Context is everything, and in willfully misrepresenting the past, repugicans create a false premise upon which to build their plans for
the future…
I find myself at year’s end reflecting on the months past. It is that
time of year to take stock of where we are and where we must be.
The repugicans are busy tallying up the year as well, of course, and their
own analysis can be enlightening. I am struck by many things as I peruse wingnut sites, but the repugican capacity for self-deception is,
as it is every year, a source of wonder. In reading the end-of-year
commentary from Wing Nut Daily, I found many examples.
Joseph Farah took the opportunity to attack not Congress’ but Obama’s work ethic in “The Obama Lifestyle“; Curtis Ellis attacked The Sultanate of Brunei
(and Obama and Boehner in the bargain) for embracing Shariah Law,
hypocritically ignoring his own party’s desire for imposing (an albeit
bastardized) Mosaic Law on our own country; Matt Barber, indulging in
pink swastika fantasies, implored readers to “stand your ground against homofascism“; while Larry Klayman, who has tried repeatedly to bring down the Obama administration through displays of decidedly limp public protests, denounced Obama’s immigration action in “The emperor’s political Xmas present.”
But it was Star Parker, I think, who really epitomized the wingnut capacity of intellectual overreach in her “For 2015: More morality, less politics.” But perhaps one should not hope for much from a black repugican female who thinks blacks were better off as slaves.
Here she introduces the subject matter as being “social justice,” a
timely topic no one can deny. But she proceeds from the false premise
that “Americans originally aimed to build an other-worldly ‘City on a
Hill.'”
It is as though she doesn’t realize there were other
colonies with other aims and other religious beliefs. The Jamestown
Colony wasn’t after cities on hills and they got here before Winthrop
and his city on a hill gang, way in 1607. And they were after gold and
other riches, which is hardly a surprise given they were founded by a
corporation, the London Company:
They got so busy looking for loot that they forgot
about feeding themselves, with predictable results. And we could point
to Lord Baltimore’s Maryland Colony, which also wasn’t after cities on
hills. They had tobacco in mind. The list goes on.
We can probably nail that proud owner of a 'degree' in christian education, David Barton, as the source for that. But as repugicans will tell you, they are big believers in personal
responsibility, so Star Parker must take her share of the blame for her
ignorance.
So while some early colonists did aim for a ‘City on
a Hill’ Parker willfully ignores all those who did not. Puritan John
Winthrop did not speak for all colonists everywhere, then or later, when
he told Massachusetts Bay colonists that their colony would be that
“city on a hill.” And he didn’t get here until 1630, when the “let’s
make money” set had already established itself on these shores.
She asks if Americans have “made good their
audacious claims,” and I would answer that the corporate-minded have
certainly had a long history of success on these shores (tobacco has had
a long run) though shining cities on hills have been in decidedly short
supply unless you’re talking about corporate office buildings.
And while admitting that the “stock market [is]
surging to record highs, a sense prevails that something is very wrong
in America.” She points to “today’s black sense of vulnerability” but
doesn’t blame it on rampant and pervasive racism. No, she points to
“police operating in a nation where legal reality is increasingly
dictated by politicians and unions rather than moral and constitutional
clarity.”
“Constitutional clarity.” Well, that’s a mouthful.
But this is what catches my eye: Unions are to blame for police
murdering young black men? How does teabagger racism get ignored? The
KKK? Race-baiting Fox News? The increasingly ethnic nationalism of the repugican cabal itself?
She does admit that “specific issues of police
behavior need to be examined” but claims that “local law enforcement
arbitrariness must be seen as symptomatic of arbitrariness at higher
levels.”
You see where she is headed, no doubt.
That’s right. She is pointing a finger at “our
president [who] waved a magic wand and made 5 million individuals who
arrived in our country illegally legal.”
She points to the IRS, “whose job it is to collect
taxes, has been turned into a political tool by those in power to pursue
those they wish to harass,” even though the IRS did not actually pick
on conservative groups as repugicans claim. Even though the so-called
IRS Scandal was just another hoax, like Benghazi.
Then she proclaims that “America was founded as a
nation under dog” even though the Constitution actually founds our
nation as an act of “We the People,” not “dog” and not the repugican cabal’s
precious corporations, which she significantly fails to mention.
She claims,
When the job of
government is no longer to protect you but tell you where you can send
your child to school, what that child can learn, what kind of health
insurance you can buy, what employers can pay you, who you can hire and
fire, where you can live if you are poor and how to save for retirement –
you have already lost control over your life.
Interestingly, it is her fellow repugicans who want
to tell us where we can send our children to school, what our children
can learn (the bible), what health insurance we can buy (corporations
decide), what employers can pay you (as little as they want without
minimum wage), where you can live if you’re poor (nowhere, as it happens
and we’re not allowed to help you), and how to save for retirement (you
don’t; Wall Street gets to steal it).
She says that “When you give power to the wrong
people for the wrong reasons, we reap what we sow” and there at least I
can agree with her. We gave power to repugicans and now we are paying
for it. But if all her complaints seem contrived it is because none of
her complaints are real, and if consumers
are feeling a desire for real “in an increasingly staged contrived, mediated world,” how is this less true for voters?
Our solution must be based on actual, not imaginary problems, and it is, in fact,
necessarily political,
as the U.S. Constitution demands. Our solution lies not in handing
control over to cults but in taking control ourselves, as the
Constitution also demands; it lies in We the People asserting our
control over the political process, kicking cult and corporations
alike to the curb where they belong and get on with the Constitution’s
avowed purpose, which is government of, by, and for the people.
The
end of the Capetian dynasty in 1328 made Anglo-French relations even
more fragile and created a new, still more incendiary arena of
conflict—the throne of France itself. Edward III of England claimed the
title through his mother, Isabella, the late king’s sister, but a
committee of French nobles ensured it passed instead to Philip, count of
Valois. This disputed succession triggered the war.
