Willful Ignorance as Political Currency

<tap tap tap> Is this thing on?

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m still the same old crank I always was. I just got too addicted to social media, an addiction I’m trying to break. Here’s hoping it takes with a return to old school blogging.

I got involved in a social media thread yesterday where a person wanted to claim that racism in the south springs from the Democratic Party of today. That the racism switch from Democratic to Republican never happened. I suppose when your political party is headed by such an overt racist you have the desire to deflect and I understand that, but this unbelievable, willful ignorance still makes me furious. It is so easy to disprove with just a few minutes of effort on the internet (which I’ll save you from – the switch happened in 1948 when Truman kicked the Dixiecrats out of the Democratic Party, just after he defeated Dewey).

But it got me thinking. Why has willful ignorance become such a treasured commodity in our social discourse? How did it become such a strong currency in our political discussions? Why is willful ignorance seen as a Political POSITIVE by so many people?

There’s some knowledge I have thanks to being descended from my father that I’m not going to get into, but I think it really starts with the expulsion of the Dixiecrats from the Democratic Party in 1948.

Understand that Harry Truman HATED the Dixiecrats. They nearly cost him the presidential election of 1948. Sure, when you look at the popular vote (Dixiecrats – 2.4%) and the electoral college (Dixiecrats – 39 votes out of a possible 531) it doesn’t seem possible, but the reason many newspapers called the election for Dewey is because of the belief that Strom Thurmond (the Dixiecrat candidate) had successfully split the vote. They were laughably wrong, but polling backed them up right up to election day.

After the election Truman consolidated power and kicked the Dixiecrats out, who were democrats until Truman adopted a civil rights platform, and because the Republican Party had been shifting rightwards for some time they were welcomed in. Most Dixiecrats became Republicans (for example, Strom Thurmond and Herman Talmadge) but a few came back by agreeing to a party loyalty pledge in 1952.

I could go on and on about that, but that’s not my point today. My point is that the Dixies wanted the South to remain Segregated. They wanted enforceable racism to stay. They were willfully wrong and they were welcomed into the Republican Party with open arms – because they were badly beaten in 1948 and needed new blood. The Republican party slowly became the party that would welcome anyone to get votes. I’ll get to that in a moment.

After Truman we got Eisenhower, who was an incredibly popular man. Recruited by both Democrats and Republicans he declined to state his preference for a very long time (including refusing to run in 1948) but finally came down on the Republican side, running for President in 1952 and winning handily. He called himself a Progressive Republican, willing to fight the right wing of his party, but he accommodated them as well, welcoming corporate executives into his cabinet (a first) and eventually issuing Executive Order 10450, which barred members of the LGBTQA community from federal service – resulting in the firing of over 5,000 people (this order wasn’t rescinded until 1995). His administration started veering more and more to the right and Eisenhower actually railed against it. He only grudgingly supported “Operation Wetback” because he wanted to curb illegal immigration, and at the end of his presidency warned against the Military Industrial Complex, that was growing and building with heavy Republican support.

Then came Nixon. Woo boy, then came Nixon. Although he lost against Kennedy he didn’t lose by all that much. Had Pennsylvania gone the other way we’d have never had Kennedy. The gap between the two in the popular vote was only 0.18%. It was close. Kennedy got most of his southern votes thanks to having Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. And there were controversies about ballot-box stuffing in Illinois. Nixon had been a rabid anti-communist, and he very nearly rode the coattails of the Eisenhower Presidency into the White House.

In 1968, with LBJ flailing and the once-promising Camelot years falling into the ruins of Vietnam and the social revolutions going on, Nixon developed a new idea: The Southern Strategy. The idea would be to appeal directly to all of the Dixiecrats and former Dixiecrats who had remained loyal to the Democratic Party by using race as a position point. One of his men, Lee Atwater, came up with buzz words and phrases like “forced busing”, “state’s rights”, “welfare state” and so on that it became possible to be an open racist without using actual racist slurs. And between the Democratic disarray and Nixon pulling everyone he could into the Republican Party it worked.

Twice.

Once 1976 came around the Republicans were hurting, thanks to the fact that Nixon’s law-breaking finally caught up with him. Ford was tainted by his pardon of Nixon so the nation wanted ANYONE else and the Democratic Party gave us Jimmy Carter, who was doing fine until Iran exploded. Believe it or not, Carter actually brought the hostages home before he left office but Reagan gets the credit because it finally happened after he was elected. Never mind the months of negotiations that went before. Reagan was a conservative Republican and he wanted to tap a potential new base: the Religious Right.

Up to this point the Religious Right was treated with widespread scorn. They said crazy shit. Several leaders of this group would tell their followers that they could reroute hurricanes and tornadoes. A couple built theme parks. One built a huge church out of glass and crystal. There were faith healers. One of them actually fund-raised that if he didn’t get enough money God would “call him home”. I’ve lost count of the number of “last days” that we have passed by. Nutcases, but nutcases with followings and many of them were simply non-voters, because God wasn’t in Government. Reagan cultivated their leaders, and their leaders preached the Gospel according to St. Ronnie. When Regan secured the Republican Nomination he force the party to accept them, and to accommodate them.

The Republican Party found themselves in the position of having to accommodate the crazy. And the crazy takes the Bible as gospel – that every word is true. At least, every word that they cherry-picked that supports their own bigotry. Against LGBTQA rights. Against Abortion. Some were even against any evidence that the earth is more than 6,000 years old. If Science or evidence contradicted their beliefs, then their beliefs were right no matter what. Willful Ignorance, for religious purposes. I kind of understand that. Freedom of religion is cool. It’s part of being US.

But then Reagan had a couple of rules changed about television broadcasting: He had the Fairness Doctrine repealed, and he got the FCC to stay mute about the idea of regulating cable. Once cable took off Roger Ailes began to work on the framework for what would become Fox News. He worked with Reagan on media, and then George Bush I after that, and then just prior to the start of Bill Clinton’s second term launched Fox News. Paula Zahn, Bill O’Reilly, Neil Cavuto, and Sean Hannity all had shows from the first week and their agenda was a simple one. Repeat Republican talking points and belittle anything said by a non-Republican, no matter what that was. Follow Reagan’s 11^th commandment – say no evil of a fellow Republican. By the time the 2000 election took place, This Republican Propaganda Channel was available in 56 Million homes. As there is no such thing as a Democratic Propaganda channel everything they said went unchallenged. The Religious Right had their own channels too. Yes, that’s a plural – at one time there were several.

And oh boy, some of the crazy shit they said. Do a few Google searches and see what you get.

While this was all happening, the internet basically exploded. Web pages. Blogs. Livejournal. Facebook. Twitter. Snapchat! Universities putting their archives online. The Cloud. So many resources for information became available. Newspapers put their archives online. You can research your ancestry. Look up quotes. Look up pictures. Find people. Research the history of nearly anything.

But at the same time, opinions came online as well and EVERYONE’s got an asshole, er, opinion. Some places encouraged and cultivated some pretty dark and dangerous stuff (everyone, just stay off 4-chan). Some places tried to be friendly. Some act as cultural centers for such a diverse group of interests that it’s impossible to comment on even 1% of them. And The Republican Party invited many of THEM in, and the people who responded are much like the people previously brought in, so swayed by the two decade effort of the Republican Propaganda channel that they tend to believe what they get from there as a source then they got in actual SCHOOL.

And those numbers grew and grew. And now they’re online. And they’ll argue with you. Most of them have never even HEARD of Reagan’s 11^th Commandment.

And then John McCain made the biggest mistake of his life and put Sarah Palin on the ticket. She was one of the nutcases. She was a Dominionist. She was loud, vacuous and narcicistic. She never checked anything she said, had any depth to anything she said, and often contradicted something she had said only 10 minutes previously. Her lack of actual knowledge about ANYTHING was staggering, and her Willful Ignorance was world class. She had never heard of Reagan’s 11^th commandment either and suddenly a party full of people who respected it had to refer to her in reverence and awe. And a LOT of the country bought it. 45.7% of the people who voted bought it. It wasn’t enough, but this was on the table now.

The Republican party tried to go back to its tax cut and corporate roots but that didn’t work either and more people like Sarah Palin were in office now. So it’s only natural that someone like Sarah Palin, but only more so, would rise to the crop. Many tried to be that person, but most couldn’t pull it off. They needed a natural.

Donald Trump is exactly that natural. He is the King of modern Narcissism. He’s a man who believes whatever comes out of his mouth, even if it contradicts what came out his own mouth previously, or positions he supported previously. A man who may be a Russian Stooge. So now we’ve added the necessity of personal loud narcissism to the equation. Willful Ignorance squared.

So the people who value Willful Ignorance finally elected a leader who embodies their own ability to not see the world as it is.

I’ve simplified this greatly, of course, but I’ve had many an argument online with people taking positions that are easily disprovable if you’re willing to use the internet for what it was built for – a research tool. The internet is a GREAT research tool, but most of the internet (about 75%) is devoted to various social media sites, or pay homage to them in some way. So of course people only use the internet for this one thing, and never bother to actually verify if what they are saying is actually TRUE. They instead use what they already believe, and that outweighs anything anyone else could say. Willful Ignorance – even though the resource to verify or rebut their belief/opinion is right at their fingertips.

It appears that all those cuts in education that started in 1970s have really taken hold.

It used to be that your opinion would NEVER outweigh facts. That calculus has changed and it’s all social media and its satellites. And like many of you, I’m sick of it. But I’m addicted to it too. Same as you.

I cannot stand for Willful Ignorance. Not when reality is in opposition with it. Not when the truth is easily available to people at the exact same keyboards where they spout their ignorance. So maybe Social Media just isn’t for me – but that said, it’s become the best way to get a message out, and as someone who produces and consumes public art that matters to me.

So I’m looking for a solution. No clue what it is but I think we need one. Making Fox News reportable to the FCC? Making any website that generates over $1B in revenue reportable? I have no idea.

But I’m tired of your Willful Ignorance. And I’m tired of it being a political virtue. It has to stop, or we’re all fucked.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Cheap Shots (hey, I can drink again!):

Mr. Trump, nobody’s buying it.

Congressman AD the Voice.

Hey, I’m all in favor of keeping Kevin McCarthy out of the Speaker’s chair, but this is nuts.

Queueing up my bet Ed Wynn impersonation: “OH, REALLY?”

Here is my opinion of the whole “Anonymous Op-Ed” summed up in a single cartoon.

You know, it’s possible to impeach him NOW. And I’m not talking about Trump.

NRA Spokes-creep Dana Loesch is a racist cunt. (ooh, I’m a gonna get hate mail for that one)

30-Something.

Sharknado!

It’s worth pointing out that while Ted Cruz is criticizing him for swearing, Beto O’Rourke does actually “show the fuck up”. Keep in mind that Cruz has a voting absenteeism rate in the senate 10 times his colleagues.

Y’all are surprised that the pot-smoking, founding member of Farm Aid who powers his tour bus with biodiesel and lives in a compound powered by solar panels would support the progressive? Really?

Apparently History class shouldn’t teach about a 2-time Presidential Candidate and Secretary of State.

Heck of a job.

Anyone else hearing the X-Files theme?

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign.

And because I love you and to prove that I’m back, have some new music from The Pineapple Thief: