Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: Southern Strategy To Rig Elections Continues!

The "Southern Strategy" was made it famous by the GOP and Lee Atwater made it clear in a leaked 1981 leaked interview that was based on racism. However, it's not limited to the GOP and the leadership of the Democratic Party has been using their own version of it for at least this election and the 2016 election with their front loading of Southern states, and possibly much earlier with variations helping both Bill Clinton and Biden's earlier campaigns.

Another major issue that the mainstream media has routinely ignored is what causes the South and many elsewhere, to be so racist; there is good research that shows this has it's roots in early education practices, often including abusive upbringing, including the use of corporal punishment and emotional intimidation of small children, that teaches blind obedience to authority, which makes children more susceptible to indoctrination and racism when they grow up, and less able to develop critical thinking skills that enable them to recognize why this isn't in their own best interests, let along the best interests of the minorities that are being targeted by racists people.

However, when it comes to political research by campaign workers they don't seem to discuss this at all, that I know of, and may not fully understand it instead studying how to manipulate the voters as if the way they became that way is an unsolvable mystery. Occasionally, like the following interview with Lee Atwater they show how they're trying to manipulate people without seeming racists:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

Democrats have been complaining about Republicans using racism for political gain, rightfully, but they often use more subtle versions of it at the same time while pretending to defend minority rights. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have been among the worst offenders, and they get a lot of support from the democrats in southern states. Hillary Clinton was famous for her claim that "We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel," at a time when the academic world, or at least the academics the media and political establishment were willing to cover, was making paranoid predictions about super-predators. These predictions turned out to be false, and many people familiar with the academic research would know that despite the media coverage at that time the academic world wasn't in complete agreement about this conclusions, and the best researchers still don't get as much media coverage as they deserve.

Joe Biden was also a leading supporter of get tough on crime solutions that ignored the long term causes of violence, like poverty or lack of education or day care. There were some small improvements on these issues, at least in parts of the country where they had better informed people pushing for them, but not nearly as much as they needed. They both also catered to corporate interests, and benefited from front loading of Southern states during the primaries, especially Hillary Clinton. This was an issue brought up at the time, but most people didn't recognize the importance of it; with California on super Tuesday, with Bernie winning it, it wasn't quite as bad in 2020; however, there have been as many voter irregularities, if not more this year than 2016 when I posted Can Hillary Clinton win without cheating? listing extensive amount of voter suppression throughout the campaign, more that were reported later, which may not have been included in that article; I haven't posted quite as extensive a list of examples of voter suppression for the 2020 campaign yet, but I listed some below and will follow up with more. There's good reason to suspect that it's as bad, if not worse; and this is on top of the overwhelming amount of preferential treatment they give to establishment candidates with their media coverage.

Shortly before their primary Joe Biden said something like, "South Carolina is more representative of the rest of the country" than the three states that he had lost badly prior to that, which isn't even a good lie; however he routinely tells people what ever he seems to think will serve his best political interests even though it means contradicting himself over and over again, like many other traditional politicians, including Hillary Clinton. what he didn't remind the public of, nor has the mainstream media reminded the public in this election cycle is the fact that South Carolina has a long history of using dirty tricks there, which often turn out to be very effective, including,

the 2000 whisper campaign that alleged that John McCain’s adopted daughter, who is from Bangladesh, was in fact his own illegitimate African-American child; the 2008 Mormon-themed greeting cards that purported to be from Mitt Romney; the accusations that 2010 gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley had an affair. “More-seasoned veterans might reach back to the 1978 phone calls pointedly ‘asking’ voters’ opinions about the faith of a Jewish candidate for Congress,” Crowley continued. “Or the curious case two years later of the reporter who asked a Democratic congressional candidate about his history of ‘psychotic treatment.'” This Is How South Carolina Got Its Reputation for Dirty Politics 01/21/2012

This isn't limited to South Carolina, of course, Jesse Helms's famous hands ad was in North Carolina, and the Willie Horton ad was a national campaign, although it appealed to people that were more likely to be racists or paranoid, which is more common in the South or among people brought up in strict authoritarian manners, often with abusive upbringing teaching blind obedience to authority. Many of these claims have little or no credibility, yet some people believe them anyrway in socme cases even when they're debunked. One of the most brazen claims was in 2012 when Rick Santorum claimed "elderly people in the Netherlands don't go to the hospital" or, if they do, wear bracelets saying "do not euthanize me," was was widely debunked at the time, (The Dutch Euthanize Their Elderly, and Other Scary GOP Lies About Europe 03/14/2012) yet many of his core supporters stuck with him and even if they didn't continue believing that obvious lie many of them trusted him on many other lies.

The lies that many of the most extreme right wing Republicans usually seem much more obvious and irrational than those believed by establishment Democrats that seem to trust candidates like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and are so obvious that many might wonder how anyone can possibly believe them; but when demagogues fight each other people raised in authoritarian ways are more likely to support the person with the toughest rhetoric, even if it doesn't match their record. This enabled Biden and Clinton to attract people by simply attacking the threat, that happens to be right wing extremists, without addressing many of the most important issues.

However, in 2016 Hillary Clinton had her own share of incredibly obvious lies even if they weren't quite as extreme and now Joe Biden is doing the same thing, including his lies about opposing the Iraq war shortly after it began, his lies about not repeatedly trying to cut social security, his lies about being in the civil rights movement, including a claim that he was arrested in South Africa while trying to meet with Nelson Mandela. By contrast, Bernie Sanders didn't have any "pants on fire fact checks by Politifact, while Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump all had at least five, with Trump taking the lions share with one hundred and eleven, personally, I think they were biased against Bernie Sanders, on one occasion making a issue because he said 42% of Walmart associates are African American, when it's technically 42% are "people of color." In all fairness one of Hillary Clinton's false claims that there were 270 mass shootings where "four or more people are killed" is also a understandable misunderstanding, since the media is constantly redefining this without adequately telling the public, they now refer to a mass shootings where four or more people are shot, not necessarily killed, but most people don't realize this; I might have made the same mistake before I figured out what they were doing.

But why are so many people believing such incredibly bad and obvious lies? One of the biggest reasons, if not the biggest reason is early childhood education methods when children develop critical thinking skills as I went into in several articles including Dobson’s Indoctrination Machine and more recently Must We Hate? Must We Beat Children? Using abusive and emotional child rearing tactics impairs the development of critical thinking skills that enable them to recognize incredibly obvious lies when they grow up and lead to a population that's more likely to go along with the crowd, even when they crowd is doing foolish things, voting against their own interests, or supporting demagogues or candidates pushed by mainstream media despite their incredibly bad records.

Joe Biden is repeating another pattern that Hillary Clinton started in 2016 as well by winning the primaries mainly in states that he can't win in the General election, which is part of the reason Hillary was defeated; not to mention the outrage about efforts to rig the nomination in her favor, which is also happening again this year. The southern strategy is a major part of efforts to rig the nomination again, which may inevitably enable another term for Trump, if it succeeds, although voter suppression isn't limited to the South, but there's probably more of it there, and they can also more effectively manipulate voters that were indoctrinated in an authoritarian manner, than in other states, especially older voters since child rearing tactics have been improving over the decades; which is a major part of the reason why Bernie Sanders does so well with younger voters, when they're allowed to vote.

Corporal punishment also teaches violence later in life, as I pointed out in Research On Preventing Violence Absent From National Media the nineteen states that still allow corporal punishment in schools and presumably use it more at home as well, mostly in the South, for religious reasons, have much higher murder rates, on average than the thirty-one that don't. In 2018 those nineteen states had just over 32% higher murder rates and for the past ten years before 2018 it's been between 22% and 31%, indicating that the difference is expanding. These nineteen states, on average also have higher rates of poverty, income inequality, pollution, and other social problems with lower rates for literacy and access to higher education.

The states that are most likely to support corporal punishment in schools and have higher murder rates, are mostly Republican states and they're the ones that both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton do best in, while the states that Bernie Sanders won are the ones with lower rates of violence and other social problems, presumably because they do better at recognizing the causes of them and preventing them. I pointed this out previously in 2016 in Bernie Sanders Wins Least Violent States At a glance it's clear that the states voting for Bernie Sanders this time as well are on average far less violence than those voting for Joe Biden.

Children that are raised in a non-violent manner by parents that are much less likely to get emotional and scare them develop much better critical thinking skills enabling them to recognize fraudulent marketing scams or political propaganda; often voting against their own best interests, for people of all races; although, minorities get the worst of it. This is why there's more pollution and income inequality in the south among other problems; poor while people routinely are taught to blame minorities for taking their jobs or other problems. And poor minorities are often more concerned with opposing racist white people of their own class, when it's usually the wealthier people responsible for most of their problems; part of this is because if there is physical confrontation, wealthy people are more likely to isolate themselves in gated communities and have security while leaving the lower classes to fight among themselves while they rig the economy against people of both races.

Regrettably, the ruling class has taught the working class to hold each other accountable through violence, even though it's not in the best interests of either race; and both blacks and whites have come to think of this as their own idea even though this isn't true, especially for African Americans. In "All God's Children" By Fox Butterfield 2008 he traces the background of Willie Bosket, his father, and several generations before them going back to when slavery was still legal, and the use of extreme corporal punishment was taught to everyone, including teaching African Americans to use it against each other.

In fairness all races used this in the past but before African American's were kidnapped and sold into slavery they weren't taught to use nearly as severe use of abusive corporal punishment and as it was passed down from generation to generation minorities came to believe it was their idea without realizing it was taught to their ancestors by white slave owners recently when a Catholic school, Saint Augustine, decided to ban corporal punishment, it was the parents of African Americans that objected, nine years ago, while the Church, at least at the local level working with social workers, were encouraging a ban on it, according to St. Augustine High School corporal punishment debate is about more than the paddle. Presumably this is because they weren't aware of the history behind it and that going back hundreds of years, it was reversed, it was the Church and White Slave owners that recommended that children be disciplined using violence, as described in the Bible.

At that time the Vatican still wasn't opposed to all use of Corporal punishment; it wasn't until about two years ago where they quietly eliminated all corporal punishment in organizations affiliated with the Church. Presumably in 2011, when this was banned it was under pressure from local social workers that led them to ban it. An it's also likely that the reason they did this so quietly is because they wanted to avoid discussion about their past behavior, and how it led to the sex scandals and other social problems.

Stacey Patton also went into the history of how African American's were taught to use corporal punishment going back to slave days in That Mean Old Yesterday: An Abused Girl's Fight for Survival 2012, although I haven't read this book entirely, but what I have read of her indicates that she's quite credible including the following excerpt from a more recent book discussing the "Baltimore Mom" that became famous for several months after beating her son to get him away from protests against the police:

Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won't Save Black America By Stacey Patton 2017

A Baltimore teacher told Gawker, Those kids were set up, they were treated like criminals before the first brick was thrown.”

“These kids are just angry. These are the same kids [the cops] pull up on the corner for no reason,” Sandra Almond-Cooper, the president of the Mondawmin Neighborhood Improvement Association, told the Baltimore Sun.

By the time Graham appeared on the scene, cameras were roiling but she didn’t care. Her goal was to get her son out of the chaos and back home safely. When she made eye contact with him, she went ballistic.

“Get the fuck over here!” Graham screamed as she repeatedly hit Singleton upside the head.

Once unmasked, young Michael backed away from his mother, subdued, with a look of humiliation in his eyes. The fifty-second video of the incident was viewed millions of times. The mother and son suddenly became media darlings, appearing on CNN, The View, and the The Today show. As Graham paraded her son on the media circuit, it was akin to giving a child a whupping and making him come out to say hello to company. And America ate it up. Oprah Winfrey gave Graham a thumbs-up seal of approval to drive home the narrative that good mothering requires physical force. The New York Post encouraged more black mothers to beat the protest out of their kids with the headline: “Forget the National Guard … Send in the Moms.” p.25 additional excerpts

At the height of the “Baltimore Mom” controversy, I appeared on a CNN segment with Illinois congressman Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther who took to the House floor with a large photo of Graham hitting her son and made a “special appeal to African American mothers.” He described the picture as an “image of strong black mother” giving her son “a love whupping – to snatch him back from the senseless violence that’s currently plaguing the city of Baltimore.” Rush added, “As this picture demonstrates, mothers can and mothers must be the mobilizing force to take back our street.” He then asked mothers across the country to show solidarity with Graham by wearing yellow.

........ The public’s view is that she saved her son’s life that day. I, however, was adamant that her tough-love approach and literal preemptive strikes against Michael do nothing to break the cycles of violence in our homes and communities. The widespread celebration, in fact, had little to do with what was good for Graham, her son, and the black community as a whole. The reason she was being worshiped by the news media was not because of genuine understanding of her fear and motivation for hitting her son, but because she symbolized the tradition of keeping black male bodies in check. Never mind that her violence against her son may only incite his anger and frustration because it prevented him from resisting the systems of oppression in his community.

Six months after she made the headlines, CBS News caught up with Graham and found her not living the life of a hero. She and her children were in danger of losing their home. They were struggling to put food on the table and the mother and son still lived in fear of the violence ravaging the neighborhood. p.27 additional excerpts

I'm glad they gave her a little bit of time on CNN when that happened, but I didn't see her, nor did I see any other good academic researchers that know as much as her and much more than traditional media and celebrities like Bobby Rush and Charles Barkley, and I did see the obsession coverage glorifying the "Baltimore Mom" for beating her kids. they glorified her repeating uninformed opinions over and over again without reporting on good research. this is just one of dozens of articles I've written citing good academics like James Garbarino, Barbara Coloroso, Alice Miller, Philip Greven, Murray Straus and many more that have written many good books on the subject, yet coverage of their views is only briefly brought on mainstream media and quickly forgotten enabling politicians and pundits to recommend the least credible research.

One of the few articles I came across that did cite some opposition was Mom of the year? Baltimore woman isn't a hero to all 04/29/2020 where they reported "'Tired of hearing about this Baltimore "Mom of the Year,"' said a tweet under the handle @DaAnGrYASiAN. 'If she raised her son better, she wouldn't have needed to do that.'" This person seems well informed, although she didn't provide additional details, or at least the media didn't repeat it, making it look like a difference of opinion where they're in the minority. However, there's plenty of good academic work some of which I've cited here, including Stacy Patton's two books, and many more that I've pointed out in the past, showing that this child rearing tactic teaches more violence, not less, and the high rates of murder and poverty in Baltimore confirms this. Five years after the media gave all that obsession coverage recommending that parents beat their kids to keep them in line the murder rates in Baltimore have broken an all time record instead of going back down. They had one year in 1993 with slightly more murders, but a much lower population so the murder rate in 1993 was probably only about 45 compared to 55.9 in 2019.

These same child rearing tactics are often used by the police and their parents before them teaching them to blindly obey orders and respond to all threats with violence, often when not necessary. This doesn't protect the public or the police, the same cities with the highest murder rates also have the more police violence and shootings killing civilians, innocent or not. And this isn't the only major contributing cause of violence, I wnet into many more contributing causes of it in a series of my own studies, including other peer reviewed one in each subject in Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit including poverty, income inequality, gambling, gun control, insurance, and several other factors, and found significant evidence that when local communities are more informed about good academic work and address the issues despite lack of media coverage they can reduce the crime rates in their own communities.

I hesitate to make a big issue out of the clothes that the "Baltimore Mom" was wearing since it shouldn't much of an issue but Bobby Rush seemed to make in issue out of it citing it positively, recommending that people wear yellow to honor her; however, poverty is one of the other leading causes of violence, and epidemic levels of fraudulent marketing contributes to that including those torn jeans which are considered stylish. falling for incredibly bad marketing scams is also more common for children raised in authoritarian manners as I pointed out in How Much Impact Does Deceptive Marketing to Kids Have On Violence? which focuses on sneaker killings and black Friday riots, but also explains how marketing, starting with little children is a form of indoctrination and leads to increased poverty, fraud and other social problems, also reducing development of critical thinking skills, although I don't expect it's as important as stopping child abuse.

In order to teach better critical thinking skills so that voters won't fall for incredibly bad political propaganda we have to teach better child rearing tactics so that outrageous corruption is easily recognized and not accepted by voters, even with appeals to emotion. Voters have fallen for incredibly obvious demagogues like Trump who treats anyone that disagrees with him by insulting them; and Biden isn't much if any better as indicated when he took a tantrum a few days ago as described in Joe Biden Physically Threatens Voter, Curses and Jabs Finger in His Face 03/10/2020; another incident a few months ago ‘You’re a damn liar, man!’ – Joe Biden blasts Iowa voter, calls him ‘fat’ after man repeats Ukraine smear 12/05/2019; and many more examples where he's yelled at voters disagreeing with them often telling them to "vote for someone else" routinely treating voters with disrespect, yet he's still supposedly the front runner.

Why would anyone consider someone so obnoxious?

Because when they're raised in abusive manners they learn to tolerate this kind of behavior and often adopt it themselves, thinking it's the appropriate way of addressing issues.

We need far more discussion about how early child rearing practices impacts kids ability to participate in the Democratic process. Fortunately, even though few people have pointed this out, modern child rearing tactics are much better than past tactics, which I have no doubt is why many young people do a much better job recognizing political scams than older people who support Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and in 2016 Hillary Clinton.

For some additional articles on this subject see the following; and after that, as I said, I compiled a lot of articles reporting on voter suppression for a future post of my own, but for now I'll just list the links below, showing that there's an extensive amount of voter fraud going on:

Baltimore nears record homicide rate as violence surges 12/26/2019

Baltimore murder rates

Baltimore sees second deadliest year on record in 2019, homicide clearance rate under 40 percent (deadliest year on record, based on the murder rate, since the population was lower in 1993, only year with slightly more murders.) 01/01/2020

Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy 11/13/2012

Sanders’s Not-So-Southern Strategy 04/15/2016

1992 Democratic Party presidential primaries

Results of the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries

Maddow Piously Labels Jesse Helms' 'Hands' Ad as 'Almost Evil' 06/03/2014

The dirty truth about dirty tricks in South Carolina politics 03/11/2016 So what pray tell was so shocking that would-be McCainiacs walked away from the celebrated POW and Arizona senator? Only the worst possible thing you would ever say about a politician in South Carolina: John McCain fathered a black child.

This Is How South Carolina Got Its Reputation for Dirty Politics 01/21/2012

The Dutch Euthanize Their Elderly, and Other Scary GOP Lies About Europe 03/14/2012 Most recently, leading GOP candidate Rick Santorum claimed that 10 per cent of the Netherlands' deaths were from euthanasia, 5 percent forced, and that "elderly people in the Netherlands don't go to the hospital" or, if they do, wear bracelets saying "do not euthanize me," all of which is false.

How the southern strategy brought the rebel yell to the White House 10/15/2013

Bernie Sanders Wins Least Violent States

Can Hillary Clinton win without cheating?

PolitiFact: Joe Biden

PolitiFact: Bernie Sanders

PolitiFact: Donald Trump

PolitiFact: Hillary Clinton

Bernie Sanders: Joe Biden claims in a new ad that he has always protected Social Security. That’s patently false. He can’t hide 40 years of working with Republicans to cut Social Security. Here are the facts. 1/8 03/07/2020

Corporal punishment in black communities: Not an intrinsic cultural tradition but racial trauma CYF News | April 2017 By Stacey Patton, PhD

Understanding black America and the spanking debate 09/21/2014

That Mean Old Yesterday: An Abused Girl's Fight for Survival By Stacey Patton 2012

Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won't Save Black America By Stacey Patton 2017

Spanking Is Part of Black Culture 08/14/2011 by LaShaun Williams

Blacks Don’t Have a Corporal Punishment Problem 09/19/2014 Americans do. But when blacks exhibit the same behaviors as others, it becomes part of a greater black pathology.

All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence By Fox Butterfield 2008

2016 United States elections

Why does Joe Biden keep losing his cool with voters? 01/29/2020

Says Joe Biden “attacked voters this primary,” saying “damn liar,” “full of s---” and “dog-faced pony soldier.” 03/12/2020

‘Biden Is Gonna Kick Ass Here Because This Is a Normal Place’ 02/28/2020 He laughed. “By the way, I wonder what the incest rate is in Iowa. I bet it’s high! Really high. Like any part of Appalachia where nobody can get in.”

Joe Biden Has Built a Career on Betraying Black Voters 03/05/2020

The following are a long list of articles about voter suppression or fraud; I'll be following this up with more in another Blog Post that will include any additional reports; but there's already enough to show it's an epidemic problem: