Everyone's Racist, But the Racists

Apparently, I'm a racist.  Why?  Because I wrote a post mocking conservative racism.  And yes, that's how skewed things are on the right: It's racist to mock racists.  It stemmed from my mockery of an idiotic post at RedState, which was premised on the theory that black people support Democrats because they've been too stupid, immature, lazy, and ungrateful to vote Republican.  And the fact that the author somehow imagined that his post wasn't racist is the greatest racial insensitivity at all.  You can claim to be my friend all you want, but if that involves you talking to me like a spoiled child, I'm going to have my doubts.

And so I wrote my post from the perspective that conservatives were right and that Democrats really hate black people and are purposefully keeping them down.  But it was all a big joke, which even conservatives couldn't take seriously.  And that's actually a big part of my nihilist posts: They're intended as object lessons in what a liberal would say, if the rightwing smears against us were true. 

Yet somehow, the obvious satire wasn't enough, and conservative stalker Donald Douglas has now cited that post as an example of leftwing racism.  Here's a quote from Donald:

What we find is that genuine, widespread, and MAINSTREAM bigotry in contemporary American politics is on the radical left end of the spectrum. See more of this at American Nihilist, "Impending Arrival of BlackState."

Yet, how can he possibly cite me as a source of "genuine" bigotry, when there wasn't anything genuine about the post?  For god's sake, I actually wrote that we had analysts in the Klan who had predicted that black people would kill 65% of white Democrats in three hours.  Only a complete nutjob would ever refer to this as being "genuine."  

Oh, and how can "mainstream bigotry" reside on the "radical left end of the spectrum"?  Either this is mainstream or it's radical.  But of course, seeing as how his post implicitly attacked black people and women for engaging in "the most disgusting racism and sexism in decades" for having supported Obama or Hillary in the primaries, I'd guess that Donald's definition of "radical left end" is really quite large.

Acting Racist

Now don't get me wrong.  I seriously doubt Donald's a racist.  He's just an anti-liberal weirdo who loves hearing any and all attacks on liberals.  And so he adopts whatever anti-liberal garbage he's fed and begs for more.  In fact, I really don't think there are many true racists on the right.  While they exist, I'm sure, I suspect most of this is misplaced antagonism towards liberals and support for their own team; ignorant of the fact that there are still true racists on their team.

But in any case, racist is as racist does, and if you write a post based upon the premise that black people are stupid and lazy, well, you wrote a racist post no matter how well intentioned you imagined you were.  And conservatives like poor Donald don't understand how any of this works.  They see TBogg displaying a racist image in order to mock racism, and insist that this makes TBogg racist.  They hear liberals call black Republicans "Uncle Tom" for behaving in ways traditionally associated with that phrase, and immediately proclaim it racist.  (For the record, I'm not sure that phrase was ever racist and believe this is yet another misunderstanding by conservatives.)

And perhaps they've got a point.  But if they do, they've failed to make it every time.  They're generally not good at dealing with arguments beyond the level of broad assertion, so even if they had a point, I'd never know what it is.  And while it's possible that their brains just can't comprehend the idea of argumentation, a better explanation would be that they can't explain themselves because they just don't know what the hell they're talking about.  

Even with this post, the best Donald could do to "refute" what I just wrote will be to focus on the insults I gave him, and insist that he doesn't need to explain himself because all his arguments are "self-evident."  And again, that's what you do when you can't explain yourself because you don't know what the hell you're talking about.  And yes, Donald has used "self-evidence" as the source for his arguments and proclaimed himself the winner of the debate.  And yes, that debate was exactly as sad as it sounds like it'd be.

Not Getting It

And it's quite shocking to see how convinced conservatives are of liberal evil-doing, without even the slightest understanding of what we were saying to begin with.  For example, TBogg's post couldn't possibly be considered racist, yet Donald accuses him of it all the same.  Why?  Because TBogg used an image that Donald didn't understand.  

To Donald, the image is racist no matter what context it's being used in.  Who cares what TBogg was trying to say; all that matters is the image.  Curiously, Donald attacked TBogg for this, writing "If any conservative blogger or columnist were to post a black Sambo eating a watermelon the entire netroots would erupt in feigned outrage at the modern day lynching."  

Yet, Donald did post the image, and in a larger version than TBogg's.  I find that fairly mind-boggling.  And I could understand if Donald was attempting to defend someone who had used a racial image in a similar context, by citing TBogg's usage in defense.  But he's not.  He's outright proclaiming TBogg to be a racist, simply for having used the image; even if the point of TBogg's usage was to mock racism.  In other words, TBogg's a racist for using the image to attack someone he thought was racist, yet Donald's a hero for having used the same image to attack someone he thought was racist.  The lack of self-awareness here is simply astonishing.

And that's the biggest problems conservatives have: They have absolutely no clue what the hell we're talking about.  And so they give everything the worst possible spin and attack us for doing the opposite of what we did.  Context is meaningless to them.  But again, they don't want to understand us.  Nor do they care about racism.  It's all about supporting their team and attacking us, and that's all they see.  

And in the end, seeing as how the basis of racism is blind prejudice in support of one's own team, we really haven't seen much of a shift here at all.  They might give backhanded compliments to black people in order to openly insult liberals; but it all pretty much amounts to the same thing.  They're the best and we all suck, and it doesn't matter what color we are; they hate us all equally.  And lost in all this is that one big reason conservatives hate liberals is because we insisted upon equal opportunity for black people.  That's irony, my friends.

And now we've come full circle and they're attempting to woo black people in order to defeat us.  Well...just as long as those black people stop expecting free cars and finally grow up and start listening to what Republicans have to say.  Somehow, I don't see that happening just yet.