Recently, in the context of Rep. Steve Scalise inadvertently
speaking about taxes over a dozen years ago unbeknownst to him to a handful of
white supremacists, this
space noted that the political left needs to embellish the episode in order
to fit it into its narrative, despite having to buy into some incredible
assumptions in order to accomplish that. The thinking of its members that
enables them to overcome this high degree of credulity merits discussion.
Given the insignificance of the
event, its datedness, and paucity of recorded evidence concerning it, two
stories have emerged about it. The much more plausible of them (an excellent
recounting of the nuances of both is here)
is that the same guy, Kenny Knight, who headed the group also headed a
neighborhood organization and scheduled the former to meet after the latter in
the same location. Republican Scalise in 2002 was invited to speak to the
organization and did so on tax issues, knowing nothing of the existence of the
other group nor that it had some of its members wander in early to listen to
him. Both Knight, who never was a political ally of Scalise, and his then-paramour
confirm this account of events, both of whom could gain lasting political
relevance and immortality if they argued Scalise knowingly and willingly spoke
to the group; they gain nothing to say otherwise. What little documentation
exists of the group’s meeting makes no mention of an appearance scheduled for
Scalise.
The implausible version contends
they, for unknown reasons, are covering up for Scalise or sanitizing his appearance,
with this resting on that after the group’s meeting the existence of a couple
of Internet forum posts mentioned his speaking and that a political opponent of
Scalise’s, Kenny Lassalle, said he ran another organization in that same
neighborhood, that Knight was antagonistic to it, and that Knight’s group didn’t
exist, backed by that it was not registered with the Secretary of State as a
nonprofit corporation. The holes in this should be obvious: dissatisfied with
Lassalle’s organization, Knight could have formed a rump organization to
counter and which like many such organizations he did not formally incorporate
it, and the consideration of cui bono
shows that Lassalle has everything to gain by trying to damage Scalise
politically.
Yet the biggest hurdle for
believers in that second story to bring it any credibility at all is to explain
why Scalise would risk his entire political career to speak knowingly to a
racist group. Why Scalise, a decade after Knight’s ally David Duke who had
founded the group had ceased to have political relevance to all but a small
fringe precisely, because it had become clear his protestations of moving away
from white supremacist ideology were untrue, in knowing that any willingness to
be associated with these people would ruin him politically then would embrace
this opportunity? Indeed, the group’s ideas being so toxic, when Scalise found
out and was under the impression that he had spoken only to the group that day,
he immediately issued an apology to the world.
Maybe in 1992, just after Duke had
racked up large margins in statewide races, a politician might have been
tempted to court those voters. That didn’t last long, as witnessed by former
Gov. Mike
Foster’s in 1995 breaching ethics laws just to conceal the fact he wanted
to buy Duke’s mailing list of potential voters. Yet even as his beliefs on
nonracial issues remained mainstream, a decade later when full information was long
out about Duke’s genuine racial beliefs that made him unelectable and
politically radioactive to have any association with him or his advocates, it
boggles the mind that then any politician would act so riskily to seek
precisely that.
Unless one’s mind has surrendered
to true faith in liberalism, the kind that cannot tolerate facts and logic that
illuminate the internal contradictions of that religion. It’s illustrated in
the comments both of a national political figure, Democrat Rep. Bennie
Thompson, who about the incident said
that “[Scalise] was not current with the conventional thinking of the time,”
and thus now needs to conduct outreach actions to show “he’s a changed man and
is color blind or whatever,” and a Louisiana-based former Democrat operative
and now academician and polemicist Bob Mann, who writes,
in a larger context about controversial political viewpoints, that Scalise’s
conservatism put him at risk to wandering into such a situation because “only
20 years ago, Duke’s racial views were fashionable among Louisiana's white
residents.”
Both comments for different reasons
are stunning for their vacuity. Across the political spectrum, those who know
Scalise attest to his
detesting of Duke’s racial views, stated even before Duke gained prominence
politically, and of his actions dispelling any racial animosities (such as
voluntary coaching of black youths). Regardless, because of a manufactured
story Thompson discounts all of that in effect to call Scalise racist, and also
perhaps because Scalise voted as a state legislator against making Dr. Martin
Luther King’s birthday a state holiday. As if that vote indicates anything
insofar as racial animosity: Scalise and many conservatives opposed it on the
principle that taxpayers were coughing up too many bucks for multiplying
holidays. It’s inconceivable that Thompson does not know of these facts given
the recent publicity of them.
Even more breathtaking is Mann’s
assertion, which in fact was the case 50 years ago. But by 1995 the country had
incorporated a quarter-century of eliminating institutionalized racism in
government and policy, the world didn’t end, and hard-bitten racists were dying
off or in retreat. A considerable amount of survey research was performed both
in Louisiana and nationally after Duke’s successes in the earlier part of that
decade, and it was universal in confirming that racist sentiments were confined
to a small portion of the American public. Perhaps five decades ago you could
say 50 percent of whites in Louisiana held at least some racist attitudes, but
by two decades in the past it’s probably a stretch to say even 20 percent
stubbornly adhered to such tripe. Mann (who almost certainly did back then as a
paid hack to politicians) must live in a bubble even to consider what he wrote
a real possibility. Thus the conjecture that Scalise felt no discomfort about coming
to a group because it appeared mainstream to him is utterly ridiculous.
Yet both suspend their disbelief of
their nonsensical understandings of others precisely because of the imperatives
of their ideological crusade. Liberalism, defeated both intellectually and
empirically, must cling to certain myths in order to validate itself. The interpretation
of Scalise as willing dupe if not slick racist depends upon a larger prejudice
that conservatism must, just simply must, somehow endorse racism, in order to
bolster faith in liberalism as the right and holy belief system. The incredible
irony of this is that conservatism, because of its emphasis on the individual and
his rights against unjust government interference, is in principle by far the
less prone to using racial and other grouping distinctions in policy-making,
opposite of what liberalism is designed to do in its obsession about division of
peoples and using government to create a war of all against all to the advantage
of a privileged in-group that controls power.
But so it goes with liberalism.
Which is why while many recognize the nonstory for what it is, some take it
seriously. That reaction tells us much more about them and their needs than it
does about any fantasy they might have about Scalise, conservatism, and ideology
in America today.
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