February 23, 2021
The truism that “Politics is Hollywood for ugly people,” never rang more true than in the past week. In the last week, a brutal storm crippled Texas’ “ruggedly independent”energy grid, exposing the folly of their go-it-alone, unregulated and fitfully maintained infrastructure and leaving millions of Texans to freeze to death in the dark. In response, Republican elected officials performed for the right wing echo chamber, rather than working for their actual constituents. By turns they: 1) blamed wind turbines (which only provide 10% of the state’s power and could have functioned had they been winterized); and 2) excoriated Texans for expecting the government to build and maintain a functioning energy and water supply. The most egregious response was from “Flyin’ Ted Cruz” whose reaction to seeing millions of his constituents in distress was to say, “let me get the hell out of here,” and fly to Cancun, only to blame his 10 and 12 year old daughters when he got busted.
It didn’t occur to any of these Republican elected officials to take responsibility for the catastrophic failure of the state’s energy grid. None of them orchestrated wellness checks on nearly one million residents, or raised $2 million dollars for relief efforts like Democrats Beto O’Rourke and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, (Source: “While Cruz was traveling from Cancun O’Rourke and AOC helped Texans in crisis,” by Daniella Diaz and Annie Grayer, CNN.com, 2/19/21).
That’s because none of these people are in power to do the hard, unglamorous work of governing. Their job is to jockey for appearances on the right wing propaganda outlets in order to deploy sound bites that demonize the “other.” Their job is to whip up hatred and contempt whether that “other” is a Latino person in El Paso, a Black person in Dallas or a Democrat in Austin. Republicans believe that politics is performance. Their only goal is to win the news cycle and anger Democrats, no matter how many of their own constituents get hurt in the process. Trump is the obvious avatar of the callous, media hungry Republican politician, but he has scores of would-be successors, from Cruz and the truly odious Josh Hawley, to dim bulbs Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn.
These people are all the spawn of Rush Limbaugh, the toxic radio host who died last week at the age of 70. Limbaugh spent decades spewing his poisonous mix of racism, misogyny and manufactured white grievance. He convinced millions of Americans that people of color and feminists were the source of their problems and fomented their misdirected rage. Limbaugh was the first to equate progressive criticism of America with hatred of the country, so that his followers could cloak their venom in a mantle of righteousness, (Source: “Rush Limbaugh’s toxic patriotism will be his worst legacy,” by Sophia A. McClennen, Salon.com, 2/20/21).
We look at Texas and ask ourselves why white Americans vote against their own self interests, but that is the wrong question. The question is, what have white Americans been taught is in their self interest? As Heather McGhee details in her new book,The Sum of Us, the evaporation of widespread support for government policies benefiting the general public coincided with the redefinition of “the public” to include Black people after the success of the Civil Rights movement. States closed public schools and paved over public pools, rather than share those resources with Black people, (Source: “‘Sum of Us’ Examines the Hidden Cost of Racism—For Everyone,” Transcript of Fresh Air, NPR.org, 2/17/21).
The withdrawal of government resources was justified by politicians who appealed to naked racism, arguing that Black, Brown and Indigenous Americans were “undeserving.” The end result of decades of demonization, deregulation and disinvestment is a cruel and callous country in which millions of white people suffer alongside those they revile. Maybe Texas will be a turning point. Our only hope is to show white people how much their racism is costing them.