A dog whistle is that gag gift that your crazy uncle gave you for Christmas that you didn’t thought worked until you blew it in the neighborhood and all the dogs did turn their heads in attention. They completely forget what they are doing: whether playing with a toy or eating a bone—they just freeze. “Dog Whistle Politics” is a similar attention getter, and describes when Republican Party members and cults are called to blind obedience by silent code words like: abortion, guns, God, gays, illegal aliens, women’s lib, affirmative action, civil rights, the rapture, science, capitalism, lower taxes, conservatism vs. liberals, creationism/intelligent design, the South will rise again, marriage/divorce, War on Christmas, war on Muslims, and now “Obama.” Once the code words are mentioned they march like zombies into an apocalyptic battle like Armageddon. Willing to risk all to prove the most minor of points that are often just ‘semantics’ to sane people.
Dog Whistle Politics enables the whistler to do something totally against the will of the whistlee; something against the best interests of the majority of We The People (the 99%). It is a sleight of hand show: “look over here” while I do something in the other hand that will take away your money, your freedom, or your rights. The whistler acts on behalf of powerful interests like corporations or Presidents that think they are dictators, or beyond the law. How else could we now have 50% of people in this country in 2011 living near or below the poverty level as discovered by a recent study. It had to be illegal pension raiding, a contrived housing market bubble, insider Wall Street trading, Federal Reserve actions, vulture capitalism, Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism, and commodities fixing; all done while we were distracted by wars and political campaigns. In a sense the 99% were “swiftboated.”
The “Southern Strategy” of Nixon was a perfectly planned campaign of Dog Whistle Politics. As was Reagan’s “City Shinning on the Hill” which employed southern strategy principles (that the White race was dwindling). It is all about ‘divide and conquer’, the ‘enemy of your enemy is your friend’ and just generally motivating people by appealing to their primeval fears. Like: “a Black man in the WHITE House.”
Mention a code word like civil rights or Affirmative Action—policies which had many beneficial parts to societies around the world, and you invoke an anger that would necessitate violence in a whistlee. The whistlee would probably say that returning to slavery is preferable to civil rights.
I’m not sure when they started hating Obama. It was certainly before Health Care was being debated. It was certainly before he had any policy initiatives completed. It was certainly before he started leading Hillary Clinton in the Primary. Heck it could have been before he was born. You know how those mixed marriages are frown upon.
Obama is a guy who can do nothing right in the eyes of the rabid right-wing fanatics. Even if he passed their legislation word-for-word with their ‘poison pills’ and all, they would say he didn’t cross the T’s and dot the I’s and is therefore totally unacceptable. These are extremists to the point of lunacy.
Not to defend Obama, because he has done things that are not in this country’s best interests (but it seems he did them in the most noblest “spirit of compromise”). But his opposition is venomous and very extreme, way beyond any logic. They would rather bring on a Depression than allow Obama to get credit for the economy; they would rather bring on nuclear war on American soil than allow Obama to get credit for making us more secure; they would rather let people die than allow Obama to get credit for a social program like health care.
Obama was the victim of a dog whistle campaign from the minute he was in the spotlight. Multiple whistlers using Fox News to distract the American public into hating a man that stands to represent their best interests. They call him an elitist and in the same breath a Kenyan (not many Kenyans have moved beyond the simple mud huts of their national economy).
They call him a secret Muslim, ready to turn over the reins of governance to Al Qaeda; yet he ordered the death of Osama bin Laden. They accuse him of taking a $200 million dollar vacation at taxpayer expense or his wife of buying $2 million dollars of dresses in Spain; all because they heard it on Fox News, Rush or Christian Radio. The multitude of high frequency dog whistles prevent a person from hearing their own brain and saying logically “this is not the truth, it is a lie being used to manipulate me.”
People attacked his Alternative Energy guy Vann Jones as a “Black Gay Elitist”—even though he is married with children (and just a college graduate). Jones was under such pressure that he resigned rather than impede President Obama’s agenda.
Wake Up America! You are being used and abused!
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Many times I think you the reader are considering the game of politics as checkers when the GOP is playing it as 3-D chess. They reinvented: the language under Frank Luntz, the dirty politics under Lee Atwater, the tricks under Donald Segretti, the tax talk under Grover Norquist, etc. It’s all very complicated. I suggest you turn to Thom Hartmann. Here is one small point: https://williamhenrymee.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/two-santa-clauses-or-how-the-republican-party-has-conned-america-for-thirty-years-by-thom-hartmann/
TC says: “I had a discussion yesterday with a young dumbed down Democrat and I tried to explain the so called “Racism” that they are talking about and how they were bashing the KKK until I had to remind them or more like educate them that the Democrats are the ones that Created the KKK……and they also created the BLM and the ANTIFA as well as the Black Panthers and the SLPC as well as all the LGBT groups and the Nazi Feminist movements All to divide the country along any lines they can. Yet all the dumbed down ones can say is……UMMMM Trump is a Racist…..Ummm Trump is in collusion with the Russians. Wake the fuck up people!! pick up a real history book once in a while and actually read. Turn off your Liberal News stations that are nothing more than just the talking bobble heads that get you to just agree with everything they say without ever even thinking about what they are brainwashing you with.”
WHM: Let’s go back in time here…1964….LBJ signs Civil Rights Act and all Southern Democrats and Klan members switch to Republican Party. 1968 Nixon starts Southern Strategy, 1980, Reagan gives speech where Civil Rights workers were slain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan%27s_Neshoba_County_Fair_%22states%27_rights%22_speech
We have GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz who runs focus groups and tests out the wording of every GOP plan. Hence Death Tax instead of Estate Tax, Obamacare instead of Affordable Care Act, Pro-Life instead of Anti-Abortion, etc. Everything the GOP does is designed to benefit the 1% and get average people to vote against their best interests. The Middle Class votes against itself because the wordsmiths make it sound so good….