White Male Problems

I'm trying to brace myself for the next ten months. President Truman's characterization as the "guardians of privilege" (which I don't recall ever seeing before) never seemed so apt. But the conservative base is angry. They've been used for years in the interest of privilege.

In order to get lots of votes, they need more than just the rich voting for them. In order to get lots of poor and middle class people voting for a party advocating policies in direct opposition to the economic interests of the vast majority of people, they wave around social issues like a matador waves a cape in front of a bull. The wealthy can watch the culture wars play out from on high, laughing to themselves all the while. All of the fine hardworking Christian culture warriors are the peasants fighting for their king, who urges them to battle for god while being primarily concerned with maintaining a healthy flow of capital.

The base is angry that they've been betrayed by the Republican leadership in Congress over December's budget vote.

The “betrayal” in this case refers to the annual failure to end Obamacare and the continuance of the program for Syrian refugees. But the one item that has them apoplectic is continued funding for Planned Parenthood. And there’s good reason for the agitation: The social conservatives are in total revolt. And that is a big problem for the GOP, which depends upon the evangelical churches to get out the vote.

The anger spills over into the Republican primary where "establishment" candidates can't get traction. The base wants someone to wipe out the Obama years--they want revenge. According to a focus group conducted by Frank Luntz

Some still believe the president is not Christian. Many believe he does not love America. And just about all of them think he does not reflect the values the country was built upon.

Of course, this is delusional. Tom Gogola believes the United States really wasn't ready for our first black president.

The first year of Obama's presidency was dominated by efforts to hold off the collapse of the American economy and undo the damage wrought by the smirking failure who previously occupied the White House. As he rolls into his last year as president, Obama appears to have largely succeeded on that front, but you'd never know it.

Then as now, Obama and his accomplishments are drowned out by the pugnacity, the sneers, the lies and the anger that regularly emits from so-called victims of Obama's presidency and their enablers in the political-media establishment—blue-collar workers of the white persuasion left in a new-economy wilderness of shifting demographics. They are content to gloat about their anti-intellectualism as those voters continue to cling to the guns and religion that made them hate Obama in the first place.

A hatred based on lies means they're avoiding the underlying issues. The lunatic right hates that their's is a minority view now. Gary Legum calls them out.

It is not so much a belief that GOP elites in the Obama era have “sold them out” as it is a fear that GOP elites have “sold them out in favor of immigrants/Muslims/black people/moochers/political correctness/campus leftists/what-have-you.”

I’m talking about racism, of course. ...[W]e’re not talking about the type of racism that wears hoods and burns crosses on black families’ lawns. If anything, we’re talking about a racism more subtle and pernicious and backed into the structure of American society, a racism whose existence conservatives so often yadda yadda when the subject arises, a racism that we are forever exhausting ourselves just trying to prove to people ... that it exists.

As a white male, I feel comfortable saying that [wonder[ing] how white male became an accusation rather than a description] might have something to do with all the bad stuff white males have done for much of human history. Not that there hasn’t been good stuff. But when you have spent hundreds of years being the dominant force in nearly every facet of society, you have to expect a backlash as that society becomes more open and multicultural. You can take the accusation as a personal affront, or you can acknowledge that not every white man in history has been, to put it mildly, as awesome as you think you are. It’s a complicated history, but also it is really not.

Update (January 2):  If only a black man hadn't gone and got himself elected President, we wouldn't have all this racist backlash.