A Banner Time for American BS
Inflation may be threatening economic stability, but America's No.1 business, the purveying of bullshit, is going strong.
As President Biden likes to say, there’s plenty of malarkey to be found in this country. Lots of people tell lots of stories that almost sound as if they’re true but inevitably they are pure, unmitigated American bullshit. It’s the same whether the fable is serious or trivial.
Serious: An 18-year-old in body armor and carrying an AR-15 rifle walked into a supermarket in a black neighborhood in Buffalo, NY last Saturday and shot 13 people. Eleven, 10 of whom were black, died. As is the current practice among today’s young attention-seekers, he live-streamed the shooting (on the gamer site Twitch). He also posted a manifesto proclaiming his intention to kill blacks and Jews as part of his battle against “replacement theory”.
“Replacement theory” is the idea permeating the radical right-wing that Democrats are welcoming immigrants into the country so they will become voters and “replace” white voters. Writing in Vox earlier this week, Fabiola Cineas points out that “the ‘white replacement theory’ or the ‘Great Replacement’… has motivated similar mass killings in recent years”:
[This] racist conspiracy theory… holds that, through immigration, interracial marriage, integration, and violence, and at the behest of secret forces orchestrated by “global elites” (as the Buffalo shooter claimed) or Jews, white people are being disenfranchised, disempowered, and pushed out of “white nations.”
These ideas are not new. They have been documented for at least a century, the forces of white fear that shaped the national origin quotas of the 1920s.
In this era of mass disinformation and social media, such BS gains purchase among that segment of the population that embraces authoritarianism and autocratic leaders. (I referenced Amanda Taub’s article about this phenomenon in last week’s newsletter.) It has been a valuable tool for the fear-mongering practiced by cynical exploiters like Fox’s Tucker Carlson. Blaming “the other” is the default move when distraction and deflection are the objectives.
In the final analysis, it’s bullshit. The data doesn’t support the theory. Compare the Obama and Trump administrations: During Obama’s 8 years, the average of annual deportations was greater than during Trump’s single term. More significantly when it comes to immigrants casting votes, on average more immigrants became naturalized citizens during the Trump years than Obama’s. The idea that non-white immigrants are becoming citizens at a very high rate is refuted, for example, by a recent study of the naturalization process that found;
[T]hat all else being equal, non-White applicants and Hispanic applicants are less likely to be approved than non-Hispanic White applicants, male applicants are less likely to be approved than female applicants, and applicants from Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be approved than applicants from other countries. In addition, we find that race/ethnicity, gender, and religion combine to produce a certain group hierarchy in terms of approval probabilities. For example, Blacks from Muslim-majority countries are much less likely to be approved than Whites from other countries. These findings underscore the continuing importance of race, gender, and religion in the making of US citizens.
Of course, a person might wonder how, after repeatedly telling us that Democrats are up to their donkey ears in conspiracies, the Republicans can claim with a straight face that the Dems are pulling the Great Replacement.
It smells like…
After yet another mass shooting in the country, the tired debate about gun control measures versus 2nd Amendment rights will be back for another encore. I call more BS. The original intent of the 2nd Amendment had nothing to do with an individual’s right to keep and bear arms except that it gave the states the ability to maintain armed citizen militias as a bulwark against the Federal government’s use of a standing army to oppress its citizens. It wasn’t until the Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) that the right was interpreted as applying to individuals. Heller overturned the 132-year-old precedent (United States v. Cruikshank) that ruled that “the right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.“
If we are to believe Justice Samuel Alito, he of precedents “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions”, it seems Cruikshank should have been reaffirmed. Or, maybe, the good Justice was just full of shit.
It is in the nature of politics that, if you are unable to win over voters with your slick, popular policy proposals, you attack the other guy. And, of course, no factual grounds for such attacks are needed; just repeat the same BS incessantly. So we are now witness to the daily spectacle of Republicans, instead of presenting alternatives to Democratic policies, devote themselves to spouting puerile put-downs: we have’Biden inflation’, the ‘Biden border crisis’, the ‘Biden baby-formula crisis’… Again, I have to call BS. Inflation is a global issue with many different root causes, almost all of which a US President can do nothing about. Abbott, the largest producer of baby formula in this country, had to close a major production facility because of biological contamination… Not to mention that Donald Trump’s tariffs are restricting the importation of baby formula from European producers. And the issue of immigration has been ongoing for decades. Blaming Biden is a bunch of malarkey.
To keep the record straight, the Democrats are not without clean hands (Ha!) when it comes to dishing out bullshit. Last week’s performative vote on a national abortion rights bill was pure bullshit. Going back to Obama’s first year, when the Dems had 60 votes in the Senate and controlled the House, it might have been forward-looking of them to deal with Roe v. Wade. After all, it was no secret that overturning Roe was a conservative goal. Did the Democrats think that they’d never be out of power? Or did they believe that even if they were, the Republicans wouldn’t risk the attempt? More likely, the Democrats were bullshitting themselves.
The last word on American bullshit goes to the late George Carlin, the man who knew how to capture the true essence of the particular flavor of excrement. Enjoy!
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If only one could buy stock in the American Bullshit Corporation…