The Prejudice Party

The Republican Party often gets a bad rap for being racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic and anti-poor. There is a simple reason for this: many of them openly display their bigotry as a badge of honor. The Nixon/Goldwater Southern Strategy irreparably tainted the soul of the Republican Party by convincing its more conscientious members to look the other way when their fellow conservatives use xenophobic hatred as a political tool. Decades later, the Grand Old Party still jealously guards every breed of virulent discrimination that has served it in the past.

Republicans have a documented history of making their party a safe place for bigots to hide within the American political system, and yet they pretend to be outraged whenever someone has the audacity to point it out. The typical rebuttal is that "Democrats can be prejudiced too," and that—as with many similar critiques—this is an unfair stigma which only reveals the depths of the media's Liberal Bias. From the Defense of Marriage Act, to defunding women's health services, to multiple bills in Southern states which aim to ban Islam under the auspices of "protecting against Sharia Law," the facts beg to differ.

By failing to call out anyone on their own "team" for flagrantly bigoted remarks and policies, Republicans have styled themselves as a rock in the River of History. Their pride and obstinacy have frozen them in time, and meanwhile, the nation keeps evolving all around them. This explains how they could have fallen so far behind the societal learning curve on issues like gay marriage and undocumented immigrants: anything that smacks of progress is labeled "political correctness" and dismissed out of hand. Theirs is a politically counterintuitive position, because they no longer get to weigh in on the most promising changes taking place in our society. All that's left is to gather together all those who decry societal evolution under one roof, through nationalistic rallying cries like "This isn't the America I grew up in!" or "We want our country back!"

Some in the party seem worried that in not keeping pace with American society, Republicans are becoming marginalized to the point that their half of the electoral duopoly is at risk. This is a moot point, because they know that it's far too late to catch up with the status quo on issues like gay rights and retain a competitive advantage. First off, they wouldn't know how to begin making amends for the last half-century. There's also the fact that most party leaders are Social Darwinists (read: "sociopaths"), a quasi-religious paradigm whose followers view dominance as the ultimate virtue and eschew ethical constraints. For such people, admitting to fault is considered to be the ultimate expression of personal weakness.

Republicans' unity in resisting the tides of change has become a major liability, but it should be said that the Democratic party faces the exact opposite problem. Liberals in Washington do a miserable job of presenting a united front, instead preferring to cannibalize one another, while appeasing the base by boasting about their superior tolerance and the radical change that's just around the corner. Democrats in Washington seem to have no idea how to fight for the peace, freedom, and social justice which they claim to champion—from the Blue Dog Democrats who actively sabotaged Obama's first term, to Hillary Clinton's endlessly beating the War Drum on Iran policy, to all the sell-outs who voted for the Iraq invasion and the Patriot Act. In lieu of any broad consensus on what they actually stand for, Congressional Democrats reassure themselves that they're less nefarious than Republicans and call it "virtue."

Mind you, none of this is going to change unless there is a major campaign finance overhaul. Democrats and Republicans in Washington take their marching orders from transnational corporations (often the same ones) which bankroll their campaigns. These companies depend on the endless political theater of "The Maybe-Racists versus the Maybe-Socialists" to distract the American public from what's really going on behind the scenes. The fact is, the two major parties in America seem to get along quite well when it comes to shielding Monsanto from criminal liability, letting White Collar criminals off the hook, or passing draconian new National Defense Authorization bills.

Even if some of the more savvy conservatives in Washington recognize the pitfalls of standing behind righteous bigotry, there is little hope for evolution within the party, because they have embraced a "groupthink" social model reminiscent of the Borg in Star Trek. Their credo: "Think as one, never back down, and use strength in numbers to convince all opponents that resistance is futile." The rationale is that since unified consensus is their main advantage over the Democrats, those in the party who publicly criticize their more bigoted colleagues are betraying the team. The other rationale, which you will never hear them say publicly, is "Hatred works, and we're very good at it."

The only exception to the Borg Rule is that when someone in the GOP is not conservative enough, the whole party will converge like a pack of wild dogs, singling that person out as a R.I.N.O. and "primarying" them. They almost never go after the shameless bigots, though, because their base in the Deep South depends on racial, religious and gender discrimination to survive. The Prejudice Pride Movement, like the Southern Strategy that preceded it, is mostly a product of cold logic: GOP leaders understand the metrics, which show that the only way for the modern Republican brand to stay competitive is to maintain a Big Tent which welcomes all manner of openly hateful positions.

With no other options left on the table, party leaders have gone into endgame mode. Instead of carrying on a pretense of getting a bad rap, they've stepped up the hate campaign to a fever pitch. Republican-controlled state legislatures all over the United States are now openly disenfranchising the sectors of society which they have historically oppressed: women, people of color, gays, Muslims, and above all, the Working Poor. The linchpin of this Southern Strategy revival is a state-by-state effort to make abortion illegal and restrict voting rights, and they have been phenomenally successful on both counts.

The "pay to play" structure in Washington opens the door for corruption at the highest levels of the American government, but by no means does it make the two ruling parties in this country equivalent when it comes to archaic prejudices. On that score, the GOP are worse and everyone knows it... even most Republicans. Their vaunted pride is giving way to desperation as they watch the world growing up around them while they remain in ideological infancy. Republicans have chosen their path and are realizing, too late, that it's a road to extinction.

Short of a coup, the only way for the GOP to remain relevant in American politics is to ferret out the worst of the bigots. In the long term, this means ceasing hostilities toward the non-white, non-rich, non-straight and non-male. It also means supporting rising stars like Meghan McCain who are advocating an end to the culture wars, before those young people give up and change their party affiliation. As a natural-born Pollyanna, I'd love to see all of this come to fruition, but I can't say I've found many reasons for optimism lately. Something tells me that these Social Darwinists are about to learn the ultimate lesson in natural selection.

https://www.facebook.com/luciusringwald/posts/10202144145262396

Legalize Mysticism

An oft-neglected aspect of the debate over whether to legalize marijuana is that cannabis is an entheogen, a special  class of plant which alters perception and cognition in ways that go beyond the effects of naturally occurring stimulants or sedatives.  For untold millennia, human beings have gathered not only plants with nutritional and medicinal uses, but entheogens--sacred plants that are known to induce a range of metanormal experiences.  This continuum includes transformative insights, ego transcendence, a sense of ecstatic union with the world outside the self, and a greater impetus to question commonly held norms and assumptions (note that these are key features of nearly all contemplative traditions, which suggests that people can achieve them without ingesting anything).*  Entheogens contain psychoactive alkaloids (such as THC) which interact with human physiology in a way that encourages people to question long-held notions about themselves, society, government, and even the meaning of life... and to a particular type of leader, these are very bad things for the rabble to be doing with their consciousness.

I would posit that a resistance to the very idea of transformative insight may actually be a significant factor in the so-called "war on drugs," which considers marijuana--a plant with hundreds of medicinal and industrial applications--in basically the same category as crack cocaine.  Those involved may only be operating on unconscious taboos, but that makes it no less of a witch hunt.  People who use drugs which induce mystical or otherwise mind-expanding states seem to be systematically ostracized and criminalized by governments that are closer to the autocratic end of the political spectrum *ahem* whereas more progressive nations recognize that non-"hard" drug use is generally a victimless crime.  That is to say, the main risk of harm is to oneself, in the form of abuse, but that harm to no one is possible when used in moderation and with responsible planning.

In the U.S., the prisons are overflowing with people (overwhelmingly black teens and young adults) who were picked up for possession of relatively small amounts of marijuana.  Our system exposes them to hardened criminals who have committed multiple assaults or killings, not unlike throwing hundreds of innocent people from Iraq and Afghanistan in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they learned to both hate the American government and network with actual terrorists.  Given the vast segment of the American populace that sometimes consume marijuana, can anyone reasonably argue that this is sensible policy any more?  The cost to taxpayer is enormous, and it takes otherwise decent kids and exposes them to things like learning to make a shiv, or getting HIV because you were raped by another inmate.

I'm only speaking to the use of marijuana as an entheogen, but there is also a strong argument for the decriminalization of industrial hemp, which would be an immense boon to U.S. GDP... but that's another rant for another blog.

Link(s):
http://www.naturalnews.com/035534_hemp_paper_clothing.html for more on that.

*Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body

News Resources

As one of the first posts on this blog, I will list sources of news and opinion that manage to break the escape velocity of the mainstream narrative and tell it like it is.  A brief description will accompany each link.  I will include a few U.S. news sources in my listing. 

Domestic News Sources
Free Speech Radio News
CounterSpin

Foreign News Publications
In most cases, you can learn more about what's going on in this country from the mainstream press in other countries.  I shudder to think about the implications of this...

Blogs & Opinion

Foreign Affairs Matter

Some of you may have noticed that what is often touted as news in the mainstream U.S. media is, in fact, "olds:" the same "Choose Spin A or Spin B" narrative on the same atomistic obsession with transitory spectacle.  For instance, did you ever notice that the U.S. media tends to ignore the rest of the world, as if other countries don't matter and there's nothing we can learn from them?  Aside from a tiny fraction of each day's news cycle reserved for token Foreign Affairs coverage, we barely hear anything about what's going on outside of the United States. 

The mainstream narrative is designed to make it seem like the only things happening outside our borders involve either A) America-hating extremists, B) Dangerous would-be dictators--most of them Socialist, C) Conservative leaders who mirror our own right-wing ideologues and illustrate this worldview's ultimate supremacy, D) occasional territorial scuffles, or E) natural disasters, and subsequent outpourings of money that show how nice we all are (2-month statute of limitations).  Even in these categories, most current events that receive mention are closely tied to our own country's military and/or financial interests, bolstering the national obsession with ego-aggrandizing groupthink. 

We live in this media bubble so that we can continue on in a state of blind nationalism, assuming that we do absolutely everything better than everyone else.  This bubble serves two main purposes.  First, it shields us from facts with the audacity to suggest that our prevailing models for government, education, electoral transparency, health care, free trade, financial oversight, and environmental conservation fall pitifully far below the standards of many other post-industrial nations.  Second, it veils the scope of our imperial agenda, from murdered union organizers in Columbia to African children whose lives have been ruined--or ended--by pharmaceutical corporations' Nazi-like drug experiments.  Third and foremost, it keeps us from forming a sense of global identity, cutting us off from the billions of people around the world who have very similar hopes and dreams, and are being victimized by ruthless assholes that bear a remarkable resemblance to the ones trying to turn our own country into a polluted third-world fascist cesspool (often the same ruthless assholes).

The only way the media can push the notion of America's absolute economic, political and moral superiority is by keeping most people blissfully ignorant to the staggeringly evil agendas that our country's handlers pursue around the globe.  For media outlets to accurately frame the United States as a sickly, undereducated nation whose foreign policy is dictated by right-wing fundamentalists, secretive intelligence agencies that thrive on human rights abuses, and corporations bent on the destruction of the Earth's natural ecosystems, would sorta bum people out.  Our only enduring claim to fame in the global meritocracy is a military budget of staggering proportions that gets more swollen with each passing year, but highlighting this fact might give the impression that we're a nation bent on world conquest even though we totally fail to model a humane and sustainable template for civilization: also a mega-bummer.  Conventional wisdom tells us that depressing news only sells when it relates to things like murder or sexual depravity, so out goes the bad news, which--in terms of foreign policy--is most of it.

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