Monthly Archives: October 2024

Will Racism Get Trump Elected?

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Just what is the GOP going to do about Mark Robinson?  The North Carolina Republican candidate for governor has given the party the political equivalent of an atomic wedgie.  Recent revelations about inflammatory comments he made on a pornographic website  a decade  past have understandably left party leaders flumoxed.  A few of them appear to have some reservations about Robinson’s character, but  they are sticking with him.  After all, Robinson already  had a known history of racist and mysogynistic remarks and this is one of Trump’s hand picked characters.  Martin Luther King on steroids, as Trump believes.  It isn’t a logical leap to  conclude Trump sees something of himself in Robinson.  Everything except skin color of course.  Interesting fact.  Robinson once called Martin Luther King “Martin Lucifer Koon” and on this porn site messaging board described himself as a black Nazi and said he condones slavery.

I can’t get my head around that last thing- a black man condoning slavery.  In fact Robinson said if that was the case he would go buy a couple.  So I don’t get it, but what it does for me is put a fine point on America’s continued burden- racism.

I have  never been an intransigent racist, but there was a time when I was ignorantly bigoted.  I grew up in Sheridan Wyoming, at the time a city with few Hispanics.  Though I never saw him, it was pointed out to me  there was a Black man who lived in town, and worked as a food server at the local Elks Club. The first Black person I actually saw was the conductor on a passenger train I took in high school. When I attended college at Creighton University’s School of Pharmacy in Omaha Nebraska  in the mid 1960’s, there were only a few Blacks on campus.  My friends were all white and about as racially naive as I was. Racial slurring and joking was something I am embarrased to say were things I participated in.

My perspective of race started to morph in 1969.  The summmer of that year a Black teenage girl, Vivian Strong, was carelessly  shot in the head by a cop, and within hours the local Black community went up in flames.  I lived with four classmates a couple of miles away, and as the evening turned dark we noticed that the horizon was lit up in bright amber.  My friends and I reached a consensus that that was something we should definitely investigate.  We drove to the perimiter  of the destruction where a group of agitated Black men alerted us to our folly from which our quick thinking driver deftly managed to extricate us from.  That episode has been an enduring memory.  I figured then maybe there was something to all the racial unrest I had been hearing about.

There were lingering prejudices.  In the 1980’s I was a Reagan Republican. As an employed pharmacist I felt I was a direct witness to a few of Reagan’s “welfare queens.”  But for me that was an economic issue more than race.  At that time I resented the entire welfare system.  Most of my friends felt the same way.  Over time, I became more open minded.  A lot of it had to do with pharmacy, the price of medication in particular.  Drug prices started accelerating in the mid 1990’s and I delt with a lot of people without insurance who really struggled to pay for their prescriptions.  The cost of insulin unrelentingly increased every  4 months or so for no apparent reason except greed.  I can’t say I became a bleeding heart liberal, but by the time Bernie Sanders  started pounding away with his criticism of the 1 percenters, I found myself agreeing with him.   And by then I had a very close Black friend who occasionally reminded me of my white privelge with his stories of unprevoked traffic stops by law enforcement.

Ever since the civil rights legislation in the 1960’s I always felt this country was making racial progress, that for every step backward, we made a couple steps forward.  I was confident my own experience  was verification.  And then along  came Trump.  The Republican candidate for president stepped off his golden escaltor and delivered an insultingly racial  speach that horrified the plurality of people who heard it, but triggered  an awakening of prejudicial animosity in many others.

it’s no secret I do not hold Trump in high esteem.  He is  a convicted sex offender , convict, racist, and all around shallow human being.  One thing you have to appreciate though is his cunning ability to recognize vulnerability.  He saw someting in the Republican party that he could take advantage of.  Starting with Black civil rights, party elites started taking positions that would ultimately attract a different party base than the one previous  Next it was opposition to the Equal Rights Ammendment, abortion rights then LGBTQ rights.  Trump realized the real glue that would hold  MAGA together is racial animus and resentment towards minorities.  Read Activating Animus

It is difficult to deny that Trump has moved Republican politics toward the hard edge “us vs them” view that dominates the GOP base.  Still, it’s a sensitive issue with Republicans.  Accuse one  of being racist you will no doubt provoke a hostile denial,  Of course not all Republicans are racist, but there are many who are not afraid and even proud to project it.   Simple observation of Trump’s hard core MAGA crowd at one of his rallies you will get the feeling you were time-shifted back to the Berlin Sportpalast in 1932.  THIS is racism.  American Reich

Why do we have to get ’em the hell out?  Because they are Black!  Straining services and driving up housing costs is MAGA bullshit.  Those things are happening as they naturally would anywhere there is a sudden inlux of residents  But that’s not the claim made by Trump and Vance as they hyped this crap.  It has everything to do with ‘demonizing and other-izing people who have already suffered enough that they chose to leave the nation of their birth. They did so exactly the way the MAGA people who claim to have “no problem with legal immigration” said they should. They went through the system. They got their paperwork. And their reward is bomb threats. Because, I’ll say it again, they’re Black’ ( Michael Ian Black- The Daily Beast)

What Trump failed to mention during his eviction notice speach is the chaos in Springfiled is of his and Vance’s own making.  They found this ficticious, outlandish conspiratorial story about Haitians eating pets on social media and continue to promulgated it even after it has been disproven and denounced by anyone even remotely involved, as well as every state and city official.  It is an inconceivably cruel stunt to perpetrate, nevermind these two are positioning themsleves to run the country.  Trump is definately a racist. He will absurdly try to deny that charge, but here is his racist history if you care to read it. Yes It’s as Bad as You’ve Heard

Trump is counting on like minded people to propell him to the presidency.  Racism really is the glue that cements his base together and solidly with him.  How many citizens are truly that bigoted?  It’s a substantial number if you believe the polls.  All those rally attendees are certainly in his corner.  They can’t get enough of all the hootin’ and hollerin’ that goes on at one of those things. However, just maybe some of those people  go to his perfomances only for that- the entertainment.  It indeed is a show.  Trump as the entertainer is the real motivator of  the MAGA movement.  It did not take him long to realise what worked best as  performance  schtick  was fear, hate and racism.  It is how he once got elected, how he maintains his base, and anything uttered that is appaling is sane-washed as being just part of the entertainment.   Just Trump being Trump.

Maga world loves a show, and boy they really got one the last week end  of October at Madison Square Garden.  This was racist ecstasy for the Maga crowd.  The MAGA Reality Show  A regular smorgasbord of crass racism and mysoginistic crudeness, interspaced with nazi innuendo, like Representative Byron Donalds walking onto the stage to the tune of “Dixie.”

Of course Trump isn’t going to disavow this stuff.  He lives for the adulation of the crowd, and he is well aware  nothing juces his crowds more than racist slurs and minority denigration.  What the Trump campaign offered in the way of  abjuration for the offensive remarks at the Garden was what you would expect.  It was delivered by JD Vance and basically it was reiteration of how the country in general has come to accept  Trump repugnancy- no big deal, it’s just the way of Trump and we should be used to it.

According to Vance, the rally was a fun fest that we shouldn’t take seriously and people should quit being so sensitive.  The Comedy Roast that Never Ends    Vance says he is “over it.”  Really? Does that mean he and Trump will quit featuring  blatant racial denigration as their main driver in this election?  Of course not.  Every rally, every speach Trump delivers is a plunge into a national dystopia and it is always  immigrants and minorities who are responsible for it.

Is Trump a racist?  It’s pretty difficult from all we see from him to conclude he is not.  Is everyone who supports Trump a racist?  Of couse not.  But if you are not offended by at least the volume of racist remarks Trump makes, you likley are a racist.  Even if you can claim to just be numb to all the degrading remarks, it’s hard to believe that fawning over his every word wouldn’t trigger inherent prejudice.

For sure many  of the people attending a Trump rally are racists. Those people see nothing wrong with the constant vilification of minorities.  But in rebuttle to Vance’s comment that the Garden rally was all in good fun, I would point out that you make racism your perpetual theme, it is not funny at all.  It is not funny when an entire community is terrorized by lies you spred about  Haitians eating pets in Springfield.  It’s not funny when a Latino gas station attendant in Florida gets punched in the head by a white man who gets caught on a survailence camera uttering “this is for Trump.”   It’s not funny when a man explains to police the reason why he threatened to kill a Syrian born man was because he wanted him to “get out of my country” and “That’s why I like Trump.”  Haters Gotta Hate

It is that resurrection of our prejudices that is so alarming.  Overcoming flat out racism is a monumental challenge. As a country we have been working on irradicating it for over 240 years.  That is why, or at least one of the main reasons why, Trump is so dangerous.  He incites people to do their worst.  Trump is especially proficient at doing so at  his rallies.  If your underlying bias and prejudice is buried under years of racial progress and you attend a Trump rally, it’s not difficult to imagine how  those atitudes could resurface and progress to something  vehemently racial.  It’s the tactic of a fascist tyrant.

I do believe Trump is a racist, and that is something completely antithetical to what America is.  We do have an immigration problem.  It has been ignored for decades.  Ironically, Trump, in his first year in office, had a very good chance of doing something about it.  He seemed sincerely adamant about initiating immigration legislation, including funding for a border wall, but he caved when  the ultra conservative wing of his party refused to make any consensions concerning DACA recipients.  More disgracefully, when he was not in office but still leveraging his MAGA clout, he torpedoed a bill written and backed by very conservative legistators only because he wanted to keep the immigration discord alive so he could use it as a political, election tool.  The man thinks only about himself.

Another Trump administration would be enormously threatening in multiple ways.  He is a careless, vindictive man bent on alloting his  time in governance settling perceived grievances rather than managing the affairs of the county and improving the lives of American citizens.  His plan for our democracy is to disable it to his advantage and profit.  Sadly the damage he has inflicted socially since his political presence is insidiously apparent.  By stoking hatred and fear of “the other” he has exposed and elevated the divisive embarrasment of racism in this country to post reconstruction levels.  So far backward has Trump taken us it will take years before racial resentment is abated.   The beginning of the repair starts by making sure he does not get elected again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump- The Musical

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I keep seeing articles asserting that Donald Trump is sort of like, loosing his mind. At first, say a month ago, I thought all that reporting was political bias.  I thought it was over reaction, and honestly felt this is all just Trump being Trump.  That’s how it’s always been.  Fox News would sane-wash his latest gaff, and people would eventually forget about whatever it was and prepare for the next crazy thing he would say.  But over the past two or three weeks I have to say I beleive I am seeing a different Trump.

The change in a way is subtle.  His racism for one thing is something he has always leaned into.  In fact, that and tarrifs are about all he’s been offering in the way of his futuristic vision of the country.  But lately his description of the nation’s present and future has become increasingly dark.  If it’s an interview or a rally, he spends the majority of his time denigrating minorities and migrants with xenophobic and racist remarks.  They are all pretty much “animals” and “stone cold killers” and “the worst people”.   No more “assuming some are good people” I guess.  And he has recently punched up the entertainment value of his speach with graphic verbal descriptions, insisting for instance that migrants will “cut your throat,” or spending what seems to me to be an inordinate amount of time explaining to a crowd how he visualizes a “vicious migrant” dragging a woman off into the woods and raping her.  Kind of creepy for a convicted sex ofender.

Very recently Trump started championing the belief that migrants and minorities are genetically disposed to commit crimes.  New Twist to the Theories of Gregor Mandel

By now most of the country is aware of the “Haitians eating pets” conspiracy promoted by Trump- one of his many lies that resulted in terroristic threats and worse  against his fellow citizens. But recently he has widened his horizons concerning ethnicities of people he has in his deportation cross-hairs.  Immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia were “destroying the fabric of life in our country,” he said during a recent rally in New York. “We are not going to take it any longer and you’ve got to get rid of these people.”

Whoops.  Turns out there are some white people he might want to dispose of also. He suggested ‘Using the military to go after “the enemy from within” in an interview with Fox News that aired this past Sunday, pointing to those  who oppose or have investigated him.’  CBS News

Kind of  disturbing to say the least.  What is getting more and more alarming is the incoherent gibberish.  If he’s not slandering an entire culture it’s because a unique subliminal switch in his brain somehow sidetracks his thought process into a pathway  that causes  him to utter an incomprehensible, twisted Gordian knot of words.  Now just maybe Trump himself is starting to understand there are limits to what the public will put up with regading the mental decline of a potential leader of the country.  Ask Joe Biden.  Case in point, this Monday he stunned the attendees of his town hall by abrupty insisting on an end to the Q and A session.  He told the crowd he was certain they were tired of all the talk and knew in their hearts they would much rather watch him listen to 40 minutes of music. Music Man

Was Trump all tuckered out, his brain too taxed to carry on answering  questions from at least a few inquisitive members of his audience?  Trump  undoubtedly feels more comfortable being the entertainer.  If that was a typical MAGA rally throng,  watching Trump gently sway and conduct an imaginary orchestra for 40 minutes to the tune of Ave Maria,  most would feel swindled out of 40 minutes of searing racial slurring and apocalyptic innuendo.  In no way was this normal, even, and especially, for Trump.

What hapened the very next day is even more baffling, and offers an explanation of why things went sideways the day before at the music festival.   Trump was subjected to a very contentious  interview by Bloomberg’s Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait and it quickly became  apparent how uncomfortable the former president is in a Q and A format, at least one conducted by a professional interviewer with no connection to Fox News.  Entangled in the “Weave”

The artful dodger deployed his infamous “weave,” but it’s always a big tip off that he senses it’s not working when he resorts to attacking the interviewer.  Maybe the lesson Trump learned from these two events was instead of putting himself through all the excruciating contortions of his “weave,” a more straightforward and effective method of covering up  incompentence or disguising mental decline is to simply instruct the stage crew to fire up a rousing rendition of Ave Maria.

 

 

 

Will the Real “Threat to Democracy” Candidate Please Rise!

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Lately a number of Republican spokesmen have their knickers in a knot over Democrtats labeling  Donald Trump as a” threat to democracy”.  MAGA enthusiasts consider the phrase so incindeary, they have convinced themselves that Democrats are using it to foment assasination attemps.  Trump’s personal response is to say Kamala Harris is the real threat to democracy.  So apparently if Republicans use the phrase it’s perfectly fine.  It’s only inappropriate if Democrats use it.  Sort of like the GOP position concerning elections.  They’re legit as long as they win.  I can’t help but think this is related to the Republican aversion to the truth.  The fact is, Trump has a history of generating indisputable anti-democratic statements and actions. And not just a few.  There are so many I can see why Republicans, those that actually still maintain at least some slim grip on reality anyway, would realize the less people are reminded about any of them the better.

What follows is a list of egregiously undemocratic things Trump has done while he was president and in his post presidency.  It is a partial list, encompassing those I can recollect and have been able to research in a couple of hours- the amount of time I set as a goal for wasting  on this project.  As usual, this is a personal exercise.  I needed to compile the list for posterity.  However, for anyone who actually thinks there is anything even remotley comparable in the way of undemocratic activity between the presidential candidates of the two major political parties, this list is for you too. Spoiler alert.  I could not find anything Kamala Harris has done that would be comparable.  And I would be surpised if you could unearth anything that any past president, Republican or Democrat, has said or done that is comparable to the volume of despotic behavior on this  list.

TRUMP’S ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY

1 Instigated an insurrection
2 Asked VP to overturn election by rejecting votes
3 Tried to strip civil service protection from thousands of federal employees so they can be replaced by political employees (Trump’s schedule F)
4 Refused to commit to peaceful transfer of presidential power
5 Claimed mail in ballots “rig” an election
6 Fawningly praised authoritarian leaders of adversarial nations
7 Claimed elections might be fraudulent after, but just as consequential, months BEFORE
election
8 Suggested voters vote twice
9 Failed to disavow white supremacists  and had lunch with white supremacists
10 Attacked his own citizens (eg: Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman)
11 Suggested political opponents be imprisoned
12 Suggested critics should be executed (Mark Milley)
13 Pressured the NOAA
14 Altered a hurricaine projection
15 Praised the assault on a reporter
16 Continuously called press the enemy of the people
17 Suggested on multiple occasions people of different races “go back where they came from”
18 Retweeted a “white power” video
19 Threatened to withhold funds for mail ballots
20 Threatened to withhold federal aid to combat wildfires happening in states with governors of  opposing political party
21 Engaged in rank hotel profiteering, likely involving violations of the Emoluments Clause
22 Claimed a president has unrestricted power to do anything, including pardoning himself
23 Objected to make tax returns public
24 Joked about an attempted murder of a political opponent’s husband
25 Called protestors adversaries
26 Shut down the goverment for over a month when congress failed to aprove funding for a pet project (border wall)
27 Insisted party leaders block legislation for his own political gain (Immigration bill)
28 Was impeached twice
29 Is a conviced felon
30 Is a convicted sex offender
31 Asked foreign government to investigate the family of a political opponent
32 Fabricated stories and generated conspiracy theories denigrating minorities for political gain
33 Canceled network TV interview after he learned there would be fact checking
34 Lied over 30,000 times while in office
35 Complicated state hurricane disaster relief efforts by telling bold faced lies about FEMA funding and response.
36 Shifted FEMA funds to ICE for immigrant transportation to hearing locations for asylum seekers

Republican complaints about labeling Trump as a threat to democracy are ludicrous. Linking the charge to any assasination attempt is absurd. Stating actual fact is hardly as provocative as all the lies, insults, and hateful rhetoric we hear from Trump on a daily basis.  He has done these things and Democrats have an obligation to remind the public of his excrable behavior.  So many people are locked into their own information silos, or are politically disinterested, it is important to point out Trump’s threats to the republic at every opportunity  in order to inform as many people as possible.

Below is an excerpt from the November issue of the Atlantic Magazine.  In it is a quote from  John Kelly, the retired Marine Corp general who served as Donald Trump’s second cheif of staff.  He spoke about George Washington’s accomplishments and what his vision of an American  president should be. The conversation took place at Mt. Vernon during a symposium about democracy.

From the article: Trump: Washington’s Nightmare

And then Kelly offered a  simple three word summary of Washington’s most important contribution to the nation he liberated. “He went home,” Kelly said.  The message was unambiguous.  After leaving the White House, Kelly had described Trump as  a “person who has no idea what America stands for and what America is all about.”   At Mount  Vernon he was making a clear point: People who are mad for power are a moral threat to democracy.  They may hold different titles- even President- but at heart they are tyrants, and all tyrants share the same trait: they never voluntarily cede power.