Blaming the Blameless

Dear George,

The best scapegoats are the blameless. The blameless are blameless because they aren’t paying attention and are simply passive participants in whatever activity they are being blamed for, rather than its perpetrator.

For example, Wingnut Land is now blaming poor blacks who took out mortgages underwritten by Freddie and Fannie for our economic meltdown. Such a charge conjures up a terrifying image of an elderly Black woman beating a banker into submission with her walker until he is forced to give her a mortgage he knows damn well she will never repay. This image could well replace the image of the welfare mother who collects her checks in a Cadillac packed with her illegitimate children. Such images feed the racism that is so integral to our greatness.

And the Palin-McCain ticket is doing its best to fan the flames of middle class discontent. The beauty of racism is that one can be a racist without espousing racism. All one need do is preach a doctrine of “personal responsibility” that blames the victim (as opposed to a doctrine of corporate responsibility which would be absurd because corporations, being extensions of the Divine Will, are covered under the Calvinist doctrine of supralapsarianism, which states that because corporations were predestined for salvation by God, it is virtually impossible for them lose this divine perk, no matter how felonious their behavior.)

But, I digress…

Getting back to the Palin-McCain ticket, one writer puts it very succinctly when he says:

In other times, Sarah Palin’s imitation of Father Charles Coughlin—the priest who preached an American Reich in the 1930s—in drag might be hilarious camp. But with the American way of life in sudden freefall, the specter of star-spangled fascism doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched.

It has been encouraging to see more and more cars speeding around sporting a set of brand-new American flags. Every Reich needs a symbol, and it is a telling sign that a flag that once stood for democracy and decency now stands for aggression and bigotry.

I’m telling you George, my blood boils every time I think of that old Black woman beating that banker. I wonder if I could find an American flag armband somewhere.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones