Among the Republicans by V.S. Naipaul

June 30, 2012 1:04 PM

Among the Republicans by V.S. Naipaul
posted by Cloud King (21 comments total)

Interesting but you might have noted that the essay is from October 1984. Not that it matters, since the Republican Party has long since lurched backward to October 1854.
posted by blucevalo at 1:10 PM on June 30, 2012 [3 favorites]

I'm not seeing the past. Is the KKK Republican? Is the defeated South Republican?
It's better if truth.
posted by Mblue at 1:31 PM on June 30, 2012

Thanks for the post. I know it's not about the main topic, but lines like

"The Dallas–Fort Worth airport is one of the biggest in the world; and regularly, one behind the other, in perhaps two lines, the airplanes, trailing black fumes, came down into visibility from the hot ochre sky and their lights suddenly glittered. The highway hissed with commuter traffic; and all around, the sky roared."

are why I know I am not a great writer.
posted by skepticallypleased at 1:39 PM on June 30, 2012 [6 favorites]

I miss Hunter S Thompson.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:39 PM on June 30, 2012 [3 favorites]

Republican Party has long since lurched backward to October 1854

Nope, in October 1854 the Republican Party was firmly in favor of using federal power to ameliorate social injustice.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:42 PM on June 30, 2012 [30 favorites]

Then in other words it's completely abandoned any pretense of adhering to any of its founding principles or almost any of the other principles that it espoused for over a century and a half. I could have really chosen any year at random from 1854 forward and found a point on the timeline at which the party put forth a governing principle which it has long since abandoned in favor of the naked pursuit of fundamentalist oligarchy.
posted by blucevalo at 1:48 PM on June 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that if Lincoln were alive today, FOX would be telling us repeatedly that he's a flaming RINO cryptic liberal.
posted by Coventry at 3:01 PM on June 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

V S Naipaul previously on Metafilter.
posted by koeselitz at 3:22 PM on June 30, 2012

Skepticallypleased, don't despair. This person's writing style is corny. You an do better!
posted by scose at 3:34 PM on June 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

This person's writing style is corny. You an do better!

Is this meant ironically? Cuz, you know, Nobel Prize in literature and all that.
posted by dave78981 at 3:37 PM on June 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yes we an!


Conservative Southern Values Revived: How a Brutal Strain of American Aristocrats Have Come to Rule America
America didn't used to be run like an old Southern slave plantation, but we're headed that way now. How did that happen?
posted by dhartung at 4:36 PM on June 30, 2012 [11 favorites]

Is this meant ironically? Cuz, you know, Nobel Prize in literature and all that.

Nope.
posted by scose at 6:14 PM on June 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

There was something oddly Biblical (though Dr. Criswell didn’t make this particular point) about AIDS, which struck down buggers and a special kind of black and spared everybody else.

It also struck down my next door neighbor. A good-fearing elderly woman who happened to get a blood transfusion at the wrong time (i.e. shortly before they started testing it for HIV).
posted by sour cream at 6:19 PM on June 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

dhartung: That was a great article. What I don't get is how Bobby Jindahl became such a perfect example of a southern elite. Any ideas?
posted by Xurando at 6:23 PM on June 30, 2012

dhartung: That was a great article. What I don't get is how Bobby Jindahl became such a perfect example of a southern elite. Any ideas?

I agree about the article. As to Jindahl, perhaps he comes from Brahmin forbears? Southern states seem to have developed a fondness for south Asian governors, for whatever reason.
posted by TedW at 6:52 PM on June 30, 2012

It's funny seeing Eldridge mentioned here as a republican shill. I read about him inspiring fugitives to escape to Algeria recently and that he was a hero over there who lived off Algerian handouts.
posted by notseamus at 6:55 PM on June 30, 2012

Yeah, the South has much to answer for. But please recall that some northern industrialists were down with fascism before World War I, and they helped fuel oppression in Birmingham, etc. And Woodrow Wilson might have become part of the US educational establishment via work at northeastern universities, but he was from Georgia and his racial beliefs were not remotely progressive, he hailed "Birth of a Nation" and such. The article lost me with a reference to him as one of the products of Yankee-dom. You'd be getting closer tonthe truth if you looked at how modern conservatism was born in the post-Jim Crow southern burbs, as given an endorsement by the likes of the Koch Brothers.
posted by raysmj at 7:54 PM on June 30, 2012

It's more a case of, See, we became prosperous out here in the burbs, on our own, with no govt help, unlike these black people back in the cities. When you think that, it becomes easy to accept libertarian ideology, which is not native the South, never had been.
posted by raysmj at 8:02 PM on June 30, 2012

I'm pretty sure that if Lincoln were alive today...

If Lincoln was alive today liberals would hate him.

Lincoln selectively suspended habeas corpus in 1861, then SCOTUS Chief Justice Taney issued an opinion that only Congress, not the president, could do this, indeed Taney as part of the circuit court ruled this suspension of habeas corpus was unconstitutional. Lincoln and the military ignored him and then in Sept. 24, 1862, President Lincoln issued the proclamation suspending the right to writs of habeas corpus nationwide.

The "rule of law" we so precariously cling to exists only on sufferance of those who hold power.
posted by edgeways at 10:07 PM on June 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

It also struck down my next door neighbor. A good-fearing elderly woman who happened to get a blood transfusion at the wrong time (i.e. shortly before they started testing it for HIV).

So G*d has collateral damage, too? I guess Obama's in good company, then.
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:30 PM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

The "rule of law" we so precariously cling to exists only on sufferance of those who hold power.

Well, in fairness, this was during a civil war, when one might reasonably argue that martial law was warranted. A few thousand dead in a single terrorist act doesn't seem to compare.
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:31 PM on July 1, 2012 [1 favorite]