'Crackers' and crackpots
0 comment Sunday, August 10, 2014 |
The other day I blogged about Pennsylvania Rep. Murtha, and his slur against his constituents, calling them 'racists' or 'rednecks.' Well this article from the Philadelphia Daily News adds further insult by discussing the 'cracker factor' in the upcoming election.
''I have a theory.
I think McCain's camp is banking on Pennsylvania's "cracker factor."
I think the campaign believes the Democratic view - expressed by Ed Rendell last winter and Jack Murtha last week (and James Carville 22 years ago) - that there are racist tendencies among Pennsylvania voters.
Think about it.''
Well, some 294 comments were appended to the piece before comments were closed, so obviously quite a few people ''thought about it" and many were not pleased by the writer's race-baiting take.
Of course the requisite snotty liberal or two has to show up in any such discussion. (By the way, sometimes I wonder if all these liberal hecklers are really many people or just one guy who surfs the Internet saying the same stupid, snarky things everywhere? The sameness, and the lameness, of the 'arguments' the liberal hecklers always make causes me to fantasize that maybe there are really only a few of them who post the same thing everywhere. I wish it were true, that only a handful of lefties existed. Sadly they are legion. And a lot of them vote.)
This comment from the stereotype sarcastic leftist is a good example of the kinds of things they inevitably say:
There sure are racist tendencies in PA, just take a look at the right-wing comments on this site on a daily basis. There are a lot of scared little white people. I wonder...is it racist for white people to vote for McCain because he's white and so are they? In fact, I wonder if our country isn't completely racist considering white people have voted for white presidents since 1789. (I'm white btw).''
I rather wish he hadn't mentioned that he is 'White'; what an embarrassment to White people everywhere. I would love to converse with this person if only to try to understand how he believes there were nonwhites who qualified to be President back in 1789.
And why do they always make this claim that Whites are 'scared'? I've often made the claim that people (namely Whites) are scared of being called 'racist'. But is fear really what drives the so-called 'xenophobia' or what causes people to become realists or nationalists? I think that's a specious claim. We as a nation have just become so worn down by the constant race-baiting and obsessing over race that many of us just try to tune it out and not respond one way or the other. But I don't think fear or cowardice is behind the backlash against politically correctness. To me it's just the opposite; this backlash shows there is some resurgent pride and a healthy indignation among White people, and if anybody is 'scared' it's liberals and their 'diverse' clientele. It's they who are scared that people are sick of their constant campaign of verbal and emotional abuse of the majority, and afraid that people will no longer submit to the browbeating and the blackmail. And of course they know that once the manipulation and coercion cease to be effective, their game will be up. They are 'scared' they will lose the ability to keep extorting from the majority forever.
The sheer number of angry responses to this 'cracker factor' piece is a good sign. A lot of people, a lot of average people, are seemingly getting fed up with the constant harping and carping about race and 'racism.' People can only take so much of it, and more people seem to be reaching their limit, or surpassing it.
And one wonders how many angry 'cracker' readers left comments that were deleted, as oftentimes happens on PC newspaper websites. I have a feeling a lot of comments did not pass the PC censors.
Another commenter says:
I'm white. I don't hunt. I don't like NASCAR. I graduated from two nationally recognized universities and hold a masters degree in a non-arts discipline. I'm voting for John McCain. Does that make me a "cracker?" '
Well, yes, it does actually. Your color will condemn you as far as the 'colorblind' liberal turncoats are concerned, and it condemns you with nonwhites, who hold all Whites to be guilty of oppression towards their people, regardless of social class, personal tastes, politics, or ethnic origin. White = cracker. Your skin is your destiny, in this brave new PC world, which paradoxically claims that race is really only a 'social construct' and that 'skin color does not matter.'
Incidentally, I had the odd experience the other day of speaking with a woman who had never heard the term 'cracker' before as applied to White people. She was surprised to hear of the word being used that way. This woman has lived all her life in this small, non-diverse town and has literally never heard of a lot of the racial epithets employed by our enemies. I had to fill her in on the uses of the word 'cracker.'
I told her about a friend of mine in a town about 25 miles from here, which has many nonwhites. This friend's son is a teen, and is now the only White boy riding his school bus. He is pale and very blond (tow-headed, really) and he is naturally the target of verbal abuse. But my local friend was taken aback that such situations happen, only a short distance away from here. Diversity is so enriching.
And it can be eye-opening, for some people who have never experienced its 'richness' in real life, up-close.
But maybe now my naive friend is beginning to see that there is a war going on out there; it's not a conventional war or open aggression, at least not all the time. But it's raging nonetheless.
If nothing else this political campaign season is really showing us who is on our side and who is not, who is aware, and who is under the PC spell.
In the case of people like Murtha and the writer who wrote the 'cracker factor' piece, they are either true believers or soulless opportunists who will cynically turn against their own people if it benefits them personally. I think Murtha is the latter. It's about party and also about desire for position, power and the perquisites thereof with people like him.
There are, however, still many Americans like those who responded to this article indignantly, who have just been ignoring the brewing conflict in this country until it began to become more overt and the hostility became undeniable.
But is this process of learning going to take too long to make a difference? Or will there be time to start to reverse things before we go off the cliff?
Opinions?

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