Eyes Wide Shut 0

There is a rather bizarre letter to the editor in today’s local rag which says, that the teabaggers are not racist, but that

. . . It’s the media that have portrayed the tea party as racist. If there are two signs out of thousands that are rude and inappropriate, you can bet that those will be the ones that make the headlines.*

So that showing pictures of actual teabaggers indulging in teabaggery is the problem, rather than the teabaggery itself.

I won’t bother to Google around for the evidence, but it’s a damned sight more than one or two signs. Steven D has already assembled a sampling of it in his recent post at the Booman Tribune. (And, no, I don’t agree with the topic of Steven D’s post–it would be a pointless and likely counter-productive gesture. I’m just pointing to the pictures and videos because I’m too lazy to look for others, but you’ve all seen them.)

A characteristic I have observed in racists–all but the fringiest of the fringe–since I first started to become aware is this:

They do not admit to anyone, not even themselves, that they are racists, for to do so knocks them off the moral pedestal to which they elevate themselves and thereby robs them of their credibility. They create instead elaborate rationales to prove to themselves and to others that the policies and beliefs informed by racism are morally correct.

To pick a common one that I saw the other day (and that I grew up with):

“The Civil War was not an attempt to free the slaves. It was about economic systems.”

This is spin.

Folks who say this do so to imply that slavery had nothing to do with the inception of the Civil War.

The CIvil War was about slavery, but to admit that undermines the moral arguments of those who idolize the Old South and what in my youth was referred to as “Our Way of Life” (TM).

The CIvil War, in political short term, was about Southern resistance to any limit on the spread of slavery into the western territories. Limiting the spread of slavery was the “moderate” political solution of the day for those who opposed the institution. No “responsible” politician could figure out how to end slavery without also destroying the monied class of the South, for the monied class of the South counted in its wealth the retail value of its slaves. And the monied class of the South, recognizing their peril, fought back.

The teabagger who wrote that letter may not be a racist.

But to pretend that teabaggery does not attract a significant portion of support from those who are afraid of having a scary black man in the White House denies the evidence of things seen.

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*I chose to omit the link to the letter. This is not about who wrote the letter. It is about magickal thinking.