The Politically Correct Senate Minority Leader

Pam's House Blend has has the video of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) on GOP TV criticizing the economic stimulus bill by alleging:

- "We will have made a dramatic move in the direction of indeed turning America into western Europe";

-"This paints a picture of the Europeanization of America"; and

-"We continue (i.e., at present) to have a vibrant private sector" (things must be pretty good in Kentucky!)

Now, you might not want to belittle a major region of the world which has a greater reverence than does the U.S.A. for the past (including for people) and neglects to show the partiality of conservative Republicans for growing income inequality accompanied by a declining middle class. Or, you might have noticed numerous nations in western Europe and a diversity greater than, say, Kentucky. But I thought immediately of something less significant and more ironic. From the website experiencefestival.com:

Dead white men or DWEM (an acronym standing for "Dead White European Male"), is a pejorative term used most commonly to refer to a tradition of thought and pedagogy which stresses the importance of individual European males from the past, at the expense of other forces (economic or social, for example) or groups of people (for example, non-Europeans and women)....

DWEM is a rhetorical device used to deride the emphasis on Western civilization in schools (especially those in the United States), as the majority of figures considered "significant" in Western civilization are white males who are usually dead. The term was used pejoratively in the early 1990s by those advocating multicultural studies. The term finds widespread usage among members of the educational establishment who see students as agents of social change.

Mitch McConnell, if he is aware of it, apparently would be loathe to acknowledge that the attack on "dead white european males" in the university was the genesis of the "politically correct" movement which conservatives smugly delight in ridiculing. And note that the proudly conservative McConnell, like other right-wing Repubs, never derides Asia, Latin America, Africa, or anywhere nearly as much as western Europe, northern Europe, or just plain "Europe." It is difficult, apparently, for a party and an ideology sensitive to the charges of racism, or at least insensitivity to minorities, to criticize any region from which many recently naturalized Americans (AKA voters) hail. Far easier to criticize Europe or, in this case, western Europe, whose inhabitants long ago came to the U.S.A. and whose identity as Europeans generally has long ago been overtaken by their identity as Americans (or as Lutherans, Roman Catholics, men, women, whites, or whatever).

Get a backbone, Mitch. Or some perspective. Or just old common sense. Anything.