THE 33%

by Malik Isasis





















The Ghost of former President Richard Nixon has lived comfortably within Karl Rove’s political hackery over the past six years. Rove otherwise known as Turd Blossom—how fitting, is the political advisor to George Bush, and during Bush’s tenure has taken Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy to the next level.

The Southern Strategy was designed by Nixon and the Republicans to comfort the bigotry, sexism and prejudices of Southern white men who felt disenfranchised by the Democratic Party’s tacit support of minorities’ and women’s challenge to the white male paradigm. The Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights and civil liberties in the 60s during the empowerment movements caused a mass exodus of disenfranchised Southern white men.

The Nixon Doctrine was not adopted to address the misperceptions or heal the grievances of these so-called disenfranchised but to build a voting block of white men by pitting their interests against those of people of color and women. Although all of the disenfranchised shared more in common than not, the Southern Strategy was a euphemism for divide and conquer. This tried and true strategy works because it fractures communities by individualizing them, if people are fighting rather than discussing their shared grief, a collective revolution is less likely. Politicians and dictators the world over understand this concept.

Steady at 33%

Bush’s support in the polls will always hover between 30%- 33% no matter what he does because the foundation was laid down by Nixon, and turned into fundamentalist right-wing ideology by the Turd Blossom. During the Republican Party’s rise to absolute power, Turd Blossom used so-called “wedge issues” to introduce prejudiced, paranoia into the 2002, 2004 and 2006 election cycles. These “wedge-issues” were gay marriage, sexist propaganda such as the feminization of America, abortion and fear mongering such as the invasion of the US territory by Mexicans. The “wedge issues” were used to keep the American public asleep while the federal government was being used as a money laundering service for Bush and his corporate raiders.

The neocons’ propaganda machine has created a simple narrative, not simple in the pejorative sense, but simple in a brilliant way. The neocons’ fictional narrative folds neatly into America’s white supremacy values. It is in this brilliant strategy that the Republicans are able to get people to vote against their own interests.

The neocon narrative tells Southerners that their moral and religious values are superior, beyond reproach—they are the moral compass of America, the corporate media coddles this folklore by persistently referring to this voting block as “Values Voters” (see here) If they are Value Voters what does that make the rest of us?

The Disconnect

There is an interesting dichotomy with the 33% in which the corporate media glosses over, take for example, the abortion and the culture of life propaganda; some voters vote Republican on abortion alone (The Turd Blossom understands this), it is their only issue. However, these same voters are supporting the Occupation in Iraq, which has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

The Republican presidential candidates are twisting themselves into pretzels, trying to out do one another to see who can become more primitive. The regression of John McCaine, Rudy Guiliani, and other once social progressive Republicans are the canaries in the mine--the representation of just how despotic and puerile the political system has become. Their catering to the religiosity of the 33% right wing ideology is shameful, and they’re shameless.

The corporate media’s responsibility in all of this is that they have bought into using the “Values Voters” as a gold standard to marginalize the Democratic Party, and liberals. The neocons have been successful at getting the corporate media to portray conservatism as the only value on the political spectrum. Conservatism is the new center.

The corporate media’s worship of this false idol has legitimized bigotry and sexism and has made it easier for the Southern voting block to operate proudly in their ignorance, completely unaware of the moral conflicts and consequences that their voting patterns have on domestic and foreign policy.

Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and Beyond, History Shows There Are certain Steps That Any Would-Be Dictator Must Take To Destroy Constitutional Freedoms. And George Bush and His Administration Seem To Be Taking Them All

by Naomi Wolf, The Guardian






















Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody. They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognize the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security - remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” - didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realize.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US...read on.

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