Southern Racist Etiquette Backfiring On GOP

The aftermath of the recent government shutdown resulting in record low approval ratings for the Republican Party, seems to have given the big money billionaire conservatives, and other business interest, pause. However, their cries are falling on deaf ears. The populist anti-government?Tea Party,?driven by ideology, doesn’t seem to care what they have to say. As noted in an article written by MJ Lee for Politico.

In the article, “Government shutdown: Wall Street Angry At Tea Party It Has No Influence Over,” Lee wrote,?”The reality is that deep-pocketed financial services executives and their lobbyists have little leverage against tea party lawmakers who don’t much care for financiers or big banks and don’t rely heavily on the industry for campaign cash.”

At the top of this donor list are the infamous Koch Brothers. David and Charles Koch are?both?lifelong?libertarians, and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes. The Koch Brothers have funded much of the libertarian-conservative activism around the country.

What we have seen is a?political opportunistic like Ted Cruz, (R, Texas), and Rand Paul, (R, Kentucky), capitulate to these blocks of angry, burn down government radicals feeding them the anti-government red raw meat that has led to a government shutdown and talks of civil war within the Republican party.

Now that the negative results, (Polls),are streaming in like a Carolina high tide, the Koch Brothers and other well-funded groups are trying to herd these Tea Party folks back into their pins without much success. As evidence to this point, a letter was sent out by Phillip Ellender, a chief lobbyist for the firm, which distances the Koch Brothers from this movement.?A movement, in fact, they helped create. In the letter Ellender wrote;

“We believe that Congress should, at a minimum, keep to sequester-level spending guidelines, and develop a plan for more significant and widespread spending reductions in the future,”?this letter came in response to majority leader Harry Reid’s comments on the Senate floor:?”Very rich people in?America who don’t believe in government?have used Obamacare as a conduit?to shut down the government.” Harry Reid cited an article from the New York Times which indicated the Koch Brothers and other deep pocketed conservatives worked with Tea Party and Libertarian elements within the party to effectively shutdown the government months in advance.

Moreover, there is a larger story-line here. The Southern Nationalist movement, which engulfs the Tea-Party crowd and the Libertarians, white supremacist, religious right, anarchist, and overall hate the government types in general the ‘South will rise again crowd,” have set up rules of engagement type criteria for advancing their cause. An etiquette of attitude and physical behavior to “fight the good fight.”

These rules of engagement are to be instituted into the Southern psyche to help them to survive the coming of the big bad boogie man government, coming to steal their freedoms and their liberty. ?To push back the liberal socialist communist government hounds, one organization headed up by Michael Hill, League of the South, has a Facebook page that lists 12 rules of engagement for people to follow.

What struck this writer was their first mantra which advocates violence. 1. The mantra, ?Violence [or the serious threat thereof] never settles anything is patently false. History shows that it indeed does settle many things. Please don’t forget this?your enemy hasn’t.”

Southern folks love to play Army in the woods. We have seen so-called private militia groups spring up all over the South.??There is one thing missing, however, from these groups and that is the ” well-regulated militia” part of the equation. Their seems to be?no regulation of these groups whatsoever, which many are now calling nothing more than Domestic Terrorist groups.

This?leads to mantra #7. Hill writes, “7. Don’t engage the enemy on ground of his own choosing. Don’t accept his labels??domestic terrorist,? ?right-wing extremist,? ?racist,? ?anti-Semite,? etc. These terms are meant to shame and marginalize you. Know you own mind and laugh them off. This is quite unsettling to the enemy. Once he sees that you don’t wish to be accepted into his ?society,? then he loses a major weapon (ostracization) to use against you.”

There is no question this group is advocating special privilege for whites.?Even to the point of violence. Hill suggest that violence does solve things so anyone with half a mind still intact could anticipate there would be such labels attached to this kind of behavior and mindset.

Basically, this Organization and others both smaller and larger are advocating violence and are calling their followers to Civil War?against?the U.S. Government.

’12. We are already at war?we just don’t know it. One instance: Immigration. This is not just a matter of policy. It’s a matter of our very survival as white men and women of European Christian stock on this land we call the South. It is a zero sum game?we win or they win. There is no middle ground for compromise.”?Michael Hill

Lastly, when you factor in the religious right-wing zealots, like the Westboro church crowd, and you factor in the push by libertarians, like Ron and Rand Paul, and all these other right-wing politicians who advocate ignoring the “Church and State” clause of the U.S. constitution, and replace it with Christian Reconstruction and Dominionism.

When you add in the mix, the above mention mindsets, who call for violence and government overthrow, when we see deep pocketed contributors whose agenda is to get government regulation off their backs so they fund and fuel this discourse, what we have as a result is a divided nation which is where a minority party, like the Republican party, wants us to be. They want people disgusted with government so they will become discouraged and not participate, thinking that it’s all rigged anyway. They encourage the institutionalized racism that would gerrymander districts, implement regressive voter ID laws, repeal rights to woman and others who tend to vote for democrats.

In earnest, these type realities are not far removed from a horrid time in America’s past. Time that became know to most Southerners as “The War of Northern Aggression.”

 

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Edited by SS