We Will Soon Discover Exactly How Racist America Is

Photo Courtesy of Daily Beast

When the votes come pouring in on Tuesday evening many Americans will be awaiting breathlessly whether their candidate will win… Both sides see their candidate as the only possible avenue down which this nation can continue.

But there are bigger data dumps which can be mined from all this data.  Elections are our only method to determine how America thinks or feels every 4 years.  Polls can be skewed. But the election is real…

The Republican candidate has done a lot to strip down his candidacy to one of racism.  He has no economic plan. He has no insurance plan. He has no plan to fight Isis. He has no military strategy, he has nothing else to say, except to rail against others.. in fact all others who are not exactly like him.. be it gender, racial, or religious… If you are not like him, YOU are the problem… That is the classic definition of racism…

The one single argument of his entire campaign is…. we are going to get rid of “them” and you (through me) are going to be in charge… We have no idea what he will do when in charge. He could be Santa Clause. He could be Hitler. He could be Putin’s butt boy. We just do not know…

If you vote for Trump, you are racist…

(I’m voting for Trump and I ain’t no racist… Get out of my fuckin’ way you Muslim piece of shit… Speak English you motherfucker… No, I’m voting for Trump and I ain’t no racist  Trump’s a good man. Like Rick Jensen I’m voting my opinions, I ain’t votin’ no racist… Woo Hoot! You tell ’em Ted Nugent! You tell ’em.. Fuck those blacks. YEAH… Burn them on crosses. Nope, we definitely ain’t no racists. We used to watch Cosby back in the day. And Sanford and Son, we ain’t no racists.)

As I said.. the only reason anyone is voting for Trump is because they approve of his racism. They may be excited by his racism. They may love the idea of bashing peoples’ heads in with baseball bats, as long as they don’t look like them or Colin Bonini. or Charlie Copeland. or Ruth King Briggs.. (Still don’t know how La Mar Gunn gets around it.. but he wholeheartedly support a racist doctrine for some reason.  I guess it is the Stockholm Syndrome, there were also Jews who threw their lot with Hitler. (they all died).)

Anyways. Enough of convincing you this election is solely about Racism… You can either believe it or not.  But we are excited to finally be able, in a huge part thanks to Donald Trump, to clearly trace the amount of racism which has been present but hidden except for brief moment in our nations history.

For example… In 1968 there were 9.9 million racists who voted for George Wallace.  In 1948 there were 1.1 million who voted for Strom Thumond and the Dixiecrats. Donald Trump needs to compare himself to Barry Goldwater, who had 27 million votes for him mixed including all racists and those who would rather throw their lot to a racist,than vote for a Democrat.

We will know how many racists there are and where they all live after this election is over. We then have to decide how we want to deal with them… As a nation, we reabsorbed the Dixiecrats, we reabsorbed the Republicans, we reabsorbed the American party.  Embolden by the loose tongue of Donald Trump, we can flush them out into the open, then open our Remingtons up on them and bring them down like ducks around Bombay Hook.

ATTN: Bonini, Reigle, La Mar Gunn, Lawson, Pettyjohn, Hocker, Hudson, Smyk, Lopez, Miro, Ramone, Short, Grey, Dukes, and Collins! Your Candidate Is A Racist and So Is Your Party! You Still With Them? IF SO, Don’t Expect To Stay With Us, You Racist!!!!! Get The Hell Outta’ Here !!!

 

My original plan for this article was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.

This week I’d planned to propose new steps to cut red tape and taxes, and make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire.

Because I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it.

I’ll be talking a lot more about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead.

But today, I want to address something I hear from Americans all over our country.

Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.

It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States.

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.

He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.

His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

In just the past week, under the guise of “outreach” to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in insulting and ignorant terms:

“Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership.

Crime at levels nobody has seen… Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot.”

Those are his words.

Donald Trump misses so much.

He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field…

The vibrancy of black-owned businesses…Or the strength of the black church… He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive…And he certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color.

It takes a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” The answer is everything!

Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.

But what he’s doing here is more sinister.

Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.

It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be.

This is what I want to make clear today:

A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.

If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?

Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.

After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says.

But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.

Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him.

When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants.

Their applications would be marked with a “C” – “C” for “colored” – and then rejected.

Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed.

The pattern continued through the decades.

State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And let’s not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called “Birthers.”

He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn’t really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black President.

In 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for President with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.

And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.

Oh, and by the way, Mexico’s not paying for his wall either.

If it ever gets built, you can be sure that American taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

Since then, there’s been a steady stream of bigotry.

We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn’t be trusted to do his job because, quote, “He’s a Mexican.”

Think about that.

The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage.

Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

To this day, he’s never apologized to Judge Curiel.

But for Trump, that’s just par for the course.

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name “white-genocide-TM.” Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.

His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on a white supremacist website.

The Trump campaign also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. They only dropped him under pressure.

When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.

And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones.

Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.

He suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there’s absolutely no evidence of that.

Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over.

His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on.

This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel.

It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.

Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”

This man wants to be President of the United States.

I’ve stood by President Obama’s side as he made the toughest decisions a Commander-in-Chief ever has to make.

In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership… clear thinking… and calm judgment… because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death.

The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors.

Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.

It’s another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.

Now, some people will say that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention.

But look at the policies Trump has proposed. They would put prejudice into practice.

And don’t be distracted by his latest attempts to muddy the waters.

He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth… but we know where he stands.

He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country.

He’d abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you’re born in the United States, you’re an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, “anchor babies” and should be deported.

Millions of them.

And he’d ban Muslims around the world – 1.5 billion men, women, and children –from entering our country just because of their religion.

Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now.

But in Trump’s America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, “What is your religion?”

And then what?

What if someone says, “I’m a Christian,” but the agent doesn’t believe them.

Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?

Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution.

Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.

Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It’s the so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. It would be a cruel irony if America followed its lead.

Don’t worry, some will say, as President, Trump will be surrounded by smart advisors who will rein in his worst impulses.

So when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will be there to convince him not to.

Maybe.

But look at who he’s put in charge of his campaign.

Trump likes to say he only hires the “best people.” But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode of the Apprentice.

The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – “Let Trump be Trump.” To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.

To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published:

“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”

“Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield”

“Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.”

That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further.

Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: “this is what I need more of in my campaign.”

Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone.

This spring, he railed against Paul Ryan for, quote “rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.”

No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces “ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas.

Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’”

Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”

The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”

The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

This is part of a broader story — the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders,Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.

Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race — that’s who Trump wants by his side.

The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs.

Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee.

Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embrace pro-Russian policies.

He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and of giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe more generally.

American presidents from Truman to Reagan have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia.

We should, too.

All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before.

Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.

On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant.

“We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,” one white supremacist said.

Duke laughed. There’s still more work to do, he said.

No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves “racialists.” White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists.” The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right.” But the hate burns just as bright.

And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. Don’t be fooled.

There’s an old Mexican proverb that says “Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.”

We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that.

He says he wants to “make America great again,” but his real message remains “Make America hate again.”

This isn’t just about one election. It’s about who we are as a nation.

It’s about the kind of example we want to set for our children and grandchildren.

Next time you watch Donald Trump rant on television, think about all the kids listening across our country. They hear a lot more than we think.

Parents and teachers are already worried about what they’re calling the “Trump Effect.”

Bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.

At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of “Build the wall!” and “Speak English.”

After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, “They see it in a presidential campaign and now it’s OK for everyone to say this.”

We wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in our own homes. How can we stand for it from a candidate for president?

This is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. It’s a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this.

Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits and told any racists in the Party to get out.

The week after 9/11, George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims “love America just as much as I do.”

In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew – Barack Obama is an American citizen and “a decent person.”

We need that kind of leadership again.

Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying “enough is enough” – including a lot of Republicans. I’m honored to have their support.

And I promise you this: with your help, I will be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For those who vote for me and those who don’t.

For all Americans.

Because I believe we are stronger together.

It’s a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we’ve ever seen.

Just look at our fabulous Olympic team.

Like Ibtihaj Muhammad, an African-American Muslim from New Jersey who won the bronze medal in fencing with grace and skill. Would she even have a place in Donald Trump’s America?

When I was growing up, Simone Manuel wouldn’t have been allowed to swim in the same public pool as Katie Ledecky. Now they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates.

So let’s keep moving forward together.

Let’s stand up against prejudice and paranoia.

Let’s prove once again, that America is great because is America is good.

Thank you, and may God bless the United States.

And The Walls Of Jericho Fell Down

It is an amazing thing to watch… the dismantling of the Confederate Flag.  These 9 murders have had an effect far reaching than any event I can remember since 9/11.

It is as if we always knew they all had to go… by we I am including  vast, vast majorities, almost everybody; but because one shrill element was loud, obnoxious, and obstinate, no one really wanted to take them on…   Reminds one of dealing with a bully at school…. One could probably take him out with several properly placed punches, but in that process you’d get hit hard, suffer damage yourself, and so the status quo of accepting an undesirable outcome, was better than striving for a more perfect world.   Everyone knows that the bully is wrong, but no one wants to invest in the personal cost it would take to permanently fix the problem, despite all secretly wishing someone else would….

That is racism in America.  The big problem which if we try to address it by tackling it on the edges, we get besieged, almost attacked, by a vocal shrill anti-social element representing the excrement of society: those of us who simply hate for hate’s sake.

Yet, they are easily outnumbered.  But since they yell and punch and we stay silent because we don’t want to bog ourselves down, they win.

But with one killing spree. the bigots lost it all.  With one killing spree, everyone is no longer afraid to throw the bigots in social jail, and lock the key.  With one killing spree, the bigots are being finally beaten down like the bullies they are.. by superior force…

I am reminded of a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr i once read… which said that the true legacy that Martin Luther King Jr. left us, was to no longer be afraid to stand up for justice…  After Selma, the next day freedom fighters were singing a capella gospel in the jails… After Selma, the next day the wounds of the batons, dog bites, and fire hoses… hurt half as bad as the day before, and tomorrow would be half as bad as today….  Everyone looked around at each other and said… “Gee, that wasn’t too bad; we can do that again, and again, and if we do, we can win this”… and they did…  Once you beat fear, anything is possible.

I think that is what is happening today… In sort of an impetuous response to the impetuous act committed in a church basement in Charleston… the flags are coming down… The omen of slavery is being removed from the state capitols and governor’s offices across the entire South. Confederacy has lost its legitimacy. And that fight which we were all afraid of… which we all lowered our eyes and looked the other way to avoid, which we all thought was better to leave those old flags up there, than take them down, get beaten up, lose the public opinion battle, and have to reinstate them,…. really wasn’t that bad after all….

All of what we feared was a paper tiger… nothing more… nothing less…

Now that we’ve done this… we must not stop on the first step. Now let us take back our nation not just in race or sexual identiy… but in economics as well…

If everyone who commented on social media, who ostracized racists making them extremely fearful of speaking out for once, if everyone who gave their opinion actually voted every election, this nation would get back on track immediately… Instead of everyone racing out to vote, we got apathy in 2014, setting our nation backwards from where it could be by at least, the minimum of two years; because of the overall apathy, we have a minority with which no one agrees, controlling Congress, running this nation into the ground simply because more of them went out to vote….

We won this battle over flags… It wasn’t free… 9 people died… but we won… The world is wide open to us… If we vote on election day, like we respond on social media… what now seems impossible…. America running on 100% renewable energy… Global cooling instead of warming…. decent minimum wages… more spending money… lifetime health, .. is in our grasp…

We just have to vote like we respond on Social media whenever we see evil rise up and knock down good…. We can do this America… and it isn’t hard at all… Get active… Join something.  We have enough votes to allow America to improve, if we all go out and vote…  And as we saw with flags coming down… exercising our power really wasn’t that hard…

Our ultimate power, is our vote…  Vote like your own money depends on it… It actually does.

Die In’s… Now Do It For Your Kids

Yesterday a very worthy demonstration against Republican sponsored racism was held in Wilmington and was approved by all worthy citizens of Delaware..  Police shooting children because they are black?  No right minded person should ever defend such atrocities.

Protesters with the blessing of Governor Markell, Lt. Gov. Matt Denn, Mayor Dennis Williams, County Exec. Tom Gordon, and every citizen of Wilmington, New Castle, and Kent Counties, lay down in the middle of the road and pretended to be dead…..

The thought occurred to me, that if we as a people were solidly behind protesting the loss to society over these dead black children; how much rightfully we should solidly be behind protesting the loss of educational opportunity for black children who are still alive?  And in far greater numbers?

There is a movement to stifle Black Academic accomplishment.  It is called the Educational Reform Movement.(ERM)  It privatizes education inside untouchable charter schools where racism can flourish and thrive privately beyond the reaches of all law or government….

Now, even the most blatant racists won’t admit they are racists… and asking them if they are, is silly.  But watching them gives you all the evidence you will need.

When you put blacks in a charter school and then close it down, but put whites in a charter school and then give them $1000 prizes, things are not equal.

When you move to privatize poor performing black public schools forcing their children into indentured charter-ship, but do nothing to the poor performing white public schools because of white public backlash, .. things are not equal.

When you create a standardized test that is written in an obscure white mid-western dialect that only mid-western whites can understand, and then whisper blacks are stupider because they perform less well, … things are not equal…

When you move to separate blacks from whites, and then put more money into white charter schools and take that money out of black public schools…. things are not equal…..

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Now if you are willing to lie down in a city street to protest harm done to dead children…. why are you not willing to keep your child out of school during the SBA testing…. to protest the harm done to live children?

In opting out, you actually are doing your child a favor.  These un-Balanced tests are the equivalent of those oppressively hard poll tests designed to keep blacks in the South from voting…. These tests are designed to keep real education and jobs with real money, out of their reach…

If as a parent you allow your child to take these tests… you are not helping any more than if you kept sending him back to the polls in 1950’s with correct answers to harder and harder questions…. The entire point back then was to keep “the Negro”  in 2nd class status… As you became smarter, they made the questions harder.. Their goal was not to allow smart Negroes to vote. Their goal was to keep Negroes in their place. Make them passive and harmless. Now welcome to the 21st Century version of the same…..

The Smarter Balanced Assessment is the worst thing that can happen to a child this year. In fact, if one was shot and killed before taking the test, there would actually be an argument over which child had it worse…. the dead, or the living. The truth of that saddens me with the realization of how far back we have slid.

T