Everyone Loves the Klan Part 3c : The Conservatives Love the Klan Too
What is a conservative? That term, like the term "liberal" is hardly descriptive of the relative beliefs of those two groups.
They really are nothing more than convenient handles for describing two competing groups of white people who have come to hate each other far more than required by mere ideological differences.
For the purposes of this essay however, I will use the terms "conservative" and "liberal" as they are commonly understood; to represent two polar opposites of the political spectrum.
Most people left and right hardly have any grand philosophy behind their beliefs.
Basically, a conservative is just someone that wants to be left alone and a liberal is someone that likes to meddle.
Or that used to be the case.
Now both sides like to meddle, though most of the everyday people in this country still want to just be left alone.
If that's sounds confusing, well it is, and I haven't even added race to this mess yet.
Race really gets the social witch's brew boiling.
This is precisely why the left loves issues of race.
Race makes everyone emotional and opens to door for government intervention, at some level, since the government has taken upon itself to regulate racial interactions in this society.
What really gets the leftist off, as I pointed out in an earlier post, is that race gives them political power.
For them guilt trips and racial politics in general is about political gamesmanship.
Black people are just useful political foils with which to beat their right wing foes.
The right does the only thing that it can and quickly seeks cover and concealment behind the nearest black man or woman.
"Clarence Thomas! Condi Rice! See, we've got some too! We're not evil like they say!" But this doesn't help.
It doesn't help because conservatives don't understand that the issue is not, and never has been about concern for black people or civil rights.
It is, as I said, about power.
The conservatives don't get it so they keep blundering around wearing baggy FUBU clothing, putting spinners on their cars and going to night school so they can learn the latest inner city slang.
Anything it takes to let everyone know that they "care" too, "and can we PLEASE start talking about foreign policy and farm subsidies now?" Most have never even seen a Klansman before, or even know someone that has.
They have heard about them though and they long for the chance to be able to demonstrate their moral bonafides.
They long To be able to strut and pontificate and indulge in a veritable orgy of moral exhibitionism as the left does.
John Hammer, editor of Greensboro NC's Rhino Times, was gifted with such an opportunity the other day, and he promptly grabbed onto it with both hands, though it won't really do him any good in the end.
Like the leftist and the government, if the Klan didn't exist, the right would be falling all over itself to invent it.
More than anything, the putative right needs ideological cover and the Klan, such that it is, helps provide it.
So in spite of the fact that the Klan is largely a phantom, it is nonetheless perpetuated in the public imagination as an imminent danger from which we all need to be protected.
Disparate and antagonistic social forces cooperate to prop up and perpetuate this straw man for the purpose of gaining political power and control and this is why everyone loves the Klan.
They really are nothing more than convenient handles for describing two competing groups of white people who have come to hate each other far more than required by mere ideological differences.
For the purposes of this essay however, I will use the terms "conservative" and "liberal" as they are commonly understood; to represent two polar opposites of the political spectrum.
Most people left and right hardly have any grand philosophy behind their beliefs.
Basically, a conservative is just someone that wants to be left alone and a liberal is someone that likes to meddle.
Or that used to be the case.
Now both sides like to meddle, though most of the everyday people in this country still want to just be left alone.
If that's sounds confusing, well it is, and I haven't even added race to this mess yet.
Race really gets the social witch's brew boiling.
This is precisely why the left loves issues of race.
Race makes everyone emotional and opens to door for government intervention, at some level, since the government has taken upon itself to regulate racial interactions in this society.
What really gets the leftist off, as I pointed out in an earlier post, is that race gives them political power.
For them guilt trips and racial politics in general is about political gamesmanship.
Black people are just useful political foils with which to beat their right wing foes.
The right does the only thing that it can and quickly seeks cover and concealment behind the nearest black man or woman.
"Clarence Thomas! Condi Rice! See, we've got some too! We're not evil like they say!" But this doesn't help.
It doesn't help because conservatives don't understand that the issue is not, and never has been about concern for black people or civil rights.
It is, as I said, about power.
The conservatives don't get it so they keep blundering around wearing baggy FUBU clothing, putting spinners on their cars and going to night school so they can learn the latest inner city slang.
Anything it takes to let everyone know that they "care" too, "and can we PLEASE start talking about foreign policy and farm subsidies now?" Most have never even seen a Klansman before, or even know someone that has.
They have heard about them though and they long for the chance to be able to demonstrate their moral bonafides.
They long To be able to strut and pontificate and indulge in a veritable orgy of moral exhibitionism as the left does.
John Hammer, editor of Greensboro NC's Rhino Times, was gifted with such an opportunity the other day, and he promptly grabbed onto it with both hands, though it won't really do him any good in the end.
Like the leftist and the government, if the Klan didn't exist, the right would be falling all over itself to invent it.
More than anything, the putative right needs ideological cover and the Klan, such that it is, helps provide it.
So in spite of the fact that the Klan is largely a phantom, it is nonetheless perpetuated in the public imagination as an imminent danger from which we all need to be protected.
Disparate and antagonistic social forces cooperate to prop up and perpetuate this straw man for the purpose of gaining political power and control and this is why everyone loves the Klan.
