Jesse Helms is dead! Let's dance on his grave.

[BrainGlutton]

From “Jesse Helms Is Not Dead,” by Michael Lind:

Where Jesse Helms came from was the Third World, the American South between World War I and the civil rights revolution. In the generation before Helms was born the son of a police chief in 1921, the Southern oligarchy had been terrified by Populism. The greatest threat to the white elite was the revolt of white workers and farmers. To forestall that possibility, the Southern state governments, in the decade before World War I, used literacy tests, poll taxes and other measures to eliminate not only all blacks but half of the white Southern population from the electorate. In the election of 1936, voter turnout in Georgia was 16.1 percent, 13 percent in Mississippi, and only 10.7 percent in South Carolina. (It was higher, 42.7 percent, in Helms’ North Carolina, where populists had abolished the poll tax.)

Having crushed the Republican and Populist parties, the oligarchs imposed a one-party dictatorship on the region, with secret state surveillance units and occasional collaboration between the police and the Ku Klux Klan. In its economy, the South was a banana republic, a commodity-exporting resource colony in which a “comprador bourgeoisie” of local landowners and local businessmen collaborated with investors in New York and elsewhere in fleecing the region.

To serve their interests, the old latifundist families and corporate elites hired “Dixie demagogues,” who were to genuine populists like William Jennings Bryan what a Disney pirate is to a pirate. All of them were entertaining. Some began as entertainers, like musician-slash-flour miller W. Lee “Pass the Biscuits, Pappy” O’Daniel, who went from hosting the “Hillbilly Flour” radio show to the Texas governor’s mansion in 1939. The “Dixie demagogues” denounced various supposed enemies of the white tribe, but with two exceptions – Huey Long and George Wallace – they never threatened the rule of the country clubs and courthouse gangs. Jesse Helms was one of these theatrical quasi-populists, an uncomplicated establishment conservative who parlayed a liberal-baiting radio show into a political career. Like other faux-homespun Southern conservatives, he employed rhetorical populism against blacks, homosexuals, liberals, professors, modern artists and “common-ists” in the service of his business backers, most noticeably North Carolina’s tobacco industry.

<snip>

So here’s the real horror story. In every respect except white supremacy, contemporary America looks more and more like the South between the world wars that Jesse Helms wanted to preserve. We have growing inequality and concentration of wealth, and an elite economic strategy like that of the traditional South that focuses on importing cheap labor, outsourcing manufacturing and exporting commodities (we supply industrial Asia with timber and soybeans). Private-sector unions are all but dead, as in the South. The political parties, as organizations, are weak, as in the South. More and more elected officials are self-funded millionaires or billionaires. Contemporary American politics, like Southern politics past and present, pits elite business-class conservatives against feeble, housebroken elite progressives who are not real threats to entrenched privilege. When, inevitably, the occasional populist protest figure like Perot, Dobbs or Huckabee appears, the affluent progressives quickly close ranks with the corporate conservatives.

Jesse Helms is dead – but his sinister influence lives on. If you seek his monument, look around.

[Siam_Sam]

@FriarTed

Yep, so evil that Bono recruited him to help fight AIDS in Africa.

I just received my latest issue of Time magazine, and in Helms’ obituary, it says:

“Originally, [Helms] didn’t think there should should be a big government role in combating AIDS. So Bono, who is an advocate for the cause, asked to see him. Bono convinced him, and they worked together – eventually securing some $200 million to fight AIDS in Africa. In a message to the Helms family this week, Bono said that thanks to Jesse Helms’ efforts, 2 million lives were saved.”

Even though I generally think “sanctimonious prick” when I hear mention of Bono’s name, I think the above excerpt deserves a mention.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

Over here is coverage of the funeral. “Hundreds” attended. These included:

Dick Cheney Vice-President
Cindy McCain, Heiress, Wife of the presumptive GOP nominee
Chris Dodd Senator, Democrat, Conn
Joe Biden Delaware
**Elizabeth Dole ** Senator, Republican, North Carolina
Bob Dole Retired GOP Senator from Kansas
Mike Easley Democratic Governor of North Carolina

No word on network news crews or people lining up to pay their respects.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Senator Jesse Helms. At this time, let us remember a life dedicated to serving this nation.” --John McCain

The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights." --Jesse Helms

[Siam_Sam]

@Siam_Sam

No, really, Thompson did like to drink with him. Apparently, Buchanan enjoys a tipple himself.

Just a small update on that Thompson/Buchanan thing. Tonight I watched the recent documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Sure enough, there was Pat Buchanan reminiscing fondly about Thompson in a couple of segments.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@BrainGlutton

No, no, he’s not a corporatist, he’s a populist. He hates Wall Street almost as much as he hates Mexicans. That’s why he ain’t welcome in the Republican Party no more…

The fact that he ran against and perhaps fatally wounded an incumbent Republican president in 1992, making way for the ::shudder:: Clintons, might have something to do with it, too.

[jayjay]

@Elendil_s_Heir

The fact that he ran against and perhaps fatally wounded an incumbent Republican president in 1992, making way for the ::shudder:: Clintons, might have something to do with it, too.

I’m not so sure about that. Buchanan was a symptom, not a cause…he represented the fiscal conservatives who felt betrayed by Bush I’s backpedal on the “no new taxes” promise. The Republican party, in general, didn’t trust Bush I any farther than they could throw him. The only thing that got him the nomination in the first place was that he was “next in line” as Reagan’s VP. The fiscal conservatives didn’t trust his feigned adherence to supply-side and the moral conservatives didn’t trust his adherence to an anti-abortion philosophy. He was a compromise candidate who would never have been put out there if St. Ronnie hadn’t hand-picked him as his veep. If he’d been up against a real opponent in 1988 he’d never have gotten in. By 1992, with his tax promise in smithereens behind him, it would have been tough even without Buchanan.

Bush was hurt more by his own policies and actions, and by Ross Perot’s candidacy, than he was by Buchanan. And Buchanan was back in the tent by the time the convention rolled around, anyway…remember his culture war speech (better, as per Molly Ivins, in the original German)?