Past Prologue Strategies

The ghosts of Atwater past: birth(er)s, death(er)s; mendacity
© 8 August 2009, The Griot Poet

Lee Atwater, God rest his soul (a fatal tumor revealed he HAD one), developed and patented divisive identity politics – the mantle taken up by Karl Rove – to get George Wallace “segregation-now-segregation-forever” Dixiecrats to Republican polls.

“The Southern Strategy” opposed the Voting Rights Act abstractly:

Atwater: “You start out in 1954 saying ‘n----r, n----r; n----r’” (when Brown vs. Board of Education received a 9 – 0 Supreme Court pass with the vigor of Thurgood Marshall’s judicial rigor to implement at all deliberate speed), “by 1968 you can’t say ‘n----r’… that hurts you. So you say stuff like”:

- “Forced busing;
- “State’s rights;
- “Tax cuts;

You keep it abstract, but the result is “blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Now: they say the fight is “health care,” while many of us are unemployed, laid off, on food stamps or welfare. Tabloid journalists insisting on reporting debunked after debunked after debunked FAKED birth certificates (because an exotic name found [Aramaic] 24 times in the King James Bible can’t be from Hawaii!). Governor “good hair” has the highest rate of uninsured of ANY state; he berates stimulus funds, punches his fist high and shouts at treason-speaking, secession-leaning tea bagger rallies: “State’s rights!”
But now: it’s not just color: it’s class! Follow-the-money to the K Street lobby and see [who] are the true masters of republicans and blue dog democrats!

Thomas Frank asks “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” We tax cut and war mongered our way into this huge deficit.

- “Forced busing;
- “State’s rights;
- “Tax cuts;

The only point changed is the first!
Lied ourselves into two wars in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein and sons Uday and Qusay, bombing Ur of the Chaldean’s back into the Bill O’Reilly stone age (which had NOTHING to do with 9/11 per DUBYA),
Instead of stating: “we don’t want that n----r in the White House” (built by the way on the backs of slaves),
We have “birth(er)” knaves and republican sponsored-for-20-years “Living Wills” transformed to “Logan’s Run” euthanasia, “death(er)s” shout down and stifle Congressional Town Hall Meetings in industry-sponsored Astroturf rallies,

Because 40 plus years later (from 1968), you can’t say: n----r, n----r; n----r!

Atwater said: “you got to be abstract.”

Forced busing becomes:
- “Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex” (what Ike meant to say),
- “State’s rights;
- “Tax cuts;

A quote from “The Price of Loyalty” by Ron Suskind: “Deficits don’t matter, this is our due,” from then Vice President Richard Bruce (Dick) Cheney!