A Conversation with Democratic Pollster Cornel Belcher About Trump's Victory and the Racist Backlash Against Barack Obama

Cornell Belcher is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He served as Pollster for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) under Chairman Howard Dean making him the first minority to lead in that role for either national party. He also served on the polling team for both Obama presidential campaigns. Over the years, Cornell has worked with both Senate and House Democrats as Senior Political Advisor to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Cornell is the author of the new book, A Black Man in the White House: Barack Obama and the Triggering of America's Racial-Aversion Crisis.

During this week's show, Chauncey and Cornell discuss Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton, what the polling data predicted (or not) about that outcome, the errors that the Democratic Party is making strategically in terms of outreach to young black and brown voters, the power of demographics, and how the white racial backlash against Barack Obama gave Donald Trump the White House.

During this week's podcast, Chauncey gloats offers some comments on the Michael Flynn "scandal" and what the real hustle is, reads from a great profile of Trump adviser and white supremacist Stephen Miller as a young man, and shares some hate mail from a Trumpthuglican.

This episode with Cornell Belcher can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher.

The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on Spotify as well.

Got My Fancy Pants and Expensive Shoes On and Am Going to Barack Obama's Farewell Address Here in Chicago Later Today

Fingers crossed, I am on the list to see Barack Obama's farewell speech here in Chicago later today. I was not able to go to the White House conference I was invited to over the summer. But, through some well-timed emails, and the power of the Force and Crom, I should be pretty close to the stage when America's first black president gives his farewell address here in Chicago. If you see a turtle-like and grotesque looking black man with an odd looking goatee, please do yell at the TV machine and give Chauncey DeVega some love.

In his speech, Obama will channel George Washington. He will be cerebral and reflective. He will cut his own version of a pro wrestling promo on Donald Trump--in a dignified way of course. There will be some tears in the house for sure.

I am excited to witness this in person. I am also saddened to see one of America's greatest presidents say goodbye. I am disgusted with now being forced to reckon with an incompetent ignoramus and bigot named Donald Trump who will soon be soiling The White House. I doubt that I am alone in that sentiment.

Nothing fancy here. But I am sincerely curious. What do you expect from Barack Obama's farewell address? If you had a chance to ask him a question during these final weeks in office what would it be? And if you had an opportunity to speak with Barack Obama in private during this time what would you ask or request of him?

Larry Wilmore: Too Smart and Too Black for the Washington Correspondents' Dinner

At Saturday night’s 2016 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Barack Obama began his comments with a joke about “colored people time,” ended his set with a “mic drop” and then passed the baton to comedian Larry Wilmore who closed out the night with the following heartfelt comments:

When I was a kid, I lived in a country where people couldn’t accept a black quarterback. Now think about that. A black man was thought by his mere color not good enough to lead a football team — and now, to live in your time, Mr. President, when a black man can lead the entire free world.

Words alone do me no justice. So, Mr. President, if i’m going to keep it 100: Yo, Barry, you did it, my nigga. You did it.

Media critics were not pleased with Larry Wilmore. Outlets as varied as The Hollywood Reporter, Slate and the New York Post said that he “flopped,” “bombed” and “underwhelmed.”

Other observers such as the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart were offended by Wilmore’s use of the phrase “my nigga” in reference to the United States’ first black president.

Those collective voices misunderstand the genius and brilliant nature of Wilmore’s mix of comedic roast, truth-telling and quick wit. Wilmore’s audience was not the Washington media elite. He was instead speaking to the black folks in the TV audience, watching a black comedian say goodbye to their first black president.

Humor is one of the primary ways that oppressed, weak, and marginalized people speak back to Power. The serf mocks the king. The worker laughs at the boss or factory owner. The slave derides and makes fun of the master. The child goofs on the adult.

Larry Wilmore’s routine is being panned in some quarters because he broke two rules.

The Fourth Estate does not like to be criticized. The supposed “guardians of democracy” do not like to have the mirror turned back on them, where they are then forced to see their own defects.

Most importantly, Wilmore did not “code switch”—the practice wherein black folks don the mask necessary for survival in a society historically oriented around protecting white supremacy and where to be “white” is to be “American” and “normal.” He spoke as a black American in the ways that we often do in private and semi-private spaces with one another away from the White Gaze. In short, he left some white folks, both in the room and viewing the show at home, feeling decentered, as though they were not clued into the context and meaning of his humor. This discomfort is proof of Wilmore’s brilliance. It was not accidental, but rather, wholly intentional.

Was Larry Wilmore's Performance "Too Black" for the 2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner?

Obama did a "mic drop" and then Larry Wilmore proceeded to offer up a devastatingly funny and sharp performance at last night's White House Correspondents' Dinner. Wilmore was not playing to the room but rather to the black folks watching at home. Wilmore also did not engage in "code switching" (i.e. changing his language and jokes) to make white folks feel included. To that end we were treated to a performance that included references to cocoa butter, Sanford and Son, Good Times, and how "black don't crack". Wilmore doubled down by ribbing Don Lemon and calling out MSNBC's metaphorical purging and genocide against its black hosts.

Of course, this approach did not go over well with most of the attendees. His humor and critical voice also offended many other people as well.

The fourth estate does not like being told the truth about itself. Truth-telling about race is also none too welcome by either the general public and elites alike.

Of course, there will be a deluge of obligatory "think pieces" on Monday about Obama, Wilmore, race, and the use of the word "nigga" as the capstone moment of the country's first black president's last White House Correspondents' Dinner. Most of them will be tedious and uninteresting. Right-wingers will boo hoo and complain about racial "double standards" and how Obama has once again "sullied the Office of the President". Liberals and progressives possessed of thin skin and delicate sensibilities will take offense at Wilmore's biting humor and comment on how his jokes were not "inclusive" enough. And there will be some black critics who will be upset at the use of the word "nigga" and how Wilmore was not critical enough of Obama's failure to deliver specific and targeted remedies for the particular challenges facing Black America.

In all, I found the last correspondents' dinner of Obama's two terms to be a fitting end to a landmark presidency as a President who happens to be black was accompanied by a comedian who is unapologetically black and together they played with, subverted, and mocked the White Gaze. It was beautiful and glorious.

What did you think of Wilmore's performance last night? Could Obama be the first former President of the United States to successfully reinvent himself as a comedian?

A Conversation with Professor Joseph Lowndes About Obama, the Color Line, and the Future of American Politics

Professor Joseph Lowndes is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon and the author of several books and articles including From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism as well as Race and American Political Development.

In this wide ranging conversation, Joe and Chauncey discuss topics such as America's "post-post racial" present and future, the challenge of reconciling history, the past, and the present along the color line, the role of black and brown conservatives in the neo liberal conservative agenda, and the symbolism and shortcomings of the Obama presidency.

During this installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Chauncey complains about having to pay taxes (and is angry at the global plutocrats who do not), and talks about Ted Cruz's college onanism habit, shares a story about his college roommate having sex with a strange woman who had a broken arm, and is excited about potentially receiving IRS tax exempt status for his new religion "porkism".

This episode with guest Professor Joseph Lowndes can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher. The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on Spotify as well.

The Politics of Disorientation at the End of the Age of Obama

One of the most common definitions of politics is that it is a means for deciding who gets what, when, and how. Politics is also about power. Power is also many other things. For example, it is the ability to impose one’s will on another person or group. Power is rigging the game to one’s own advantage. Power is convincing a person to act against their own interest, all while they believe the opposite is true. Power is not an abstraction. It acts on our bodies. And by doing so, power gives some people more privileges and opportunities than others.

But a political agenda is also advanced by manipulating people—in one way or another—via their emotions. The average citizen may not have a deep grasp of the particulars of public policy, but they do have a sense of their own emotions and feelings about politics. Alas, we are not human calculators, making wholly rational decisions that maximize our gains. We are thinking and feeling people that use “decision rules” to arrive at an answer.

And in this moment of authoritarianism and proto-fascism by the Republican Party, of “Trumpism” and fearmongering, feelings of bigotry and hatred are being ginned up to a fever pitch. As I have written about both here at Daily Kos and elsewhere, the end of the Age of Obama has inaugurated a full-on temper tantrum by the White Right. Obama’s election in 2008 began the public fit, and it will continue after his departure from office.

Why Does the United States Still Honor White Supremacist Confederate Trash on Memorial Day?

I hope that your bellies are full of the entrail-filled stomach linings of other animals as well as the recycled Soylent Green like meat products that are created from feeding the dead to the living at America's commercial farms and slaughterhouses.

I too will be gorging on similar food items--in addition to a BBQ pork loin purchased at Walmart that is so damn good it should be illegal--and drinking high fructose corn syrup products.

Memorial Day was a tradition inaugurated after the American Civil War by (now) freed black Americans. Black America's history is American history, even while too many of those who are invested in the herrenvolk White dream and past of America in the present are dedicated to erasing such a basic fact from our schools, libraries, and other centers of learning.

Senior historian Dr. David Blight wrote a fine essay on Memorial Day's origins for the New York Times in 2011. It is still worth revisiting on this day.

But, did you know that the Confederacy is also included in Memorial Day celebrations? Moreover, that Barack Obama, the United States' first President who happens to be black has continued with a tradition where the White House sends a wreath to the Confederate Monument in Arlington?

Germany had the good sense to confront its Nazi past. yet, in the United States, the Confederacy, a treasonous rebellion that fought for white supremacy and to keep millions of black people as human property, is still celebrated and honored.

The Confederate flag is the American Swastika, the name of the founder of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest, is still on schools and street signs in the South, and the White Right still embraces the language and iconography of the Confederacy as they bemoan and attempt to usurp Barack Obama's legitimacy and authority.

One of Blight's peers, Dr. James McPherson, along with other prominent historians and academics, sent a letter to Barack Obama in 2009 in which they suggested that he stop honoring the Confederates and their white supremacist cause on Memorial Day:

Early in President Obama’s first term, a group of academics that included prominent Civil War historian James McPherson asked him to end the tradition of sending a Memorial Day wreath to the Confederate Monument in Arlington, which they felt represented “the nadir of American race relations” and “a denial of the wrong committed against African Americans by slave owners, Confederates, and neo-Confederates, through the monument’s denial of slavery as the cause of secession and its holding up of Confederates as heroes.” 

Obama opted instead to send wreaths both to the Confederate memorial and to the African American Civil War Memorial in the U Street neighborhood.

The matter of how and if the Confederacy should be honored on Memorial Day remains unresolved.

In Virginia, a group of Confederate sympathizers is upset that a local church will not allow them to fly the American Swastika during this year's Memorial Day celebrations:

John Branson is the current rector of Christ Church Episcopal in Old Town Alexandria, where Robert E. Lee worshipped and where 34 Confederate soldiers are still buried. Every year on May 24, the local branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, wearing their grays and bearing rebel flags, would hold a Confederate Memorial Day service. Branson says the rector before him put an end to the tradition. “The church has suggested that they take their ceremonies elsewhere.” 

One member of the Confederate group calls the change of policy “intolerant.” 

The parish still permits the group to hold a quiet wreath-laying ceremony in the churchyard but prohibits any display of Confederate regalia. “They have a full, formal color guard that they’d like to use, but they continue to display the Confederate flag, and we find that offensive,” Branson says.

Justice is so askew in America, that white supremacist sympathizers now complain that they are treated in an "intolerant" manner. Oh, I so dream of the day when that is in fact the rule in the United States.

Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Junior famously said that the arc of justice is long. Perhaps the arc of justice also has an ironic sense of humor as a black man who is President of the United States now sends a wreath to "honor" those who fought to keep people who look like him as human property, to be raped, murdered, tortured, and labor and wealth extracted from their bodies and souls in the service of white supremacist capitalist expansion and greed.

The secesh trash are likely rolling over in their graves at the thought of a black man being President of the United States. Alexander Stephen's white supremacist "Cornerstone Speech" is no comfort as their bones rot and they receive honorifics from a black man named Barack Obama, he who is the leader of a multicultural corporate democracy.

"I Have No More Campaigns to Run...I Know 'Cos I Won Both of 'Em": President Barack Obama is an Uppity Rude Rapscallion Negro Who Does Not Know His Place!

I am having some fun over at the Daily Kos. Liberal racists are such an easy crowd.

Near future plans: there will be a new podcast episode this Thursday. I also have a longer essay to share on Friday.

For the immediate present...

President Barack Obama successfully trolled the White Right in his seventh State of the Union Address before the United States Congress on Tuesday evening.

In my schadenfreude vision and hope, a member of the White Right shot at the cockroaches on the wall of his home with a pellet gun, while yelling at the TV about the evil Black President who "steals the white man's air" in their rage-filled response to Obama's witty quip.

Right-wing bloviators and their racially resentful and overtly bigoted public will howl--and will do so for the next few days--about the "disrespectful" and "rude" Black President (who to their eyes, introduced "petty politics", and "his arrogance", into a "sacred" American ritual).

As is their habit, for white conservatives and their allies, Barack Obama, who in reality is a very centrist Rockefeller Republican neoliberal operating under the guise of a Democrat, is a black rapscallion uppity negro who does not know his place.

And people of conscience and intelligence must never forget that the word "uppity" is an excuse for violence and murder when historically used by whites against African-Americans:

Although rape is often cited as a rationale, statistics now show that only about one-fourth of lynchings from 1880 to 1930 were prompted by an accusation of rape. In fact, most victims of lynching were political activists, labor organizers or black men and women who violated white expectations of black deference, and were deemed "uppity" or "insolent." Though most victims were black men, women were by no means exempt.

The plutocrat oligarchs laugh the whole time at the Vaudeville post-modern politics spectacle.

I know this to be true; I still allow myself, being the wrestling smart mark that I am, to enjoy the whole damned show, all the while I wonder what gems of truth and honesty about the Tea Party GOP and the White Right, more generally, that Obama will share some years from now in his autobiography and chronicle of his years as President of the United States of America.

What were your thoughts about Obama's State of the Union Address? Any insights, reactions, humor, disappointment, or the like to share and reflect upon?

Of course, what did you think of Obama's beautiful smile and damn sharp wink?

Paul Heyman's Wisdom: How Professional Wrestling Can Help Us to Understand the 2014 Midterm Elections

The Republican Party is a "babyface" territory. The Democratic Party is a "heel" territory...and that is why they lost.

I am still reflecting on the Democratic Party's thrashing by the Republicans in last week's midterm elections. The postmortem suggests that the historical pattern of a sitting President losing off year elections combined with general voter discontent about "broken" government to give the Tea Party GOP control of Congress. As I wrote here, given the extreme racial animus of the White Right, and its pull over a good segment of the white voting public, Obama's skin color also served as a negative coattail.

The Democratic Party's choice to run away from Obama ceded priceless territory and initiative to the Republicans. The latter broke the government by abandoning the common good in an effort to delegitimate the United States' first black president. The Republicans and their propaganda machine created a narrative that Obama was a failure, and is a toxic presence in the White House; Democratic candidates fell into their trap by pursuing a strategy which validated the lie.

One of my favorite, and most popular (in terms of traffic) essays is "Forget Boxing: The 2012 Presidential Election is More Like Professional Wrestling".

I believe that the analysis offered there is both analytically correct as well as novel in presentation.

In total, the suggestion that professional wrestling is a type of model for understanding, and a powerful lens through which to observe, American politics in the age of the corporatecracy, inverted totalitarianism, and spectacle remains compelling.

But, how does it explain the American 2014 midterm elections and the way that the Republicans destroyed the Democrats?

Contemplating What Petey Greene Would Say About the Boston Herald's Barack Obama 'Watermelon' Cartoon While Cornel West Keeps Spitting That Hot 'Black Prophetic Fire'

As is our habit, do treat this as a (truncated) semi-open weekend (Sunday) thread.

I am about to take my daily constitutional around the lake. While walking about I will be focusing my energies on bending the universe so that the New England Patriots can lose with dignity in their match against the Cincinnati Bengals. Last week's defeat by the Kansas City Chiefs was devastating--it reminded me of watching the Undertaker put in a last horrific match against Brock Lesnar or Hulk Hogan's last days in the squared circle. Dynasties fall; we mourn them because we are reminded both that youth triumphs over age, and of our own bodies, which at a certain point, are dying more everyday than they are living in total.

In the spirit of our semi-open thread and conversation, here are some of my random thoughts and discoveries.

Last evening, I watched Gone Girl. If the mood strikes me, and there are folks who are curious as to my thoughts on the movie, I will share them (Grantland's essay channels my thoughts about Gone Girl almost beat for beat). Fincher's work is never boring; his film-making embodies a wonderful mix of commercially acceptable auteur sensibilities. 

[Have you seen the film or read the book upon the movie Gone Girl is based? What are your thoughts and feelings about the project?]

I recently spoke with Professor Claire Potter's class at the New School--she writes as The Tenured Radical over at The Chronicle of Higher Education's website--about social media and blogging. It was a great experience and good practice for my future endeavors. One of her very smart students asked me about the use of satire and irony in my work here at WARN. It was an excellent question because I have not spent much time consciously thinking about that aesthetic and its relationship to my "performance" style. 

I told her that maybe I just hear the drums of the ancestors and am responding to them on a subconscious level because the children of the Black Freedom Struggle, like all people of the subaltern and we who are the Other, learn very early in life "how to balance our smiles and cries".

These questions of satire and irony are call backs to our earlier conversation about President Obama and the Boston Herald's racist cartoon depicting his use of watermelon toothpaste. 

Petey Greene, was/is a legendary Black American comedian and radio personality. One of his most famous moments involved eating a watermelon on television, an exercise that he transformed into a rich exploration of the White Gaze and black identity politics. 

Greene was a master satirist.

The Real Problem With the Boston Herald's Barack Obama Watermelon Cartoon

The Boston Herald published an editorial cartoon by Jerry Holbert which suggested that President Barack Obama should brush his teeth with watermelon flavored toothpaste. The original intent of the joke was to lampoon and skewer the ineffectiveness and incompetence of the Secret Service. Its topical humor was eclipsed by the controversy surrounding Holbert's use of an ugly racial stereotype. The Boston Herald has issued an obligatory "apology" as no "offense" was intended by the cartoon.

Once more and again, the myth of the liberal media is exposed. In reality, the American media routinely circulates racist images, narratives, and distortions of empirical reality about non-whites. While "prime time blackness" has helped to transform the global public's awareness of racial issues by priming whites (and others) to be more "progressive" and "inclusive", the American (and Western) media continues to operate through the white racial frame.

Consequently, it normalizes whiteness and routinely presents non-whites as somehow exotic, deviant, or abnormal. The ostensibly liberal news media channels an empty post civil rights era notion of fashionable diversity through the multicultural culture industry--which I suggest has done little to substantively improve the life chances of black and brown Americans en masse.

Holbert's watermelon cartoon has incited a range of responses.

For example, the always sharp Charles Pierce has linked Holbert and the Herald's obvious race baiting to the paper's target demographic of aging conservative whites.

Jonathan Chait--he who did not learn his lesson from the public butt whooping he received by Ta-Nehisi Coates--has bloviated a white victimologist explanation for Holbert's bigoted cartoon.

Chait's comments are instructive: they are boilerplate colorblind racism in action where he or she who is racist (sexist, homophobic, etc.) can decide the terms and context of how the target of their bad behavior ought and should respond to it in terms that are pleasing and acceptable to the former.

Moreover, Chait's excuse-making defense reminds us that white supremacy and white privilege are many things; ugly hubris and arrogance are among the most noxious of the day-to-day personality traits of those who are invested in whiteness as a type of material and psychological property that colours the behavior of the whole person.

Jerry Holbert's lazy and casual racism has been criticized on sound and reasonable grounds. An allusion to watermelons in the context of discussing Barack Obama channels one of the oldest white supremacist stereotypes about black people, one in which they are depicted as lazy, happy slaves who are subhuman and not fit for democracy.

However, while summoning righteous offense towards such overt racism, we should still ask ourselves about the mechanics and logic that cohere and give meaning to such stereotypes.

In the context of Holbert's cartoon, it would not matter if Obama was depicted as a president who happens to be black and may just like watermelon flavored toothpaste. It is the connection of "blackness" to the image of watermelons and the implication that black people are lazy, idle, and subhuman which creates the racial semiotics of the cartoon.

Friday Semi-Open Thread: Beyond the Wonks and Beltway Types. What can Political Science and 'On The Ground' Experts Teach Us About ISIL?

As is our tradition, do treat this as a semi-open weekend thread.

Happy birthday to me. I feel old. I say that every year. This year I am really feeling it. Where does the time go? I would like to thank one of the kind supporters of WARN who sent me some birthday monies that I will use to purchase a great graphic novel series they recommended. Big smiles and thanks to them.

For my birthday weekend, I will be going to the casino, seeing the new movie The Drop, attending a Star Wars themed burlesque show (anticipating your questions, no, I am not the star of the show), and eating at Maggiano's and Wildfire as my dinner treats to myself. I am a master of the mid high tier restaurant scene.

Any other Virgos in the house? How do you of lesser astrological signs celebrate/reflect on the anniversary of being forced out of your mother's birth canal?

A more important question: What did you think of President Obama's speech on ISIL and his plans to "destroy" the "threat" which they represent to the United States and its allies?

I was not impressed by Obama's speech. Its meandering detour to matters of the economy was vexing. He was describing events which have already taken place and/or are in process--the United States has likely already been doing on a covert level the things that Obama is now finally publicly proposing.

Obama sounds and looks tired. Given the difficulties he has faced both from the White Right at home, as well as the mess unleashed abroad by a failed Iraq intervention, and other meddling in the Middle East, even the legendary and mythic King Solomon would be made weary.

A more contemporary allusion: I was not expecting The King's Speech, but Obama's timbre channeled Robert Dinero's voiceover in the last act of the classic movie Casino. Like Dinero, Obama is trapped by a set of outcomes, none of which are desirable or good. Obama is a bound man.

Barack Obama is the John Cena of American Politics: You Make the Call. Cornel West Versus Melissa Harris-Perry Part 2

As is our weekend habit, do treat this as a semi-open thread.

I hope that you have a nice Labor Day weekend. Does anyone have a BBQ or similar outing planned? Any tips or tricks from you grill masters?

The election of Barack Obama also began a series a feuds among various elements of the "left", "liberals", and "progressives". Some of the most intense spats were between black public intellectuals whose responses to Obama's tenure center on his willingness to negotiate with obstructionist and racist Republicans, how the president is the Scold-in-Chief of Black America (and silent on white racism), and is a pawn of Wall Street and the corporateocracy.

Politics is professional wrestling. The newest angle in the feud is Cornel West's blistering take down of President Obama. In a much discussed conversation with Thomas Frank, West engages in some harsh truth-telling. For example, he says the following about Obama:

An Ugly Secret Hiding in Plain Sight: Racism and Political Polarization in the Age of Obama

According to a recent Pew Research Foundation report, liberals and conservatives live in different worlds. The report depicts a society where finding common ground to confront shared problems is all but impossible. Pew’s research provides empirical evidence for the common-sense notion that America’s political culture is broken.

The report details how those on the Left and the Right do not talk with one another, have separate social networks, different values, consume different news media, live in neighborhoods with politically like-minded people, and possess different attitudes about America’s changing ethnic and racial demographics.

The report notes that "far more liberals than conservatives think it is important that a community have racial and ethnic diversity (76% vs. 20%). At the same time, conservatives are more likely than liberals to attach importance to living in a place where many people share their religious faith (57% vs. 17% of liberals).”

Most importantly, the Left and the Right cannot agree on basic facts about the nature of empirical reality. Movement conservatives are immersed in a fantasy land of mythological thinking on a range of issues from global warming and science to the economy and foreign policy.

Liberals and conservatives are also unable to agree on the nature of the common good and the role to be played by the social compact in American life.

As Pew’s new report suggests, how can a society come together to solve its problems if its members cannot agree on basic facts?

While little discussed in the report, attitudes about race and the color line are central fissures in polarized America. The oft-discussed “browning of America,” and the country’s changing demographics, are a source of anxiety for many white Americans. The ahistorical claim (whiteness is an expanding and adaptive racial category; there are “white” people today who would not have been considered white in the earlier parts of the 20th and 19th centuries) that in the near future white people will no longer be a majority group in the United States is a potent tool for white conservatives to mobilize their base through division and fear.

A sophisticated and nuanced understanding of American politics requires that one grapple with white supremacy’s enduring power to shape the political terrain of the United States. Extreme political polarization is a reflection of how the Republican and Democratic parties have positioned themselves on questions of race and social equality. The Democratic Party is identified as the party of “racial minorities.” The Republican Party is almost exclusively white. Consequently, both organizations have crafted political strategies which they believe best leverage their voting public.

The Democratic Party is more inclusive and seeks to maintain and expand its support among people of color. The Republican Party has chosen from the Southern Strategy of the late 1960s onward, to use white identity politics, and a mix of overt and covert racist appeals, to mobilize white voters.

The Tea Party, the most powerful faction in the GOP, is a typical example of that process: its members are more racially resentful, have higher levels of white racial animus than “mainstream” conservatives, and are beginning to think of their political interests in explicitly racial terms.

And because the Republican Party is increasingly dependent on a shrinking base of older white conservatives voters, its leaders have decided to pursue a strategy of voter suppression, harassment and intimidation to limit access to the franchise by non-whites as a way of gaining an electoral advantage.

Racial attitudes and partisanship are deeply intertwined: together they have created the highly polarized American public.

The election of Barack Obama, the United States’ first black president, has been the political equivalent of pouring gasoline on dynamite. Obama is both black and a Democrat. He is the public face and leader of the Democratic Party. This is a perfect storm for white racial animus and extreme partisanship by the white right and the Tea Party GOP.

Why is Eric Holder Finally Telling the Truth About the Republican Party's Racist Opposition to Barack Obama?

I hope that you all had a nice and restful weekend. Here in Chicago, we alternated between torrential rains and thunderstorms and wonderful, unseasonably mild weather. The Taste of Chicago, one of the country's largest food festivals, also took place. The additional traffic and tourists are annoying. But, I do like watching folks marvel at a city which I often take for granted.

If I was a professional wrestler, my bio would read "from Connecticut by way of Chicago". "Parts unknown" always makes for an intriguing origin story--rest in peace Ultimate Warrior.

I would like to begin the week with a question. In a recent interview with ABC, Attorney General Eric Holder told the truth about the role played by white racial resentment and racism in the White Right's opposition to Barack Obama where he said how:

“There's a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that's directed at me [and] directed at the president,” Holder told ABC. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. … There's a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there's a racial animus."

The readers' comments in response to Holder's statement are boilerplate "colorblind" conservative racism: they follow the tired, but still very revealing script, where white racists use racist logic and speech to deny that they are in fact racists.

Movement conservatism is a white supremacist ideology. Its adherents and advocates are unable to reason outside of that framework; white supremacy is their normal and foundational assumption about the nature of empirical reality. Moreover, white conservatives become extremely agitated and rageful when the role of white supremacy as a unifying ideology for their political belief system is exposed.

Religious fundamentalists act the same way when the concept of God is challenged as a childish myth and fantasy. Contemporary conservatism is a cult where white supremacy is one of the godheads. Both rage at their heretics and those others who are non-believers.

A Broken Saxophone Playing 'Hail to the Chief: Are Black Americans Worse Off After Six Years of Barack Obama?

There is an black saxophone playing street musician who is a fixture on Michigan Avenue here in Chicago. I have been living in Chicago for more than ten years. I would guess that he has been here for many more years than me.

There are many black street musicians, drummers, creative types, shoeshine men, newspaper salespeople, panhandlers, and others who comprise the familiar faces, on every block, that make a neighborhood, a town, a city, or a well-traveled thoroughfare more than just a collection of random people and buildings.

This saxophone playing street musician is distinguished and made special by his limited catalog of songs. He plays "When the Saints Go Marching In" with passion and glee. The theme from Sanford and Son is another one of his crowd pleasing classics. He loses his way on songs by Sinatra and the standard "Feelings". His limitations may be a function of a broken saxophone and tired reed, hands not as dexterous as in years before.

He is self-trained. The saxophone man is not a virtuoso who has fallen on hard times, where drink, or drugs, or love, or a bad economy and poor investments broke him.

He is a workaday man who went to a job for many years and somehow through poor decision-making--did the saxophone man do a bid in prison for a petty crime that had the promise of great fortune attached to it by his more streetwise and crooked friends?--found himself with his Alto sax, playing outside, everyday, for monies that he brings home to a relative, friend, lover, or fellow traveler, the latter blessed with more luck than him, which the saxophone man throws into the communal rent and utilities pile.

The brother is always clean. His old clothes are very neat. He takes pride in his work and appearance.

Tourists pay him because that is what tourists, especially white tourists in the "big city" do, throwing some change into the hat or cup of the poor black street musician as part of the fee, the noblesse oblige that is "taking it all in" while on holiday. While on safari, one is expected to feed the animals.

The saxophone playing street musician also extracts a tithe and blackmail money. The folks who work in the office building above wherever he has created an informal stage for the day's performance must pay him, for purposes of productivity, sanity, and piece of mind, to relocate his atonal concert once the novelty and familiarity have grown thin. His playing is an announcement that a new day is here; his playing is also an announcement that a new day in a job that I already do not like is here too. He smiles while accepting the bribe.

On the night of Barack Obama's election in 2008, the black street musician saxophonist played "Hail to the Chief" with enthusiasm and vigor. The marks cum pigeons were ready to be plucked. A smart businessman understands that success is a function of timing, luck, and leveraging the emotions of a potential customer. Obama's election in 2008 was a night of lucre for him, sadly it was the finite and limited lucre of a poor or working class man earning 50 dollars a turn.

He knows it is not much in relative terms. There are businessmen who spend that amount as part of their nightly after work winding down drinking ritual. Some people would kill for less. It is several meals, a fix, or enough to feed their children and pets for a week or two. The symbolic value of 50 dollars is what matters to the saxophone man. The transaction makes him feel like the richest person in the world. His work and art were acknowledged by strangers, they who are his friends.

The Michigan Avenue black street performer saxophonist herald and Pied Piper of Obama's 2008 presidential election blew a broken saxophone that produced off key notes for an emotion filled rendition of "Hail to the Chief".

Featured Reader's Comment: Do You Think That Interracial Hostility and Animus Have Increased Since the Election of Barack Obama in 2008?

I would like to follow-up on our earlier conversation about Dinesh D'Souza's new "film" and the Right-wing propagandized public. 

I featured the below comment on that thread, but I would still like to bump it up here. 

SabrinaBee relayed the following experience:

As to the looney right, my, but they are becoming more frustrated and unable to control themselves. Just bursting with so much anger that, they have to act out in some way. I was in Barnes and Noble and two men, that fit the movie audience you described above, were talking to each other, in a reasonable voice. That is, until I happened upon the new arrivals table. Noticng me, one fine gentleman raised his voice, several octaves and proceeded to voice how bad Obama is for America. Of course, I looked up and, sure enough, he was looking in my direction. I suppose he was expecting to get a defensive reaction out of me when, in reality it was the raising of the voice that caused me to look up. 

If i wasn't afraid the man would have a massive coronary, based on the redness in his face, I might have laughed out loud. Rather, I simply moved to another section of the store. I was amused, though.

As prompted by SabrinaBee's encounter with real-life breathing in the flesh Tea Party GOPers, I have a few questions. Your answering them will help me further refine an essay that I will be sharing here on WARN later in the week. 

Stated with more brevity and precision: your answers will help me to determine if I am grasping at straws, seeing chimeras which are not there, and trying to grab the "shadow people" who are lingering in the corner of my eye.

With the election of Barack Obama in 2008 the White Right predicted an outbreak of black on white racial violence, negro rebellions, uppity behavior by rapscallion colored people, and the end of White American civilization.

Of course, none of these events came to pass. Black Americans have never sought revenge on White Americans for the crimes of the past/present.

We are too generous of spirit and have only wanted our freedom papers and full-citizenship as equal members in American society.

Alas, the Black Freedom Struggle remains a work in progress. 

There is also a potent irony at the heart of African-American political project: we have helped so many others to be free that we have neglected our own personal obligations to communal and political self-interest.

My questions.

1. Have you personally noticed or experienced a general increase in racial animus and hostility in the United States since the election of Barack Obama in 2008?

2. If you are a person of color, have you noticed or experienced an increase in the types of interpersonal racial provocations or microaggressions from white folks as detailed by SabrinaBee's story since the election of Obama in 2008?

3. If you are a white brother or sister, have you personally experienced more hostility or antagonism from people of color, blacks in particular, since the election of Obama? In addition, since President Obama's election in  2008 have you personally observed or seen an increase in racially hostile and bigoted speech, attitudes, or behavior on the part of your white friends, family members, acquaintances, or others in your social network towards people of color?

ISIS in Iraq is Not the Rave on Cobra Island: What Advice Would You Give Barack Obama About Resolving the Crisis?

I would like to thank all of the folks who donated to our fundraiser here at WARN. We met the fundraising goal. I am very appreciative and grateful for all of the kindness that the readers, fans, and boosters of the site showed to me. My begging bowl NPR request portion of the fundraising drive is now over. As always, do feel free to donate if you are so inclined, and able to, via the Paypal link on the sidebar.

Moving forward...

I have no use for the Fck Yeah America! crowd. They help to young men and women to die in imperial misadventures while taking no personal responsibility for said events--save for the hope that they can crow and gloat if the latter go reasonably "well", and then sell books and go on the lecture circuit to fatten their pockets.

If the war mongering goes badly, the advocates of the blood parade can deny any connection to it, or alternatively lie and make themselves into voices of caution and reason.

Frederick Kagan and William Kristol are cheerleaders for militaristic and imperial hubris. I am no dove. I am a hawk (within reason) who follows Clausewitz's dictum that war is the continuance of politics by other means. War should not be an end in and of itself.

Their piece in The Weekly Standard is historically myopic; it also demonstrates a lack of appreciation for both the context and history that created the Iraq-ISIS boondoggle. Iraq is a failed state, one created by the poor decision-making of George Bush the Younger's administration.

The Right-wing media have decoupled Bush from this current mess. The Iraq crisis is his child, even while the Republican Party and its media would like to deliver it as a castoff baby left on Obama's doorstep in a basket, affixed with a note that says, "will you adopt me? I need a good home."

I disagree with most of what Frederick Kagan and William Kristol wrote for The Weekly Standard.

However, I am not able to easily dismiss their observation and concern that:

What Republicans (and Others) are Loathe to Discuss: Bowe Bergdahl and the Long Tradition of American Soldiers Who Choose to Desert During Wartime

I would like to thank the folks who have contributed to our annual fundraiser here on We Are Respectable Negroes. Your support is very appreciated. Readers and follows of WARN know that we talk about a range of topics that include race and politics, as well as popular culture, academia, and military affairs here on the site. The complaints by the Republican Party about the release of Bowe Bergdahl from the Taliban demands comment because they are ahistorical and one more example, among many, of how symbolic racism influences the Right-wing on matters that extend to foreign policy.

If you like what we are doing here on WARN, and are able to throw in a few pieces of copper or silver in the begging bowl, such an act of generosity would be very much appreciated.
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Nearly 50,000 American and 100,000 British soldiers bolted during the war, mostly in North Africa and Europe. (Desertion was rare in the Pacific because there weren’t many places to go.) Glass focuses at length on the complicated sagas of three of them—one from Scotland, two from the U.S.—and in the process sweeps aside easy assumptions about the motivations and character of soldiers who followed this path. “Few deserters were cowards,” Glass writes, adding that the people who “showed the greatest sympathy to deserters were other frontline soldiers. They had, at one time or another, felt the temptation.”

Bowe Bergdahl is a member of the United States Army. He was posted to Afghanistan. Bergdahl either deserted or was captured by the Taliban. He has spent 5 years as their prisoner. Barack Obama's administration negotiated his release. Bowe Bergdahl will not be the last man left in Afghanistan after the United States finally withdraws after its long cruel imperial misadventure in that country.

Republicans have developed a name brand as "the party that is strong on national defense". In its present iteration, with two failed wars--what were a 6 trillion dollar misadventure that almost (?) led to a 2nd Great Depression--the Republican's national security bonafides are akin to Taco Bell advertising itself as "real" or "authentic" Mexican food.

Thus, the Right and its bloviators can claim that the release of Bowe Bergdahl is one more sign that Barack Obama is "weak" on national defense. Of course, Obama's foreign policy successes are many. And empirical reality suggests that Obama has actually expanded the American empire and its military's reach as opposed to weakening and undermining it.

The Republican Party's opposition to the release of Bowe Bergdahl is a function of a desperate politics wherein they are pursuing a logic of professional contrariness, a decision-rule that deems anything done by Obama to be by definition "bad" and a "failure" which "threatens" American "freedom" and "security". Politics no longer stops at the ocean; such a rule of governance was fully jettisoned by the election of the United States' first black President.

The Personal is Political: In Thinking About Barack Obama's New Initiative for Young Men of Color, Do You Have Any 'Brother's Keepers' That You Would Like to Publicly Thank?

Obama's proposed "My Brother's Keeper" initiative has encouraged me to reflect upon those folks who offered me advice in these four decades of life.

I have been blessed with many brother's keeper's along the way. I should have listened to more of their wisdom and advice. If I had done so I would be much farther along my life path, with much more money in the bank, much less debt, and more personal satisfaction. 

Who doesn't have like regrets? 

But, I did take in quite a bit of their advice and wisdom. And years later, I have discovered, after the fact, that some of my best guardians and allies were working behind the scenes to either clear the path ahead for me or beat back the vipers that were waiting to strike.

I have no doubt that the policy level analysis of Obama's proposal will be sidetracked by an embrace of the powerful symbolic elements of the showmanship which accompanied the debut of "My Brother's Keeper"--"Look Obama is on stage with black young boys and men! How beautiful!"

Those are nice words for empty stomachs.

However, symbolic politics are no substitute for dealing with the specific structural dynamics of white supremacy and class inequality that are over-determining, in a profoundly negative way, the life chances of black and brown youth and adults. 

Moreover, the very title of the program lends itself to folksy truisms about "villages raising a child" and how "back in the day" things were really so simple and different. 

Two related questions for the weekend, questions that are also a chance to say "thank you" to those who watched over us, and if we are lucky, are still doing so.