Fiddle Dee Dee--George Bush Thinks Conservatives are Poor White Trash

Mamzelle

[Mamzelle]

Over the past months of this nightmare of immigration scofflawry, listening to the rhetoric from the aristocratic Republican elites--I’ve been carried back to the Magnolia Melodramas I enjoyed reading as a teenager. Gwen Bristow’s “Plantation Trilogy”; Frank Yerby’s “The Foxes of Harrow” and the magnificent mother of them all--Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With The Wind.”

George Bush once said, “I’m not a southerner, I’m a southwesterner.” He was trying to distance himself from the south and the taint of racism, a “compassionate” insult to every southerner who voted for him. But he has every resemblence to the linen-suited julep-drinking Massa of the Old South.

And the dynamic of the Elites verses Middle-class Conservatives is exactly like the plantation owner and his nearest inelegant neighbors...White Trash. Scots-Irish subsistence farmers couldn’t afford to the leisured fineries of the Planter Class because they were trying to eke out an existence in competition with the institution of slavery.

Remember the characters of the Slatterys and the Macintoshes, Gerald and Scarlett O’Hara’s WT neighbors? Not only did the O’Haras hold them in contempt for being so hardscrabble, tacky and rough-textured, but the slaves themselves of the plantations held themselves in higher esteem than “po’ whites.”

And the Massa with the Big Heart dearly loved his servants, loved condescending to them--What treasures! Just like members of the family! Not that he set them free, or ate at the same table. There are limits to paternalism and noblesse oblige. But Massa and Missus were unfailingly thankful that Mammy and Pork picked up Scotty’s poop off the Big House lawn.

The irony--it’s the Southern middle class that makes up a lot of the soldiers who trusted him enough to serve in Iraq.

George Bush thinks he can afford to openly display the contempt he has always felt for Joe Redneck...er...Sixpack. His chief overseer, Tony Snow, let us in on the secret in the wee hours after election day. He can now concentrate on indulging his oozing childhood sentimentality by handing his house servants a deed to America.

I’m reminded of another scene from Gone With The Wind--Scarlett was being lectured by an elderly matriarch about Trash. “And when you’re done with them--kick them away and do it thoroughly, because Trash clinging to your coattails can ruin you.”

I have entered into many discussions about illegal immigration with a comment--housework and yardwork are political. This is a class issue between overlord elites who can’t conceive of a life spent actually cleaning up after themselves. They break the laws, then have to justify the transgression by accusing the law of being bad. That’s why they become insulting and defensive when requested to obey the law.

I’m done with Bush. I don’t trust him--or any member of his Indolent family.

[Texas Mulerider]

Agreed. However, the eastern third of Texas is more similar to the Deep South both culturally and physically than it is to West Texas, IMO.

[lentulusgracchus]

but Bush has a history of denying Texas’s place in the old South and the War Between the States. He’s a yankee ...of course he wishes to deny it.

No, what he is doing is running away from a PR/media fight that he would have a hard time winning.

Starting in about 1990, the central neural plexus of Yankee Marxism devised a strategy for breaking Dick Nixon's Southern/moral majority. It's still in effect.

The strategy is to demonize Southerners as Hitchcockian trolls, lean-and-nasty white trolls in sweaty felt slouch hats and dirty overalls, with long, nasty yellow fingernails and teeth, who just go on and on about "nigras" and try to hang them and set them on fire every chance they get. It's a hate-icon on the level of "Jew pig" and Fu Manchu as the Yellow Peril (or, in one famous nineteenth-century political cartoon, as a giant Buddha, radiating light and seated on a hovering cloud, surrounded by a nimbus of ominous power -- China apotheosized as an Ultimate Enemy of the West).

When Bush was still governor of Texas, the state NAACP sent him a letter demanding that Confederate symbols be removed from buildings nominally under Bush's administrative responsibility. What Gary Bledsoe, who wrote the letter, wanted was for Bush to say "no" -- so that the NAACP could launch a crusade against Bush as a sweat-stained, snaggletoothed cracker, as "one of THEM". That's what that was all about. Bush tried to slip the punch by taking the plaques down immediately on his own authority, literally in the middle of the night.

The overarching political purpose in all this is to "break the box" -- the Finkelstein box, named for GOP strategist Arthur Finkelstein, that being the geographic area of the U.S. which has voted reliably for Republicans in the later 20th, and which voted reliably for conservative Democrats in the early 20th and later 19th centuries.

And the Border States.

The political objective is to use Southern hate-puppets to turn off, demoralize, and drive away from the polls Midwestern and "battleground States" conservatives and moderates. That is the strategic objective.

It worked in the 2006 midterm elections -- the Democrats used a) corruption charges against GOP congressmen (n/w/s their own hypocrisy on this subject), b) the Mark Foley scandal, and c) "moderate" Democrats who actually looked like real people (Sen. Webb of Virginia being Exhibit "A") to run against conservative Republicans, to give the 'Rats a working majority in both houses of Congress.

In 2004, it worked the other way, with Karl Rove using down-ballot initiatives to invigorate and turn out the social conservatives in e.g. Ohio, to blow away the waffling, weak, morally compromised (thanks to the Swifties and his own gigolousness) DemonRat candidate.

[lentulusgracchus]

Joel Garreau (a Quebecker) agreed when he wrote The Nine Nations of North America in the late 70's.

According to him, north Texas and the Panhandle are in the Midwest (which he called the Breadbasket and centered on Iowa -- it runs up into the Peace River country in northern Canada), while west and south Texas are part of what he calls Mexamerica. The eastern part of Texas, east of a line running through the Dallas-Fort Worth "metroplex" and down to San Antonio, then over to the coast, is part of the South ("Dixie"), whose symbol was and is (you guessed it) a Battle Flag with big, white stars and white fimbrations.

[Netizen]

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source class        (klās)  Pronunciation Key 
n.  

1. A set, collection, group, or configuration containing members regarded as having certain attributes or traits in common; a kind or category.
2. A division based on quality, rank, or grade, as:
   1. A grade of mail: a package sent third class.
   2. A quality of accommodation on public transport: tourist class.
   3. A social stratum whose members share certain economic, social, or cultural characteristics: the lower-income classes.
   4. Social rank or caste, especially high rank.
   5. Informal Elegance of style, taste, and manner: an actor with class.
   6. A group of students who are taught together because they have roughly the same level of academic development.
   7. A group of students or alumni who have the same year of graduation.
   8. A group of students who meet at a regularly scheduled time to study the same subject.
   9. The period during which such a group meets: had to stay after class.
3. 1. A social stratum whose members share certain economic, social, or cultural characteristics: the lower-income classes.
   2. Social rank or caste, especially high rank.
   3. Informal Elegance of style, taste, and manner: an actor with class.
   4. A group of students who are taught together because they have roughly the same level of academic development.
   5. A group of students or alumni who have the same year of graduation.
   6. A group of students who meet at a regularly scheduled time to study the same subject.
   7. The period during which such a group meets: had to stay after class.
4. A level of academic development, as in an elementary or secondary school.
5. 1. A group of students who are taught together because they have roughly the same level of academic development.
   2. A group of students or alumni who have the same year of graduation.
   3. A group of students who meet at a regularly scheduled time to study the same subject.
   4. The period during which such a group meets: had to stay after class.
6. Biology A taxonomic category ranking below a phylum or division and above an order. See Table at taxonomy.
7. Statistics An interval in a frequency distribution.
8. Linguistics A group of words belonging to the same grammatical category that share a particular set of morphological properties, such as a set of inflections.

[Thunder90]

Bush is seriously considering abandoning Iraq and the WOT in September and appeasing Putin on Missile Defense (No more NMD in Poland).

[Thunder90]

It will be through the Russians and Chinese (Countries that we bend over backwords to appease, even now [No NMD in Poland per agreement with Russia])

[lentulusgracchus]

I’m not sure Southerners think Texas is part of the South. Of all the complaints you could make about the man, this is perhaps one of the silliest.

Actually, it isn't a "silly" complaint, it's quite substantive.

Loyalty in politics, especially in American politics, is a big deal. "You dance with the one what brung you." You reward your date with a show of loyalty -- and you don't catch a social disease from messing around in the coatroom. Bush behaves at times more like a British prime minister, like an expedient William Gladstone or an overly clever and calculating Stanley Baldwin -- or like a frat boy practicing the old Sigma Nu "Four F's". American conservatives would rather he acted more like Andrew Jackson, who defended his wife fiercely against the calumnies of Washington society, or like William Jennings Bryan defending the freehold farmers and Western miners against the East Coast money interests. Abraham Lincoln advocated for the freesoil farmers, Teddy Roosevelt advocated for small businesses and Main Street, and Richard Nixon advocated for the Moral (Silent) Majority.

Bush has been good about defending staffers -- when they go down the line for him. He's been good about not deserting Scooter Libby, but on the other hand he and Arlen Specter could have done more for Rick Santorum, knowing that UberRat Rahm Emanuel and Harry Reid had dialed Santorum up for destruction, precisely because he's a conservative, in order to send a Big Message to the RiNO's and drive them farther away from the Republican base -- to make them more vulnerable later. This is Rat Master Strategy working, divide et impera, and the GOP is acting like they don't get it yet.

Bush needs to act like he gets it, and that doesn't include acting like a whiteshoe NWO lodge member and a ring-knocking member of the Brotherhood of the Bell.

[lentulusgracchus]

I have lot's of family in Texas - they do not consider themselves part of "the South", nor do many others - I'm a Mainer, and have lived all over the country - never heard Texas referred to as anything other than 'south western' - geeze.

Lt. Gen. Longstreet's First Corps was anchored by John Bell Hood's division and his Texas Brigade.

It's quite true that the western half of Texas remained Indian country during the Recent Unpleasantness. The part of it inhabited by English-speaking white people was, I assure you, very Southern and very Confederate. They voted by plebiscite for secession by a huge majority.

Even during the Civil War period, many Texans had been born in other States -- Southern States, by and large. Texas historians have identified Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee as among the major contributors of early settlers to Texas. By 1860, direct settlement from Europe was becoming a factor, as when German Catholics settling around Fredericksburg and Georgetown built their churches' stonework with a hod or a trowel in one hand, and a Sharps in the other, even as the circling Kiowas, Apaches, and Comanches took potshots at them.

[ClaireSolt]

I once participated in a program in various public libraries in Missouri. I gave a lecture on "Gone with the Wind" and let a discussion afterwards. It is a favorite movie and book for me, and I used to know it by heart. It is, however, fiction, and the author was a protofeminist. My theme was that Scarlet was an unlikely southern belle.

As the author favored social change, she picked a time when roles were turned upside down after the seige of Atlanta in the Civil War. To use the book as a portrayal of class, is I think, to miss its whole point. All of the trappings of social distinctions are stripped away and changed. I think, in particular, of the scene in which a Slattery comes with a carpetbagger to collect taxes. She was dressed in new finery and Scarlet was making dresses out of old drapes.

Think how that book would go over in a rigid class society like Czarist Russia or the India of the caste system. People who are defined as members of classes like serfs or untouchables have lives that are completely defined at birth. They are stuck without any control or opportunity. Mitchell, however, created a heroine who could do anything she wanted. and limited only by what she would think about tomorrow.

The state of Georgia she writes about is so full of history that I could never drive through it, if I didn't go at night. I want to stop every mile or so. I have been to Texas a couple of times. It is a completely different culture, a lot more remember the Alamo and Texas two step. Could Scarlet O'Hara walk on the set of Dallas and immediately fit in? I don't think so. Southern and Southwestern are different even if they are muy simpatico.

[jpl]

Connecticut isn't in the southwest...

I've come to the conclusion that El Pequeno is all hat, and no cattle.

[lentulusgracchus]

Heck, they even played Dixie at the U of T, and I know the Aggies played it. But that was some years ago.

Texas A&M is getting a Political Correctness and Yankification Makeover by the Powers That Be. A few years ago, a member of the Corps who had a small Confederate battleflag sticker on his footlocker was told to remove it. He demurred, and the Yankeefying commandant, a retired bird colonel in the Union Army, told him to remove it or be expelled from the Corps. I don't know if they'd have tossed the kid from A&M as well, but the sentiment seems to be that the Powers would rather that all those East Texas white kids stay home, back in the woods, and learn to fix air conditioners and peddle doublewide tornado-magnets trailers, and save the spaces at A&M for more-deserving applicants of the politically correct social backgrounds.

[Mamzelle]

re: Could Scarlet O'Hara walk on the set of Dallas and immediately fit in? I don't think so. Southern and Southwestern are different even if they are muy simpatico.)))

Straining at gnats, tempestuous teapot, niggling at meaningless details. Dallas was filmed in Burbank.

I might also say that Lousisiana is not southern, but a mix of Carib/Creole with a bizarre Napoleonic code. In NO they speak with an accent more Bronx than Atlanta. You don't see many magnolias in Virginia--and no liveoaks trailing moss in Asheville NC. Each of the southern states can claim an identity, style and flavor of its own, indeed, so do the cities--but Southern is not New Jersey. Maybe we can agree on that.

But I'll bet a poll designed to designate "The National Food of Texas" would more likely indicate chicken fried steak with cream gravy than the latest of TexMex novelties.

Luckily you gave your lectures in the Midwest--the notion that there wasn't a consciousness of class in GWTW would get a lot of titters below the Mason Dixon. You can put a mule in horse's harness, but he'll still be a mule-remember Mammy's lectures on not "acting above your raising". The book was filled with constant references to "trashy behavior" and Savannah and Charleston social millieu--just like Wharton, only vastly more entertaining.

[lentulusgracchus]

Why do the second, third, and fifth paragraphs of your definition set for the word "class" show so much redundancy?

[BarbaricGrandeur]

I’m done with Bush. I don’t trust him--or any member of his Indolent family.

Death to all enemies of the Republic, long live the peoples revolution!

[lentulusgracchus]

But I'll bet a poll designed to designate "The National Food of Texas" would more likely indicate chicken fried steak with cream gravy than the latest of TexMex novelties.

Hmm, bet Texas barbecue would give chicken fried steak a run for its gravy. Barbecue being, of course, the Hispanized barbacoa of (originally) the Carancahua (that's the Spanish spelling, again) Indians. Except that the Karankawas, when they made their barbecue, included meats that were most definitely not on the menu anywhere else! =8^*

[grellis]

I knew you'd take that line, Claire, and I'm laughing my tail off because you have proven my point: You are a teacher, and you reign supreme at the top of the intellectual classes, don't you?

I don't need to read Marx to know that classes exist. They have existed since the days of the Old Testament, dear, and they will continue to exist for as long as we humans remain social creatures. As such, there will always be those who sit in the lofty positions of their particular class distinction and look down their noses upon the rest of us. Sometimes those lofty few imagine themselves puppet masters, holding tight to the strings of the cascades of humanity falling away from their feet. You may want to believe that someone like George Soros, who is without doubt in the upper echelons of the financial classes, does not sway the movement of our country. That is disasterous thinking. And you are a teacher...:"You are way out of your element. I don’t want to know more about someone who writes so badly about things I know a lot more about."

You might just be the worst kind of puppet master, one who gets paid to pull the strings. A bona fide member of the intelligentsia. And so very proud of that, aren't you?

How's the view from up there? LMAO

[Mamzelle]

Is that an alternate spelling for Tonkawas? OK—I’d put bbq beef brisket second to chick fried steak. But my brisket doesn’t taste Tex Mex, and it sure never did. Plus, like I said, years have gone by since I was a Texas. Maybe they don’t know how to make chicken-fried like they used to.

[lentulusgracchus]

Carancahua = Karankawa (pron. the same)..... accent on the second syllable. Carancahua Bay (Spanish mapmakers) is named for them, and that's the part of the coast they lived on......and barbecued other people when they caught them, as per the horrified testimony of Cabeza de Vaca.

[Petronski]

It’s becoming quite clear that Dubya is sometimes very good at being rich white trash.

[wardaddy]

hey...we agree completely

that’s always good!

thanks.

ps...i’m a little geelous of texuns