Simple. A simple government.Common Sense. “Family Values” Its a common refrain that wraps up a political agenda into a wider context of right wing reactionary politics in which the apparent simplicity of the message is not detachable from a politics of exclusion, racism, militarism and acts as subtext, all wrapped in a particular vision of “God” Mike Huckabee is on the book hustings, peddling his “Do the Right Thing” sequel, ”A Simple Government” as a thinking man’s Sarah Palin, or the used car salesman populism of Pat Buchanan.
The subtitle “Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (and a Trillion That We Don’t!)” sounds very much like the twelves steps of AA and it gives the reader an inkling of pretty dumbed down soft demagoguery. You can read the twelve steps from the a onetime Baptist preacher on how to “fix” government.It seems catered to the white trash ; pablum to keep them dancing around the bonfire praying for some vanities to torch, but not fiery enough to ignite a peasant uprising. The Huckabee vision is not marginal however: it really points to a situation of irreconcilable differences and the potential “civil war” peaceful divorce that seems inevitable.
“In an interview with radio talk show host Michael Medved that took place on Monday but that’s getting traction today, Huckabee said that Portman’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy was “troubling.” “It’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea” of having children without being married, Huckabee said on the program….”Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing.” …”You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock. 61 percent of Hispanic kids… across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering.” Read More: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/03/04/mike-huckabee-criticizess-natalie-portmans-pregnancy/
Its all very predictable. Blame the victim which automatically throws out a straight flush of the race card. Separate but equal. A two-state solution. Rather than reflect that the problems Huckabee belabors are endemic to a lack of leadership which has always chosen to throw money at a problem instead of a systematic review of the relationship between leadership and responsibility. The following is a critique by ballet critic Katharine Kanter on the fact only 3,000 people attend ballet in France, and the art finds itself dying. The dynamic describes the same process in America and the reactionary politics of the Mike Huckabee stripe that are spawned from scavenging among Church parking lots looking for bones and handouts.
Kanter: He will not know that most of the Africans and North Africans he sees live, or rather vegetate, when they are not working at sub-standard wages, either in Ghettos like the Goutte d’Or, or in what are, quite literally, Bantustans. Built in the 1970s over an hour’s train journey from the centre of every major town, the Bantustans are fetid tower blocks that the French call “rabbit hutches”. Before they were put up, the living conditions of immigrants often resembled those in a concentration camp. I would suggest that readers who doubt that, see a 1997 documentary film entitled by Yamina Benguigui, entitled Mémoire d’Immigrés.
France is a country of Apartheid. Individuals born in Africa or North Africa, whose parents or grandparents were, or who profess the Muslim faith, are not considered to be truly French. They “cannot be trusted”. But, if we are to go by the latest statistics provided by La Documentation française, roughly eight percent of the population officially profess the Muslim faith in France, i.e. something like 4.2 million, out of a total population of sixty million. Religion aside, individuals of African and North African origin or of so-called “mixed” race, represent, at this point, well over ten percent of the population overall, and probably more like fifteen percent, although here, no precise statistics are available….
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Having lived in the US now for almost 7 years I can report that I find the culture disappointing in general. Americans have little to no respect for their history and seem, in general, to be soft intellectually, morally, spiritually, and even physically. But I think it is the generation of which we are, unfortunately, a part. The Boom Generation mewls at every turn, a pathetic plaint when needs and want s are not immediately indulged. Here the malaise is a squirming, cranky, infantile failure to stand with a straight back and do the difficult thing – including thinking deeply or on many cases, thinking at all. I wonder if it is better anywhere else and I think, probably not.