Tucker Carlson is in Hungary, consulting with far-right autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a pillar of European ethno-nationalism. Pretense has been dropped. This week we see where the Republican party is headed. The racial insensitivity of the Trump presidency was nothing compared to what’s coming.
The kernal of fierce white supremacism and avowed racism in America (not people who wore blackface once at Halloween in 1981, or who sometimes still say "colored") has been rather slim. But many who'd normally refuse to stand anywhere near a whiff of white nationalism have turned a corner. It's spreading, bringing the pestilence into sunlight and out of its dark hiding spots. This isn't the fake-racism hunted on Twitter for bloodsport. This is the real thing.
"Conservatives have all been totally racist all along" is the explanation offered by many progressives. It's a vicious lie. Just like "Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals," it's a generalization that can only come from people too insular to know actual individual people from the group they're attacking. It's as disgusting as any other group-based generalization. And that sort of thoughtless tarring has radicalized conservatives who'd otherwise have fought this movement.
Strident anti-racists have chosen certain groups as free targets for their contempt (dudes, boomers, the melanin-deficient). Let's call them "negatively-protected classes". This makes many such people feel "othered", which ensures conflict. In fact, it's the eternal route to conflict.
Randy Newman pissed off many with his hit "Short People", making fun of racists by pretending to dumbly condemn an arbitrary harmless trait. Short people wanted to kill the guy, despite his clearly satirical intent. He'd drawn a circle and placed them outside its circumference, and said unkind things about them. Regardless of intent, that move has power (which is precisely why racism's toxic).
Humans are simple creatures. Make someone your enemy, and, no surprise, you'll have made an enemy. The people you scream at and hate on - certain that with this element it's amply deserved - will not sit there obediently taking your medicine. They won't willingly line up at reeducation camps. They won't strive to "do better". That's just not how it works.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of those who've taken that bait, responding by collapsing their moral standards and enabling, however hesitantly, the encroaching abomination. Far from it. I keep praying that humanity will finally follow the lead of Christ, Gandhi, and MLK and rise above, reacting to extremism with enlightened moderation rather than with reciprocal extremism.
But we are, alas, a race of bait-takers. Bait and ye shall hook. So a whole slew of Americans - including the nice Republican lady down the block who brought you brownies when your kid was born - who've been freely and loudly "othered" (not because of who they are, but because of what they are) might not be ready to don robes and burn crosses, but, if they had to choose a team...
Wide frame: the good news is that I believe this entire fiasco represents the last gasp of a certain type of human assholery. As the world gets better and better, there are inevitable zigzags. It's never a smooth, straight line. So welcome to the zig, which may last for a generation or two. Our experience won’t be remembered. We’ll be rounding error in an upward trajectory, like protozoa drenched by an errant splash of Pepsi.
Did I mention that I'm moving out of the country?
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