"If you can't be better than a nigger, who can you be better than?" I never heard this line from anyone except my friend, who told me it was spoken in the movie: Mississippi Burning. I never saw the movie, but I bring this up because more than once I have suggested that emotional thinking based on fear and greed is the only explanation for women, poor whites, and members of the working-class, especially since 1998 to vote for Republican candidates.
Much of that is true, of course. Right wing conservative political and religious pundits understand the emotional power of fear and greed. It motivates ordinary citizens, with no real personal stake in the outcome, to say and do things that no intelligent rational thinking person would ever say or do.
So I am left with the fact that emotional thinking based on fear and greed does not explain enough--at least not enough to account for the reasons why so many mothers and fathers who are teachers, government employees, military, military spouses, police, firefighters, nurses, and other members of the shrinking middle-class vote for right wing conservative politicians whose policies simply do not support the best interest of working people.
And it brings me back to my original quote. "If you can't be better than a nigger, who can you be better than?" In 2012, you can substitute the word nigger with any popular contemporary slur, including but not limited to gay, lesbian, homo, bi-sexual, and homosexual.
It even includes some words that are intended to be slurs but are not simply beause of the ludicrous bastardization of the word by the conservative right who want to make their poor base feel special by telling them they are not members of the group they have worked so hard to demonize. It includes, but is not limited to words and expressions such as liberal, Liberal Democrats,Mexicans, Niggers, Jews, educated elite, union workers, and environmentalists.
While emotional thinking based on fear and greed is a powerful motivator, emotional thinking based on the the need to feel superior and the need to belong are even more powerful motivators. In no small way, feeling superior to someone--to anyone--by claiming allegiance and loyalty to some group that make you feel special is one way many people combat the anxiety brought about by a an ambiguous sense of feling and being small and unimportant.
The anxiety of feeling small and unimportant is the wedge between common sense and the need to belong and the need to feel superior that causes some Americans, especially many poor conservative and working-class white Americans to embrace a Republican Party that consistently and relentlessly exercise power and influence that is not in their nor their children's best interest. Nor are they in the best interest of America because they weaken the America they claim to love.
The Republican party and the christian right encourages it constituency to feel special by telling them that they are superior to everyone outside their group. And they are not liberal enough to consider any "truth" outside of what they are told to believe by their abusers.
I do not suggest that the GOP does not have a legitimate constituency that it does not serve well. To the contrary, the rich and the very rich are served very well by a party that bust unions, not support education and health-care, and gut regulations that protect ordinary citizens from corporate abuse.
But if American is going to work for what many are calling the 99%. Members of the 99% must stop voting against false demons and stop voting for the party of their abusers.
Labels carry too much weight in human culture. So if America is to remain a superior power, we need to stop being labels and start being good citizens, good citizens who embrace justice, joy, happiness, civility, and health.