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Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Racism = The Grand Unified Theory of American Wingnuttery

From the rush transcript of Amy Goodman's interview this morning with Paul Krugman on Democracy Now!
PAUL KRUGMAN: OK, it’s -- you know, right at the time just -- time of the New Deal, the time when all advanced countries were building a basic set of social insurance programs, the natural thing was to include some kind of healthcare. And actually FDR thought of including health insurance in Social Security, but decided that was one step too far politically, so didn’t go that far. And right after World War II, Harry Truman wanted to have national health insurance, which made perfect sense and would have been at that point -- that was a good moment. The insurance lobby wasn’t the monster it is today. The drug lobby didn’t exist. You know, all the things that stand in the way.

But it failed. And it failed because the opposition of the American Medical Association, which has been a constant throughout this. But it failed crucially because Southern whites said, no, this will lead to integrated hospitals, and we won’t let it happen, which is -- they were probably right. When Medicare came in -- and one of the reasons they were bitterly opposed to Medicare was they were afraid it would integrate their hospitals, and it did.

But it’s -- you know, you go through US history, try to understand US political history, and race always comes back, and even the rise of the conservative movement in the Republican Party, the victories. It’s almost embarrassing. I talk a lot to political scientists, and you go through the numbers and the polls, and it all boils down -- almost everything else goes away, except for five words: Southern whites started voting Republican. The backlash against the Civil Rights Movement explains almost everything that’s happened in this country for the past forty-five years.

Krugman was on DN! on the occasion of the publication of his new book, The Conscience of a Liberal. You know, Go Buy It or something.

3 comments:

jimf said...

Dale quoted:

> [T]ry to understand US political history, and race always comes back,
> and even the rise of the conservative movement in the Republican Party,
> the victories. It’s almost embarrassing. . . The backlash against the
> Civil Rights Movement explains almost everything that’s happened in
> this country for the past forty-five years.

Yes, that's plausible enough, sad to say. And also, of course,
the backlash against the gay rights movement (or a perceived malign
"homosexual agenda") seems to account for the rise of the
religious right over the past twenty-five years. They've
overcome their distaste for worldly politics and forged an
unholy alliance with the Republicans.

It's not going to go away any time soon. The post-9/11 power-grab
and erosion of civil rights was perfectly predictable, and even
an ill-conceived war doesn't seem to me to have changed
things all that much.

And of course our friends, the Libertopians, see the Republican
Party as the **lesser** of two evils!

Dale Carrico said...

And also, of course, the backlash against the gay rights movement (or a perceived malign "homosexual agenda") seems to account for the rise of the religious right over the past twenty-five years.

I see this essentially as a connection between fundamentalism and patriarchy (usually called "social conservatism" in polite circles that enable this reactionary crapola while simultaneously excoriating enormously popular progressive attitudes on these questions) that is pretty much equally freaked out about women acquiring social and political equity in the workplace challenging the male role as "breadwinner," women acquiring social and political equity through control over healthcare decisions concerning their own bodies (abortion/ARTs, etc), and diverse gender-queer forms of affiliation acquiring legal standing and cultural legitimacy. These things have complex inter-implications, and race actually is an omnipresent complicating factor here as well. But, yes, I agree with the thrust of your point.

And of course our friends, the Libertopians, see the Republican Party as the **lesser** of two evils!

A few of the more reasonable libertopians are beginning to realize that there is a corporatist wing of the Democratic Party that will provide them quite as cozy a harbor for their market-fundamentalism without interfering with their desires to be hippies in matters of fucking and pot-smoking. Of course, I am equally eager to observe the permanent eclipse of Democratic as well as Republican corporate-militarists, so this trickle of libertopian defections is of little moment to me.

But, you're right, it's a bit shocking to discover how many in the Black Helicopter crowd railing against Clintonian Big-Gu'ment (this of DLC Clinton, of all people, the absurdity of it all!) became foaming at the mouth phone-tapping civil liberties eroding marshall-law advocating Brown Shirts the instant Bush arrived on the scene. The translation of libertopian abstractions into concrete realities on the ground is always a bit flabbergasting to behold.

jimf said...

Dale wrote:

> I see [homophobia] essentially as a connection between fundamentalism and
> patriarchy (usually called "social conservatism" in polite circles. . .)
> that is. . . equally freaked out about women acquiring social and political
> equity. . . and diverse gender-queer forms of affiliation acquiring
> legal standing and cultural legitimacy. These things have complex inter-implications,
> and race actually is an omnipresent complicating factor here as well.

Of course if you're looking for a "real" Grand Unified Theory ;-> ,
there's Jonathan Haidt's candidate, the "Five Foundations of
Morality". According to him, liberals "see" only the first
two of these, whereas conservatives are motivated by all five.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html
http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/

"[T]here were three best candidates for being additional psychological
foundations of morality, beyond harm/care and fairness/justice.
These three we label as ingroup/loyalty (which may have evolved from
the long history of cross-group or sub-group competition...);
authority/respect (which may have evolved from the long history of
primate hierarchy, modified by cultural limitations on power and
bullying...), and purity/sanctity, which may be a much more recent
system, growing out of the uniquely human emotion of disgust, which
seems to give people feelings that some ways of living and acting
are higher, more noble, and less carnal than others."

I suppose racial differences, **and** differences in sexual proclivity
and behavior, activate the purity/sanctity axis. :-/