Is Conservatism Dumb?

One day not long after we moved to South Texas -- it must have been around 1968 -- I was out riding my Sting-Ray when I saw a bumper sticker reading "Liberalism is Anarchy." Fairly certain that I was a liberal, I mentioned what I had seen to a family friend. He had a ready response: Conservatism is dumb, he said.

By now, most of you have read about the Daily Kos poll of Republicans in which, among other things,

• 61% either agreed or were not sure that Barack Obama should be impeached
  
• 58% either believed or were not sure that Obama was born in the United States
  
• 63% think he is a socialist
  
• 57% either believe or are not sure that he "wants the terrorists to win"
  
• 76% either believe or are not sure that ACORN stole the 2008 election
  
• 86% either believe or are not sure that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president
• 64% either believe or are not sure that Obama is a "racist who hates white people"

Some have questioned the methodology of the poll and others criticize the absence of a control group. (In other words, how would Democrats respond to similar hot button questions.) FiveThirtyEight.com had a spirited debate about the poll, with over 500 comments that eventually deteriorated into a pissing contest. Tellingly, conservative debaters danced around the questions of whether the results seemed credible and what their own positions were. (There was at least one avowed birther, and most think Obama is a socialist.) All agree that the results raise the question of whether Democrats are smarter than Republicans.

Are they? There is an always has been a yahoo, Know Nothing element in American politics. Moreover, this element is usually courted by the conservative political party of the day. Democrats are no exception: After the Civil War, they co-opted the most violent members of southern society, continued fighting the war through terror tactics, and eventually scuttled the southern Republican party. Southern Democrats disenfranchised African-Americans with Jim Crow laws and returned them to a state that many argued was no better than slavery. The media and judiciary openly supported the Democrats, and the "success" of this particular "movement" lasted for a hundred years until the Civil Rights movement eclipsed it by harnessing northern sympathy and ending the reign of Jim Crow. White southerners established the myth of Reconstruction, in which a vengeful and avaricious North brutally oppressed a beaten but noble South. This myth survived the Civil Rights movement and has only recently been challenged. So, don't think these crusades can't work.

There's no doubt in my mind that many of today's conservatives are willfully ignorant. It has always been thus; the historical antecedents are many and not hard to find. As the Reconstruction myth demonstrates, it's not hard to establish a new reality by repeating a lie often enough.

"The spark of patriotic indignation that inspired those who fought for our independence and those who marched peacefully for civil rights has ignited once again," wrote Sarah Palin of the tea baggers in USA Today. Now, this is beyond offensive. No tea bagger has put his or her life or livelihood on the line to overthrow a century of barbarous tyranny. And I'll bet that the fathers of more than one tea bagger stood on the wrong side of the bridge at Selma. And yet the leaders of these people have told themselves that they are heirs to the Civil Rights movement so often that it has become an article of faith to them. The organizations that oppose affirmative action and a woman's right to choose invoke Martin Luther King's name so readily that one barely has time to feel nauseous.

And so it goes. Barack Obama is a socialist, socialist, socialist. He's a Marxist, Marxist, Marxist. And -- just so you'll feel good about yourself -- it's him and not you who is racist, racist, racist. The Democrats are left wing, left wing, left wing. (As I told a conservative friend, would that it were so.) ACORN, ACORN, ACORN. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. These are loaded words to the yahoo contingent, and so much the better when a popular puppet like Sarah Palin delivers them. Send them out there enough times and the response will be like a recalcitrant bull goosed with a cattle prod.

Does the Daily Kos poll prove that Republicans are stupid? I don't know: I'm sure that there are plenty with high IQ's. But I don't need the KOS poll to tell me that there is a critical mass of willing minds susceptible to blunt instrument propaganda and propaganda techniques. That's no surprise, either, and extreme conservatives from time immemorial through Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh have exploited it. In short, smart conservatives are ever ready to take advantage of gullible people whose emotions, once harnessed, will in the end perpetuate the right-wing power elite.

If this movement sustains itself, the tea baggers will attend Republican precinct meetings and attempt to infiltrate the party. They might even succeed in electing a Republican president in 2012. But at the end of the day, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will still be their leaders, Sarah Palin will continue to pocket six-figure speaking fees, and corporate, pharmaceutical, and insurance interests will still control Republican policy. Same as it ever was...

I've been asking myself what it is about Barack Obama personally that elicits such virulent, pathological hatred from the wingnuts. The McCain campaign played the race care by trying mightily but unsuccessfully to paint Obama as an "other," but this tactic failed spectacularly. Plus, anti-Clinton acrimony was (and is) perhaps even more intense. Thinking about what the two men have in common, I realized that both were born to single mothers in modest circumstances and both rose above those circumstances to attend elite schools and embark on a career in politics that led the presidency. Far from being the other, both are uncomfortably like the people who hate them, at least in their origins. My take is that a powerful strain of resentment has combined with deeply rooted self-loathing to form an irrational animosity toward the two men...

The GOP's chief budget writer wants to -- surprise, surprise -- cut Medicare and privatize Social Security. He also wants to raise the retirement age and reduce Social Security benefits...

Don't miss Larry Blumenfeld's review of Ned Sublette's The Year Before the Flood. Blumenfeld connects the themes of Sublette's excellent book to the post-Katrina politics of the Crescent City in what amounts to a fascinating essay about the current state of New Orleans arts and culture...

Makin' a living the old hard way. Takin' and giving day by day. I dig snow and rain and bright sunshine. Draggin' the line...

Goldman Sucks Dept. Outside of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika, has any group ever been more arrogant and out of touch than the banking and finance barons?...

NOLA's Terence Blanchard and Donald Harrison playing "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise":

Sunday Funnies & Arts

As always, click to enlarge. For more Ben Sargent, Tom Toles, Tom the Dancing Bug, Tony Auth, Zippy the Pinhead, Pat Oliphant, and Tom Tomorrow, go here, here, here, here, here, here, and here...

Offbeat interviews Bo Dollis, a pivotal figure in the history of the Mardi Gras Indians:

The mystical power of the word at the heart of Mardi Gras Indian ritual resided in Dollis, whose preacher’s powers made him stand out after he joined the Wild Magnolias. Though he was a relative newcomer, Dollis quickly rose from Flag Boy to Big Chief in 1964 largely because of his singing ability. As Big Chief of the Wild Magnolias, Dollis helped refashion the nature and practices of Mardi Gras Indian culture and protocol through the 1960s, preserving the traditional ritual texts but changing the nature of the competition between tribes and bringing the Indians to a wider audience. Bo Dollis was part of a new breed of Mardi Gras Indians that eschewed violence and sublimated the competition between gangs into a contest of costumes, the prettier and more elaborate the better.

Mardi Gras Indian culture made a dramatic breakthrough to the outside world in 1970 when Dollis and his childhood friend Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles organized a Mardi Gras Indian second line as part of the inaugural New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which took place across the street from the French Quarter in Congo Square. New Orleans had just emerged from the social restrictions of segregation. It was a truly historic moment for a city scarred by the American original sin of slavery to have an African American secret society lead an integrated public parade to a spot where their ancestors had been sold as chattel. The voice of Bo Dollis called the way into the Promised Land...

The Found Poetry of Postcards: Sarah Boxer's slide show essay on recent installations of the postcard collections of Walker Evans and Zoe Leonard...

The Forgotten War...

Premium T. and I watched Gone With The Wind last night. Yes, the second part drags in the middle, neither Clark Gable nor Leslie Howard would stoop to using southern accents, and the racism is palpable. But Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland do the heavy acting lifting anyway, and the movie set a new standard for storytelling and filmmaking.  Leigh was all of 24 when she portrayed Scarlett O'Hara in what gets my vote for Best Performance by an Actress in a 20th Century Picture. I counted once, and she's in all but five scenes of the 3:42 film -- an astonishing effort, especially considering that she is superb throughout. Leigh essays Scarlett's underlying character so compellingly that the character remains consistent from a flighty belle of the ball to a flinty businesswoman who finally acknowledges her beating heart. Here is her great "I'll never be hungry again" scene from just before intermission:

Jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard, whose album A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina), chronicled the psychological destruction of Hurricane Katrina, is recording his new album at New Orlean's Patrick F. Taylor Library. Here's a an excerpt from the "Funeral Dirge" portion of the requiem, performed with the Louisiana Philharmonic at last year's Jazz Festival:

Food, inglorious food...

Leonard Pitts writes that no one should be surprised that we are losing our religion:

And people of faith should ask themselves:

What is the cumulative effect upon outside observers of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker living like lords on the largesse of the poor, multiplied by Jimmy Swaggart's pornography addiction, plus Eric Rudolph bombing Olympians and gays in the name of God, plus Muslims hijacking airplanes in the name of God, multiplied by the church that kicked out some members because they voted Democrat, divided by people caterwauling on courthouse steps as a rock bearing the Ten Commandments was removed, multiplied by the square root of Catholic priests preying on little boys while the church looked on and did nothing, multiplied by Muslims rioting over cartoons, plus the ongoing demonization of gay men and lesbians, divided by all those "traditional values" coalitions and "family values" councils that try to bully public schools into becoming worship houses, with morning prayers and science lessons from the book of Genesis? Then subtract selflessness, service, sacrifice, holiness and hope.

Do the math, and I bet you'll draw the same conclusion the researchers did...

Note: Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ben Sargent, whose work is a regular feature of Citizen K.'s Sunday Funnies, has accepted an early retirement buyout from the Austin American-Statesmen.  For the time being, he plans to develop one cartoon a week, some of which will no doubt appear here...

Sunday Gospel Hour: Orville Noble sings "I Don't Know What You Came To Do" at the homegoing service for his mother, Rev. Vera Bell. Rev. Aubrey Ghent accompanies him on sacred steel guitar. If all churches were like this, Leonard Pitts might not have had anything to write about today...

Sunday Funnies & So Much More

As always, click to enlarge. For more, see Non Sequitur, Tom the Dancing Bug, Tom Toles, Zippy the Pinhead, Jack Ohman, Doonesbury, and Tony Auth. 

Avery Johnson: From the New Orleans projects to the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame. While on his, Avery hit and NBA-title winning jump shot and became one of two players under six feet tall to play in over a thousand NBA games. The Little General also acquired one of the NBA's all-time great nicknames...

Slumdog Millionaire. D: Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan. Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Freida Pinto. Directors Boyle and Tandan aim for Charles Dickens and hit Horatio Alger. When you strip away the vivid colors and occasionally impressive set piece, you're left with boy meets girl/boy loses girl/boy almost gets girl back/boy loses girl again/boy gets girl back once and for all. This is all wrapped in the sheen of a rags-to-riches story in which slumdog Jamal (Patel) successfully navigates the Indian version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" because the questions each coincide with traumatic events in his life. (A slumdog is an orphan of the slums of India's cities.) The characters' motives range from the implausible to the unclear, and -- despite the film's length -- the supporting roles are woefully underdeveloped. A more interesting film would have dealt with Jamal's brother Salim, whose responsibilities as the surviving oldest member of the family render him conflicted and resentful of Jamal while tiptoeing through a moral minefield. Nice performance by Khan, who deserved last year's Best Supporting Actor recognition for his superb work in The Namesake...

The most recent first line was, of course, from Charles' Dickens Great Expectations, one of the first great coming-of-age novels. Great Expectations occupies a permanent place on Citizen K.'s list of books you should read before you die...

The Portland (Oregon) Jazz Festival kicks off this coming Friday with Terence Blanchard and Gonzalo Rubalcaba leading a performance of God's Will, Blanchard's jazz suite about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath...

Come to think of it, the San Antonio Spurs best players have all had great nicknames, from George "Iceman" Gervin to David "The Admiral" Robinson to Tim "The Big Fundamental" Duncan. George Gervin was also the subject of one of the best sports posters ever:

Sunday Gospel Hour: I've enjoyed digging up gospel videos, so look for this to become at least a semi-regular feature. Once again, here's Glen David Andrews, this time leading choir, band, congregation, and anyone in hearing distance of New Orleans' Zion Hill Baptist Church in "I'll Fly Away."