Life is far too short to spend reading Pat Buchanan books, but his latest screed contained so many nursing home doozies (pining for segregation, fretting over the future of “White America”, taking Martin Luther King out of context) that it caused a brief media spasm and Talking Points Memo did it anyway. The result was “Twelve Pretty Racist Or Just Crazy Quotes From Pat Buchanan’s New Book”. A few choice excerpted excerpts:
If [conservative political commentator Heather] Mac Donald’s statistics are accurate, 49 of every 50 muggings and murders in New York are the work of minorities. That might explain why black folks have trouble getting a cab. Every New York cabby must know the odds, should he pick up a man of color at night.
That’s a nice twofer there, racism and statistical ignorance. Moving along:
Perhaps some of us misremember the past. But the racial, religious, cultural, social, political, and economic divides today seem greater than they seemed even in the segregation cities some of us grew up in.
Back then, black and white lived apart, went to different schools and churches, played on different playgrounds, and went to different restaurants, bars, theaters, and soda fountains. But we shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans.
That’s an impressively high contradiction to sentence ratio. And finally:
Mexico is moving north. Ethnically, linguistically, and culturally, the verdict of 1848 is being overturned. Will this Mexican nation within a nation advance the goals of the Constitution—to “insure domestic tranquility” and “make us a more perfect union”? Or has our passivity in the face of this invasion imperiled our union?
That appears to be the thrust of the book, modestly titled, “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025”. And while I wouldn’t presume to review a book I’ve no intention of reading, I think it is fair to say that Buchanan speaks for a lot of people. He won the New Hampshire primary in 1992, garnered half a million votes in the general in 2000, and his book is currently the #95 selling book on all of Amazon, and #3 in politics. Buchanan is very clearly afraid of something, as are a great many on the right.
What’s got him worried? Primarily the fact that he sees the America he knew as a kid (he turns 73 today) disappearing in favor of one that looks weird and scary to him. If that sounds, as TPM said in their headline “Pretty Racist”, well, that’s because it is. Buchanan is saying, quite plainly, that America was better off when it was a lot whiter. But it’s dismissive to end the discussion there.
Behind pointing the finger at border jumping brown people and black people who should’ve been content with separate but equal lies a great deal of fear, in Buchanan and in plenty of other American conservatives. And while that fear is often racially motivated and quite irrational, it’s also understandable.
As with most things, this can partly be blamed on the subservient pack of illiterates we call the press corps. It is very much their fault that, while violent crime rates are at near historic lows, the fear of crime is as high as it’s ever been. Scary re-enactments, pictures of missing white girls, and whole channels full of crime stories feed an utterly unjustified perception of how dangerous our society is.
Beyond that, though, is what Buchanan is getting at: America has changed radically within the memory of many of its citizens. It’s not just big things like ending segregation and giving women the right to proper medical care, it’s thousands of little things like swear words on television, couples living openly in sin, and billionaires who wear blue jeans. When Buchanan was growing up in the 1940s, respectable men wore ties and hats everywhere, women often weren’t allowed into public buildings unless they were in a dress, and two men caught in sexual congress could be arrested.
On top of that, Buchanan is Catholic, which means he can remember a time when the Church was one of the most powerful institutions in the country, all services were held in Latin, and bishops and cardinals all but ran many towns and cities. Protestants of his age can, if so inclined, still find plenty of old time religion. Buchanan is stuck with a Church that is a shadow of itself, wracked by scandal, and hopelessly liberal compared to the one in which he was raised.
The world has changed enormously in his lifetime, and like a lot of other people he has a hard time with that. That isn’t surprising, and for reasons of pure tribalism (nothing Obama or Pelosi says will help) it may be impossible to assuage those fears in any meaningful way. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth redirecting the conversation a little, because while Buchanan himself is likely beyond mollification, a lot of the people for whom he speaks aren’t.
That’s why things like dishonest portrayals of Social Security’s solvency (it’s fine, but you wouldn’t know that reading Kaplan Test Prep Daily) and doom and gloom articles about crime rates (actually down) are such a problem. They’re ratcheting up the fear for people who are already afraid. While there are certainly things to be worried about, the things Pat Buchanan is worried about, including the unfamiliar culture of modern America, aren’t among them. Pushing back on that won’t convince him of anything, but it might sway a few of the people who think he’s on to something.
