When the dog whistle gets dropped

Leaked tapes of Republicans behind closed doors tell us the real story

For years the Republicans have become masters at using dog whistles to carefully say things that say one thing but mean another. They are truly masters at the word play. Just look at the political landscape across the nation as they pass laws allowing more ‘freedom’ for parents that ban books they don’t like. Bills that ‘protect’ girls by attacking transgender kids, their families, and healthcare providers. And, of course, the cleverest, passing ‘Constitutional carry’ laws allowing for the flooding of unregistered guns that are slaughtering kids. The dogs hear the call even as Republicans deny they even own the whistles.

Thanks to a couple of leaked tapes, and a new generation of Republicans who didn’t get the memo on how to hide their true meanings, we’re getting to hear and see exactly what they mean. We’re hearing what the truth is with the modern GOP and their extremists thanks to local journalists doing their jobs to hold them accountable. What we’re hearing is racist, violent, and horrifying. They are telling us exactly who they are when they drop the dog whistles.

Oklahoma Republicans take off their hoods

Thanks to a print only newspaper in McCurtain County, Oklahoma we got to have a seat in the back of the room as local elected Republicans let their hoods down and stopped pretending. The leak of a tape from after the March 6^th county commission meeting caught the Republican elected officials, including the sheriff, a commissioner, investigator, and the jail administrator, having what they thought was a private conversation that will make your hair stand on end.

A reporter at the McCurtain Gazette-News got the recording, in which the group could be heard kicking around ideas on how to murder two Gazette reporters. Sheriff Clardy, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings, Investigator Alicia Manning, and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix also could be heard joking about a woman who died in a fire like she was barbecue; lamenting how you can’t lynch black people anymore; and hiring hitmen from Louisiana to take care of the journalists with one member repeatedly mentioning he has two pre-dug holes if they need them.

You have to listen to the thing to believe it. The seething hatred rolls of their tongues with ease as they sadly talk about how you can’t just arrest a black person, beat them up, and toss them in a jail cell anymore. “I know. Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got.”

I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a more twisted logic in my life. Since you can’t just murder someone because of their color it means they have more rights than you. That is the purest form of white supremacist language you can find.

Republican Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt is condemning the recording and there are reports that the FBI is investigating after protests were held in the small town on Monday. If past is prologue we shouldn’t hold our breaths for justice. At any minute we will get the apologists saying they were just joking, they aren’t racists, and it is all being taken out of context.

Tennessee Republican moral compasses

Of course, that tape wasn’t our first taste lately of what goes on behind closed Republican doors. Last week we got to listen in as Tennessee state legislators gathered after expelling two young black lawmakers over supposed breeches of decorum. Thanks to the hard work of the Tennessee Holler we were able to listen in as they discussed their next steps and turned on each other and perfectly defined their broken moral compasses for the world to understand.

In the caucus meeting they attacked the lone representative who split his vote and spared the one white member of the ‘Tennessee 3’ from expulsion because he felt she had not violated the rules as laid out in the resolution. They insisted that none of that mattered, and he should have ignored his moral qualms for “the good of the republic.” Rep. Scott Cepicky told him, “You gotta do what’s right even if you think it might be wrong.”

He continued, “If we don’t stick together, if you don’t believe we’re at war for our republic, with all love and respect to you, you need a different job. The left wants Tennessee so bad…This is not a neighborhood social gathering. We are fighting for the republic of our country right now.”

The “left” they are angry about? That was kids demanding action to stop the mass murder in their schools that they have endured for two decades.

Of course, according to the tape the Republican supermajority that ousted two duly elected members are the real victims in all of this. “I listened for the last three days to Democrats trash us as racist. I’ve never had anybody call me a racist. And for the last three days, all I’ve heard from them is how this is the most racist place—one of them even [said] white supremacist,” state Rep. Jason Zachary told his colleagues.

You know what you don’t hear on the audio? Anything at all about the slaughter of six children and school staff just miles away from where they met and was the reason there were protests at the Capitol at all. No, the real issue is them being called racists. They are using the language of war and putting down a revolution because their own constituents dared to question them.

Both tapes allow us to hear with their own words what so many of us have been saying for years. The Republican Party at every level has completely converted into a white nationalist authoritarian movement where maintaining, and growing, their power is the only thing that matters.

Their duty isn’t to the people they allegedly serve or adhering to their silly moral concerns. In this GOP, doing the ‘right’ thing is only about maintaining power be it kicking around the idea of killing reporters to shut them up or actually booting opponents out of the state legislature on made up charges.

You don’t have to believe me. Just listen to them as they tell you exactly what they are doing. Maybe we should stop pretending too?

Wanting to kill black people and expelling black men from the legislature is RACIST.

Working to silence the media is FASCIST.

Destroying the rights of transgender Americans is TRANSPHOBIC.

Stop letting them dictate the conversation with their lies. Just listen to them tell you for themselves.