I remember the death bed repentance of the God Father of conservative attack strategy, one of the first to put 'thug' in Republican, Lee Atwater. It made me want to vomit. After all he had been vomiting all over the American political landscape for years, and rolling in dough and increasing in influence as a result. Atwater planted the demon seeds that resulted in Karl Rove (who was a protege). Today's Bob Herbert in the NYTimes quoted a juicy bit from his playbook, from a 1981 interview:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger! By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
After he spent decades yanking the chain of working white Americans, creating racial polarization, undermining social programs, demonizing liberals, and spreading hatred and discontent, he hit a bump in the road: brain cancer. Really Bad Brain Cancer. And something changed for poor Lee: he felt the sting of conscience.
See Atwater wasn't just a dumb whitey frat boy. He certainly played one for political purposes but he had other interests. For example, he released an album called "Red, Hot And Blue" on Curb Records, featuring himself with Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Sam Moore, Chuck Jackson, and, B.B. King, who got co-billing with Atwater. This was when he was the national chairman of the Thug (oops, Republican) party. He'd been playing R&B since high school & in fact he was pretty good.
So on some level he knew his political schtick, his stock-in-trade, his legacy, his whole professional identity was based on a moral corruption: racism. He was living a contradiction, and when he faced death, his frat boy immorality broke down.
Before he died he issued a number of public and written apologies to individuals whom he had attacked during his political career (including Dukakis - the famous Willie Horton smear had Atwater fingerprints). In a February 1991 article for Life Magazine, Atwater wrote:
- My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.
Atwater's Republican party has taken to heart the sinister lessons of his success and has pursued them into the nether regions of what I would call treason. This so-called 'conservative' party of religious extremists and corporate lobbyists combines hustling for favors from the wealthy with awarding virtue brownie points to the religiously insecure.
But that is normal politics. What is treasonous is the hijacking of public discourse for the purpose of initiating wars of choice, manipulating intelligence, and executing policy in a manner so incompetent as to be itself criminal.
What is treasonous is to undermine the checks and balances of the American system of government in order to concentrate power in the Commander In Chief like that of a dictator and not a president.
What is treasonous is to attack democracy and the rule of law, to try to prevent voters from voting, as in Ohio and Florida.
What is treasonous is to suppress scientific reports from government agencies which might be contrary to the interests of Thug party funders, for example global warming reports and oil companies.
What is treasonous is to give the Thug In Chief, oops the President, the power to torture and detain anyone (including native born citizens!) without recourse to the protections of the American legal system on nothing but the say-so of the Thug in Chief.
The Republican party has much to be ashamed of. It is a party of betrayal. After being entrusted with leadership, they have betrayed their country. The verdict of history will be harsh.
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