Since the last thread was locked post election, and given that there have been recent political and news developments in the US since, I think it's time we have another self-contained American Politics thread.
I'm going to start with a new post:
Racism and American Politics
In the other thread,
Thor provided some diagrams and
I supplemented them showing a relation between the most ardently reliable Republican states and their contemporary position in American political history in terms of slaveholding states and later, segregationist states.
Azure responded with,
Quote:
Example? The electoral maps shown earlier show casing the apparent link between 'southern' states, and those states that voted in favor of slavery years ago. Except when you look at the total electoral map, I guess we can assume that Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois harbor some deep seated racism, as they're almost the same percentage red as Mississippi.
Why didn't I post it? Because its quite clear that the idea that Republicans as a whole are racially motivated when they vote is an acceptable viewpoint on here, despite evidence to the contrary. But hey, can't win them all. Would be nice if the 'discussion' would be more balanced though without posters coming to criticize you as having the 'same old line' everything you post something.
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On Tuesday, TheNation published an interview with long-time Republican political strategist Lee Atwater. A segment of the interview, published for the first time, involves Atwater explaining the nature of Republican appeals to Southern racists, and how it is a deliberate attempt to pander politically to base, divisive, racial motivations (with transcript below):
Quote:
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You start out in 1954 by saying, “######, ######, ######.” By 1968 you can’t say “######”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “######, ######.”
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Unfortunately the forum censors the 'N word', but, that's is the nomenclature hidden by "#####".
Now, while this quote has been published before, first anonymously and then attributed to Atwater sometime after his death, never has the audio been released, nor the full interview.
There is an incredibly fascinating documentary on Atwater called '
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story'. that I highly recommend to anyone interested in American political history. Here's an excerpt: