Cause Maude knows throwing sluts into the street makes all the difference
-julesabouttown

The world isn’t simple, but the wingnuts desperately desire it to be so.

“Conspiracy theories” derive their popularity not because they follow the complicated and circuitous webs of deceit, but precisely the opposite; they boil down these variegated, multi faceted, ‘nuanced’ issues into a bumper sticker.

They see sinister cabals everywhere because it’s *easy.* And as Marcotte says, they get a lot of emotional gratification out of it.

It explains a lot of why their theories are so incoherent - even inchoate. Like the liberals are killing the black fetuses who, in 18 years, would’ve mindlessly voted for them. It’s literally nonsensical but you get to hate liberals for their ‘hypocrisy’ and blacks for being ‘stupid.’ 

not really related to this story, tho i agree with it, but prominent republican blogger just compared the media reports on palin’s emails to a gang rape. oy.

I have an honest genuinely non-concern trolling question about a point you made:

I’m going to point out that the truck in question here specifically singles out black women who have abortions as bad people.

I’m not seeing whatever is on the truck that seems to be explicitly singling out black women - the (likely?) black toddler on the rear of the truck? The use of the words “Debt Slavery”?

I’m really not trying to be an ass, and I fully recognize that there’s a lot of crossover between anti-choice wingnut tropes and racist wingnut tropes, but I’m not seeing where that’s the case on the vehicle in question. Admittedly, my white male privilege could be blinding me. What am I looking for here?

Incidentally, Dana Loesch is absolutely loathesome. She has become all the more loathesome as she’s risen up the ranks on the national wingnut talk circuit. She lives in my neighborhood and likes to act hip because she lives in an urban area, but she’s a disgustingly plastic Sarah Palin sycophant whose main aspiration in life is to become the next Ann Coulter. She’s good buddies with St. Louis’ other prominent emerging douchebag wingnut, Gateway Pundit (AKA Jim Hoft). Loesch and Hoft were heavily responsible for promoting the bullshit Kenneth Gladney SEIU “beating” hoax (the black teabagger) that supposedly occurred at a healthcare town hall here in 2009.

DTGslu2K, the photo on the back of the truck is the same photo that was displayed on an anti-abortion billboard in Atlanta, GA, with the words, “Endangered Species” emblazoned as a caption.

This particular billboard was attempting to influence Atlanta voters to believe that Planned Parenthood specifically targets black women for abortions, and implied that the black community was “aborting itself out of existence.” 

Which goes back to anti-abortion claims about Margaret Sanger having been a eugenicist (she wasn’t) due to some writings of hers that were taken out of context. 

The billboard tries to connect all these ideas with one picture, basically saying: “The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicst.  Therefore, Sanger’s contemporaries in Planned Parenthood and other reproductive-health access initiatives are also eugenicists, and they are specifically targeting the black community, because they believe that being black is a genetic feature that they would prefer to eliminate.” 

None of that is true, of course, but that’s their implication.

Rachel Tyrel @ Comment #5:

Oh, yeah, I remember that billboard well. I didn’t immediately recognize that the baby photo was the same as the baby photo in the “Endangered Species” billboard, which is why I was a bit confused about it. Thanks for clearing it up for me.

I’d guess that your average right wing nut thinks that spending on welfare is about half the federal budget

The other half, of course, consists of foreign aid.

“Most people have no idea what the tax rate was in 1953, for instance.”

They don’t, and we know that it was very high compared with today.  Their ignorance (or active avoidance of economic facts and understanding) cannot continue or there is truly no hope for this country.  Unless we’d really like to become a third-world kleptocracy.

“But they definitely know how much sexual and gender mores changed, and the most obvious change becomes the scapegoat for all other problems.”

I’m sure this is true, to our great loss.  Ironic to me is the fact that while the mores have changed a lot, the actual behavior really hasn’t.  The only practical difference between then and now is that back then many people felt horrible shame for indulging their sexual desires, while now this is not as common.

The question I’m curious about: Is this deep (and hypocritical) concern by the American Idiocracy about our sexual morality — as a substitute for a common-sense understanding of the extreme economic class warfare that we’re up to our necks in — really by choice, or is it the simple end result of a decades long GOP/oligarchy propaganda/disinformation campaign which has been pumped out through every available media orifice?

Of course, while I’d like to know the answer for philosophical reasons, it’s not clear that answering this question will help…

I think this is why antiabortion activism has gone through the roof since the Reagan administration. There’s a link to supply side corporate welfare. Abortion and slut bashing keeps the unwashed masses distracted from the economic policies that have increased income inequality in the U.S. and ruined our economy. The politicians I suspect know damn well what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
The logic of the antiabortion masses, I think, is that if women would just stop taking men’s jobs and go back to providing the unpaid domestic labor and low-wage sexual services, everything will go back to where it should be.

MikeEss: According to some of the social history I’ve read, religious/moral revivals were often coupled with times of stress when people felt like they were losing everything. Crazy preachers flourished during the dust bowl and pretty much every other hard agricultural time, during the upheavals that surrounded the creation of mill towns in the 19th century, and so forth. But I think this version is different because it’s so clearly tailored to support the wealthy and further disenfranchise the less powerful.

But I do think that there is a connection between anti-abortion fever and the debt limit: both are (ostensibly at least) about punishing misdeeds. Open your legs, be forced to bear and raise a chlld; spend on social programs (even though we’re not, really), suffer national bankruptcy. That whole “pain caucus” thing isn’t just a figure of speech.

I said this on another thread, but I would just like to point out that while it’s true that the abortion rate is highest among Black women as compared to other races, the BIRTHRATE is ALSO higher than average for the same group.  The Black population is NOT failing to grow.  The reason there are a lot of abortions in that population is that there are a lot of pregnancies, both wanted and otherwise.

About economics and abortion:

If the rightwing really wanted to reduce abortions, they should make improving the economy, especially for the poor and working classes, a priority. One of the most common reasons a woman has an abortion is that she simply can’t afford a(nother) child.

More on my comment at #9 - I’m also increasingly suspicious that mainstream Democrats are doing the same - doing and saying nothing about antichoice legislation or making any real economic changes and then waving coat hangers around when they have an election to win.

Amanda I think you’re mistaken on the idea that they know what society was like in 1953.  Say you were 25 in 1953, still fairly young to be fully aware of the world but still clearly an adult.  That means you are 83 today.  Sure there are some in the Tea Party that old but not many.  There are just not many that age or older alive.  No what we are competing with is not the 1950s but with instead the “Happy Days” version of the 1950s.  Its a false vision of what life was like.  And its the “Happy Days” after the first season 1950s.  I mean even a huge part of the 1950s revival of the 1970s in film was based on teenagers having sex (Grease, American Graffiti, Porky’s, Animal House).

@Robert: No, what we’re dealing with are people who were 8 in 1953 - or 8 in 1963, which is when The Fifties actually ended, or who were 8 in 1973 and grew up hearing stories about “the good old days”. People who weren’t adults during the fifties and look upon them with the same sort of fuzzy fondness with which I look upon the early nineties.

Another huge change between now and the fifties is the HUGE rightward shift of the right-wing center.  Barry Goldwater was considered far right and he supported civil rights legislation (but only at the state level) and, as late as 1984, local powers to impose benign, progressive content requirements in television programming.  The tax rates he wanted were higher than what we have now, as noted upthread.  Eisenhower felt the same about taxes; he also warned the country about the military-industrial complex.

Guys like Goldwater and Nixon would despise the Tea Party.  Nixon and Eisenhower were both left of Obama.  Goldwater too, if you tune out all that noise he made about the Commies who no longer exist and maybe never did.  And everyone called these fifties dudes conservative.

Goldwater also said things like “Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell’s ass.”

It’s true that a large part of the purpose of the Culture Wars is to intertwine economic policy and social policy. And the reason for this is that, when it comes to economic policy, liberals are demonstrably, factually correct about what works. It’s simply not a matter of opinion. This is assuming, of course that by “what works” you mean what works for the general public good. Conservatives certainly know what works for the upper class, and that’s what they’re busy enacting. Which is also a pretty indisputable fact.

Which is why upper-class conservatives make it their mission to tie economic facts to cultural worldviews and opinions, and make them seem inseparable. It’s the only way to win the argument. Sadly, as everyone in this thread knows, it’s working.

Which is why upper-class conservatives make it their mission to tie economic facts to cultural worldviews and opinions, and make them seem inseparable.

I don’t think it’s as much of a false consciousness as you think. Economic conservatism and support for the upper classes is intimately tied with social conservatism. People who are successful and have economically stable lives succeeded under the present social regime and thus have a stake in it. Disruptions in the social status quo are seen as inherent threats to the economic status quo and may potentially lead to a “new normal” in which the economic winners now may not be able to compete as well in the future. Economic conservatives likely succeeded under socially conservative conditions.

@Maureen - Jon Stewart once did a bit where he showed clips of prominent politicians of various ages talking about how we need to get back to when things were good and times were simpler, like they were in the .... 1920s/1930s/1940s/1950s/1960s/1970s (depending on age of speaker).... and basically pointed out that what everyone is mythologizing is their own childhood.  Of COURSE those seemed like simpler, happier times, you were a CHILD!!!

Amanda, it’s so much worse than you think.  Lots of people believe that because the US now tolerates homosexuality, abortion, and general sluttiness, that God is causing the economy to tank, gas prices to rise, terrorists to attack us, and in general, that “He is removing His hand of blessing from us.”  That’s what Palin, et. al. are actually referring to when they’re referring to “American exceptionalism,” which is why I wish Obama didn’t pander to their accusation that he doesn’t believe in “American exceptionalism.”  Needless to say, this belief is dangerous as hell, starting with the fact that it completely ignores a little thing called “reality,” whether economic, political, or social, and ending with the potential of a freaking holy war.

Of COURSE those seemed like simpler, happier times, you were a CHILD!!!

That reminds me of the Fred Allen story where he pulled a young boy out of the way of a car and reprimanded him, “What’s the matter, don’t you want to grow up and have troubles of your own?”

Amanda, I think that this view that government spending is mostly welfare payments to single mothers of color and pork barrel projects in other Congressional districts is, sadly, way more common than just the average wingnut. It is a myth that has been perpetuated for as long as I can remember and is usually the starting assumption of budget debates and the reason you have all those old white people, the #1 welfare recepients in the country, wanting to shrink the size of government. I would say that nearly all wingnuts and most moderates think that pork and single mother welfare are teh complete budget and a lot of less informed liberals think that the budget is those two ingredients plus military spending. IMHO one of the biggest ways our political system is broken is that so many people think that spending on the poor is the real welfare and that SS and medicare and medicaid (which pays for nursing home care so it also largely serves the elderly) and ifrastructure spending and so on (let alone all the spending through the taxcode that subsidizes retirement for the wealthy and home mortgages, etc) just happens magically because middle + class white people are such good, hard working folks. This is also why the bullshit ryan plan got so much play because it sort of acknowledged that elderly care is a large part of the budget.  I wish his plan didn’t suck so terribley and also rely on so many fantasy beliefs, but we would all be better off if the political debate were grounded in reality.

@23: It’s true, conservatives have done a fantastic job of making the notion that welfare makes up an enormous chunk of the budget compared even to, say, military spending the normal mode of discourse in our country. I’ve seen more than enough comments on political blogs along the lines of “Huh, what do you mean military spending is too high? That’s silly. It’s welfare spending that’s too high!”

IMHO one of the biggest ways our political system is broken is that so many people think that spending on the poor is the real welfare and that SS and medicare and medicaid (which pays for nursing home care so it also largely serves the elderly) and ifrastructure spending and so on (let alone all the spending through the taxcode that subsidizes retirement for the wealthy and home mortgages, etc) just happens magically because middle + class white people are such good, hard working folks.

Damn right. That’s one of the best ways I’ve seen it worded.

@19: You’re right about that. Maybe the “opinion” I was thinking of was more along the lines of “I want everyone to share equally in our nation’s prosperity” vs. “Fuck everyone who isn’t a member of my identity group.”

So this well-funded “libertarian” on the road…why didn’t they get him a better truck?  That thing sucks.

“There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s a problem for the country when strong emotional and ideological views about abortion get intimately linked in people’s ideas”

I wonder what method of controlling other people’s ideas Matt has in mind.

I don’t get how making it difficult for women to get healthcare related to bearing or caring for children ‘empowers’ anyone.

Personally, I don’t want to get back to the ‘simplicity’ of the decade I was born in - it came back to us.

“The assumption is, from what I can tell, that the government needs to “crack down” and stop borrowing money, and throw all those sluts on the street.  And then what will happen is said sluts will stop fucking, get married, and have a husband to support them and this country will return to the 1950s”

Whoah!  lol - that came outta nowhere.  Who told you this?  Aside from the fact that people who came of age in the 50s are in their 70s now and I wasn’t aware you talked to many seniors about fucking.  But you know, whatever floats your boat.  I have to start reading these things through for the Easter Eggs.

Anonymouse being deliberately obtuse? Why I never!

Hey, that was quality sarcasm!

It also solves an obvious problem for the wingnuts. They’ve started to notice that the overt fears over demographic winters, brown people outbreeding them, and so on are obviously racist in origin, so this allows them the same dog-whistle quality that they turn to actual dog-whistles for.

No, they aren’t racist sexist assholes who are directly targeting black women in such a way that it’s obvious that they would make abortions mandatory for the black race just as quickly as they’d make childbirth mandatory for white people.

They are just the only people who care about what happens to black babies against PP’s eugenics experiment.

It’s a bad faith argument to lull the only people who matter. The wishy-washy moderates who want “compromise” between both sides and the news media. Hey, it isn’t about racism and sexism, it’s about babies. Now we have controversy, let’s cover both sides and never ever check up on policy wording or even the rhetoric actually used in the majority of press to their side.

Triplanetery—
They also do a lot of bait and switch with the term welfare. They say that welfare is the largest portion of the budget which is true because of SS and medicaid/care, or they talk about how much gov spending has grown as a percent of gdp which is also true because of the aging population. so when they talk about the out of controls spending they include those programs, but when the discussion is on taxation and how much the rich have to pay in taxes on this mostly welfare budget, they don’t include payroll taxes in their account of taxation, and the non-payroll taxes are clearly dominated by the military. In high school we had to watch all these god awful john stossel propoganda films and he pulled shit like that all the time, but I heard a Cato guy doing it on npr last week too.

@32 alysia:
I talked about that very thing in a blog post a couple months ago. So, thanks for the shameless self-promotion excuse. (tl;dr - scroll to the very bottom with the line graph)

One thing you just said that didn’t even occur to me when I wrote that post is the issue with payroll vs. income tax. Payroll tax, which like you said is what goes toward SS and Medicare, is only assessed on the first $100,000 of income - so people making millions of dollars year barely pay into it at all, as a percent of their income. Whereas anyone making less than $100,000 a year pays a pretty significant chunk of their income into payroll tax.

Reagan actually pulled a neat trick in the 80s where he lowered income tax and compensated by increasing payroll tax. In other words, he literally and deliberately shifted the tax burden away from the upper class and onto the lower class. But what else is new?

The notion that poor people are bamboozled into voting Republican by social conservatives is a bit of a myth - the people most concerned about issues like abortion and gay rights tend to be higher up the socioeconomic scale. I think status concerns are a stronger explanation. There’s a good book called “Symbolic Crusade” about the Prohibition Movement. It basically makes the argument that much of the Prohibition Movement was about status competition, specifically white, rural Protestant regions exerting cultural superiority over the wicked and heavily Catholic cities. There’s a similar dynamic over abortion rights and gay rights - it’s about asserting the superiority of a given ethnic group, in this case centered among white Southerners. Interestingly, Symbolic Crusade notes how Prohibition shifted over time from a political movement that crossed party lines to one that by the mid 20th Century was strictly right wing. The pro-life movement has followed a similar trajectory over the past few decades. Note also that while black and Latino voters are if anything more socially conservative on average than white voters, that does not lead to support for Republicans. Economic and status concerns override social conservatism.

fortunately, most people who came of age in the eisenhower “golden 50’s” are in the process of, as we speak, dying off. as they do, so does the republican/tea party base. since they’ve alienated every other demographic, soon they’ll be a zoo exhibit of near-extinct species.

traplanetary, raising the FICA rate had nothing to do with the reagan deficits, since he was also responsible for establishing the SS trust fund. all it did was provide a less obvious source of gov’t borrowing, the deficits remained the same.

The stereotype that blacks and Latinos are likelier to be socially conservative is also a bit of a myth, frankly.

traplanetary, raising the FICA rate had nothing to do with the reagan deficits

Never said it did. I just said that he used it to shift the tax burden more heavily onto the lower classes.

Aside from the fact that people who came of age in the 50s are in their 70s now and I wasn’t aware you talked to many seniors about fucking.

Point is, the people who most idealise the 50s are precisely the people who didn’t live through them, at least as adults - they just have a rosy *idea* of the period.

In 1953 the tax rate for married filing seperately, married filing jointly and single were 92% for over $200K/person ($200K for a single and $400K for married).  For a head of household it was 92% at $300K.  It went above the current 35% for top out at $8K/person for the first three and $10K for the last.  Clearly, taxes are what drove that prosperity.

snobographer @13, I am admittedly growing even more cynical as regards the Dems, but yes, I think that is exactly what they have been doing since at least the mid-90s.

Oh, yeah - link for the tax data.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html

heln w.h. @40 - The Dems have pretty much the same corporate interests as the Republicans. A look at how private sector unions have been gutted is pretty informative as to what they’ve really been doing too.

“as we speak, dying off. as they do, so does the republican/tea party base”

Very hopeful but yeah, no.  From bureaucrash (atheist anti-establishment group) to GOProud to objectivists to the Reason.org crowd and all stripes of other younger people, it just isn’t happening.  Heh, I do enjoy the ideas people have about the 50s being some Donna Reed/Dick van Dyke show scenario.  No television shows were realistic, but you’d be closer mentioning Honeymooners or I Love Lucy than the mythos of the pearl-bedecked woman in full-skirted dresses happily vacuuming before her husband gets home.

Snobographer - True; and why, along with the truly awful corruption iin the Dem machine in MA, that I am no longer registered as a Dem.