Michelle Bachmann was the first Republican candidate to sign a very special loyalty pledge to the Tea Party. As you can imagine, the pledge is loaded with bullets of the conservative agenda, the boilerplate message that is staunchly pro-marriage, anti-choice, anti-porn, and anti-gay--but here's a new twist--overtly racist. We know racism has incited some fearful Tea Partiers to fight against President Obama--their picket signs alone prove that--but this document makes it official. And downright creepy. Decipher this passage:
...sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.
In other words, slavery helped keep families TOGETHER. So much for "family values." Even if you're ignorant of history, even if you've never read a history book on the era (or watched the television mini-series,"Roots," for godsakes) you know that slavery ripped families apart regulalry and that rape by slavemasters was common. Not exactly the "good old days."
What is Bachmann saying by signing this pledge? I'm not sure, really, other than that "the dark races" are incapable of taking care of themselves, that too much freedom for these troublesome folk does them no good, and therefore that white American has nothing to be ashamed of for owning other human beings as property--just more revisionist conservative history making from the lunatic fringe. How it applies? If their lot in life is their own damn fault, then we should be less concerned about the poor, and that the system is fair and meritocratic after all and people get what they deserve, they rise to the station they have earned, and this view justifies all the pro-wealthy tax cuts and loyalty to the rich since the "good people" have naturally risen to the top (and are probably are favored by God, as well). Bachmann is one of these middle Americans who probably see black people (and other minorities, and liberals, and gays, and immigrants) as always bellyaching about the American Way of Life, so she is defending it (including slavery, apparently) against these not-real-Americans who want a piece of the pie they don't deserve.
That Bachmann is historically ignorant comes hardly as a surprise, but the fact that she eagerly supports this kind of myth in an official pledge shows how extreme and divisive she is--exactly what we don't need, here and now, when the country is more divided than ever. Don't be hoodwinked. Her deep-dish, all-American pie is made with horse apples.
Watch this video clip and you'll know more about slavery than Michele Bachmann.
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