Eventually, I will write the stories I had planned to write, but life has a funny way of preventing that.
Warning: This article will contain strong language. Sensitive subjects will be covered, viewer discretion is advised.
This weekend, a rally was held in Charlottesville, VA, originally to protest the removal of a monument to Robert E. Lee, the general in charge of the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
Was this rally attended by historians who objected to the statue’s removal under historical grounds? No.
Was this rally attended by the descendants of the statue sculptors? No.
Was the rally attended by the local chapter of the Robert E. Lee reenactment club? No.
Was it attended by neo-nazis, alt-right white supremacists, the white lives matter, all lives matter, and the KKK? Well, yes, actually it was.
A bunch of white racist assholes, bitching about how they’re being discriminated against, all the while chanting “blood and soil”, “White Power”, and a bunch of other disgusting crap that I refuse to type right now.
And they all voted Republican in the last election.
The Republican Party. The Party of Lincoln. The political party founded on the abolitionist principles of ending slavery, and fighting against racism, has officially become the Party of Trump and Racists.
How, for the love of fuck, did this happen? What does it mean that racism is acceptable in the White House today? And how do we fix this?
First, how did this happen? Back in the 1850’s, the Whig Party was falling apart. Out of its ashes, the anti-slavery wing of the Whig Party formed the Republican Party. They won the Presidency in 1860 when Lincoln defeated the current Vice President John C. Breckinridge and Stephen Douglas. South Carolina seceded shortly thereafter. The Civil War started.
The Republicans were the left wing party. They were the liberals and radicals. The Democrats were the conservative and reactionary party. The pro-slavery, pro-racism party.
Funny thing is, as times change, so do people and politics. Even the parties themselves undergo major changes. The largest change came in 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, signed the Civil Rights Act, which guaranteed equal treatment under the law for blacks. This pissed off the south, who had long fought against treating blacks like, well, people. Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, these were all “traditions” deeply held by the descendants of Dixie.
How did the South respond to a Democratic president signing a law that treated black people like equals? They left the Democratic Party for the Republicans. Classic “Blue Dog” Democrats like Strom Thurmond left for the Republican Party in retaliation to such an egregious political move like giving black children the same access to a quality education as their white counterparts had.
But, didn’t LBJ win reelection in 1964? Yes, he did. He was wildly popular at this time, having served as VP to John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. But, by 1968, thing got weird. George Wallace ran on a pro-segregation policy, and managed to carry 5 states and 46 electoral college votes, all in the Deep South. Following that, the only times any of the Deep South states voted for a Democrat in a presidential election was either for Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter, both Southerners themselves.
Over the next couple generations, the party identities changed. The Democrats quickly became the party of the minorities, while the Republicans would become, ever increasingly, the party for disenfranchised white people. Or, at least disenfranchised in their own minds. Evangelicals that would claim Christian Persecution because it became socially acceptable to acknowledge that other religions exist, and white racists would claim that because minorities were getting rights, they were losing theirs.
The GOP’s embrace of racial hate accelerated in 2016, with Donald Trump becoming the nominee, and later President. He didn’t just implicitly accept the support of white supremacists, he explicitly embraced it.
I mentioned in 2016 GOP Primary on how Trump won the primary election partly on his adoption of the Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi/KKK/White Supremacists. I didn’t mention how Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General, reached notoriety in Alabama by pursuing “voter fraud” cases against black people in his home state, going out of his way to disenfranchise thousands of voters and wants to extend mandatory sentencing for drug crimes in African-American communities. I didn’t mention Steven Miller or Seb Gorka, members of Trump’s White House, who both have extensive ties to the White Supremacist community. Or Steve Bannon, Trump’s Chief Strategist, former CEO of Breitbart who basically wrote the Muslim Travel Ban that Trump signed as an Executive Order a week into his presidency.
So now, we’re in a fucked up situation. The President of the United States is either a sniveling coward who’s afraid of upsetting his political base of racists and crazies and refuses to do something useful for this country, or he’s a racist who enjoys seeing blacks, Muslims, Mexicans, and any other non-white people suffer. Or both.
Trump is a racist who employs racists. His history of racism goes back a long way. This article from the NYT goes into great detail about his past, when him and his father would actively turn away black people from renting apartments from them. Later, he was sued by the Federal Government TWICE for violating racial discrimination laws in housing. He would order black employees off the casino floors when him, his wife, or a “whale” would visit. He maintained a campaign against the Central Park 5 for almost 30 years, said a judge couldn’t rule fairly against him because the judge was of Mexican descent, attacked Barack Obama with the Birtherism craziness for over 5 years, and attacked a pair of Muslim Gold Star parents. HuffPo has a better list here. And this Mother Fucker is President.
Anyone who thinks that this racist prick is becoming less of a racist hasn’t paid attention. There have been about a couple dozen incidents of terrorism around the world since he became President. A handful of them were perpetrated by Muslims, or other minorities. Most of them were carried out by white people, specifically targeting other races. How many did Trump speak about, or acknowledge?
None of them. No message of condoning the violence, or how we need to reach out to each other. On most of them, radio silence.
With the Minnesota Mosque Bombing last week, the White House did the unthinkable. And that’s by 2017 standards. Seb Gorka, Trump’s Deputy Assistant, claimed that the attack may be a fake attack staged by Liberals. I shit you not. This is coming from the White House as an official stance.
Then, a couple days later, Charlottesville. A rally on Friday night with a bunch of racist white assholes carrying Tiki Torches chanting about “blood and soil”, that turned a little violent. Then, the shit hit the fan on Saturday when the Racist Rally was met by counter protestors. That got very violent, very quick. Several people were injured, and as of this writing, one person died when a racist from Ohio, James Field, drove his Dodge faux muscle car into a crowd of protestors. He killed Heather Heyer, a 32 year old woman, simply there to speak out against hate.
Does the President condemn the racists for their actions? Does he call it what it is, an act of terrorism? Does he call the grieving parents to offer his condolences?
Fuck no.
Donald Trump comes up with one of the most cowardly responses ever, and dog-whistles against violence “on all sides.” What a crock of shit.
Sorry, I’m starting to get a little upset. More so than I usually do. I hate racism, and the people who knowingly and willingly practice it. I’m glad I moved out of Pennsyltucky, so I don’t have to deal with that shit as much. I still hear the occasional relative drop the n-word now and then, but for the most part, I chalk it up to them being old, and they’ll die soon.
Now, where do we go from here? How do we combat the racism in our politics and our culture? Where do we go, what do we do, with a racist as President?
First, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. Racism does exist, and most people have some level of prejudice based off of how someone looks and what culture they grew up in. Let’s recognize that Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist. It’s what we do with it that matters.
Second, realize that there’s a difference in levels of racism, and the self-appointed racism police needs to recognize this. There is a world of difference between blowing up a church frequented by blacks or Muslims, and not having a black actor nominated for an Oscar. The hypersensitivity of racism pushed a lot of otherwise non-racists, or low-level racists, into the waiting arms of the white supremacist movement.
Hate speech is protected speech, but there are limits. Speech used to incite a riot or violence is not protected.
Next, name and shame. I support doxxing the fuckers at that rally. Each and every one of them gathered, in public, in full view of their neighbors, their family, and the Internet. Find them and expose them. Bigotry dies in daylight, and making these people accountable for their actions is the first step to ending it.
Finally, it’s time to take down the monuments, the statues, and the symbols these people rally around. The monuments to soldiers who led an insurrection against their country. The statues of the generals fighting for “states rights” to own people and treat them as glorified farm equipment and cattle, and the symbols of defeated armies. Don’t be quiet anymore. Let the person waving the “Stars and Bars” know that sure, they can cry about General Lee all they want, but you’ll assume that they’re a racist asshole who wants to fuck his own sister or cousin. Have a swastika tattoo? My guess is you did time in prison and were afraid of getting raped by a big black dick.
I’m ending this article on incest and big black dicks, cause,…. why the fuck not?