Song of the South

" If it hurts a bunch of lazy Blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.” 

Said North Carolina state GOP executive committee member and precinct chairman Don Yelton, about the new, more restrictive voting laws  --  and there you have it, the cornerstone, the key assumption, the basis of Republican philosophy.  I can't say, as much as it might seem otherwise, that there's been no progress in the old, old, quest for recognition of people of color as fully human; as real citizens with the same rights and privileges and responsibilities as white, Anglo-Saxon Americans.  After all when I was a kid, he wouldn't have said "lazy Blacks."

Barack Obama is of course all about buckets of chicken, watermelons, welfare checks and leering at white women, or at least he is in the imaginations of people like Yelton who is after all, the sad remainder of what was once a political party.  All else, all that purports to be principle, philosophy, policy and patriotism is simply camouflage. It's not a coincidence that what others might think of as undeserving categories of white people aren't mentioned, the kind of folks that a previous generation subjected to forced sterilization so that they wouldn't pass on their inferior genes. Undereducated, malnourished, uncivilized, unmotivated, intoxicated made dependent by welfare and ill-suited for informed citizenship, they're nevertheless white and at the very least more nearly all right.  In fact so many of them vote Republican they're needed, if for no other reason.

People that may have been Dixiecrats back before the civil rights movement alienated them from the Democratic Party,  have been feeling sorry for themselves since before the Civil War, burdened by the requirements of modern civilization which they see in terms of their hard earned money and privilege being taken away by the damn Yankees and given to the "takers."

And now one of "them" has taken the presidency. Ain't gonna let that happen again!

I often think of Republicans like Winnie the Pooh without the charm: as creatures of very  little brain, but of course they have their wicked wizards, smart enough to fire people like Yelton who make too much noise from behind the curtain and expose the game.

The County GOP Chairman, in firing Yelton's ass this week said in a statement to a local TV station that Yelton's statements were:

“offensive, uniformed and unacceptable of any member within the Republican Party.
“Let me make it very clear: Mr. Yelton’s comments do not reflect the belief or feelings of Buncombe Republicans, nor do they mirror any core principle that our party is founded upon, This mentality will not be supported or propagated within our party.”

Except of course in practice.