they won't or can't then yes in private you might occasionally wonder at their IQ levels but you would never say that in public because not only is it an ugly and nasty thing to say about people but fundamentally it's untrue. There are simply too many people who are intelligent decent honest people who see the world differently than you do to say that anyone who doesn't see things just like you do is an evil wicked person who for amusement shoots puppies in their spare time. Not to say that there aren't people like that but they probably don't neatly line up with your political opposition.

One of the things that is really interesting to me is how some leading Romney supporters have forgotten this truism and gone off the deep end in not only rejecting the outcome of the election but vacillate between soul numbing depression and white-hot rage at the voters who helped re-elect the President. If you remember just a few weeks back there were more than a few conservatives, fueled by speculation from sites as Drudge, Breitbart and a few others I won't mention, who were not only convinced that Romney was going to win but that Black Obama supporters, no doubt fueled by crack cocaine, rage and resentment would riot in the streets and have to be dealt with by police and/or the National Guard. Evidently some conservatives were eagerly looking forward to this. Well as it turned out not only did Obama win but the twitter tough guy calling for violent revolution and taking it to the streets and shutting this muyerfuyer down was none other than the very successful and very white billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump, who as far as I know has never had to sleep on the streets, been locked up for years for a crime he didn't commit, been fired because of the color of his skin, wondered where his next meal was coming from, been abused by police or prosecutors, figure out which member of his outlaw organization was a police informant, make a choice between housing and medical coverage, or have any of a multitude of unpleasant experiences that tend to produce REAL revolutionaries, nevertheless saw fit to demand marches on Washington, suddenly decided the Electoral College was a disaster for democracy and said we should have a revolution. Right. Okay Donald. Meet us at the barricades but let us know which color Bentley you're driving so we'll know it's you. We certainly wouldn't want to throw rocks at our brother revolutionary. Power to the People!!!!

Meanwhile musician and racist nitwit Ted Nugent couldn't wait to let everyone know that as far as he was concerned the people that helped elect Barack Obama were all a bunch of "pimps, whores and welfare brats". As far as Teddy is concerned if you voted for Obama you are probably a subhuman varmint or soulless. There's not a huge amount of room for difference of opinion in Nugent's world I guess. Not much nuance. But at least you know where he's coming from. I don't think you can make a lot of mistakes about that. Not to be outdone conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly spewed forth that Obama's victory meant that the days of traditional America were over, that the white establishment was now a minority and that the reason Obama won was that people (hispanics and blacks) wanted free stuff and Obama was going to give it to them. Glenn Beck wept that sometimes God sucks. That's amazing, Beck's chosen candidate loses a few  times and Beck comes to the belief that God sucks. Hmm. And yet there are other people who have been through a few centuries of slavery, colonialism and discrimination who still seem to have a fierce and unbroken belief in and love of God. Perhaps Beck should check with them to see how they did it because it looks like his faith is a bit weak. 

Finally the gelatinous king of demagoguery himself, one Mr. Rush Limbaugh, went on air to claim that Obama won because we now live in a country of children and that therefore the adults (Romney) could not compete with Santa Claus. There's more but I think you get the idea. Oftentimes (white) conservatives criticize Blacks for identity politics. I think it is fair as we've discussed in the past to point out that some black intellectuals and even voters give Obama a pass on things they may not have let slide with other Presidents. The flip side of this though is that whites, and in these examples, white men, are not immune to identity politics any more than any other human beings are. This idea that whites are the norm and everyone else is practicing unfair identity politics needs to go. Whites were just fine with election results as long as white men won but insult voters and want revolution now that a black man won? I am shocked....

It bothers Trump so much that Obama is going to be President for another four years that he's calling for revolution? What is that about if not race? All the insults sneering at Obama voters as welfare recipients or children or subhuman are about nothing but race.  The truly ironic thing is that if white conservatives had been able to put away all the constant sneers about "welfare" and "affirmative action" and "man-child" and "monkey" and "wookie" and "ghetto crackhead" and "Kenyan" and "Muslim" and "birth certificates" they might have been able to make good arguments against some of President Obama's policies. But asking some of them to stop doing that is like asking a dog to stop licking itself. It's just what they do. And O'Reilly's comments are honest if wrong. Whites are not a minority and, depending on how "white" is redefined in America, may never be a minority. White is a somewhat nebulous description that expanded to include Irish, Italians, Jews, Arabs, and other previously "non-white" ethnic groups. Somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 of Hispanics also identify as white. But what IS true is that the current Republican party can't win a Presidential election with 59% of the white vote. The numbers aren't there any more. It is no longer a given that whatever a majority of whites want is what the nation wants. The nation has expanded. I think, qualms about illegal immigration aside, that this is mostly a good thing.

After all Republicans should remember, everything that happens is God's will. Just relax and enjoy it. There's nothing you can do anyway. Just ask Mourdock and Akin. Don't worry, be happy. Snicker...

Thoughts?