OBLIGATORY PRETENSE OF CONCERN FOR BLACK PEOPLE TIME.
Every once is a while the NeverTrumpers and JustTheTipTrumpers tell us how they're gonna revive conservatism, by God. And today Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner makes a bold choice:
Carney has read Hannah Gais' (excellent) investigative report at Splinter on rightwing orgs (the Institute for Humane Studies, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Daily Caller) that somehow found themselves harboring a bunch of garden-variety racists.
Carney cannot turn away, and after his initial "horror that otherwise sane-seeming people in the United States hold Hitlerian views," he says he has as a "third reaction" this sentiment: "Great, now liberals are going to paint everyone who’s gone through IHS, ISI, or the Daily Caller as racists."
Late as it comes, this emotion animates the rest of Carney's article. Being a true conservative, he is obsessed with his movement's unjust treatment at the hands of liberals; "Snide liberals will chuckle and say something like, 'Because conservatism is racism,'" he mopes, but conservatives must do something to discourage this unaccountable incursion of white nationalists into conservatism even though "none of this will stop the bad-faith or hate-filled folks on the Left from calling us all bigots in the pages of Bloomberg News or the Washington Post."
(Bloomberg News is a recent addition to the rightwing hit-list, owing to one of their reporters forwarding a smart-alecky online post from one of Trump's Labor department appointees, made in reaction to an anti-Semite, to his boss for comment; the boss, irony-challenged, apparently got the appointee to quit, and every wingnut in Christendom blamed the reporter instead of the administration. The appointee has been fully restored.)
Carney gives a brief sermon about how black people have it rough in this country -- though, he assures his readers, this knowledge "doesn’t require one to declare that whites are all vile racists or oppressors. It doesn’t require agreeing that the U.S. is fundamentally a white supremacist nation." Nonetheless one can imagine the punters drifting away; they're reading the Washington Examiner, after all, and we can imagine for such people the plight of African Americans is way down the list.
But Carney makes it up to you by the end: After sermonizing "first, that all humans are created equal (the official teaching of the U.S. founders and all Abrahamic religions), and second, that blacks and Hispanics have far worse outcomes in the U.S.," he says,
It's time to create a conservative ecosystem that doesn't welcome racists
Liberal commentators will always say conservatives are just a bunch of racists. This is a lie. But conservatives need to do a better job convincing the racists that it's a lie.Obligatory:
Carney has read Hannah Gais' (excellent) investigative report at Splinter on rightwing orgs (the Institute for Humane Studies, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Daily Caller) that somehow found themselves harboring a bunch of garden-variety racists.
Carney cannot turn away, and after his initial "horror that otherwise sane-seeming people in the United States hold Hitlerian views," he says he has as a "third reaction" this sentiment: "Great, now liberals are going to paint everyone who’s gone through IHS, ISI, or the Daily Caller as racists."
Late as it comes, this emotion animates the rest of Carney's article. Being a true conservative, he is obsessed with his movement's unjust treatment at the hands of liberals; "Snide liberals will chuckle and say something like, 'Because conservatism is racism,'" he mopes, but conservatives must do something to discourage this unaccountable incursion of white nationalists into conservatism even though "none of this will stop the bad-faith or hate-filled folks on the Left from calling us all bigots in the pages of Bloomberg News or the Washington Post."
(Bloomberg News is a recent addition to the rightwing hit-list, owing to one of their reporters forwarding a smart-alecky online post from one of Trump's Labor department appointees, made in reaction to an anti-Semite, to his boss for comment; the boss, irony-challenged, apparently got the appointee to quit, and every wingnut in Christendom blamed the reporter instead of the administration. The appointee has been fully restored.)
Carney gives a brief sermon about how black people have it rough in this country -- though, he assures his readers, this knowledge "doesn’t require one to declare that whites are all vile racists or oppressors. It doesn’t require agreeing that the U.S. is fundamentally a white supremacist nation." Nonetheless one can imagine the punters drifting away; they're reading the Washington Examiner, after all, and we can imagine for such people the plight of African Americans is way down the list.
But Carney makes it up to you by the end: After sermonizing "first, that all humans are created equal (the official teaching of the U.S. founders and all Abrahamic religions), and second, that blacks and Hispanics have far worse outcomes in the U.S.," he says,
If both of these premises are true — and they are — then things in the U.S. still aren’t fair and can be improved. And if the game is rigged so badly in the U.S. that thousands of young men are shot on the streets of Chicago, that tens of thousands of black babies are aborted every year, that hundreds of thousands are born out of wedlock, then isn’t that a crisis that deserves attention?Chicago murder! Black babies aborted! Broken families! -- it's Wingnut Race Bingo! And Carney's congregants may file out, secure in the knowledge that nothing need change -- though it may behoove them to make an occasional pretense of concern for the darkskins before flocking to the next Trump rally. If only all their problems were so easy to solve!
