"There is no one who is you-er than you!"
"Dr. Seuss" You are you!
The "Dr. Seuss" controversy is related to the controversy over the 2020 election, which is related to the Republican effort to make elections more "secure," which is related to Trump's populist ethno-nationalism.
Yesterday this blog discussed Dr. Seuss and inclusion. A few of the older books in the Dr. Seuss catalog included text and images that were caricatures of Africans, Chinese, and turban-wearers, positioning them as more "other" than the presumed reader of the book. The Geisel estate beneficiaries asked that those books be withdrawn.
The surprising "tell" about the deep and related issues at play in America was not that they pulled the books. Their doing so was entirely consistent with Geisel's "Dr. Seuss" message of inclusion and validation of people in their own different selves. The tell was the outrage by Fox News and Republican pundits. They defined it as silencing of material that was totally innocuous. They said there is nothing wrong with the material.
The third connection is what is taking place in the actions and messaging by Republicans in state capitols and in Congress. They have found a policy and rhetorical path for sidestepping full-on support for insurrection and overthrow of the election. It is to reiterate that Trump got 74 million votes, proof that he represents the American will. Then they voice skepticism of the election result as an artifact of insecure elections not anti-democratic sentiment. They say they have questions and doubts, legitimate ones. Finally, they advocate for efforts to make voting more "secure," i.e. more difficult. Put multiple steps into voting absentee. Require notarization of mailed ballots. Have fewer days for early voting. Require voting in person on election day. Purge voter rolls. Check signatures better.
There is an underlying theme and a warning reiterated often by GOP pundits: Democrats want to let into the country all sorts of the wrong people, people who will be rushed to citizenship so they can vote for Democrats who will promise them an easy comfortable life of free stuff at taxpayer expense. And meanwhile, in cities populated by people of color, corrupt election officials pad the vote with non-citizen and fraudulent votes. The wrong people vote and it might get worse if we don't stop it.
The GOP has become Trump's party because it has adopted the central organizing theme of ethno-nationalist right populism. It is not a Main Street Chamber of Commerce Party anymore. Those voters still exist, and may follow along to get the tax cuts for the educated and prosperous, but they are not driving the agenda. It is a party addressing the concerns of the White working-class male. They are being displaced by women, by educated fellow-citizens, by automation, by foreign workers, by people of color who have lived here for centuries, and by immigrants. These people are threats to the former centrality and primacy of the White working-class man. 
Given that mindset, the Dr. Seuss controversy fits into context. Democrats--those crazy, woke, inclusion-loving liberal socialists--are all soft-hearted and squishy, because they think everyone is entitled to be an American and an American voter. They like walls to protect the "real" Americans against the physical presence of outsiders, and legal walls around our election system to protect us from their votes.
Trump said to build a wall. A lot of people liked the sound of that.
3 comments:
This discussion circles back to "white privilege".
What if America had not institutionalized slavery? It's a fascinating complex question that leads one into all sort of possible consequences and a reimagining of history. America's national ethnic mix would be radically different, for a start.
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Here's one of several considerations I see in the present era. Because of the shift in the 19th century from wealth being generated by agriculture to industry, the factory superseded the farm and because it was in the North where more caucasians were available for labor, and subsequently more immigration from Europe, the "white worker" became the dominant class. Their political power dominated elections until the Great Depression, with exclusion of other groups a central driver. Workers voted Republican in solidarity with their employers.
Since then all the social and technological change we have experienced has eroded this dynamic and led the Republican party down the path to fascism. Labor, the turning of a nut on a bolt, has become devalued and with automation, a commodity. Seen in this light it seems inevitable, even with a certain twisted logic, that a party that represents a diminishing share of the electorate would turn to other, less palatable avenues for support.
By instituting slavery colonial America set in motion the forces of its own destruction. Simply ending it by edict has clearly not been enough, and the Democratic party has subsequently made it a central mission to bring equality to American society, which never was "white" and certainly won't be in the future.
I am troubled by the frequent refrain on this blog that the Trump ideology is one that addresses "working class" white males, when there is so much evidence that wealthy whites voted for Trump and subscribes to "ethno-nationalism" in much greater proportions than did lower-income white folks. There is an affluent segment of the population that, like Rush Limbaugh, loved their familiar comforts and did't care to let anyone else have them. They may not be the old "chamber of commerce" Republicans but neither do they work with their hands in factories or on the land. When they come to DC to rally they don't look for bargain motels. They stay at the Ritz-Carlton. They want to keep their money and make more of it, without either hard work or ingenuity--the very traits that they resent in the rising multi-cultural tide.
I read a very smart comment a few weeks ago. It said that in the debate over elections, the Republicans have gone wrong by claiming election fraud in the absence of evidence. The Democrats have gone wrong by acting like they have something to hide.
In particular, the Democrats’ resistance to voter ID verification, masked by semi-hysterical claims about “voter suppression,“ looks like they really want there to be loopholes that they can exploit.
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