I am getting heartily sick of Herman Cain AKA Mr "Let's simultaneous decimate the federal budget and increase tax rates on the poor by a factor of nine". Zandar does a fine job of dismembering his "racism is dead" bullshit here. [1] Zandar, as I understand it, is black, so I'll let him or her dissect the degree to which Cain's nonsense is especially surprising and aggravating coming from a black man.
I will note however that one does not need any personal experience of the pain of racism to realise that Cain claiming that his rise to wealth and power is proof that the playing field is level is ludicrous. It's exactly as logical as Frodo returning to the Shire and announcing any hobbit who can't make the trip to Mount Doom is a feeble-minded, unmotivated pussy, because he's done it, Sam's done it, and all those raspy, scraping Nazgul don't seem to have any trouble with it either.
Newsflash, Mr Baggins: you didn't get there on positivity alone. As Zandar notes, we don't know whether Gandalf the Grey represents affirmative action in this metaphor, or just an astonishingly impressive run of good luck, but either way, that dude was there, keeping the Balrog off your back whilst you gritted your teeth and applied yourself. To turn round and announce the moral of your story is that you have proved the uselessness of wizards doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Cain's loyal coterie of defenders can piss off as well, while we're at it. Every time someone argues the Republicans can't be racist because Lincoln freed the slaves (Pierce eviscerates one such fool here), it makes me wish Honest Abe had left a seven course banquet sealed up somewhere in the Whitehouse, just so we could feed its dust and bones to these idiotic fuckers and demand they claim it's still the hautest of haute cuisine. You might as well cite Friedrich Ebert as proof that Hitler was a fan of political compromise and coalition building to ensure peace.
[1] Is there any more perfect encapsulation of Republican thought than "Now I've passed beyond the need for something, it's high time that it was removed?" See also the wretched husk of humanity men call George "No global warming since 1991" Will.
2 comments:
I take your point but as Ebert was in the SPD, your last comparison would be more like arguing that the Republicans can't be racist because LBJ passed the civil rights act.
It probably wasn't clear enough, I grant you, but I was thinking more along the lines that "American republicans have remained the same throughout the last 150 years" is no less ridiculous than "German socialists have remained the same throughout the last 150 years".
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