• Bye@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That’s not what they mean when they say states rights, everybody who can breathe knows it, and it’s frustrating watching journos and commenters say “oh look they should be happy they are getting states rights, haha, take that you hypocrite”.

    Yes they are hypocritical, but it doesn’t matter, it’s intentional, practiced, premeditated, and widely understood as “good” by their voters.

    You may as well cut through the meta-narrative and call them out on the racism, sexism, and general hate that they really mean by “states rights”. After all, they started saying that when the federal government forcefully desegregated schools, and they started talking about states rights as some dog-whistle post-hoc justification for the civil war (states rights to literally have slaves!)

    • Hegar@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      “You start out in 1954 by saying, “N-, n-, n-.” By 1968 you can’t say “n-”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff…”

      • Lee Atwater, 1981.

      It’s been over 40 years since Republicans publicly admitted that “states’ rights” just means ‘we hate black people too’ and reporters still feel they have to pretend this is a legitimate position 🙄