From Little Rock to Baghdad
Little Rock Central High School: Desegregated in 1957 with the Protection of the U.S. Military
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
In many ways, the road to Baghdad began symbolically at Little Rock Central High School, which was desegregated 50 years ago after armed federal intervention.
It was one of the milestones of the Civil Rights era -- and a sign to the white southern male that the era of plantation style entitlement was finally coming to an end. It's hard even, today, to realize that some people felt that they were closer to God and civilized standards because of the color of their skin. It's hard, because some people -- although not publicly proclaiming the belief -- still harbor it.
In fact, one could argue that the entire Bush Administration -- black window dressing like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice aside -- is about white male entitlement.
The mystery of what Bush and Cheney mean when they endlessly proclaim that GIs must die to accomplish the honor of "our mission" and achieve "victory" can be resolved with an understanding of white man's rules.
Bush and Cheney have offered us so many different "missions" for Iraq that they remind one of a toy terrier on speed.
But they have a different "mission" and definition of "victory" locked inside their heads, one that they dare not speak out loud. It's quite simple: the white man wins. For the white man to lose -- as the South did in the Civil War -- is to be shamefully dishonored.
The synergistic issues of the control of Iraq's oil, the creation of a multi-national corporate marketplace in Iraq, and the geo-political colonization of Iraq all hearken back to plantation politics.
Ownership is what is due to the white man. It is in the natural order of things to Bush and Cheney. It is their entitlement.
In the world of entitlement and neo-Confederacy social order, there is no need for accountability or responsibility. The white man is the head of the household, the owner of slaves, the exploiter of natural resources, because this is in the natural order -- the religiously "pious" Southerners felt -- the divine order of things.
BuzzFlash recently paid a visit to Little Rock, Bill Clinton's old political stomping grounds. There were endless brochures describing all his haunts, but the one that drew us was Little Rock Central High and a National Park Service visitor center across the street that commemorated the historic and tumultuous integration of the school.
In the visitor center, it is clear that Clinton developed a special relationship with the High School and repeatedly recognized its importance as a milestone in the Civil Rights movement. Before he left office as President, he bestowed the Congressional Gold Medal on the "Little Rock Nine," the intrepid black Americans who endured the most vile of hatred as they challenged the doctrine of segregated education.
Many white males -- and white women -- who are heirs to the Confederacy "white entitlement" outlook hated Clinton for embracing the Civil Rights movement and for nurturing a diverse society. Clinton took the words "opportunity for all Americans" to heart -- and the right wing viscerally detested him for it.
Why would a white Southern male betray his race and gender and voluntarily abandon "white entitlement"? White male entitlement is the ultimate affirmative action program. In fact the entire system of slavery was an affirmative action society and economy run for the benefit of a white power base. Just look at Bush. The man would be lucky to get a job cleaning out stables if he didn't have the ultimate white male entitlement "pedigree."
And so it is with Cheney, who relentlessly utters the mantra of "victory" and "honor" lying ahead of us in Iraq, because a white man can't "lose" to men and women of color -- and non-Christians to boot.
This is the definition of "victory" in the end for Bush and Cheney: white men -- whatever their personal deficiencies -- can't lose. It is just not allowed.
That is, perhaps, how we journeyed from Little Rock Central High School -- through a celebration of equality and the embracing of diversity under Bill Clinton -- to the bloodbath of Iraq.
If you were the master of a plantation, you could go whoring, drinking and gambling, but you could not be dethroned or fall from your position of ownership, because you had white male entitlement. You remained "the decider" no matter what. That is what the antebellum social and economic structure was built upon.
The unshakable core of Bush and Cheney's base may baffle persons who see the current Executive Branch leadership as impairing the national security of the United States and possibly precipitating WW III, not to mention bankrupting our country and destroying our environment.
But when you owned a plantation in the days of slavery, you weren't accountable to anyone but yourself -- and if a black slave got uppity, you just lashed or hung him.
A white man never lost. That is the heritage mindset of Cheney and Bush.
This is how we traveled from the promise of the Civil Rights era to the bloodbath of Baghdad.
A white man of the Confederacy can't back down, whatever his errors.
They call it "honor."
We call it a betrayal of our Constitution, accountability, common sense, and the safety of every American.
Most of us thought the Civil War ended in 1865.
But it hasn't really at all.
Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are fighting that battle all over again, trying to avenge the defeat of the South and impose white male entitlement as the law of the land.
Beyond it being morally repugnant, it is a doomed mindset and strategy that can only end in disaster.
It already has.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
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