Convenient Conservatism

by digby

Both David Neiwert and Glenn Greenwald have written blockbuster posts about the foolish Shelby Steele’s stunning call today to divest ourselves of “white guilt” and bomb the hell out of the wogs.

Greenwald looks at the implications of the argument for the GWOT and checks in with the bigotsphere while Neiwert examines this idea in the context of the right’s new assumption the racism is dead — nothing to see here, move along citizen — even while a fairly large faction of Americans are fulminating daily about how the Mexican vermin are defecating in the streets.

The only thing I can add is that I’m not surprised, by either the racism or the embrace of all out war against the the newly “liberated” Iraqis. The conservative experiment is melting down. William F Buckley got what he always wanted and it turned out to be bullshit. We are finally seeing the facade of civilization crumble, leaving only the conservative id.

The argument here is that racism is dead so we needn’t worry about killing, deporting, marginalizing or demonizing “the other.” How convenient for the party that has been exploiting the southern strategy for forty years and finds itself nearly as unpopular as the disgraced president who first embraced it.

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