Confused White People
by admin on Sep.01, 2010, under Commentary
On August 28, ignorance looked pretty blissful
By Will Moredock
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.†- George Orwell
I have lived long enough to have witnessed some important changes in American culture, in the way Americans think, behave and speak.
When I was growing up in South Carolina a half-century ago, every white person I knew was a segregationist and a racist to a greater or lesser degree. Or if there were any white people who did not share those views, they were smart enough to keep it to themselves.
It is a tribute to the humanity of the civil rights movement and to the basic decency of the American people that so much has changed – even in the South. One of those changes has been in the way Americans use the language. The “n-word,†as it has come to be known, is now verboten. Its use can cost a person his social standing or her job, as it did with a right wing radio personality recently. Ironically, the word has standing today only among certain elements of the black community.
Likewise, the word “racist†itself has been transformed. Fifty years ago racist speech and behavior were perfectly respectable, even de rigueur. Whites not demonstrating sufficient hostility to blacks and suspicion of the civil rights movement might be ostracized – or worse.
Today “racist†is one of the strongest pejoratives in the language. No one – not even a racist – can allow the word to be hung on him. It is almost comic to watch conservative politicians backtrack and stumble over themselves (as several South Carolina pols have done in the last couple of years), trying to explain that their racist remarks were misunderstood, were taken out of context, were meant in jest, etc.
I realized the language had undergone a strange mutation a couple of years ago when I observed that my critics had begun calling me a racist in their responses to my columns and blogs. Presumably, they were angry at my criticism of white people for their historic bigotry, for their subsequent distortion of history, for their glorification of violence and folly. And presumably, they took my motivation for writing such things to be racism against white people, ignoring the fact that I am white, that my family is white, that the majority of my friends associates are white.
So what does “racism†mean in the 21st century? Is it just the pejorative of last resort for those of limited vocabulary? Did the civil rights movement so effectively stigmatize the behavior that even racists find the tag a handy cudgel against their adversaries?
And what does “honor†mean today? What does it mean in the mouth of a man like Glenn Beck?
I’ve wondered about the man’s state of mind in the past as I watched the tears stream down his face on his Fox News show. (He reminds me of Tammy Faye Bakker, who used open the faucets and streak her mascara while fleecing the lambs with her husband Jim at her side on their PTL Network.)
A few months ago, when Beck announced that he would hold a rally at the Lincoln Memorial, on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream†speech, there was appropriate outrage and consternation. The reaction was because Beck had so clearly taken that great moment in American history and turned it on its head.
“We were the people that did it in the first place,†Beck announced last spring on Fox News.
Did what in the first place? Stood up to ignorance, bigotry and violence? No, Beck and his Fox News colleagues have never done that. They have fanned ignorance, bigotry and violence with their Islamophobia and homophobia. And one knows instinctively that if Beck and Fox had been around in 1963, they would have been railing against Martin Luther King and everything he stood for.
“This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement,†Beck proclaimed with no sense of irony. “It has been so distorted and so turned upside down because we must repair honor and integrity first…We will take that movement because we were the people that did it in the first place.â€
And so a hundred thousand white people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 for Beck’s “Restoring Honor†rally, another linguistic contortion that failed to address whose honor was being restored and how it was lost.
“Political language,†George Orwell wrote, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.â€
There was much wind and lying at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 and it all sounded very respectable. Such is the power of language when people no longer care or remember what words mean.
talkback@columbiacitypaper.com
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September 5th, 2010 on 4:44 pm
Follow me on twitter @Youxia88 What Ohio is doing should change your views on equal rights. Blacks in Ohio have god like status and non blacks have no rights at all.
September 15th, 2010 on 6:27 pm
Americans need to wake up the fact that Beck is simply another opinion pushing charlatan who is a product of mormon cult theology and he mixes this with his personal make up as a dry alcoholic. And for the record, he is a Mormon and not a Christian. As someone with a graduate degree in religion, I can say with all qualifications that Mormonism fits all parameters of a cult and has none of the parameters of a religion. A cult is any group (regardless of its size) that interprets the doctrines of a religion in an unorthodox fashion. The problem here is the fact the most Christians do not understand the difference and they easily fall for the lies of Mormon missionaries when they come to one’s door. On Beck’s radio show and Fox Network program he consistent demonstrates all the unstable behaviors of a dry alcoholic which include grandiosity, judgmentalism, intolerance, impulsivity, ADD and indecisiveness. Alongside that reality, Glenn Beck does not possess a single ounce of journalistic integrity, has no college degree, has no qualifications and he is definitely not a true conservative. But then, what can anyone expect from someone who can’t find anything filthier than their own personal reflection. Since people like Beck cannot survive on the basis of any personal merits, they survive by putting others down with lies and half truths in order to feel good about themselves. The truth about Beck is that he a dry mormon alcoholic who never got the counseling required for alcoholics. To further complicate things and confuse people, Beck flippantly throws around Christian terms like “God”, “Jesus”,”Holy Spirit” as well as voices of other so called “Spirit Powers” on his radio talk show. Beck is a mormon in active standing with the mormon church and is not a Christian. Mormonism teaches many gods, that the god of the earth was once a man who attained godhood status, there is no trinity, the cross of Christ means nothing and that Jesus Christ and Satan were brothers. Because Beck does not possess a single ounce of journalistic integrity, he is the perfect abortion poster child for Fox Network. The people who love what Beck says are no different than the impressionable sheep who loved every speech made by Adolph Hitler in his early years when he brought Germany into an era of economic prosperity These same sheep also blindly followed Hitler into one of the darkest chapters of world history. Beck and the Fox Network both cater to the same lowest common denominator of demagoguery. Beck would not know the first thing about God as he is a mormon. Someone should ask him which of the many mormon gods he kept talking about during his argument with himself on Saturday on the square in DC. Like a typical dry alcoholic, Beck even lied on national television when he spoke about holding a document signed by George Washington. That event never took Place. Unfortunately, people who love being led around by the nose do not realize that Beck is talking about a different god than that of Christianity, Judaism or Islam and that he has been a product of mormonism cultism from the day he started doing a radio talk show as an opinion pusher. You don’t have to have a degree in psychology to see that he exhibits all the signs of a dry alcoholic. The only reason this unstable impressionable idiot fell into mormonism was because the woman he wanted to have sex with would not do so unless they got first got married and from that point, they joined the mormon cult. Glenn Beck is as big a charlatan as Joseph Smith or that 5th grade graduate (Charles T Russell) who started the Jehovah’s Witness cult. This is Glenn Beck in a very accurate and concise nutshell. Considering the fact that Becks personal views are extreme Marxist Libertarian, his form of patriotism is false and he is a person who has no real substance or depth. It will not surprise many of us when Beck’s next big thing is to come out of the closet and announce his homosexuality to the nation. Simply put…he is just another predatory neocon who is pushing the buttons of very ignorant & impressionable people who love being told what to think and believe. We live in a period of history where it has become very socially acceptable to be stupid and follow extremist idiots like Glenn Beck, Adolph Hitler, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. Chicanery and lies are their middle names.