What No One Says: Apartheid, Coming to America
Such interesting times with all of these Tea Partier in their tricorn hats and patting themselves on the back for be being such strict Constitutionalists. So dedicated to the vision that Founding Fathers had for our nation. Purportedly. Never mind that they had to fight a civil war to give freedom to the slaves and add the fourteenth Amendment. These Tea Partiers are so very dedicated to our Constitution. Until of course they decide that it's inconvenient and decide that they need to start cutting parts out because, clearly, the Founding Fathers never intended for Mexicans to cross the border and drop their litters on American soil.
Its not like the Founding Fathers were really all that or that the Constitution is a sacred document or anything. So, just to be clear, a strict Constitutionalists is someone who is adamant that the Constitution is a document that should be amended for political (the removal of the 14th Amendment to deny citizenship for child born on American soil...screw you anchor babies!) or emotional (rescind the Freedom of Religion portion of the 1st Amendment to prevent further mosques being built on American soil) convenience.
Why is this an issue? Why does it even matter? It matters because of time and inevitable realities. As it stands, the baby boomer generation is in the process of aging and eventually dying. The generation that fought WW2 is all but extinct. Already, among the white majority, deaths are surpassing births. Hispanics are the largest minority and on their way to supplant whites as the racial majority. This is the "browning of America" and cause for great alarm in many racist and political quarters. As a man descended from Mexicans who is married to a black woman, that is not a problem for me.
However, with the passing of Az1070 and calls for repeal of the 14th Amendment, there is a very real attempt to criminalize a segment of the largest and fastest growing portion of our population. Coupled, in Az at least, with a movement to popularize the private prison industry and the right "tough on crime"laws, all of these conspire to make a growth industry out of a police state targeting minorities. Much as we saw during the Reagan Administration with the War on Drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing, which targeted blacks. All of which creates an incentive for the government, local or otherwise, to short change the educational system. A quality education is the best chance to avoid incarceration, which is NOT in the best interests of the prison industrial complex.
The Tea Parties and the Right Wing Noise Machine drum 24/7 that the greatest threat to our nation is socialism, communism, Nazism. The thought that the federal government is at all responsible to its citizens during hard times, and answerable to its least able during the best of times. The small government crowd are of the opinion that the sole role of government is killing people abroad (in wartime activities) and at home (law enforcement and national security) and spying on its own. All that plus monitoring every pregnancy to insure that it doesn't end in abortion. The small gov crowd also tend to be extremely anti-abortion, making every uterus gov't property. This, again, ties into fears of a vanishing white majority which is also subsumed into the "full quiver movement."
What you don't hear from the Right Wing is this: While whites as a racial majority diminish, what grows is income disparity. More and more money is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands...the vast majority of whom are white. While the white majority exists now, its not to be commented on because it doesn't seem unusual. Nor does it seem unusual that political and legal power is also tightly gripped by white hands as well. Those with money are able to buy the best education for their children putting them in the best position to lead in their own turn. As education costs rise placing the opportunity for education oneself or one's children beyond reach, the pool of qualified educated individuals from which future leaders arise shrinks.
The proposed changes of the rules for the game already in progress (repeal of the 14th Amendment, the controversy of the 10th, the appeal for limited suspension of religious freedom of the 1st) all point toward a willingness to game the system with a view toward consolidating power and control over a populace that is looking less and less like those wielding power.
If, and it is a very big if, laws like Az 1070 gain popularity and traction across the nation, as well as prison privatization with a concurrent defunding of education...the end result would be, not so much Nazi Germany, or even Jim Crow South, but looking far more like Apartheid South Africa. Wealth, education, and prosperity for the few. And a police state for everyone else.
That is the future we appear to be crawling toward and that is the one thing nobody talks about. That would be the death of the America I know and love, and that I have a huge problem with that.
P.S. A big piece of the puzzle I left out was voter suppression. No exaggeration. 2012 will make Bush v. Gore look like Queensbury rules. Participatory democracy will be the ladder which the power elite kicks away with the NEXT Republican presidency in order to preserve their fiscal and political hegemony.
Its not like the Founding Fathers were really all that or that the Constitution is a sacred document or anything. So, just to be clear, a strict Constitutionalists is someone who is adamant that the Constitution is a document that should be amended for political (the removal of the 14th Amendment to deny citizenship for child born on American soil...screw you anchor babies!) or emotional (rescind the Freedom of Religion portion of the 1st Amendment to prevent further mosques being built on American soil) convenience.
Why is this an issue? Why does it even matter? It matters because of time and inevitable realities. As it stands, the baby boomer generation is in the process of aging and eventually dying. The generation that fought WW2 is all but extinct. Already, among the white majority, deaths are surpassing births. Hispanics are the largest minority and on their way to supplant whites as the racial majority. This is the "browning of America" and cause for great alarm in many racist and political quarters. As a man descended from Mexicans who is married to a black woman, that is not a problem for me.
However, with the passing of Az1070 and calls for repeal of the 14th Amendment, there is a very real attempt to criminalize a segment of the largest and fastest growing portion of our population. Coupled, in Az at least, with a movement to popularize the private prison industry and the right "tough on crime"laws, all of these conspire to make a growth industry out of a police state targeting minorities. Much as we saw during the Reagan Administration with the War on Drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing, which targeted blacks. All of which creates an incentive for the government, local or otherwise, to short change the educational system. A quality education is the best chance to avoid incarceration, which is NOT in the best interests of the prison industrial complex.
The Tea Parties and the Right Wing Noise Machine drum 24/7 that the greatest threat to our nation is socialism, communism, Nazism. The thought that the federal government is at all responsible to its citizens during hard times, and answerable to its least able during the best of times. The small government crowd are of the opinion that the sole role of government is killing people abroad (in wartime activities) and at home (law enforcement and national security) and spying on its own. All that plus monitoring every pregnancy to insure that it doesn't end in abortion. The small gov crowd also tend to be extremely anti-abortion, making every uterus gov't property. This, again, ties into fears of a vanishing white majority which is also subsumed into the "full quiver movement."
What you don't hear from the Right Wing is this: While whites as a racial majority diminish, what grows is income disparity. More and more money is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands...the vast majority of whom are white. While the white majority exists now, its not to be commented on because it doesn't seem unusual. Nor does it seem unusual that political and legal power is also tightly gripped by white hands as well. Those with money are able to buy the best education for their children putting them in the best position to lead in their own turn. As education costs rise placing the opportunity for education oneself or one's children beyond reach, the pool of qualified educated individuals from which future leaders arise shrinks.
The proposed changes of the rules for the game already in progress (repeal of the 14th Amendment, the controversy of the 10th, the appeal for limited suspension of religious freedom of the 1st) all point toward a willingness to game the system with a view toward consolidating power and control over a populace that is looking less and less like those wielding power.
If, and it is a very big if, laws like Az 1070 gain popularity and traction across the nation, as well as prison privatization with a concurrent defunding of education...the end result would be, not so much Nazi Germany, or even Jim Crow South, but looking far more like Apartheid South Africa. Wealth, education, and prosperity for the few. And a police state for everyone else.
That is the future we appear to be crawling toward and that is the one thing nobody talks about. That would be the death of the America I know and love, and that I have a huge problem with that.
P.S. A big piece of the puzzle I left out was voter suppression. No exaggeration. 2012 will make Bush v. Gore look like Queensbury rules. Participatory democracy will be the ladder which the power elite kicks away with the NEXT Republican presidency in order to preserve their fiscal and political hegemony.
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