Demagoguery

Demagoguery. The word for the day is, as it has been in the past, "demagoguery. " In case anyone forgot, here's the dictionary definition:

"impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace"

That's "prejudices" as in racism. Although there are plenty of homophobic African-American leaders who denounce claims that the Gay Rights Movement is an analogue to or extension of the Civil Rights Movement, let's not forget that the last time we saw this level of demagoguery was during that very Civil Rights Movement. No matter what homophobes or historians may think about comparing the two movements, there's no denying that the people who have ridden homophobia to power are doing a hell of a job of making the similarities painfully clear.

Doubt it? Then set the Wayback Machine to 1964. Those of you who are students of Southern History (and many who aren't) will probably recognize the famous quote from George Wallace, the demagog-est of demagogues, at his inauguration:*

Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!

But the odds are that fewer would recognize the related quote that explains why the one above came into existence.

Wallace, who won the Governor's election in Alabama in '64, '70, '74 and '80, didn't win it in 1958. He ran as a moderate--endorsed by the NAACP, for Freya's sake--against a racist demagogue who carried an endorsement from the Klan.

He lost.

The story goes that after his concession, Wallace was sitting in a car in a rainy parking lot talking about the loss with his advisors. The man who'd earned the NAACP's endorsement came to a cynical conclusion:

``I was out-niggered. I will never be out-niggered again.''

Ugly language, but demagoguery is ugly. It was ugly in 1964, and it's ugly in 2006. Right now, demagogues in the Senate are pushing for a vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment--a vote they know they will lose. The prediction is 52-48, 17 votes shy of the 2/3 majority. Nothing short of an Act of God is going to change 17 senators' minds in the next week or two. The vote is a non-starter. The only reason the FMA is coming up for a vote is that the demagogues want their "appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace” to be a matter of public record, because they know they can turn those prejudices into votes by appealing to the worst qualities of the American public.

To be fair, though, you can't put all of the blame on the politicians. After all, they wouldn't do it if it didn't work. Hell, most of them are probably cynical enough that they'd back compulsory pedophilia if it polled well. No, we have to think about the voters. The anti-science, reactionary, "let's put American back on track" voters who are just dying for a scapegoat--whether it be "Activist Judges," undocumented workers, the Islamic world, or gays and lesbians. Fortunately for students of demagoguery, Wallace, who'd held a moderate line on race, was quite willing to be explicit about his choice to appeal to the prejudices and emotions of the populace:

When Wallace started using demagoguery on the race issue, one of his distraught supporters asked him why, historian Dan Carter** said on an "American Experience'' documentary broadcast on PBS.

Wallace replied, "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.''

That foot-stomping is the same sound we heard when Ronald Regan made his "young buck" speech (which later morphed into the slightly-less-obviously racist "Welfare Queen"), and it's the very same foot stomping we hear when people like Mike DeWine take a look at their sagging poll numbers and decide to shore them up with some gay-bashing. Or, as Congressman Barney Frank put it:

“We screwed up Katrina, wages aren’t going up, but how about those fags getting married?”

No shit. Considering that we've gone from a balanced budget to a staggering deficit, considering that we're engaged in a losing war that was immoral and illegal to start with and there's no good way out, considering that we're doing everything we can to piss off the Islamic world short of changing our national motto to "Allah Sucks," then what the flying fuck sense does it make to run around talking like the idea of my friends Mary and Linda actually enjoying some of the rights they've earned by committing their lives to each other and their kids is the single most dangerous threat looming over the US today?

Unless your goal is to appeal to the prejudices and emotions of the populace.





Hat tip to Anne Woolner for making the 1958/2006 connection, also source of the Dan Carter quote.
________________________________
*Said quote, interestingly enough, was written by one Asa Carter--White supremacist and author of, perhaps not surprisingly, The Outlaw Josey Wales (under the pen name Forrest Carter, chosen in honor of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first major Klan leader (after whom Forrest Gump was also named)), but also, probably quite surprisingly, the much-adored The Education of Little Tree.

**Okay, I just have to say that Dan Carter was one of my instructors in my PhD program. He's a fantastic historian, literally wrote the book on George Wallace (as well as a multiple award winning account of the Scottsboro Boys) and one of the few faculty to share my fascination with white supremacists. And a hell of a nice guy, too. If you live anywhere near the University of South Carolina, I strongly suggest that you sign up for one of his classes.