Filed under: Politics, Religion, Strategy | Tags: bigotry, political theory, sexism
I am sensing a subtle change in the discourse, even here in Mississippi. The political landscape is shifting. Young people are paying attention to politics. Older people are questioning long-held assumptions. Progressives are getting organized and learning to be assertive. I believe people of good will have more and better opportunities to make real changes in this country than we’ve had since the early 90s. We need to make the most of these opportunities.
We are faced with some uncomfortable truths. Racism and sexism are still alive in this country. A lot of people have been complacent (perhaps even fatalistic) about them for quite a few years now. We need to start thinking about them again.
David Neiwert has a very thought-provoking post on racism that I think provides a good starting point for beginning to evaluate race relations in the here-and-now and figuring out how to start making progress on racism again. I also recommend the comments thread.
Echidne has a post on sexism that I think does a good job of pointing out some things that are very helpful to anyone interested in understanding sexism in these 21st Century United States. IMO, the comments thread on this post is very intersting reading.
A word about these two bloggers. Dave has assembled an impressive body of work, and his credentials are impressive, too. Orcinus is one of the first blogs I discovered in the dark days of the run-up to the war. Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism, which you can find on his sidebar, really opened my eyes. He knows the far right and he knows the media. Intimately. Echidne is also a long-time fave of mine. I trust her powers of observation, and her understanding of gender relations, as much or more than any of the great writers who post on the big feminist blogs.
Here’s a third piece of the puzzle. The histories of race and gender bigotry in this country are long. A deep, ugly, and persistent strain of religious bigotry is entertwined with them and enables them both. I suggest that we need to start thinking about these three separate historical narratives as related. What do they have in common? How do they reinforce and enable one another? Are there things we can do to that will help reduce them all at once? I am not sure. But I have a theory about where they all converge.
I ask a simple question: What are the people who I have met that fall into the category of religious, racial, and sexist bigots all at the same time like? My answer: Far right Christians who go by various names. Dominionist theocrats. Evangelical Fundamentalists. Christian White Supremacists. This is not a monolithic group, and I have named only the most extreme elements. It’s a lot of different organizations. Some of them excel at seeming “mainstream.”
These are the people exerting the social pressure that make it so easy for Conservative Movement elites to push the Overton window to the right. Expose their connections to the so-called “moderate” wing of the Republican Party, and most decent Christians will be outraged by those connections. Show how their ideas: Their political theory, their theology, their economics, and their various ideologies of hatred are used by the warmongers and the profiteers to construct the grand narrative of “social conservatism.” Connect them to Reagan. Connect them to Iraq. That’s how you win the game in the short term, and it is how you win the South in the long-term.
I know this isn’t a perfect argument, but I think there is something in here worthwhile. Will someone help me see these pieces of the puzzle more clearly, and assemble them into a coherent whole? Theocracy, and the sort of political ideas that I call theocracy-lite (see: the Mike Huckabee campaign) seems to be the place where our most pressing social and political problems converge.
This is the first of a series of posts for the latest installment of Blog Against Theocracy. At some point this weekend, I’ll write the post that actually gets linked to the BAT blog.
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This is an excellent post. Thank you. I am glad to see that there is a reasonable discussion of racism and sexism and religious bigotry as all evils that need to be addressed. Lately it seems as if sexism is A_OK even from people who are e-screaming about racism and throwing that word around like its candy. In my view, this goes back to Locke’s theory that liberty and property were intricately linked. Most people had some sort of property element in them–as servants whose labor was the property of someone else, as wives who were the property of their husbands, and as enslaved people, whose persons were property entirely. The only free people were masters and there were few of them. As other people became free and were no longer property, power became something that had to be grabbed, because it could no longer simply be held. I don’t have answers, but you got me thinking.
Comment by 1dumblonde 21 March, 2008 @ 9:58 pmThanks! I am glad you like the post, and hope you’ll come back. I think we need to think about all three of these forms of bigotry at the same time. I think there are important relationships between them!
I haven’t looked into Locke in quite some time, so I’ll throw some Rousseau back at you.
Rousseau is fascinating. I don’t endorse his philosophy as perfect. In fact, some of it is quite dangerous, to my way of thinkin. He wanted to destroy the philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Grotius because he thought their ideas of liberty were insufficient and favored the powerful. If I remember correctly, he argued that, the moment humans first divided property among themselves, they became less free; and he equated that first division of property to the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I find that very interesting.
Comment by Gene'O 21 March, 2008 @ 10:22 pmRousseau is an interesting character as well as an interesting philosopher. Everywhere man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains, or something close. I think he’s closer to the truth on property and liberty than Locke, but because he wrote the Social Compact people think he was in Locke-step. OK, bad pun. Absolutely thinking about the triumvirate of race, sex, and religion is important. It all comes together in America like no place else. I look forward to future posts and I am putting you on my blog roll. Don’t read mine. I have been too bent out of shape lately, and it’s not the usual me.
Comment by 1dumblonde 21 March, 2008 @ 10:45 pmAck! No! not in Locke step. He wanted to rip Locke’s philosophy up by the roots (It’s where we get our idea of a political radical(radical and radish come from the same latin word meaning “root”). What are they teaching in schools these days? Next time some one tells you that, sit them down and make them compare and contrast Locke’s and Rousseau’s versions of the state of nature. They’ll never make that mistake again.
He is indeed an interesting character. And, way closer to the truth on property. But his solution to the problem is a recipe for all manner of mischief. I think he may be the first modern Western philosopher to truly appreciate the potential of education to shape the ideology of the masses. In addition to his discourses, I recommend his Confessions.
Comment by Gene'O 21 March, 2008 @ 10:57 pm