The gobsmacking unawareness that unless you are a recognized member of an indigenous nation you, too, are a descendant of immigrants is appalling. I don’t care how many generations your family has been here, you were not the first inhabitants of this land.
It's always been blood & soil (and a religion they situationally love despite not practicing or even thinking about it for most of their lives except in December, during their annual rage against takeout coffee cups) for the majority of the rally-going, insurrection-loving base, and the top of the Republican food chain says sure, fine, we can work with that, and leverages it in a very predictable way.
The part below is really starting to get my goat, however. Their belief that "their side" comprises the only people who can say this exact same thing would be laughable if it weren't such a primordially potent and lethal tool (as much of history, including that of our own lives, well establishes). But they keep saying it and nobody challenges it. If you swap out the state name here, this fully describes my own family, except mine goes back a few generations further and includes many who actually fought in the Civil War (for the right side). There are millions of families like that in this country. So try again, JD. I know it makes for a particularly juicy rhetorical tidbit, but you guys don't get to co-opt. You just do not.
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"Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War... generations of people who have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to."
Finally, I get a lucid and cogent explanation for what's fueling this MAGA movement. In essence, it's nothing more than another version of white entitlement.
I wonder if that little cemetery in eastern Kentucky where Vance expects to be buried resembles the one in Florida where my father is buried. Over the years I've lost the deed to his plot (he died in 1966, when I was nine), but it clearly stated that in perpetuity it would be a cemetery "for the white race only."
It is the fault of the pervasive ignorance of these people, brought about by lack of education and an overdose of phony "patriotism," that has passed on the bigotry to succeeding generations. Blood and soil is a lot easier to teach than tolerance and inclusion.
There are many who can feel good [or ok] about themselves only by insisting that others are unacceptably inferior to, and unlike, them. Add "entitlement" and "Marlboro Man exceptionalism", just as R propaganda and coded messages have done for decades. This combination has forced today's maga on us.
The gobsmacking unawareness that unless you are a recognized member of an indigenous nation you, too, are a descendant of immigrants is appalling. I don’t care how many generations your family has been here, you were not the first inhabitants of this land.
Um, what about those whose ancestry dates back to the Middle Passage?
And those who walked the Trail of Tears?
It's always been blood & soil (and a religion they situationally love despite not practicing or even thinking about it for most of their lives except in December, during their annual rage against takeout coffee cups) for the majority of the rally-going, insurrection-loving base, and the top of the Republican food chain says sure, fine, we can work with that, and leverages it in a very predictable way.
The part below is really starting to get my goat, however. Their belief that "their side" comprises the only people who can say this exact same thing would be laughable if it weren't such a primordially potent and lethal tool (as much of history, including that of our own lives, well establishes). But they keep saying it and nobody challenges it. If you swap out the state name here, this fully describes my own family, except mine goes back a few generations further and includes many who actually fought in the Civil War (for the right side). There are millions of families like that in this country. So try again, JD. I know it makes for a particularly juicy rhetorical tidbit, but you guys don't get to co-opt. You just do not.
=========================
"Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War... generations of people who have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to."
Finally, I get a lucid and cogent explanation for what's fueling this MAGA movement. In essence, it's nothing more than another version of white entitlement.
I wonder if that little cemetery in eastern Kentucky where Vance expects to be buried resembles the one in Florida where my father is buried. Over the years I've lost the deed to his plot (he died in 1966, when I was nine), but it clearly stated that in perpetuity it would be a cemetery "for the white race only."
It is the fault of the pervasive ignorance of these people, brought about by lack of education and an overdose of phony "patriotism," that has passed on the bigotry to succeeding generations. Blood and soil is a lot easier to teach than tolerance and inclusion.
There are many who can feel good [or ok] about themselves only by insisting that others are unacceptably inferior to, and unlike, them. Add "entitlement" and "Marlboro Man exceptionalism", just as R propaganda and coded messages have done for decades. This combination has forced today's maga on us.