The Republican Party has Become the Party of Creepy Uncles Nobody Wanted to Talk About

Republicans are rallying around white supremacy. It’s an odd thing, listening to Republicans steadfastly deny their own racism while praising one of the most racist among them, Clive Bundy, who says slavery was good for “the negro” because they have nothing to do today but “abort their young children” and “put their young men in jail” whereas as slaves they at least learned how to pick cotton.

Now as racism goes it doesn’t get much more egregious than this – the advocacy of slavery, but Republicans love him. He is living their fantasy, you see, their dream life, thumbing his nose at the federal government, his own private militia rallying around him, and telling all those greedy, grasping, black folks they ought to get back to work picking cotton. How can they not like the guy?

It has been suggested that given Bundy’s public support for slavery Fox News and others may distance themselves from him, but I would caution against that assumption: it is not very seldom do you see one right wing fanatic distance him or herself from another right wing fanatic, and when they do, it is usually in the mildest possible terms. And in this case, as in those others, even if they issue a public “distancing” they privately agree. Thus any distancing is more illusory than real.

What has happened here is that, inadvertently perhaps, the secret has come out: Republicans are “ga-ga” over white people and “bleh” over all those of, shall we say, shades darker than Northern European, even when some of the republican racists are themselves a tint darker than that, one noted Cuban anarchist among them, a Louisiana governor as well. But then there are “tame” black folks who sign onto the white supremacist bandwagon as well, just as there are women collaborating with the Republican war on women.

When you get right down to it, in terms of the whole issue of a master, or ruling race, there is nothing but death camps to distinguish Republicans from National Socialists. They are both ethnic nationalists (Völkisch), and even where death camps are concerned the distance is not really so great, because Republicans have rallied around a more subtle final solution: no healthcare + no jobs = the “other” dies at a much more rapid rate than white folks, who do have jobs and healthcare.

The death panels, and even the actual camps, exist. They are called ghettos. And barrios. And dead, after all, is dead.

There really has been no hiding this racism since 2008. We all knew it was still there, though some of us didn’t realize just how bad it was. We were quickly brought around to the truth when Barack Obama moved into the White House not as butler but as resident, and, in the imagination of the Tea Bagger, watermelon patches appeared all over the property.

Republicans said it was satire. They blamed liberals for not having a sense of humor., for not getting the “joke,” whatever it was. But racism isn’t funny. Not any time. Not any place. Racism is ugly, pure and simple. For a party that embraces absolutes, the idea of either/or, black/white, good/evil, you would think they’d get this. But the one area in which conservatives pretend to embrace subtlety is in race relations.

But from Rand Paul’s neo-Confederate, white supremacist hireling to all the Tea Party Confederate flags to Clive Bundy, white supremacy is getting harder to hide. As the extremists increasingly call the tune Republican candidate and office holders dance to, Republicans find it increasingly difficult to hide their true bona fides, which is as wannabe plantation owning crackers with personal arsenals that would do any developing country proud.

When they say “Duck Dynasty,” they are really thinking entrenched white dynasties. The old ante bellum plantation becomes in their imagination and in our future, a firebase in “Indian country,” surrounded by seas of blacks and browns and yellows and reds. Utopia for them; dystopia for everyone else. Haves and have not clearly delineated by the color of their skin and by the caliber of their weapons, if not their brains.

That’s the America Republican victories in 2014 and 2016 would move us toward. This is what Rand Paul wants every bit as much as Clive Bundy. But Rand Paul can throw on blue jeans and say the GOP needs earrings and tattoos and imagine that saying that proves he likes black folks too.

The corporate mainstream media will happily ignore his racism, which differs from Bundy’s only in that he did kick federal agents off his lawn. In a very real sense, slavery has been mainstreamed by the GOP since 2008, and just as Bundy isn’t its first advocate (remember FAMiLY LEADER’s infamous preamble?), he won’t be the last.

The GOP has not only institutionalized racism for a new generation, they have given a home – a major (if no longer legitimate) political party – to every whack job out there, from murderers to racists to neo-Confederate to sovereign citizen militias to those who want to marry your 15-year-old daughter, Bible in hand, while he defiles her and complains about adults marrying other adults.

Remember when Sarah Jones told us how right wing websites have become the home of the “creepy old dude demo”? Those creeps have always been lurking in the shadows of our society, but now they have an outlet, and creepiness has, as a result of the Tea Party/Religious Right/Republican Party, been mainstreamed. It’s suddenly not only okay to be that uncle nobody once wanted to talk about, but worse, they all WANT to be that uncle.

And this is the party that talks about family values? Sorry, it’s become the party of racist white cracker trailer trash slave owner wannabes who want to marry your 15-year-old daughter instead. Good luck selling THAT to America’s changing demographic.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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