It's Like De Ja Vu All Over Again

This post at Shakespeare's Sister is about the sexual assault of a Hispanic boy over the weekend but it raises the larger issue of the panic that seems to be emerging in the larger, dominant culture. The current generation seems to have no knowledge, karmic or otherwise, of the treachery of their forefathers. The rape and beating of this young man because he supposedly made advances towards a white girl is horribly reminscent of the Emmett Till story. But, I think she is right on with this conclusion:

And we need look no further than the GOP, as each is representative of their key wedge issues: gay marriage, abortion, and immigration.

When there are politicians—including our president—spouting off about gays undermining the sanctity of marriage, abortionists commiting murder, and mostly Hispanic undocumented workers threatening both our national security and economy, and those politicians’ words are repeated ad infinitum by their supporters, and the conservative echo chamber comprised of media shills and the rightwing blogosphere led by disgusting characters like Michael Savage and Michelle Malkin, who have millions of listeners and readers, put their own overtly vicious spin, rooted in bigotry and hatred of The Other, on these policies, we should expect nothing less for a disingenuous wedge issue designed by the likes of Karl Rove to exploit the prejudices of the GOP base to translate into action that leaves victims of policy also victims of violence.

This shit doesn’t happen in a void. When real people are used as fodder to garner votes born of bias, those real people are inevitably endangered. Politicians cannot continually demonize a group of people and then claim naivety that the fuckwit homophobes, radical anti-choicers, and racists on whose votes they are dependent for their continued supremacy actually treat those groups as demons, monsters under the bed who threaten our very way of life.

The GOP is no longer a legitimate political party. They are a collection of hatemongers who overtly seek to convince poor white trash that they are privileged, and that their privilege can be used to oppress the weak, scaring them through policy and their loyal shills that life would be better if only gays and feminists and racial minorities weren’t around. They use these people’s hatred of others to mask the real reasons life sucks for poor whites—tax breaks for the rich, rewarding companies who offshore, largesse toward corporations designed by lobbyists at the expense of Americans’ pocketbooks. As long as the gays, feminists, and racial minorities stand between the GOP and their poor base with targets on their backs, the GOP will continue to hide behind them, shouting, "Ready, aim, fire!"