How Did We Get Here?

An observation: consider a recent string of murders--the abortion doctor George Tiller, the guard at the Holocaust museum, the intended slaughter at the progressive Tides Foundation in San Francisco thwarted by Oakland police, the 1998 bombing of the Olympics in Atlanta, and now the slaughter in Tucson. These and more were all committed by white men. Can you imagine the difference in response by this nation if they had all been committed by black men? There would have been an immediate and prolonged search for conspiracy, perhaps even the invention of a conspiracy a la WMDs in Iraq. However, does that mean that there is no conspiracy?

In what follows I will argue that there is a conspiracy of sorts involved in all of these events, although not an obvious one.

The "conspiracy" was called "the Southern Strategy." It was a Republican response to the crushing defeat of Barry Goldwater's presidential bid in 1964. Let me explain. In 1968 Richard Nixon implemented the Republicans' Southern Strategy. This strategy consisted basically of replacing the century-long Democratic "solid South" with a Republican solid South. I should point out that FDR had constant problems with these Dixiecrats and on at least one occasion had to ask Eleanor to cease going to the Southern states and advocating for the civil rights of blacks because he needed their votes in Congress. Southerners were infuriated with the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision requiring integration of public schools. They were even more so with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 pushed by Lyndon Johnson. This disaffection, indeed violent opposition, of white Southerners to such Democrat-supported legislation led Nixon and other Republican leaders to strike while the iron was hot. They succeeded. The Republican Party deliberately introduced racism, the single most heinous feature of American culture, into mainstream politics to gain votes. It was almost as if the Civil War had never been fought. For this they should never be forgiven. This is the "conspiracy" that I speak of. The South became Republican in very short order and the Republican Party became dominated by Southerners and the Southern ethos. Interestingly in 2005 Ken Mehlman the then RNC chairman confessed this motive and apologized to the NAACP for doing this.

While racism remained the foundation of the Southern political and social ethos, it was not totally foreign to other parts of the country, indeed to the nation as a whole. In World War II blacks and whites were segregated into separate military units. I found it interesting that the Army's white and black units that built the Alcan Highway competed with each other even though the black units labored with debilitated equipment. However, more than racism was involved. Along with racism Southerners brought a host of long-standing grudges against the North, which was epitomized by the federal government. The federal government was the agent that sent many of the carpet baggers south and they installed blacks in positions of power over whites. While white Southerners eventually got the power back through Jim Crow laws, the resentment remained. There was the oft repeated assertion that the South would rise again and the Confederate flag remained the flag of choice. In this connection, while I have a high regard for Howard Dean, I was appalled when he suggested going south for bubba's gun tooting, rebel flag flying pickup vote. The last thing the Democratic Party needs is an infusion of Southern sentiments.

However the story, as I see it, does not end there. When the Republican Party invited Southern white racists into their party they brought more than a hatred of blacks. They brought a century old hatred of the federal government and they brought their inherent belief that some people are, by nature, better than other people. They brought an ethos of confrontation, which was endemic to their opposition to the federal government. They brought their gun culture reflected in their gun rack pickups. The gun and the rope were their symbols of superiority as practiced by decades of KKK popularity, which spread to the Middle West before retreating again to the south. While these are things found in many parts of our country, they were profoundly developed artifacts of Southern culture. I was stationed for several months in Florida during World War II. I still remember the shock this California boy experienced when he saw separate drinking fountains and public toilet facilities for "negroes" and whites. On one occasion, on a crowded bus, I offered my seat to a black woman overburdened with packages. I was promptly reprimanded by the bus driver. A long history of slavery and a hundred years of Jim Crow become deeply imbedded in a culture, which means they find a wide range of cultural expression. This political use of racism by the GOP is aptly demonstrated by a quote from Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan's campaign manager. "Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."[6]
What perhaps Nixon and other Republican leaders did not anticipate was that these newly minted Republicans would take over their party."

But to continue. These newly minted Southern Republicans quickly took over the Republican Paty, which rapidly moved from negotiation in legislation to confrontation. This is, in my opinion, the source of the political antagonism that so pervasively characterizes today's politics and is decried by so many. An example of the depth of the Republican policy of confrontation can be found in Newt Gingrich's shutdown of federal government non-essential services by withholding funds in a budget dispute with the Clinton administration.

But how, you may ask, could an old line political party of the wealthy find common cause with Bible Belt, poorly educated proletariat of the South? I believe the link can be found in the corporation. Let me cite some congruences between the Southern sentiment and corporate desires.

First, and perhaps most fundamental, the Southern hatred for the federal government and the corporate desire to keep government as small and weak as possible, except for the military, bred instant soul mates. When Ronald Reagan said that government was not the solution, but was the problem, he was inciting the energetic support of both groups.

Second, the Southern love of the military coincided with the corporate desire to use the military to gain its global objectives, particularly oil and the military as a source of major profit.

The religious charismatic fundamentalism of the South would seem in irreconcilable opposition to the more modernist churches of the North. I suspect the militarism intimately associated with Southern protestant religion helped as corporations saw an excellent recruitment motivator for its military. There are few greater military motivators than religion. Recruitment went center stage when the military went all volunteer after the Vietnam war.

I also think that as the textile industries of the North moved south for cheaper labor that many in the South viewed the corporation as a means of economic advancement.

These are some of the congruences. I am sure there are many more, possibly more significant than those I have mentioned.

The penetration of Southern culture into national politics by way of its takeover of the Republican Party has been so thorough that I think we are able to say that the South has indeed risen again. In a world of increasing violence-oriented technology I think this cultural, socio/political development poses a significant threat to this nation and the world it still hopes to dominate.

A caveat: When I use the term Southern culture I of course do not mean every white Southerner. Bill Moyers, Jim Hightower and Molly Ivins are all Southerners. However, they all are or were at odds with the culture they were raised in. Molly did, however, write an article in defense of "bubba", whom she felt was misguided, but of good heart.

Cultures generally have three major groups; the fanatic at one end and the skeptic at the other. Most people however are somewhere in the middle, primarily focused on their own lives, taking the culture for granted. However, when cultural values seem threatened they can easily become energized, even to the point of fanaticism. The salient point is that criticism of a culture does not necessarily imply criticism of a particular member of the culture.

In 1944 Gunnar Myrdahl published his 1,500 page landmark study of racism in the United States and its threat to democracy titled An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. In the last two years we have seen the rapid rise of the corporation-created, racist Tea Party. Will we never learn?

Bob Newhard