Monday, February 6, 2012

Me Love You Long Time, Me So Horny: More than Dog Whistles, Republican Pete Hoekstra Embraces the Yellow Peril Strategy



Getting my feet back under me after the Superbowl.

It seems that at the nadir of the American Empire, the Tea Party GOP is more than desperate. They are using their racial air raid sirens to key in on every fear that white conservatives may possess--this is a good strategy as research suggests that conservatives do in fact have larger fear centers in their brains, and are more prone to hold racist attitudes and have low IQ's.

But, from Gingrich's janitor and lazy black people food stamp president meme, to Santorum's black parasites, to Ron Paul's "giant negroes," the Republican Party is going off of the deep end.

Michigan Senate Republican candidate Pete Hoekstra's yellow peril ad is more than failed satire. It is piss poor reasoning and raggedy argumentation. I am very concerned about the rise of China. I am doubly concerned about how the American people sold themselves out for boatloads of cheap crap from abroad. But, there are better and smarter ways to make such claims, and to develop long-term, intelligent, and nuanced policies to prepare the country for the de facto emergence of China's global power.

In keeping with the slave ship anti-Obama ad, Republicans who are lower on the ticket have apparently learned to dig deep in that old bucket of white racial resentment and anxiety to win voters. If the top tier candidates are wallowing in this mess, it just becomes a prototype for others to replicate. It becomes a political version of Moneyball, or the PSA where the kid learns to use drugs or smoke by watching his parents.

"I learned it by watching you!" becomes a catch-all phrase to legitimate toxic behavior in the public and political spheres.

In all, conservatives are in a state of existential angst. A black man happens to be President of the United States, and America is a falling power and not a rising one. Moreover, as cultivated by the Right-wing echo chamber, black and brown people are oppressing white folks. Consequently, many white conservative populists are at a total loss. A few decades ago black people stopped getting off of the sidewalk when whites approached; it is a slippery slope as such changes in social convention have led to all sorts of madness and upset for the White Soul.

Who knows where this will lead us? Next thing we know, perhaps the nativists and know nothings in the Tea Party GOP will be recycling Madison Grant's racist screeds and stripping Jews, Poles, Italians, and others of their recently earned full Whiteness. Perhaps the Tea Party will form patrols to raid opium dens and save white women from slavery at the hands of nefarious, evil, Fu Manchu Asians?

In the 2012 campaign season the Republicans are still fighting the Vietnam War; during the Age of Obama it would seem that the white racial frame is indeed back to the future.

So sad.

6 comments:

Matthew Hubbard said...

Thanks for linking this back to the whore in Full Metal Jacket. When they had the girl in orange on a bike near rice paddies, my first thought was that the makers of the commercial were trying to evoke war-era Vietnam, not modern China.

While a little pidgin English is thrown in, it doesn't hide the fact the actress is Asian-American. The body language is all wrong for someone actually from Asia.

Not that anyone in the Hoekstra campaign would notice either of these things. Another example of the link of racism and low intelligence.

Shady_Grady said...

We wrote on this today.
I am from Michigan. Hoekstra is under pressure from some Republicans to apologize or pull the ad. He is from West Michigan which is nowhere near as "diverse" as SE Michigan.

I think it is fair to criticize China or globalization but there are much better ways to do it.

chaunceydevega said...

@Matty. They are all the same. You didn't know that? They also have sideways vaginas...but that is another convo.

@Shady. How you been lately?

Anonymous said...

A few decades ago black people stopped getting off of the sidewalk when whites approached

I don't have the time or patience to track it down, but in the runup to November 2008, at least one conservative pundit implied that the election of Obama would so embolden black people that they would simply begin shoving white people into traffic. I'd like to be able to chuckle at that kind of hysteria, but was sobered by the fact that the author of that screed was probably paid to spew his drivel.

You can still hear echoes of that paranoia today, when Limbaugh the Hutt raises the specter of 'reparations' every time the Obamas use an extra fork at dinner time...

Air raid siren, indeed.

--Sour Kraut

Shady_Grady said...

Can't complain Chauncey.

This "Yellow Peril" stuff goes back a ways. I think it will always come up in different forms.

Again, I do think China, for lack of a better word, cheats, but we can discuss that without using yellow women speaking fractured English.

A Jack London story that I discovered a few years back.
http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/StrengthStrong/invasion.html

StewartIII said...

NewsBusters| Daily Kos Week in Review: Confusing Ground for Religious Haters
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-johnson/2012/02/11/daily-kos-week-review-confusing-ground-religious-haters