The Mississippification of America

 by Mixt Green Leo - Because of the realignment of the U.S. political map following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Santorum will undoubtedly get more electoral votes than Goldwater did, but I don’t think the Republican Establishment will be happy in the least.  A Santorum candidacy is the logical consequence of forty years of implementing the Southern Strategy, and may finally result in moderate conservatives uttering the words that their segregationist forebears did fifty years ago: “I didn’t leave my party, my party left me”.  But I’m not holding my breath, as there is probably still at least another generations’ worth of life left in a regionalized, rural, reactionary, racist Republican party.

The simple mathematics of income and wealth inequality in a winner-take-all political system demands two outcomes.  First, that the parties will align themselves by class, and second, that the party representing the wealthy will have to resort to non-economic appeals to the other 99% (or more practically, the other 80-90%).  Initially there is the aspirational appeal to be made to the second and third deciles – you too can become a millionaire one day, but that pretty much exhausts the economic possibilities before you have to resort to the Culture War approach.

Fortunately for the 1% the U.S. is rich in culture war opportunities:  race, gender, religion, nationality, geography, history.  Because race goes right back to the discovery and founding of the continent, and due to its centrality in the economy for hundreds of years, race is clearly the best choice upon which to build a culture war, thus the Southern Strategy.

If you were to compare Venn diagrams of the constituencies of the two major parties, one significant difference would become immediately obvious.  The Democratic version would have clearly separate and only slightly overlapping circles representing labor, women, civil rights, the environment, etc …, whereas that same diagram for the Republicans would show nearly completely overlapping constituencies, the god, guns and gays of the GOP slogans.

In attempting to understand the relationships among the closely related Republican constituencies, it is easy to be misled by the fallacy of trying to explain one factor in terms of another.  As a prime example, which comes first, the racism or the religious fundamentalism?  Is religion used to later justify a primal white superiority, or does bigotry arise from the exclusionary nature of religious fundamentalism?  What the latest machinations of the GOP’s War on Women have shown, however, is that there is a third case, where neither is the direct cause of the other, but both have a shared common cause – the existential identity crisis of white, male privilege.

When seen in this light, it becomes obvious that everything else works in support of white, male identity.  Racial superiority, segregation and apartheid are one foundation pillar, but so is a religion that creates and sustains both a patriarchy and a sense of divine racial/cultural “choseness”.  The monoculture of monotheism abhors any sort of diversity as a direct threat, be that sexual orientation or immigrants with funny clothes, accents and surnames.  The maintenance of such a monoculture requires the same level of overkill that Monsanto applies to maintaining agricultural monocultures, thus the preference for authoritarianism, hierarchy, fascism, the military and the security state.

Whether what we’re now seeing is the death throes of white, male privilege, or something else, is still an open question. After all, there is that “guns” piece to consider, and I would not underestimate either their determination or their efficacy.  As Exhibit A, I present you with: Mississippi.

You don’t get to be 50^th in the nation by accident, it takes generations of concentrated effort and sacrifice, let alone to be able to remain there decade after decade even with your neighbors challenging you in that race to the bottom.  Alabama, South Carolina and the rest of the Thurmond/ Goldwater/ Wallace electoral vote states that perpetually comprise the bottom 10% must be just green with envy – Mississippi, how do you do it?

Race, of course, has been the tried and true approach to reaching and maintaining third world status in the midst of the most prosperous country on the planet since, well, since the nation was formed.  You need a compelling message if you are to convince the majority in your state to forego any improvements in education, health, mortality and standard of living for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and “Not a Dime for the Negroes” has worked miracles since Reconstruction.  Mississippi and the rest of the Deep South have shown that they mean business when it comes to racial inequality.  If black children are required to get the same, non-separate and equal education that white children get, then by golly, NOBODY gets an education!

This attitude of not just cutting off your nose to spite your face, but being willing to engage in suicide-bombing-hostage-taking, used to be confined to the Thurmond/ Goldwater/ Wallace state legislatures.  Nixon’s Southern Strategy was never meant to be a national scheme, but things got out of hand during the intervening years.  Reagan’s presidential campaign kickoff in Philadelphia, Mississippi, like George W. Bush’s at Bob Jones University two decades later, were not just local dog-whistle politics for the initiated, they were signs that the South’s scorched earth racial policies could be employed more broadly for other objectives on a national scale.

It took 14 years from the time it first got Reagan’s blessing to when it later manifested itself in the mad rush of Bob Dole instituting the procedural filibuster in the Senate, Newt Gingrich shutting down the government, and culminating in the impeachment of Clinton, all within the short space of four years during the 1990’s.  Adult, white males proclaiming that not only are they going to take their ball and go home, but that they are also going to bulldoze the playing field before they leave so that nobody gets to play.

Round two of America’s conservative temper tantrum was ushered in by the Tea Party, another mistake by the Republican Establishment that really only wanted to create a little off-year media-marketing experiment meant to GOTV and energize their base like Rove did with gay marriage referenda in 2006.  Instead what they got with Cantor and McConnell was Newt II – The Mississippification of America.  It’s not that there are mere parallels between Mississippi and the Republican’s threat to default on the national debt, thus bringing down both the U.S. and the worldwide economy, it’s that they are at base the exact same approach.  With their fundamental identity at stake, they know they have nothing to lose and are dead serious about creating a global catastrophe if they don’t get their way.

By “their way” what I mean is “no compromise”.  They see the world in win/lose terms, which is at odds with the free-market establishment wing of the party, who chants the mantra of “let’s not just divide the pie, let’s make the pie bigger”.  However, when it comes to the existential demise of white, male privilege there is no ‘making the pie bigger’, it truly is a win/lose proposition, because for the bottom 80% in this little Southern Strategy bargain, it was always and only about complete domination of the pie.  Compromise = lose.  Once you can translate that situation into victimhood, you are only one step away from second amendment remedies.

The language we hear reflects this win/lose no-compromise paradigm as well.  When there is no compromise, facts don’t matter, the truth does not matter.  Say anything you want, it’s all about winning.  Birtherism?  Death Panels? Muslims?  Guillotines and dead babies and Sharia law and concentration camps for Christians?  The scary black man is coming for your guns and your churches and your daughters.  It’s all fair game.  Extremism in the defense of your racial-gender-religiously superior way of life is no vice.  It’s culture wars all the way down.

How badly this plays out after Obama’s reelection in 2012 most likely depends on whether or not the Republicans can gain control over both houses of Congress.  With only one chamber in hand I have my doubts as to whether they’d be willing to risk it all. But with control of both the House and the Senate, their base will demand results.  No nation or peoples, and this is how the fundamentalist white males of the Republican base see themselves, as a chosen people, ever voluntarily surrendered while they still held significant power. Expect a default on the debt, no judicial or executive appointments whatsoever, and consistent and periodic shutdowns of the government following veto after veto of unacceptable budgets that cut funding for everything regulatory.  Obama will invoke the 14^th Amendment to avoid defaulting on the debt, him being the only adult on the playground, but the Republicans and their minions in the media will make life hell for all the rest of us on the planet.  Mississippi, here we come.

Which leads to my next conundrum: What is the radical-Republican, white-male end-game?  Is it the dissolution of the United States?  After all, they did it once already.  Or do they envision a more Soviet-style police state over the whole of the country, which is what it would take to subjugate the more liberal east and west coasts?  Perhaps the more important question is what does the 1% want as an end game?  The Tea Party is a disaster as far as Wall Street and the military-industrial complex is concerned.  You can’t be a financial and military hegemon if you’re an economic backwater or are fragmented into perhaps a dozen new, independent countries.  The Tea Party may be a bit confused when it comes to history, but the governing elite understands the lessons of the rise and fall of succeeding European powers over the past several centuries, including the recent collapse of the Soviet Union – it’s all about the ability to finance wars.

Lastly, there is the matter of how the Left will react?  Will they understand the extreme depth of this culture war, its existential, win/lose nature for the white patriarchy?  As Obama and the rest of the Clinton triangulists continue to drag the Democrats further into the center being vacated by the Right, what is the best approach for maintaining and increasing the Left’s voice in political affairs? And then there is the matter of tactics – do you fight fire with fire, or do you continue with non-violent, civil disobedience in the face of a no-compromise approach from an opposition that is bent on suicide if need be?  The Right is prepared to make this entire Nation one big Mississippi, are we prepared to match their stubbornness and perhaps dissolve it in order to save what can be saved?  The Left needs a game plan, because so far it appears that only one side is playing for keeps.