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Pat Buchanan, the velvet racist
Oct. 11th, 2009 11:20 amSomeone in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ljdemocrats posted an opinion piece by Pat Buchanan. This was my response:
This is some of the most racist stuff I've seen in a long time. Not the knock-you-in-your-face racism of the '60s, but for our time it is way, way out there.
The first thing someone with a knowledge about such things as food stamps and similar federal assistance would interject into this monologue/diatribe is that the segment of the US population who has most benefitted from such programs is white women. The thing is, Pat Buchanan knows this. He is not a dumb man. He is disingenuous to the point of dissembling. He preys on the stereotypes that have plagued our nation for decades, scores, centuries. His demagoguery inflames those on the right who have a psychological need--almost a pathology--to perceive themselves as better than an entire classification of people.
Buchanan, snug in the wealthy class, realizes that what threatens his standard of living is a redistribution of wealth, something that universal health care symbolizes. Howard Zinn, in his A People's History of the United States, described how moneyed landowners (particularly plantation owners) recognized that people who worked together had a solidarity--white indentured slaves would couple with enslaved blacks. This tendency went up the chain of class, whether bonded or free. When workers, regardless of color, began to revolt against their capitalistic employers/owners, the rich figured out that wedging race between these collective workers would drive them apart and dissolve the growing impetus for socialistic economic reform.
Buchanan is taking a page out of history. His wallet is threatened, so he rouses racial dischord. It distracts the working class (the lower class) from their ultimate goal, economic parity. But also in Mr. Buchanan's case, I believe he suffers from that pathology of needing to feel superior. Class is one way of achieving tangible superiority over one's peers. Race, a social construct, unfortunately is seen by some people as another.
ljdemocrats posted an opinion piece by Pat Buchanan. This was my response:This is some of the most racist stuff I've seen in a long time. Not the knock-you-in-your-face racism of the '60s, but for our time it is way, way out there.
The first thing someone with a knowledge about such things as food stamps and similar federal assistance would interject into this monologue/diatribe is that the segment of the US population who has most benefitted from such programs is white women. The thing is, Pat Buchanan knows this. He is not a dumb man. He is disingenuous to the point of dissembling. He preys on the stereotypes that have plagued our nation for decades, scores, centuries. His demagoguery inflames those on the right who have a psychological need--almost a pathology--to perceive themselves as better than an entire classification of people.
Buchanan, snug in the wealthy class, realizes that what threatens his standard of living is a redistribution of wealth, something that universal health care symbolizes. Howard Zinn, in his A People's History of the United States, described how moneyed landowners (particularly plantation owners) recognized that people who worked together had a solidarity--white indentured slaves would couple with enslaved blacks. This tendency went up the chain of class, whether bonded or free. When workers, regardless of color, began to revolt against their capitalistic employers/owners, the rich figured out that wedging race between these collective workers would drive them apart and dissolve the growing impetus for socialistic economic reform.
Buchanan is taking a page out of history. His wallet is threatened, so he rouses racial dischord. It distracts the working class (the lower class) from their ultimate goal, economic parity. But also in Mr. Buchanan's case, I believe he suffers from that pathology of needing to feel superior. Class is one way of achieving tangible superiority over one's peers. Race, a social construct, unfortunately is seen by some people as another.
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