December 2002
part one: cross in mouth
well trent lott has gone and done it. he thought he could apologize his way out of the paper bag which is the prison of racial politics. apparently, he's no jesse helms. which is too bad. political racists, like everybody else these days in washington, are shadows of their former hardball selves.
bill quotes hillary in calling washington d.c. an 'evidence-free zone'. it is clearly that kind of rhetoric which pervades lott's attempt at being above the fray. but when it comes to the vagaries of race, people actually prefer there to be black and white rules.
lott's an easy target. is he racist? probably? can i prove it? probably not. but that's no longer the question. is he anti-racist enough? clearly not. his downfall will be credited to the power of the black vote. that's a joke but it's still blacks that are the ones quoted as the reason why. truth be told, we have other fish to fry, but it's still nice to get credit for being the consciousness of america. we're not it, we just started the fire.
the fact is, everybody is vaguely sensitive enough, if not disciplined and precise enough to be a decent arbiter of racial politics. i hope lott doesn't make it, but i tell you it's difficult living in the future when your traditional enemies are so pathetic and weak that even the colorblind can toss bombs.
by the way, arabs are not being lynched. more on that later.
part two: lovers vs fighters
trent lott has become an easy target. i don't think he's going to get knocked over, because this is really just his second strike in public, the first being his dalliance with the CCC. although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that his head is in the wrong place it would take a bit of sleuthing to find where the rubber meets the road. this is not the kind of sleuthing that is going on. i take a lot of pleasure in his being knocked around, especially now that bill bennett has joined the fray. but this should really be about what legacy segregation really had, not what lott says about it.
the only people really interested in depths of lott's depravity for something other than political horsetrading are the 'special interests'. which makes an ugly point about the republican majority and their constituency. lott has stepped in it, and people who fussed about his prominence in the first place are not being interviewed in depth.
to my eyes, the elephant in the corner here is the legacy of white-flight private schools in the south - all founded around the passage of brown. just like its lack of union labor, this is the legacy of southern politics designed to keep blacks poor and uneducated. today public schooling in the state of georgia is horrendous, and the prices for private schools are going from rediculous to outrageous. it's not as bad as the 92nd street y, but it is where segregationists voted with their feet. now everybody is paying the price. so what does it take to stop the separate and unequal trend? it brings you right back to vouchers and republican policies on public accomodations.
you *can* look at the kind of issues like environmental racism that cynthia mckinney harped upon many years ago and draw lines. you *can* look at issues like manipulation of taxes to defund public services in poor and black areas. you *can* look closely at the kind of newly allowable discrimination exemptions bush will give to federally funded religious groups. you *can* draw attention to the legacy of the dixiecrats, but then you will have to indict the boiling frog of rightward public opinion. you would have to ask just why is it that *this* kind of republican is leading the party. does anyone really want to do this, or would americans just wish it all went away with an apology?
it seems to me that you can't have it both ways. if you feel that lott is getting a raw dose of 'pc' backlash and character assasination, then you'll have to look at what his philosophy brings to the republican party, and the effect of that on real people. in other words you should have some hardball tests for lott's thinking. this has become a litmus test for what 'racism' is and what the punishments for it are. so far the answer seems to be 'loose talk' and 'harsh words'. bfd!
part three: material breach
so somebody help me here, how many times does lott get to apologize? isn't he already in material breach? racist segregation is a weapon of mass destruction, do we just sit around on our butts until he uses it again? we already know that he used it against his own people. we already know that he was in the jihad in his youth.
i say we get kweisi mfume to head up an inspection team that gets unimpeded access to all republican controlled states, including 'election headquarters' palaces, where they were impeded last time. until trent lott produces a document of about 13,000 pages in length and prove he is harboring no racists, we cannot give him the benefit of the doubt. but it doesn't matter what lies he publishes because we already know that he is - we just can't share that evidence with the general public because it would be a cookbook for racism.
none of us wants to fight the same racial battles that our parents did, but the same guys are in power. everybody agrees that we'd be better off without them, but as soon as we get tough about it, the coalition gets squeamish.
doesn't anybody around here care about the values of civilization? jesse helms, strom thurmond and trent lott are an axis of evil. we need to be about bringing them to justice.