Misdirection Plays 1

Responding to a particularly odious racist video (you will have to click through to view it–I suffered through about 30 seconds before being about to bear no more), Chauncey DeVega decodes the code:

Republican “Small government”=”Southern Strategy.”

As is common with DeVega’s work, the post is long, tightly-reasoned, and amply supported with evidence.

Here are two nuggets (I couldn’t restrict myself to just one). The full post is here:

Ignoring for a moment Lee Atwater’s naked confession on the matter, rank and file former Reagan Democrats, suburban swing voters, and today’s Tea Party GOPers would bristle in defense at the suggestion that race or racism plays any role at all in their disdain for “big government.”

To Conservatives, such an argument is bizarre and strange: How could tax cuts and government rollbacks have anything at all to do with racism or racial resentment?

(snip)

Of course, the evidence suggests otherwise. The chants of “take our country back” beg the response “from who?” The narrative of “real America” plays on xenophobia towards non-whites, and a fear of how some type of Other is always at the gates, ready and willing to steal the hard earned just rewards of the (white) American middle class. Ultimately, in a previous year the fixation would have been on Reagan’s mythical welfare queens or nefarious “quotas” and “affirmative action” programs that deny white men job opportunities.

Most certainly, there are women (referring to the video–ed.) straight out of central casting who view food stamps and public assistance as a credit card of sorts and raise their children to believe that receiving support from the State is a “job” to be aspired to, a career to invest in. Likewise, they have twins in “respectable circles” who broke this country’s economy by advocating for irresponsible tax cuts for the very richest Americans, embracing robber baron capitalism, and gutted the American middle class through financial crookery.

Their crimes are different by orders of magnitude. That fact is irrelevant. Herein lies the rub: Colorblind Conservatism looks at the former with immediate suspicion and disdain, while the latter looks back in the mirror and is greeted with a smile.

In your heart, you know he’s right.