Republicans, unmasked

This post by "TRex" at Firedoglake is so good I'm just stealing it outright. (Which I know is kind of a blogging faux pas, but it's like this person pulled these sentiments directly out of my brain. So I'm stealing away...) Definitely stop by the original page for the accompanying photo, though.

As we were discussing last night, since Ned Lamont won the Connecticut Senate primary, the intervening six days have seen the Republican party going out of its way to show its true colors with regards to its (very) thinly veiled racist agenda and its intolerance toward people of color and white people who support them. Of course, it goes way beyond that, but that’s as good a place to start as any.

The bottom line is that the Republican party is an elite club for wealthy whites and token minorities who will join their ranks and spew racist swill alongside their white brethren. Anyone who tells you differently is a liar, and anyone (like Ann Coulter or Michelle MalKKKin) who insists that liberals are the real racists is either mentally ill or they’re simply being willfully obtuse.

But let’s look at the evidence, shall we?

Back in April, this blog featured a series of posts dedicated to exposing the writhing grub-white underbelly of modern GOP racism in the blogging world and in the world of talk radio and television news and beyond. All the posts in the series were outstanding, and the message that came blaring through loud and clear at the end of the series was that today’s Republican party is merely a JC Penney White Sale away from its cross-burning, lynching, Jim Crow roots. A mere 40 years separate us from the forced integration of the southern states, when segregationist Democrats in the south crossed party lines to become Republicans and moderate Republicans opposed to American apartheid left the GOP to become Democrats.

40 years is not a very long time. Many of the wealthy white men in positions of power within the GOP made their political fortunes in this era and today, from their perches high on their ivory towers of privilege, they continue to push policy and political initiatives which routinely disenfranchise minority Americans. Who could forget Trent Lott’s ham-fisted attempt to justify the segregationist views of Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign?

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either," Lott said at last week’s party.

Reality-based English translation: "These problems" equals "uppity ni&&@rs", i.e., "If Strom Thurmond had won the presidential race and upheld racial segregation in this country, fat white chucklefucks like me would have a lot easier time maintaining our choke-hold on the reins of power."

The RNC clean-up squads were dispatched, Lott was forced to apologize, and faced a nominal punishment, as is the likely fate of Virginia Republican George Allen, who is currently under fire for calling a 20-year-old Virginia man "Monkey Boy" in Tunisian slang and "welcoming" him to America, because OBVIOUSLY a brown-skinned liberal person couldn’t actually be born and raised in lily-white Virginia! Of course, the staffer, S. R. Siddarth was born and raised in Virginia, but to a Real Republican, that’s simply not enough. You have to be born and raised in America with skin whiter than Ivory Soap to be a "Real American" like George Felix Allen, Timothy McVeigh, or Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

Then take into account the push by a group of southern Republicans to derail the Voting Rights Act earlier this summer, which, thankfully, failed. But how about my own state’s Photo ID voting requirements, which are being pushed on the public by the same legislators opposed to the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, and which is vigorously opposed by state Democrats, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other progressive organizations. Not to mention the staggering indifference shown by FEMA and the administration toward the stranded victims of Hurricane Katrina. Mike Chertoff had to be told in a live interview by NPR’s Robert Siegel that the Convention Center was even there, let alone that a few thousand people were trapped there in desperate hunger, filth, and fear.

But if you back up and look at the even bigger picture, the Republican party’s entire 2006 electoral agenda is based around punishing people for not being white. Republicans on Immigration equals Stop the Evil Brown-Skinned Latino Hordes from Coming Here to Live. Republicans on Terrorism equals Stop the Evil Brown-Skinned Arabs and Islamic Asians from Blowing Up Our Planes and Bridges. Republicans on Ned Lamont equals PLEASE Stop the Evil Black Voters from Banding Together and Forming a Legitimate Threat to Our All-White Boys’ Club. The time has come to punch through their codified euphemisms and strike at the truth of their rhetoric. Republicans are melanin-ophobics.

Kanye West was right. Republicans are the Party of Racism. So, start pinning them to the wall on it. Ask a Republican, "Why do you hate black people?" or "Why are you so scared of Mexicans?" or "Why do you think that all Arabs are terrorists?"

REPUBLICANS ARE RACIST FUCKERS. STOP LETTING THEM GET AWAY WITH THIS SHIT.

Ask Ann Coulter what she really means about Maxine Waters and Affirmative Action, or MalKKKin and her Reconquistas. Ask George Allen why he calls brown-skinned people monkeys. Ask the Weakly Standard what the fushizzuck they meant by that stupid cover with Al Sharpton as Step N Fetchit.

The gilmpses of Old School White Fright we get when these dullards slip up and speak their minds are not aberrations. It’s when the real soul of the Party of Bigots slips its leash and evades its handlers and jumps out, however briefly, for us all to see. Then the handlers and spinners come out and tell us, "You saw nothing! You heard nothing! The views Senator Whitey McCracker espoused in his unfortunate remarks do NOT represent the views of the GOP and blah de blah diddy blah…"

And that’s the big lie. Is your skin is a half-tone darker than a tan paper bag? More? Then, my friend, you are The Enemy to the Republican Party. Unless of course, you want to act, dress, think, talk, and legislate from a position somewhere to the right of Adolph Eichmann, THEN (and only then) are you welcome in the Republican tent, but first you have to be willing to sell out and actively work against other minority people. Only then do you become the kind of useful idiot the Republicans so desperately want on their side.

So, Firedogs, let’s call them out. Coulter, MalKKKin, Glenn Beck, William Bennett, George F. Allen, Krauthammer, Kristol, and Lott (oh, my!), Limbaugh, Hannity, John Gibson, and all the rest. It’s time for them to know that we see through their thin layer of PR spin all the way to the ugly all-white heart of racist, Repugnican America. This is 2006, fer fuck’s sake! Plantation America is no longer a viable concept. Unacceptable. And it’s up to us to raise the necessary Hell to call the public’s attention to the true, viciously exclusionary nature of the Reich Wing.

ATTACK!! ATTACK!! ATTAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!

Who’s with me?