Love and Bondage

The possibility of a fascist state in America that I alluded to in an earlier post became slightly more realistic yesterday when it turned out that a pact to protect the sanctity of marriage that was put out by the Family Leader, a right-wing advocacy group, that had been signed by two Republican presidential candidates featured a rosy view of black family life under slavery. The document, signed by Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, expressed the belief that a black child born in slavery in 1860, before the Civil War, had a more stable family life, with two parents, than a black child born during Barack Obama's Presidency.

If this statement had expressed outrage or pity over this assessment, the Family Leader might have gotten away with it. But the wording suggested that the Family Leader endorsed slavery. Though they retracted the wording, they've still managed to call attention to the underlying racism of social conservative groups fighting for . . . no change. They want to return to the 1950s ideal of white nuclear middle-class families before gays came out of the closet, women went to work, and actresses like Cybill Shepherd mouthed off about marriage being a misogynistic institution . . . and when blacks were seen but not heard.

I understand why Bachmann signed the vow. She thought John Quincy Adams and other Founding Fathers ended slavery long before 1860. I don't know why Rick Santorum, who's evidently dumber than he looks (he reminds me of the 1980s video game character Evil Otto) would sign this pact, because I don't think he has anything against black people. It's the gays he hates.

Anyway, like Michele Bachmann's statement about the Founding Fathers and the belief that "Father Knows Best" reflected real life, the Family Leader's statement just isn't true. Plantation owners had no regard for slave family units; slave marriages were not recognized as legitimate, and many families were broken up at the auction block. Absent fathers may be a problem in black America today, but both parents were likelier to be absent in a slave child's life because the master sold them to another cotton grower.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin has reared her ugly head on the cover of Newsweek, telling the magazine that she can win a general presidential election and toying with the possibility of a presidential campaign. And even while family leader is trying to distance itself from charges of racism, Palin is dismissing President Obama as a "sugar daddy" for doling out money in the form of government spending and that he has "run out of sugar." Unfortunately, Palin, more evil than Evil Otto, hasn't yet run out of sweet talk designed to keep people paying attention to her - some of that same talk being sourly racist.

It should be obvious that the United States is becoming more like apartheid-era South Africa, where we will see more laws based on fundamentalist Christianity, white people will be the minority but will still control everything, people of color have no voting rights, women have no health amenities, and the capitalist system merrily rolls along enriching only a few people. Pretty soon other countries will boycott us.

Except China, which will continue to make our kitchen utensils and underwear.