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LUDIC LOG

Friday the thirteenth! And so close to Christmas, too. What topic can I possibly write about grim enough to suit the occassion? Oh, I know. How about Trent Lott and the niggers?

As anyone who knows that politics the the art not of getting power but of keeping it could have anticipated that the Senate Majority Leader would not step down. And, in keeping with what we expect from public figures who let the mask drop these days, he's had the good grace to mouth a few platitudes about race and opportunity. Soon enough, all will be forgiven. But it won't be forgotten. Why?

Because Trent Lott (R/Miss.) is a racist. And I don't mean this in the way that I'm a racist, in the "we're all racist" sense. I don't mean in the way that every white American is a racist. I mean in it in the old way, the hateful way. The way that strung a thousand darkies from a tree and laughed. In the mean, Southern way that's bred into the bone. And we've come so far, so far: It's not like it was in 1948, the year that Trent Lott wishes a racist more naked than himself had won the presidency. It's not even like it was in 1980, the first time Trent Lott publicly dreamed of a world without integration. But it's apparently still not a world in which a transparently racist politician is forced by his peers to vacate his authority; not as long as he goes on television and pretends not to be a racist for 15 minutes.

How can I be so cocksure? How can I know a man's secret soul? By what magic do I look into such a guarded heart and mind and declare without hesistation that there is malignant racialism there? Simple mathematics. For example, 3-1=2. Three times (that we know of) has Trent Lott publicly stated that the nation would be better off if the Dixiecrat Party had ascended to power fifty-four years ago; only once has it caused enough scandal that it was deemed necessary that he feign contrition. Or, 100-11=89. An AP article this morning, attempting the ludicrous trick of lending credence to the claims of his colleagues that he really and truly cares about blacks, noted (just as if it were meaningful) the fact that in the last election, Lott won 11% of the black vote. Apparently trusting in the mathematical incompetence of the reading public, this was framed in a complimentary fashion, as if it were not simply a more elegant way of saying that nine out of every ten black voters cast their ballots against him. It's stupefying that the media is still accused of being liberal, when an fact like this is tossed out without the collary that if a candidate were to lose 89% of the white vote, it would be a legendarily grotesque thrashing that would make Mondale in '84 look like Gore in 2000.

Numbers don't lie; but people do. Trent Lott, for example, lies about his knowledge of the true nature of the Council of Conservative Citizens. This organization, which (far more recently than Strom Thurmond's run for the White House) was once known as the White Citizens' Council, is as blatantly racist as any you care to name; it is ideologically allied with the British and French National Front parties, it flagrantly trumpets white pride while disingenuously claiming that this isn't part and parcel of black hate, and even the FAQ section of its website questions if there even is such a thing as racism. It's also an organization that Trent Lott has been affiliated with for many years; he's been on their board, he's courted their votes, he's had their directors as his political advisors, and he has written any number of articles for their newsletter.

Of course, he now claims that he doesn't know anything about their darker motives and that if he had, he never would have affiliated himself with them. This is absurd, of course. I'm never going to be scandalized by publications I've written for, because, simply, I do not, have not, and will not write for a publication that openly endorses segregation, prints hostile racist material and flies the flag of white pride. The notion that Lott could have written for the magazine, known its publishers and editors, and courted its readership for years and not known anything about the obvious racialist slant of the publication is an insult to credulity. So why does he even bother to say it?

Because times have changed. Trent Lott, as a politician, was mentored by a segregationist. His earliest political allies were former segregationists. He has won election in the most segregationist state in America -- a state that, during the civil rights era, was the shame of the nation -- many times on a platform of white fear and alarmism. He owes his political career to racist whites who fear their state's sizable black population will someday realize its power. He's a Republican who rose to greatness in a predominantly Democratic state by playing on the paranoia, hostility and dormant racism of white voters. But that's not okay anymore. Trent Lott now has to pretend that he loves blacks, or at least doesn't hate them. Trent Lott has to stand before the camera eye and weep real tears, while inside him spits and tears a beast that wants the nigger out.

It's a testament to how far we've come as a nation that a man as racist as Trent Lott must now pretend he is something other than what he is. It's a testament to how far we have still to go that he's allowed to stay where he is.