The (Shiny New) Southern Strategy || Twenty Twelve Edition

from http://divalocity.blogspot.it

The Southern Strategy: emerging, polished, and relentless in the GOP…..opinion from the Editor of the Four Directions Unity Blog.

Note: || The so-called Southern Strategy is based upon an idea that "the wite man is superior to all human beings of color. Their rights are more important. Their preferences are most important. All other people are in effect ""slave class""....editor

I am an American Indian. Most of my adult life I have given much of my attention to American Indian interests and issues. My professional work is in creating both art and words which reflect and seek to engage the waiting world on American Indian issues.

I am also a modern American. My genetic heritage is American Indian, but it is also a bit Celtic and possibly Pantesche or Sicilian.

I am also a Child of the Old South. I was born in 1949 in the doctor’s office, one Doctor Stuckey, by natural child birth into a small southern town. My mother’s family was multi-generational old southern. In my youth I experienced this small town southern culture as decidedly distinct from my American Indian, and Indian my American heritage. Unlike residents of the other states, those of us born into the old South are quite distinct…not just in how we speak or what we like to eat, but different in that as a culture, we “southerners” were, at least in the hearts of our political, military and social leaders (if not as individuals) dedicated to the idea that human slavery was both good, and profitable. When, in a dirty and terrible war, the United States Federal Government took that right away from the old South…it was never forgotten, and never forgiven.

from http://www.theprogressivesinfluence.com/2012/01
/southern-strategy-and-gingrich-win-in.html

I can no more take out the “southern” in me than I can take out the “indian” that is in there with me. Like many modern Americans I am more than one thing at the same time.

It is with increasing sorrow that I watch, before my eyes, every day, implicit proof that the leadership, both business and political, of the old south is just the same as it ever was. I recently finished reading the first four volumes of the must read works by the legendary Robert Caro; a truly rich and remarkable study of the US Senate through the decades of service of one Lyndon Johnson. God bless him. By looking at Johnson we see the skeleton and bones and raw DNA in fact of just who the political right actually is. The surprising thing, now, is that the roots of the old south, the southern states right strategy, was with the democrats. That has reversed itself. It is also a point almost never made, in my viewing and reading, of any modern discussions of the bat shit crazy American republican Party.

I have been content most of my life to keep my work and attention with the Indians. It has only been since the debacle of twenty ten (the arrival of so many GOP governors, anti-Negroe negroes like Adam West, and moral morons like Todd Akin, the ascendancy of Jan Brewer of Arizona, enshrinement of Rush Limbaugh, the growing haze of confusion and vitriol of Senator McCain…etc). Yes, since that moment it was clear that the Southern Strategy has Grown Up. It has more money, voices, networks, newspapers, talking heads, even more money and corporate protection than anyone would have imagined in 1965.

I became even more interested in this situation when, in the presidential election of twenty twelve, a majority of Americans of all races and types voted against the money, the disguise and the capital (corporate). Using new inventions to disguise the dog whistle emporium which sustained the GOP campaign at all levels, the determined White Men openly suppressed the vote, intimidated, insulted and dismissed every minority, including their own daughters. The GOP White Men did all this and a long revolting list of other open but disguised, evil but legal terrible intrusions into freedom and the right to life itself. An unprecedented and mountain of gold funded effort….and they failed. They lost.

What will the Old White Men of the Republican Party do now?

In the past the men of the old South turned to lynching. Interesting. As I write this Senator John McCain and the little lying US Senator from South Carolina are publicly, almost hysterically, verbally lynching (vowing to destroy) a woman of color who happens to be the Honorable Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations, Mrs. Susan Rice.

This lynching instinct so soon after the election, by these white men, is the give away, the “tell” that the Southern Strategy is more determined than ever to (1) disguise itself (2) proceed full throttle. Or are these at last the first dying gasps of the final exposure of the Southern Strategy and its renunciation at last? This election proved once and for all that the White Man alone cannot win elections to high office. US President Barack Obama was elected by a clear majority, by a stunning diversity of voters. All the GOP got was the white man’s vote, and they lost.

I hope, rather than permitting the (somewhat sociopathic McCain) GOP lynching of Susan Rice, that other voices will just say no. And Stop. The actual human beings who live and die in the lands controlled by the Southern Strategy have perhaps arrived at the point where they have had enough, at least some of them. More than yesterday. As a child, raised in the old South I never signed on for the "strategy". But its evidence and consequences were easy enough to see in my daily life.

In the grand defeat and shellacking of the GOP this year was at least one US Senate race, in North dakota, that may have been decided for the Democrats by the American Indian vote in that state. American Indians came out very strongly in favor of the Obama ticket. The editor here has asked Nate Silver and others if it is possible to parse the American Indian vote for this election cycle. Most American Indians believe that a Romney and larger GOP victory in this cycle would have been a disaster for treaty obligations and American Indian programs across the board. This GOP has persisted year by year to end all treaty obligations to American Indians and abandon tribes to sink or swim on their own. The GOP frequently tries to sneak in very amendments to many legislative bills that are harmful and destructive to American Indian issues. Collectively, the American Indians maintain a congressional presence to catch and lobby against these many vile and evil amendments.

As a child of South Carolina, I am disgusted, ashamed and outraged by everything about US Senator Lindsay Graham. I don't like his face, the way he dresses, his toes, his hair or his voice. How such a great old, historic and gracious state like South Carolina continues to empower this lowly character is a source of many questions in my mind and heart. How are the Southern States able to keep these retrograde, somewhat moronic white men in leadership there? It is difficult to completely avoid the vitriolic tense when discussing Graham and his associates. They represent such an extreme, far right agenda that is just insulting to reason. I hope the Democrats of South Carolina, or the independents, will find their way to field a champion to take the seat of this man in his next election cycle. Please.  With the sudden demise of US Senator Luger, it has been shown to be quite possible to move out some of these entrenched Senators, letting in some fresh new political air.

While the GOP and its agents spend the next four years lying, distorting, blocking and denigrating, let the rest of us that at last the voices of reason have some motivation to feel a mandate for correction.

The old Indians always said to me, that if you lose something, lose your way, you can loook back, look closely and you can find something you can use. You can make what we call a "correction ceremony" which is similar to but somewhat more elevated in its aspirations that the "proctology examination" Southern US Senator Haley Barber recently suggested.

Are you fired up? Are you ready to go?

PS...a call out and congratulations to Elizabeth Warren, one of our American Indian relatives, who has taken her seat as the Distinguisged US Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Brava!!!