Saturday, September 15, 2012

Smirking Mitt Walking Away from a Lynching


Mitt Romney's entitled, privileged, and self-righteous smirk when caught in a lie about President Obama and Libya has spawned an Internet meme. On this website, Romney has been depicted walking away from the Hindenburg, civil rights protesters, burning homes, and homeless people. The image, what it represents about his humanity and calculating coldness, both stands in for Romney, while also telling us something about the values and ideas we are reading onto him by virtue of his actions.

Mitt Romney is a sociopathic racist. His Southern Strategy 2.0 is proof of this fact. Romney's repeated lie that Barack Obama, "apologized" for the killing of Ambassador Stevens in Libya, and for the attacks on the consulate, are evidence of a profound lack of human empathy. He will do anything to win the presidency; Romney will double down on his post-truth campaign--even if it means misrepresenting reality while four Americans have recently been killed--even when the facts are still forthcoming.

The Tea Party GOP is a de facto party for "white people's rights." As such, Romney's campaign is dependent upon stirring up white racial resentment in order to defeat the country's first black president. All of his "real America," Birther-like appeals are direct signals that black and brown people are somehow outside of the American political tradition. By definition, a black man cannot and should not lead a "White" republic. Romney's lies about Obama as a thief and "welfare king" who steals from good white people in order to give money to "lazy" and "parasitic" blacks is a direct function of that big lie.

As I have pointed out many times, the Tea Party GOP are direct descendants of the "polite" racists in the John Birch Society (in fact, one of the elder members of the Koch family, the group that funds and supports the Tea Party brigands, was a founding member of the aforementioned organization). They would not kill a black person directly. Instead, these polite racists would watch the lynching, buy the postcards of the destroyed and defiled body, and cheer a spectacular act of violence that reinforced the color line and fueled whiteness as a sense of community, belonging, and exclusion of the Other.

Romney would have been there too, looming in the shadows.

Romney, and other white businessmen like him, both profited from, as well as encouraged Jim and Jane Crow because it was the "rational" thing to do. Romney's type would create racial animosity in the workplace or on the factory floor if it suited the economic logic of divide and conquer where black, brown, and white folks were put against one another in the interests of Capital and greed. Mitt Romney (much unlike his father) is also the very same type of man who would use what was then called "blockbusting" in order to scare white homeowners with a rumor that blacks would soon be moving into the neighborhood--and that any white person who wants to salvage the wealth and equity held in their property had best sell soon.

Romney's smirk, and his cold indifference, are a perfect embodiment of the cowardly and callous racial logic that many white Americans exhibited during the dark days of Jim and Jane Crow. In the Age of Obama, Romney, the Tea Party GOP, and the other assorted members of the rogues gallery that is the New Right, are playing to the worst part of the American (white) collective consciousness. One of "those people" is in "their" White House. Most would not actively do him any harm, but they would certainly not look the other way as Barack Obama is symbolically and (politically) immolated.

In a role befitting a man of his temperament and nature, Mitt Romney would, and is, simply handing the white racial reactionaries on the Right a lighter and some kindling, while he turns, then walking off with a smirk on his face.

It ain't personal. It is only business.

18 comments:

Plane Ideas said...

CD,

I am offended by your publication of this photo on WARN. It is over the top and not worthy of our collective stature here on WARN.

Your ability and draftsmanship with words is unmatched any where on the internet and in the MSM.Your words don't need this photo to butress them.

Why you felt the need to be a carrier of this horrific photo to augment your appropriate analysis of Romney is beyond me.

I also don't think you were right by Romney as well. The photograph depicts true evil and respectfully I don't think Romney is that.

In my activism over the past 4 decades I have encountered hate up close an person from the KKK to crazed racists who have threaten my life and hand delivered death threats YET I refused to return the hate with the loss of my humanity.

This is not a good look CD..You are better than this.

Greg


CNu said...

It's a natural progression given that the entire contemporary race studies programme is increasingly hard-pressed to find (much less prove to a legal standard) systemic racist behavior. Further, because the race studies programme doesn't have any intrinsic appeal to folks who know how to do and to make real things, it's not likely to acquire these chops.

Frankly, afrodemia has produced a cultural package that's only barely more relevant or compelling than afro-trekia.

Meanwhile, no one addresses themselves to the racist point sources in cutting edge science and technology - AT ALL. Ultimately, the only way to address these folks is to beat them in the technological arms-race and to ensure that there are enough black practitioners of cutting edge sci-tech to detect and deter any further real movement on that front.

No existing element(s) in the ranks of 2nd/3rd line inheritors of the civil rights movement have - or have even considered - constructing a cultural package sufficient to the task of making sure that black interests are well-represented in the rapidly emerging and very exclusive spaces of evolving human capability.

chaunceydevega said...

@Thrasher. the truth is the truth. please do not presume to lecture me given your online schizo act as of late, basement poo flinger monkey people students of yours, use of profanity, and other silliness.

pretending that racial violence and pogroms against blacks and others in this country did not occur, and we should hide our eyes, is childish.

would you want to destroy these artifacts, close down collections, make sure that these realities are purged from the public memory. our jewish brothers do not run from the holocaust; we should not run and cower in shame from ours.

Those folks who walked away from lynchings, watched them, used racism to divide and conquer, profited from segregation, and belonged to white citizens councils were evil.

they were simply polite about it. you can be kind to romney and give him a pass for his sociopathic racism. i will not.

the man belongs to a faith that until 1978 believed that people like you thrasher went to a second class afterlife and even that blacks would be slaves to whites in heaven none too long ago.

romney never left mormonism, he was in his 30s when this policy was "changed," and romney did nothing to change his faith's racist policies. keep that in mind.

@cnu. we talked about that months ago, we have many many many cases of documented actionable systemic racism in this country. we just had the mortgage settlement a few days ago. moreover, as you know, the law is not a neutral agent--it represents certain elite interests that are in turn reproduced through "common sense" and legal procedure. as racism evolves to a point where it is invisible, meta, and symbolic in how it determines life chances, the law will change to.

given your expertise in technology, it is interesting to see how technology and racism have evolved to work together and to service one another. technology has also been used to upset the racial order too.

transhumanism, customizing genes, and other advances towards the singularity will challenge (or reinforce) these categories. gene mapping is going to make it easier to eliminate whole populations and traits in a given group. if racism is a social problem maybe it can be solved by making everyone white or beige like Schuyler suggested.

Scary stuff.

Plane Ideas said...

CD

Yep I am doing that calling you out for publishing this offensive photo to buttress another one of your circular race theme commentaries. The humanity our dead is violated when you exploit them with your gratuitous use of this photo for a political agenda especially against a hollow person like Romney you insult their legacy and Black activists like me.

Please spare the Jewish narrative they don 't define anythIng for me as a Black person certainly not in regards to our domestic holocaust here in America . In truth of late in America now that Jewish people except those of color have purchased whiteness they often engage in the same racist contempt as their brethren now.

But this issue is about you not my students you are out of order inserting this horrid photo take responsibility for your lack of judgement and stop making excuses !

chaunceydevega said...

@Thrasher. The truth it the truth. You can choose to live in fantasy land. I insert those characters because you presume to lecture me, the host, on what you think I should or should not do. If you want to talk about "good" or "bad" looks, associating with those brigands, assuming they are not you in a mania or fugue state, is most certainly the latter.

If you don't like the allusion--which I suggest is so very true that you are in denial about it--move on. By virtue of everything he he has said, done, participated in, or the like, Romney would be an old school Jim and Jane Crow in a suit type of racist. You can take that to the bank.

Black activist Thrasher? I don't care; I don't kiss your ring; I don't hold you in some ethereal high regard; I/Me/Other folks don't owe you anything; Based on the silliness of your online ventriloquist act I have given you the benefit of the doubt and defended you when others had long dismissed you. That moment has passed.

I think you are a decent guy caught up in some imagined status as "legend" of the "D" and "mentor" to basement dwellers, who once had a public access TV show. Cool. We all need to live a few lies--to quote George Costanza--and to drink our own Jesus juice. At a certain point it is meh. The old guard has passed away into obsolescence. Time to move on and forward.

Plane Ideas said...

Your judgement is flawed here and reeks of immaturity and lack of ability to understand the art of calibration.

I have no problem leveraging our slavery legacy in America but judgement is critical your insertion of this photo to slamm a hollow bigot like Romney is a classic example of failed judgement .

Please take down this photo now!

chaunceydevega said...

@Thrasher. Tear down this wall! Sorry, wrong historical allusion.

"Your judgement is flawed here and reeks of immaturity and lack of ability to understand the art of calibration."

Freud would say that statement is a classic example of deflection and projection.

Immaturity from a grown man who pretends to be multiple people online so he can "get his names up" on these Internets? Please.

Football is on now, go watch some TV or read something else on these Internets. It is a big place.

CNu said...

Romney, and other white businessmen like him, both profited from, as well as encouraged Jim and Jane Crow because it was the "rational" thing to do. Romney's type would create racial animosity in the workplace or on the factory floor if it suited the economic logic of divide and conquer where black, brown, and white folks were put against one another in the interests of Capital and greed. Romney's people are also the very same type of men who would use what was then called "blockbusting" in order to scare white homeowners with a rumor that blacks would soon be moving into the neighborhood--and that any white person who wants to salvage the wealth and equity held in their property had best sell soon. It wasn't personal. It was all just business.

George Romney championed civil rights CDV;

George Romney championed Civil Rights at a time when his church was theologically opposed to the idea of innate equality. Romney could not bring himself to condemn his church publicly (in spite of his private views) for its policy of denying the "priesthood" to black men.

In 1964, the year King won the Nobel Peace Prize, George Romney was the most powerful Mormon in American politics and was gearing up for a presidential run in 1968. The LDS hierarchy took note and worried about his positions on civil rights. Delbert L. Stapley, a high-ranking member of the LDS (who was born the year the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was constitutional and died the year the LDS lifted its ban on African Americans in the priesthood), wrote to Romney deeply troubled. "After listening to your talk on Civil Rights, I am very much concerned. Several others have expressed the same concern to me." The letter was "personal" and not an "official Church position" but it still came on letterhead that read, "The Council of the Twelve."

Stapley directed Governor Romney to read Joseph Smith's position on "the Negro" and "abolition." Stapley commented that when he reflected on Smith's anti-black words, he thought of "what happened to the three of our nation's presidents who were very active in the Negro cause, [and] I am sobered by their demise." (John F. Kennedy had died only five months earlier.)

While Mormons could support "all the privileges, social opportunities, and participation enjoyed by the Whites," Stapley warned, they could not change the fact that the "Lord had placed the curse upon the Negro, which denied him the Priesthood." While Stapley supported some elements of the Civil Rights Bill, he could not support "full social benefits nor inter-marriage privileges with Whites, nor should the Whites be forced to accept them into restricted White areas." In conclusion, Stapley added, "Don't think I am against the Negro people, because I have several in my employ."

The letter only seemed to strengthen Romney's civil rights trajectory. While he remained steadfastly Republican and endorsed many "law and order" measures, he continued to work for many civil rights measures that conservatives today may deem anathema. During his term as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Richard Nixon's first term from 1969 to 1972, Romney pursued policies of affordable housing and suburban desegregation with zeal, to the point of angering some white residents of Michigan who opposed his policies of encouraging the integration of lily-white suburbs.

Even so, Romney's very membership in the Mormon Church made him suspect in the eyes of many African American voters.

chaunceydevega said...

@Cnu. I know. That is why his son's behavior is so contemptible. His father walked out on Goldwater; Mitt would have gone along with it. I will correct that phrasing as it is misleading. Thanks for the catch.

Black Sage said...

I also don't think you were right by Romney as well. The photograph depicts true evil and respectfully I don't think Romney is that. – The One and Only Thrasher

@Thrasher, sorry buddy, the pictures are aptly placed and time during these tumultuous political period in these contiguous territories of these United States. It’s not wise to take a butter knife to a gun fight for obvious reasons. Wishful President Romney has been deliberately broadcasting lies about the POTUS for quite some time now. There is no need to take a foray into the path of a laundry list courtesy of the Wishful President himself regarding his tactics and attempts to paint BO with a broad mischaracterization brush.

Wishful Romney doesn’t have enough n#ts stand in opposition to what the corporate elites and what should lay within his humanistic heart. Conversely, his father, George Romney stood for further civil right acts and at the time stood up to his boss, then President Nixon who opposed desegregation of the suburbs. Hell….., George Romney even walked out of the 1964 Republican Convention in protest due to the collective pivoting of the Republican party towards extremism, just like they are doing in today’s heated political environment.

When Zoraida Fonalledas of Puerto Rico walked up to the podium approximately two weeks ago to give her report, White Republican/Tea party members stood up in solidarity and protested. On the other hand, Wishful President Romney stood in naked silence. He should’ve publicly condemned the act of Republican extremism. He failed to do so! Therefore, it must be assumed that he quietly supported this shameful and obvious act of radicalism. I sincerely believed that George Romney would’ve condemned this behavior.

In summary, Wishful President Mitt is certainly a Romney clan member. However, he’s certainly not George Romney!

Razor said...

Thrasher, only at first blush does it appear that CD went over the top with the lynching/burning/mutilating photo with Romney in the foreground. However, when you consider historically the true gravity, reality and potential of the game that Romney is/has been playing....it's the same game that has been played out over our hollocaust. You said it yourself.

As far as CD being the one who did it...well, why not? The picture is genius. It graphically illustrates what he has paid his journalistic dues for with many considered words and research for some time now. Having what I suspect is a clear understanding of our history here in America, you should be able to appreciate the connective truth. My thought was, that CD anticipating the first blush reaction of some (new visitors to WARN) further contextualized it.

Regular visitors of WARN only needed to read the caption and see the photo...I get it...clearly. CD gets it...clearly.

The analogy of the elite businessman keeping his own hands, though not conscience, clean of the murders of innocents, while cheering from the shadows, then walking away from the grotesque scene with a smirk...that's telling the story CD...well.

chaunceydevega said...

@black sage. It is apt and appropriate. I am working on something for this week and next that will put this all in context. I play the long game which is why I am often ahead of many pundits and commentators in the msm...who often come around to where I have been for months.

@Razor. I do not think that many Americans across the color line understand how routine white supremacy was and is for most of this country's history. I mentioned the WCC's and John Birchers intentionally. Romney would be right at home with them. He is ruthless; he is also a coward like I said above, there is something looking us plain in the face with Romney, his smirking, and his race baiting that I am shocked that folks have made readily apparent. I am going to remedy the oversight imminently.

makheru bradley said...

I can make a more legitimate case that Barack Obama actually enabled the racist forces who lynched Black people in Libya. No photoshop from history necessary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EzzLEi9NcQ

Obama’s R2P obviously stopped at the border of Tawergha. White supremacy is more insidiously effective when facilitated by the Black president.

http://www.youtube.com/user/tawergha?feature=results_main

chaunceydevega said...

@Thrasher. You are really a piece of work. Now you are posting demands under other fake names. Do you have a hobby or something else to do? Be gone.

CNu said...

When Zoraida Fonalledas of Puerto Rico walked up to the podium approximately two weeks ago to give her report, White Republican/Tea party members stood up in solidarity and protested.

This is a lie. The teabagger humanzees were hooting and chest thumping over a Ron Paul related issue, period.

makheru bradley said...

How about this smirk? This is the wave of the future, as crypto-fascism becomes more visible.

“Obama wins right to indefinitely detain Americans under NDAA.”

[A lone appeals judge bowed down to the Obama administration late Monday and reauthorized the White House’s ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or due process.]

http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-lohier-ndaa-stay-414/

Our First Amendment rights are under a neo-liberal assault.

Perhaps Joe Biden should have said: “We’re, instead of ‘they’re,’ going to put y’all back in chains.”

E.C. 2 said...

GEORGE Romney CHAMPIONED Civil Rights. WILLARD MITT Romney OPPOSED, and STILL OPPOSES, Civil Rights.

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY would have STAYED at that 1964 Republican National Convention and stood alongside Barry Goldwater, and he would support Goldwater's opposition to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

One of Romney's advisers on the issues of nominations to the Supreme Court and the nominations to the Federal Courts is Robert Bork, and Bork favors either the repeal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act or having the Supreme Court declare the 1964 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional, and/or favors the Supreme Court reinstating or rebuilding the Plessy vs. Fergusen ruling that made Jim Crow Segregation legal until 1954.

E.C. 2 said...

Add to that, Racist Romney's admiration for Racist Ronald Reagan stems from Reagan's anti-civil rights racist posititons and sentiments.