How President* Trump Surrendered The Civil War To The Confederacy

John Kelly, the operator of an adult daycare in Washington, recently questioned the legitimacy of the Union’s victory in the Civil War. It’s worthwhile to revisit crucial issues now and again, but in 1865 most Americans thought the issue of slavery had been well and truly (and finally) buried with a stake through its cruel heart. Apparently not, at least in the Republican half of the country.

Some useful reading on the topic:

A tutorial from The Atlantic. (Summary: The Union Won)

The New Yorker is right when it describes Gen. Kelly's Civil War beliefs as "bizarre mythology"

And by the way, the South was not at all in favor of states’ rights until they lost their stranglehold on the national government. The Southern states were, and still are, all about rejecting any regulation or instruction from the democratic majority of other states, but are insistent upon other states following, without question, the South’s regulations and instructions whenever they are given.

The Atlantic dissects and debunks the old States' Rights myth

When in doubt, representatives of the old Confederacy do not hesitate to have preachers come in and pray their beliefs into law. From TalkingPointsMemo

Then there is the daily ignorance of this White House...

DailyKos reports on the White House's refusal to say slavery is wrong and over

In today’s Republican Party, if you are asked what your opinion is on the subject of slavery it is best to say “No Comment” as Sarah Huckabee Sanders did.

If not best, safest.

I’ve been commenting this too often lately, and it’s a sad comment on us. But it’s true. President* Trump has unilaterally surrendered the total victory achieved by the United States in its costliest wars. Trump has in one year surrendered the Civil War to the Confederacy, WW2 to the fascists who still live and march among us, and the Cold War to the Russians, of whom the White House now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Sad.

The Dark Holes Fascism and Racism Crawl Out From

Many sides? That's how Trump tried to defend his followers in the white supremacist fringe.*

There are two distinct sides in this, just as there were in 1941, when one side attacked peaceful neighbors and exterminated millions, and the other side (the Allies) opposed fascism and defeated it.

There were two clear sides in 1861; one defended slavery and bigotry, the other side opposed these evils. This film from the 40s states what our values were after we fought and won WW2, when we knew the difference between good and evil.

The WW2 era film explaining why we fought fascism can be seen via The Atlantic

But the Nazi flags are back, carried by people who think they are great patriots upholding a better America, a pure white America. Seeing the Nazi and Confederate flags together carried by armed mobs shouting bigotry and hate down the public street is disturbing, especially because these people believe themselves to be patriotic––while telling us that the United States should have been defeated in WW2 and the Civil War. They believe American values of democracy and tolerance should not prevail. They believe that the men and women who died for those values died for nothing, or, worse, that they died for false values. They may carry the U.S. flag along with their enemy flags but they are not patriots.

Here’s another video making the rounds, from the NRA. This is the organization that arms the Right and inflames their dreams of “purifying" this country the way Germany “purified” itself in the 1940s, by force of arms. The NRA urges “real Americans" to arm themselves against “the other”, the person who looks or thinks or worships differently. Note that it was the Nazis and Confederates who came to Charlottesville armed.

You can watch the virulent NRA hate propaganda spot here at ThinkProgress

It appears that the NRA gets considerable support and aid from Russia, America’s longtime global foe and Trump’s greatest ally.

The NRA's coziness with Russia is discussed here, at Medium

Fascism, bigotry, authoritarianism, violent suppression of people's rights. These strains crawl out of the same hole. It turns out the Nazis got many of their ideas from the American South.

Business Insider goes into how the founders of Nazism looked to the American South and its race laws to devise the Nuremberg Laws that looted and repressed and finally exterminated the Jews of Europe

*It's being argued that Trump derived the points his more aggressive statement yesterday from the predominant right wing propaganda machine in America today, FoxNews. This is laid out in a video comparison from MediaMatters.

The Meanness Of Republican Policies

Is there something about being a Republican that makes you anti-woman and anti-working people?

Jonathan Chait of NY Magazine summarizes the Republican mindset pretty well: "Conservatives have made all kinds of practical arguments for the Republican health-care bill. They have made a smattering of moral arguments, too, such as the principle that people with more expensive medical needs have failed to make healthy choices and deserve financial punishment for their failings. What is telling about the gender debate is that it lacks even the pretext of personal responsibility. There is no case to be made that women ought to pay more for insurance because they chose to be female. There is no principle at all except that people who have more ought to keep it."

There seems to be a simpleminded self-centered misanthropy in Republican thinking, or at least in the thinking of the Republicans writing our laws right now. I say right now because Republicans used to be cheap without being mean. I know it's not just racism, but racism is in there. It's not just sexism but sexism is in there. Consider some of the shit these Republican white men say about people who are not white men. People who are not white men come in for a lot of abuse from Republicans, and their voters seem to like this about them. It gets them elected.

"We have folks who try to get pregnant in this state so that they can get a free trip to the city, and we have folks who want to carry their baby past the point of being able to have an abortion in this state so that they can have a free trip to Seattle.” ~Rep. David Eastman (R/Alaska)

"Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us.’ There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves. Just, like, homeless people … I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want health care. The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging…” ~Rep. Roger Marshall (R/Kansas)

(Oh, but he is judging.)

Meanwhile, in the Senate, a whole parliament of judgmental and punitive white men are figuring out how to fix healthcare in America in a way that covers white men but not other kinds of people.

Fixed the way you might fix a dog, is what they are planning.

The Language of the Right

From Buzzfeed, a glossary of memes and codes popular among right wing trolls

Who knew that placing three parens before and after a person's name was a derisory way of labelling them as Jewish.

"(((Echo))) Parentheses: When used around someone's name, a means of indicating that they are Jewish. The "echoes" are a reference to some old gobbledygook about Jews "echoing through history," but the parentheses are a handy tool on Twitter for anti-Semites to signal to one another when someone they dislike is Jewish. Once the tactic was exposed, some Jews and non-Jews started adding them to their own Twitter usernames as a way to subvert the practice and make it less powerful."

From ATTN, a glossary of commonly used phrases that have racist origins or overtones

It includes an interesting entry from Encyclopedia Britannica about the "Grandfather Clause". The concept of "grandfathering" someone into legal status after a period of time has its roots in the Jim Crow South:

"It provided that those who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867, or their lineal descendants, would be exempt from educational, property, or tax requirements for voting. Because the former slaves had not been granted the franchise until the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, those clauses worked effectively to exclude black people from the vote but assured the franchise to many impoverished and illiterate whites."

Not that using the term today makes a person racist, but it's interesting to know. Just as it would be good to know that the term "Thug" that is now verboten has its roots not in white Americans' fears of gangs but in white British imperialists' fears of gangs in India, specifically the gangs that engaged in Thuggee, a violent killing ritual that targeted travelers, native Indians mostly, along the Great Trunk Road in northern India.

The weaponization of words is a major issue today, poisoning conversations and relationships. Groups have always used coded language to exclude people but this behavior entered the mainstream of party politics in the nineties with the rise of Newt Gingrich and his political guru Frank Luntz. Luntz helped Gingrich gain a Republican majority in the House and one of his weapons was a lexicon included in a GOPAC memo titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.” FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) reported on the memo in 1995.

Luntz taught Gingrich and Gingrich trained the Republicans to use language like a tar brush to smear the Democrats and make people feel suspicious and angry about them. Their caucus members followed the playbook.

"Often we search hard for words to help us define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

"decay… failure (fail)… collapse(ing)… deeper… crisis… urgent(cy)… destructive… destroy… sick… pathetic… lie… liberal… they/them… unionized bureaucracy… “compassion” is not enough… betray… consequences… limit(s)… shallow… traitors… sensationalists…endanger… coercion… hypocrisy… radical… threaten… devour… waste… corruption… incompetent… permissive attitudes… destructive… impose… self-serving… greed… ideological… insecure… anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs… pessimistic… excuses… intolerant…stagnation… welfare… corrupt… selfish… insensitive… status quo… mandate(s)… taxes… spend(ing)… shame… disgrace… punish (poor…)… bizarre… cynicism… cheat… steal… abuse of power… machine… bosses… obsolete… criminal rights… red tape… patronage"

This list of words has remained in use ever since, and it's helped destroy the polity or traditional courtesy that used to make our political system function. Language helped make our democracy dysfunctional. When Obama was elected president most Americans polled said they were sick and tired of the nasty partisanship in Washington, yet they kept re-electing the same right wing cohort who'd poisoned the well. Americans wanted civility but in 2010, after two years of fierce Republican opposition and outright racism, they restored the Congress to the Republicans.

NeoReaction = NRx–––The New Disguise For American Fascism

The new philosophy shaping White House policy is called neo-reaction. (You can make that an ISM if you like.

Or just call it NRx. (Which makes it sound like a skin treatment. Maybe it is.)

NRx is another way of saying Alt Right. Which means White Supremacy. Which is a pure white All-American variation on German fascism.

All of them are disguises for the old idea that the best government is tyranny by rich white males over the diverse crowd of people who do the work.

The Atlantic reports how Trump's main handler and advisor is deeply invested in NRx.

“White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been in contact via intermediaries with Curtis Yarvin, Politico reported this week. Yarvin, a software engineer and blogger, writes under the name Mencius Moldbug. His anti-egalitarian arguments have formed the basis for a movement called “neoreaction.”
"The main thrust of Yarvin’s thinking is that democracy is a bust; rule by the people doesn’t work, and doesn’t lead to good governance. He has described it as an “ineffective and destructive” form of government, which he associates with “war, tyranny, destruction and poverty.” Yarvin’s ideas, along with those of the English philosopher Nick Land, have provided a structure of political theory for parts of the white-nationalist movement calling itself the alt-right. The alt-right can be seen as a political movement; neoreaction, which adherents refer to as NRx, is a philosophy. At the core of that philosophy is a rejection of democracy and an embrace of autocratic rule."

Steve Bannon is the murderer planning to kill American democracy. Trump is the weapon he’s using to kill it.

Here's another take on the hard right turn, from The New Republic.

White nationalist groups are showing faster growth than ISIS. Says The Independent.

“Donald Trump is a prominent subject among white nationalists on Twitter. According to the study, white nationalist users are “heavily invested” in the Republican’s candidacy. Tweets mentioned Mr Trump more than other popular topics among the groups.”

New white power groups and groups are forming. Some call for the U.S. to reshape itself more like the old Confederacy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports on the bullish prospects for an armed white interstate defense force across the South. Somebody play Dixie.

"[T]he League of the South is calling for all able-bodied, traditionalist Southern men to join our organization’s Southern Defense Force for the purpose of helping our State and local magistrates across Dixie combat this growing leftist menace to our historic Christian civilization. As private citizens in a private organization, we will stand ready to protect our own families and friends, our property, and our liberty from leftist chaos. Moreover, we will be ready to assist our local and State authorities in keeping the peace should they find it necessary to “deputize” private citizens for that purpose”

They believe suppression of and violence towards liberals and persons of other races and religions is the central purpose of our government.

There is also a growing atmosphere of intimidation and aggression toward people who disagree with the ascendant right-wing/fascist white people who hold power.

If you say or write anything opposed to their viewpoint expect to receive threats. Here's one writer's story, posted by Bill Moyers.

"By mid-afternoon, I was getting death threats. “I AM GOING TO CUT YOUR HEAD OFF………BITCH!” screamed one email. Other correspondents threatened to hang me, shoot me, deport me, imprison me and/or get me fired (this last one seemed a bit anti-climactic). The dean of Georgetown Law, where I teach, got nasty emails about me. The Georgetown University president’s office received a voicemail from someone threatening to shoot me.”

Then, sometimes, the behavior trends towards simple insult and abuse, as in this case (reported by RawStory) where a student at an elite university taunted a homeless man asking for money by lighting money on fire in front of his face. This happened in the UK, where things have taken a similar Trumpian turn.

We Need Better Tools Of Persuasion

A couple of years ago a high school friend of mine wrote a short piece for HuffPost about the inequities in our criminal justice system––the very disproportionate percentage of people of color who are in prison compared to their percentage in the general population. The key point of the piece isn't the inequity but our difficulty making white conservatives care about the inequity and the clear injustice. This point is important whether the issue is racial justice or economic or gender or religious justice or issues of basic practicality and survival like climate change and good government.

In his piece Gilliam discussed the problem of persuasion in the area of racial justice. Blacks are far more likely to spend time in prison than whites. Blacks are more likely to be convicted and more likely to receive prison sentences and longer sentences than whites convicted of similar crimes. Sure it’s unfair, but for some reason unfairness isn’t an effective argument against it with people who are not directly affected by the injustice, white people and conservatives. Conservatives are likely to reply that life is unfair. Hearing that far more black men are in prison conforms with the entrenched idea among white people that more black men are in prison because they commit more crimes. Even though they do not commit more crimes. Explaining this does not persuade whites who are inclined to think otherwise.

Unfortunately, some progressives are satisfied with expressing a pure and logically consistent idea regardless of its ineffectiveness, its unpersuasiveness as an argument.

We see these inequities as injustice and wonder how Americans can stand for it––if it is clearly an injustice. It has to do with mindset. The reason may be how it’s framed in arguments and discussions and political discourse. In recent decades white conservatives have done a very effective job of creating white unease over the issue of race and religion and orientation and otherness.

Now psychologists have learned that it is unhelpful to counter those carefully created sentiments (that are cemented daily by FoxNews and talk radio) by explaining they are incorrect or hateful or unChristian, which they are.

It is better to reframe the issue in terms the other side is likely to understand and relate to. We aren’t persuading ourselves here. We are trying to persuade them.

Here are the relevant paragraphs from Franklin Gilliam’s piece at Huffington Post:

"In a series of experiments, [Stanford psychologists Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt] report that, “...exposing people to extreme racial disparities in the prison population heightened their fear of crime and increased acceptance of the very policies that led to those disparities”. Hetey and Eberhardt conclude that “... bombarding the public with images and statistics documenting the plight of minorities” is unlikely to increase support for progressive reform policies."

"We have found that starting a conversation with the American public by essentially claiming the system is racist does, in fact, dampen support for progressive reforms. But, and this is an important finding, our research also shows that starting the conversation with the values that many Americans adhere to, and then pointing out racial disparities, is effective in garnering support for progressive reforms.

"In a recent piece in Slate, Jamelle Bouie argues that, “...advocates might want to try different language (or a different approach) in their campaign to reform the criminal justice system.”

"We believe we have identified a better strategy that allows advocates to both use facts and talk about race. Paying attention to values and order in criminal justice reform communications is an important framework for moving public will."

Which is, essentially, the same argument made in an Atlantic piece this week. The Atlantic also buries the gist in its discussion and supporting information.

The gist is: frame the argument in values which the other side already has, like patriotism and faith, instead of trying to prove they are dead wrong… even if they are.

The article in the Atlantic this week can be read here

We need to integrate these findings into how we work to persuade people. Our scripts need to be less about gratifying our own feelings of righteousness and anger and more directed at changing and shaping opinions that are different from ours.

The Monsters Behind The Monster

Steve Bannon, the top advisor who will have President Trump on a leash, is the man behind Breitbart News, one of the most notorious lie-producing and hate-fomenting websites on the right.

This is what these people think of women:

"In terms of female happiness, women’s liberation was probably a mistake, and it was a mistake driven by technology that was, of course, invented by men. Let’s start with the device that forced women out of the home they so lovingly kept, wrenched their children from their arms and doomed them to perform unsatisfying tasks in the workforce in order to respond to new social norms: the washing machine."

The full Breitbart article in favor of putting women back in the kitchen and the laundry.

Trump the online bully in chief is going to be advised by the most prolific online bully of them all. Good luck, Melania.

MONEY magazine/CNN on Brietbart's bullying and dishonesty

Hate and hate crimes rose in 2016, encouraged by our new president elect and his posse.

Reported by Minnesota Public Radio

Reported by Quartz

We need to quit normalizing these people. They are not normal. They are wrong. They are dangerous.

In the Fort Worth Star Telegram

The Republican official in West Virginia who said it would be refreshing to have a dignified First Lady for a change, after eight years of "an ape in heels."

LiveScience has an article about the association of low intelligence with conservatism and racism

Picture Men In White Hoods

The talk about the Alt Right is long overdue, but we shouldn’t flatter them with this hip new label. It makes them sound like a music trend from Seattle. They are white supremacists. They are bigots. They are anti-semites. They believe women should be subservient and silent. Their methods are hate and ridicule and intimidation. They are unAmerican. Millions who voted for this new team thought they were voting for the old team, the Republican team. It is no longer the Republican Party. It is the White Male Party. It is a clear and present danger to our democracy, our nation, and the world.

Story in the Guardian

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls out the outright racism in the Trump White House team

This Salon/Alternet article looks into the white minority anger that swept Trump into office

They are a group organized around anger and disruption led by a corrupt billionaire. They are not likely to govern honestly or competently. They will probably earn a profit.

The Vandals in the White House discussed by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo

(Marshall discusses White House corruption by invoking Grant and Truman. I am familiar with the corruption charges thrown at Truman. I believe some of the pettier ones but think most of them were part of the witch-hunting fervor of that time. Truman’s foibles were trivial compared to Trump’s long history of self-dealing. It was Truman, after all, who doggedly investigated the war profiteers of WW2. This was one big reason he had enemies after the war.)

We suddenly have a president elect who is completely unequal to the difficult tasks, and the people he is bringing in to guide him are partisan fighters and outright bigots. Steve Bannon once described himself as like Lenin, bent on destroying the system. He is in an excellent position to do that. Where are the people who’ve worked their whole lives building this system and trying to make it work? Too many have been displaced by lobbyists who seek to make the system work only for themselves and their clients.

From the New Republic, Obama's calm, measured words about this transition do not deny the serious risks we face.

An interview with Noam Chomsky about president-elect Trump

If we survive, if our democratic institutions survive, the next four years, the Supreme Court is where Trump can do more permanent damage.

Dahlia Lithwick discusses the dire SCOTUS implications. Sadly, complex longterm dangers like this were not enough to get millions on board to elect Hillary.

We need hope right now because misdirected and unfocused anger will do us no good at all. It may lose us the longer argument. We need to be angry, but focused and non-violent. Pull what hope you can from this:

Politico urges us to be hopeful. Whether it's rational, we won't win through without it. (Think Churchill in 1940.)

Our friends are worried about us. Our enemies are delighted. It’s surprising how many enemies there are among us. People who were willing to cheer the interference of an enemy power as long as it helped their team win the Big Game. As Andy Borowitz said “I’m nostalgic for when the FBI and the Russians were on opposite sides.” Amen to that. Will the words Fifth Column and Quisling be used more in coming months and years? Whose side are these new “Republicans” on?

From Der Spiegel. If Europe lived next door they would be on the phone with the police and social services right now.

Your Daily Trump––Torches and Pitchforks and Burning Crosses

Trump urges his angriest followers to intimidate voters in black and hispanic neighborhoods

Reported by SLATE

And those communities are preparing to face that

Reported by Reuters

We may have a defining moment of Trump the politician.

A revealing and chilling few seconds from debate 3 reported by SLATE

Not since Nixon have we seen a paranoid this close to power.

From SLATE, the paranoid style in Republican politics

Trump’s anger is less political than it is personal. It’s always been about him. He’s addicted to the attention. He enjoys having people afraid of him. The great primatologist says it reminds her of dominance behavior among chimps.

Reported by Alternet

Donald Trump’s lewd and offensively sexist talk has given new life to a bad old habit among men of keeping women down through fear and intimidation.

Reported by SLATE

This stoking of fear is a central theme of his campaign. Trump has been intimidating women, people of color, immigrants, employees, and every group that has experienced repression in the past. He seeks vulnerabilities he can exploit. Any group that can be conveniently and quickly marginalized and excluded is quickly targeted and instructions go out to his millions of supporters, who are mostly white men or people who see an advantage siding with the supremacy of white men.

Trump's voter intimidation strategy reported by VOX

And by the Boston Globe

And the news media has been complicit. They see a commercial advantage in stoking the ugliness. Fearful audiences watch cable news. Angry audiences are bigger than happy and contented ones.

Reported by Bill Moyers

“If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take. . . . I would do whatever I can for my country.”

Once again we find sheriffs among the leaders of this pitchfork mob

The Milwaukee sheriff and his pitchfork posse, covered by the Guardian

Is Trump campaign a cult?

Question asked by the New Republic

Beyond the talk of armed revolt, there is the sheer profanity and ugliness of Trump’s revolution.

Reported by the reliably conservative Wall Street Journal

Trump's post election plans may include 24/7 rhetoric on his own news network

Reported by the Christian Science Monitor

In the last debate Trump refused to say he would accept the results of the election. It is growing clearer he will lose and he hates losing. When he loses he needs to say he was cheated.

This is how Republicans and Democrats used to congratulate the winner.

The LATimes looks back on the more gracious politics of George H. W. Bush.

(Of course Bush first won the White House using the Willie Horton ad.)

In an even more disputed election in 2000 Al Gore, who had seen the presidency decided by a split Supreme Court, gave one of the most gracious and dignified speeches of his political life.

Al Gore's speech via CNN. What a different and better and safer world we might have had if Gore hadn't been barred from the presidency by the prejudices of five justices.

One Republican-appointed Supreme Court justice warned of the wave of ignorance and anger we are experiencing today.

Via MSNBC and the Rachel Maddow Show.

Trump and the Alt Right––The Politics of Hate

The Alt Right will not crawl away and hide after this election. If the Republicans hold onto a majority in Congress they will have much greater power.

The Guardian reports on the right wing patriot movement's big recruiting year. They thank Trump.

The groundwork is being laid for Trump’s post-defeat power center as a right-wing hate-media star

Reported by the Financial Times.

This is the ugliness that Trump’s campaign has legitimized. Give a listen to the audience at a Trump rally. From the NewCivilRightsMovement.

The GOP has decided if they can’t win democratically they need to destroy democracy

The Daily Beast reports on GOP ads in Arizona threatening voters.

Even the moderate Republicans [sic] are saying Democratic presidents should not be allowed to nominate Supreme Court Justices.

NPR reports on John McCain's promise to block all SCOTUS nominations by President Hillary Clinton.

A newspaper that hadn’t endorsed a Democrat for president in over a century endorsed Hillary, and then came the death threats

USAToday reports on the death threats received by the Arizona Republic and how they responded.

I have a feeling that the Alt Right takes great comfort from the knowledge that Hitler lost several elections before he gained power. (I didn’t introduce the Hitler comparison, the Alt Right did.)

Which Americans Prefer Dictatorship?

One thing I’ve been addressing, or trying to address, is this sudden popularity of fascism, of the idea of dictatorship. Why are Americans attracted to something they’ve never experienced? Why do Americans assume that a dictator would take dictation from them personally? Because that is the assumption Trump’s millions of admirers make.

It isn’t a misunderstanding of dictatorship. Dictators have total power but they are products of a machinery which is the source of that power. If Americans think this is a foreign idea or an obsolete idea they are wrong. It’s existed in America for centuries and it’s still here. As most of America has modernized and urbanized there are parts of America that have remained feudal and antebellum.

The regions where Trump is especially popular are actually very familiar with dictatorship.

The only seat of dictatorial power in America (since the decline of the big city machines anyway) is in rural areas where sheriffs run things. Every powerful office in America has a check on its power, a rival power center in the same district–––except small town sheriffs, whose only check is the electorate, an electorate which is more easily cowed and controlled in rural areas.

Rural sheriffs were the enforcers of Jim Crow. But these same sheriffs have also been the enforcers of male rule. Where the sheriff and his posse of good old boys is the only police force you will probably also find that crimes against women are seldom taken seriously. Unless the “violation of sacred womanhood” serves as a useful bludgeon against persons outside the powerful circles surrounding the sheriff.

Former (perhaps not so former) Jim Crow country is also Trump Country and Good Old Boy Country and Women-Do-As-They’re-Told Country. It's familiar from the rural South, but it persists in all corners of the country.

It would be worthwhile to examine and report on what I suspect is a significant difference in how women are protected by the law in these areas compared with the rest of the country, and how women in these areas are coerced into thinking like their menfolk and acting, thinking and voting as they are instructed.

There is an important difference between democratic power––the power of a democratic government––and police power. Certainly, these rural sheriffs are elected, but the actual power exists in the office, which is not subject to vote––these regions do not vote to invalidate the sheriff’s power, they simply rotate the occupants of the office, and the occupants exercise the traditional white male rule, enforcing laws that protect that rule and dismissing complaints that challenge it.

These are the areas where you hear serious discussions of "Obama seizing power", as reported in this MotherJones article. Any exercise of lawful Constitutional powers they dislike or disagree with is considered dictatorial, but their own dictatorial rule is entirely proper because it is local. These areas resent federal laws and judicial rulings and regulations because these are the alternate powers that protect and empower women and minorities.

(This bias against federal law was called Nullification when slave states refused to respect any federal law restricting slaveowners' rights. The strategy of Nullification re-emerged in 2009 as all Republicans vowed to disrespect everything the new black president proposed. This excerpt from a Frontline documentary describes this modern Nullification.)

This article from RightWingWatch describes another example of how rural dictators resent the dictatorial powers of the first black president. They cry out against imaginary dictators while they enjoy their own absolute power. They accuse Washington of dictatorship yet they admire a very real tyrant in Russia, whose spies are working hard to put their man Trump into the White House. (This idea of a local tyrant calling on a foreign tyrant to overthrow the national government is not new. It has roots in the Jacobite rebellions against the British parliament, the discontent that sent floods of emigrants to America, whose descendants still populate America's backwoods South.)

The idea of a local police force answerable to no one outside the community is sacred in the parts of America that gravitate toward Trump. Because how things have always been done in these areas is the only right way to do things. It was that way when Eisenhower tried to “interfere" with their Jim Crow law enforcement. It’s that way now when they scream about Obama’s planned dictatorship. Regulation by a fairer national law is anathema to them. What they call "liberty" we could just as well call defiance. They are defying the Constitution they claim to worship. In areas where women and people of color and newcomers who are simply “not from here" are not protected by the law, the system isn’t a democratic one, it’s a kind of dictatorship. These are the areas which want dictatorship on a national scale.

Your Daily Trump––The Lynch Mob Mentality Is Alive And Well

A perceptive filmmaker has created a video that has gone viral. It plays Trump's hateful violent words over some ugly racist episodes in our past. It's upsetting because it's true. (Please watch this video.)

The old ugliness and hate has crawled out from under its rock.

Trump has validated it and given it a leader. He has given it a voice, his voice.

He has put these bullyboys in action, jackbooted them and encouraged them to bring their guns.

He’s encouraged these thugs to beat up the people who disagree with him. To beat up the people whose skin is a different color, whose religion is different, whose nation of birth is different.

He’s reaped enthusiastic approval from the KKK and American Nazis and he returns their love with a wink.

Hitler had Mein Kampf, in which he explained how brutal he planned to be and who he planned to exterminate.

Trump had his TV programs, which were built around ritual humiliation of people who desperately wanted to get ahead.

Trump’s TV programs brought the ugly brutality and degradation of frat rituals to a mass audience. It was sold as fun, as a joke, as make believe, but it was what he sincerely was after, ritual humiliation of those he could gain power over.

And the TV audience ate it up. They loved watching Trump humiliate people––while they were safe at home and out of his reach.

Well they’re not out of his reach now. The new targets for Trump’s organized beatings and humiliations are American voters, the non-Aryan voters, the non-Republican voters, the voters not born here. And women, especially women. Trump has been rubbishing women for decades from his comfortable position on talk show couches.

We used to call this kind of behavior monstrous and wrong, but Trump has ridden in on a wave of reaction, leading millions of people who hate political correctness because it inhibits their right as Americans to verbally abuse and insult and degrade large groups of Americans they see as different from them. Trump is the champion of those people who think abusiveness is a great cause. His loud presence on television has brought this ugly behavior back into public again, proud and defiant. They have a deep hatred and they want to parade it publicly, the way the ugliness paraded in its brown shirts in Germany in the 30s, the way similar bigots marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in their white hoods in the 20s.

Trump has made this kind of hate popular again. In the early 1960s it was popular to beat up African Americans who sat at whites-only lunch counters across the South. We chose which side we were on then. We must reassert that now.

Helter Skelter?

"3 Dallas Cops killed, 7 wounded. This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you.” Tweeted last night by former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, who's now a right-wing talk show host. This is the kind of embarrassing ugly comment that used to remain between friends. Now it goes viral immediately. Going viral is the whole idea for a talk show host, but Walsh took the crude comment down shortly after his thousands of followers got the message.

We are all miked. I’m sure each time an innocent black man is shot and killed by police there are similar thoughts expressed by African Americans who’ve had enough. Senseless violence makes people angry. But you don’t hear incitement among the leaders of the black community. The marches have been peaceful. The organizers have called for peaceful protest. It is a volatile moment. And again we have white radio hosts calling for vengeance against the President of the United States, because he is black. There are a lot of Americans out there eager to hear that. That audience has been carefully and expensively cultivated.

This idea of “race war” is not new. The Charles Manson "Helter Skelter" murder spree was supposed to foment race war. The plan was shaped by Manson’s bizarre interpretation of the Beatles’ White Album.

But it goes back much further. Back to the mass murder of blacks in their neighborhood in Oklahoma City, and similar violent white rampages elsewhere. The cheerful, boastful, well attended, proudly photographed lynchings of black citizens in the years following Emancipation. Towns used postcards of the lynch mob and their victim as a form of advertising.

It goes back to our nation’s founding. What is this “well-regulated militia” the 2nd Amendment speaks of? The militia was a very serious institution in the South, when all white plantation owners and their white employees were required by law to belong to the militia, whose job it was to routinely inspect slave quarters to remove firearms and whip the slaves found to own the firearms. The “well-regulated militias” were slave patrols. As were the first organized police forces across the South. So the animus has deep roots.

(Thom Hartmann writes a clear history of the well regulated militia here.)

After slavery was abolished the tradition of oppressing black citizens persisted through Jim Crow. In some respects the situation of blacks worsened. When they were slaves they had value. Being free they had no value and were more casually killed or worked to death. Worked to death? This was routine under the Southern penal system. On a regular calendar basis large industries like lumbering and mining and large scale agriculture informed the local police and sheriffs that workers were needed, and those lawmen would round up black men where they knew they would be, often walking home from their jobs or gathering where black citizens regularly met. Charges of vagrancy sufficed to imprison the black citizen for whatever term of work the industry owner asked. Free labor, essentially slave labor. Except the black man convicted in this way was also assessed fines which placed him in an endless round of peonage and debt, often till the was worked to death.

(PBS produced a great documentary about the abuses of the Jim Crow period, which you can watch online.)

So the recent hatred directed at black Americans has a backstory. It has a deep history, but it isn’t just “history”. It’s still around. The resentment over the casual contempt shown to our black president by white Americans. The ignorant questioning of his legitimacy and his religion and his citizenship, much of it led by Donald Trump. The resentment black citizens feel over these routine indignities and systematic racist targeting is not “history”, it’s now. It’s grown worse since Obama was inaugurated. It would be naive to say it doesn’t amount to an orchestrated backlash against the “uppity black man.”

(VOX summarizes several academic studies of the sources and the stubborn persistence of white racism in America.)

Black Lives Matter, you say. The predominantly, overwhelmingly, white right wing in this country responds with All Lives Matter. It’s a cynical response, surely, but what’s wrong with it? These few paragraphs found on Reddit explain what’s wrong with it. Besides the cynicism and insincerity, I mean.

Certainly all lives matter. Right now, though, the way this country has turned more divided and insecure and poorer for most people ever since Reagan was president, a few lives matter a hell of a lot more than the majority of others. The 1% are obscenely rich, the broad middle class is under stress, and over on the other end are the unemployed and the unemployable, who are split between poor whites and people of color.

For fifty or so years, following FDR’s New Deal and further advanced by LBJ’s civil rights and Great Society legislation, America’s working classes did very well. There were still a lot of racial tensions, though, because the New Deal, when it was enacted, was shaped very carefully to put people of color at the back of the line. Not because FDR was a racist, but because a very powerful and senior block of progressives came from the South, where they hated Lincoln and black people in equal measure. That was why they were not Republican.

When Hubert Humphrey spoke boldly for civil rights at the 1948 Democratic convention, the South began pulling away from the Democratic Party. Nixon’s Southern Strategy finalized this by wrapping its loving arms around the racist voter. “Join us! We understand! We agree with you!” The Republican Party became the welcoming refuge of all racists and white identity types, to the deep embarrassment of millions of Republicans who believed in civil rights, and the Republican politicians who’d helped LBJ put it into law.

Sure all lives matter. But whose lives have been shortchanged the most and the longest? African Americans were slaves for several centuries, bred and driven and sold like cattle. Native Americans were driven off their lands and systematically cheated by federal treaty and exterminated by federal troops and state militias. The treatment of American workers ought to create a stronger fellow feeling, a reason to unify instead of resenting each other. Part of the Republicans’ Southern Strategy was pushed nationwide: the clever and manipulative dividing of people, setting them against each other, and then robbing them both by enacting policies that favored the very rich.

The people looted and victimized by the Reagan Revolution ought to come together to win back a prosperous, financially secure middle class. But keeping them fighting serves the 1%. And millions of white Americans seem happy to go along with this.

Your Daily Trump, Third Week of June, 2016

A political reporter live-tweeted from inside a Trump rally in the South. What he saw and heard and felt disgusted and frightened him. This is what the Republican Party has devolved into.

There have been several stories about the lawsuit charging Trump University with fraud, and how Trump paid Republican attorney generals to block the lawsuit, which they did.

CNN reports on his purchase of the Florida AG.

Trump has shown a pattern of strong-arming the legal system.

Trump has a history of using his wealth advantage to intimidate. He’s also used it to avoid paying his bills.

From USAToday.

If America has the brain of an impulsive, gullible, dishonest adolescent do we deserve to have an impulsive, gullible, dishonest adolescent as president? Reported in the Atlantic.

Trump has a habit of treating his most trusted friends like dirt. In this report he sends Chris Christie to get him lunch at McDonald's.

Trump’s dishonesty problem. Is a journalist biased if he or she calls Trump a liar? Bill Moyers' blog discusses the problem.

Trump’s hate riff.

Obama discusses Trump and what he represents. Reported in the New Yorker.

Some history. First, from Politico, a case where an outsider destroyed a major political party.

We use Nixon as a yardstick when we discuss corruption and dirty politics. We have a new yardstick. Bob Woodward comments.

I can remember when Republicans were the moderate, pragmatic and common-sense party. I voted for this Republican governor and never regretted it... but that was then. That GOP is long dead.

Place Blame Where It Belongs

The recent arguments over the GOP's determination to block President Obama's constitutional obligation to appoint a new justice to the Supreme Court have tended to return to the old canard that "both parties do this." Both parties are not equally extreme or rigid or prejudiced or hypocritical. One party is causing most of the dysfunction, even if, sadly and unfairly, most Americans have a habit of blaming everyone in elected office.

Which makes it worth re-reading an op-ed from a few years ago by two of the more clear-eyed political observers, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann.

Saying both parties are to blame for the dysfunction we’ve seen in recent years is the result of public laziness. Or perhaps it's exhaustion. Either way it flows from a bad habit in our journalism and the news media who are supposed to moderate and referee our public discourse. I’m referring to the bad habit of false equivalency or false balancing.

“Both sides do it” was Nixon’s defense when a bit of political spying exposed the massive corruption in his presidency. It's also the defense given by five year olds who want to misbehave like the friends their parents don't want them to hang around with.

I’m reminded of something that happened at a friend’s house when I was eight or nine. The older brother was in the rec room pounding the hell out of my friend when their mother came in. She didn’t drag the older brother off and send him to his room; she yelled at both of them and punished both of them for fighting. This is false equivalency: if one party is doing wrong, whether beating or lying or cheating, it is somehow “unfair” to punish or rebuke the one that is offending without also rebuking and punishing the other, the victim. Both were fighting. "It takes two to make a fight." If one party does wrong something in our sense of fairness requires us to say, “Well, both were probably to blame.” This is why we hear people say that the victim of a crime probably asked for it, the beaten wife probably shouldn’t have provoked her husband, the rape victim should have dressed more primly or not gone outside after dark. This kind of lazy rationalization licenses the wrongdoer.

A lot of Americans have expressed disappointment with President Obama because he "doesn’t fight hard enough" for what the Democrats want to achieve, because he doesn’t go full-on political with the Republicans who have embargoed his presidency from day one. But when Obama was elected most Americans breathed a giant sigh of relief because he promised to preside as a moderate, as someone willing to look for common ground, willing to get things done, willing to avoid the bitter partisanship which had disgusted Americans in recent years. Americans applauded his promise to keep away from the nastiness that obsesses the other party. When others got ugly, he did not. When a freshman congressman called him a liar at the State of the Union, he answered civilly and without rancor, because it was a ludicrous and ugly remark. When idiots like Donald Trump questioned his birth certificate he laughed; it was the only sane response to a stupid charge that was provably false and proven to be so.

We’ve heard it seriously suggested by Republicans that Obama has been a divisive president. And there has been no moderate voice to point out what a stupid suggestion this is. The news media has simply reported the Republicans are saying it. They have reported it endlessly without invalidating it or even questioning it. (Just as they have covered Donald Trump’s candidacy without examining his statements or positions for validity or falsehood or bigotry or contradictions.) Calling Obama divisive is a bit like blaming the black family down the street for the burned spot in their front yard. True, that cross would not have been burned there if they had not been black and had not lived in that house. But it is deeply wrong and dishonest to blame the victim for the offenses committed against him. These things are an offense to all of us; perhaps we are all to blame.

All the evidence––the comments, the obstruction, the disrespectful comments by Republican officials, the outright hatred in the comments sections in newspapers and websites––tells us that the Republican base believes Obama was divisive simply because he was elected as a black man. Having a black family living in the White House upsets and somehow “insults” the base of the Republican Party––therefore it was “divisive" of Barack Obama to win the office. And twice as "divisive" to win it twice. That this ludicrous charge isn't greeted with broad disgust shows how corrupted our public conversation has become. Other ugly ideas flow from this unrepudiated and racist sentiment in the Republican base. It now seems the Republicans feel––since the Constitution stated that black Americans were only 3/5 of a human being––that any black American president should have a similarly limited presidency, say three years instead of four. This is difficult to dispute if you believe the Constitution was perfect as written, as if it was a sacred text from God, complete with its slavery provisions, and this is what most Republicans seem to believe. Especially canvassed en masse. One member of a mob will tend to uphold the consensus of the entire body no matter how ugly it is.

This core belief among Republicans that Democrats––and especially Democrats of color––are illegitimate is a deep seated, habitual, and outright form of bigotry. And it is a core part of the Republican brand. It has been so ever since the Democratic Party embraced civil rights and the Republican Party happily invited all the racists to join the GOP. It was written into the party’s campaign strategy in the Southern Strategy that elected Nixon to the White House twice.

A good short piece on the Republicans' Southern Strategy from Bloomberg.

Because Americans prize civility we are barred from calling this racism or bigotry, and we are barred by our news media’s habit of false equivalency from calling the Republican Party racist and bigoted, even when it is, but failure to call out bigotry tends to license it. When we (or our news media) accept a political extremist’s values without opposing or rejecting them we see the political middle skewed toward that extremism.

The center shifts. The standards of validity are rewritten to accommodate what was formerly unacceptable. Just as failure to call out a lie against science and reason shifts public opinion toward the lie and away from the scientific truth. People have a habit of balancing opposing arguments, and if the false argument is not repudiated, whether out of politeness or laziness or cowardice or bad habit, it corrupts the public conversation and the public conception of what is true. Barack Obama has chosen to match political extremism and bigotry and anti-science unreason and outright dishonesty with moderation and reason and tolerance and honesty.

Reason has a disadvantage when it is confronted by unreason. Unreason is louder, it is more fanatical, it is more stubborn, it is narrow minded and will not listen to dispute. President Obama has responded reasonably and tolerantly to the unreason and bigotry of his opponents. Does answering intolerance with tolerance make him a hypocrite? No. He was only tolerant in allowing the bigots the freedom to speak. As Voltaire put it “‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Which puts truth and science and reason and tolerance at a tactical disadvantage. When the Democratic Party repudiated racism the Republicans seized that opening. Knowing that no politician would win by calling the voters bigots, the GOP decided to embrace the bigots and this tactical advantage.

Which means that reasonable people need to engage in the argument instead of relaxing in the comfortable belief that they are right and the comfortable habit of not getting angry about someone else’s offensive beliefs. We cannot relax and feel confident that falsehood will be evident to everyone hearing it. We cannot be confident that everyone will see and repudiate racism or unreason or hypocrisy or unAmerican values without our taking the trouble to point them out. We are obligated to repudiate bigotry and unreason and dysfunction and to place the blame for these things squarely on those causing them. If we do not we are making it likelier that the ugly dishonest things we deplore will become the norm.

Hypocrisy In The News

The Republican Secretary of State in New Mexico was elected on a Stop Voter Fraud platform. She is now under indictment on 65 counts including fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. She is also being charged with identity theft. Hm... It’s a shame Republican voters don’t understand irony or hypocrisy... The LATimes has the full story.

The state of Alabama was very pleased when the Supreme Court said nobody needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act anymore because bigotry and prejudice were over with. So Alabama did two things. They added a requirement that all voters have a photo ID to vote, and they closed offices where these photo IDs could be obtained in majority black counties. Hm… Anybody phoned Chief Justice Roberts for comment? Maybe just phone the Department of Justice... The Root has a full report on this story.

A hurricane just dropped several feet of rain on South Carolina causing the dozenth “thousand year flood” in the past few years. All their Republicans in Congress loudly demanded disaster relief, and they’ll get it too, because it’s what Americans do to help other Americans in trouble. Trouble is, when Hurricane Sandy hit New York, New Jersey and the rest of the northeast every one of these South Carolina Republicans voted against federal aid. Hm… Sometimes hypocrisy is so ripe you have to hold your nose... This story is all over the news; here's Salon's article.

Confederate Flaggery

People so want the Civil War not to be about slavery. They so want that old plantation way of life to be some kind of jolly role playing, instead of the brutal ownership of human beings of color by human beings of no color. It says something that people are still asking stupid questions like “Didn’t the slaves actually have it pretty good back then?” Uh…no.

This story from VOX tells about the stupid questions the tour guides get at Mount Vernon.

As FoxNews sees it, removing the flag of the traitors who fought a bloody war against the United States to preserve slavery… is a kind of fascism.

There’s such pervasive certainty about this across the South people get confused.

From Salon: This Confederate-flag-wearing woman of color thinks slavery was a choice. Like on a menu. Uh huh.

It’s what they are taught.

This article from Salon describes some of the ways school districts try to pretty up the old South and slavery.

And it doesn’t only happen in the South. Here's an instance from a grade school in suburban Boston.

100 years ago you could be considered progressive and still be a deep dyed racist. Woodrow Wilson, a progressive by most standards, purged black workers from the federal government. Hell, 75 years ago The New Deal was created by FDR––but only with the help of similar racists from the South. Which is why the New Deal didn’t help people of color.

Republicans might not know this: 40 years ago President Nixon had the idea of inviting all the white supremacists and racists and segregationists to come and join his party. Which is why now the Party of Lincoln is the one most associated with the Confederate Flag. Nixon’s Southern Strategy is (to borrow an old line from Edmund Wilson) “...the worst thing that has happened to Lincoln since Booth shot him.” (Wilson was referring to Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln biography.)

The New Yorker's John Cassidy on the racist strain in the Republican Party today.

This is how our best satirists have commented on the Confederate flag issue.

From the Daily Show this past week.

Bloomberg has an article about Stephen Colbert's war on the Confederate flag.

The best piece of patriotic performance art was this woman’s heroic climb. From Mother Jones.

By the way, the first casualty in the Civil War was a Union officer who was shot dead while trying to remove a Confederate flag from the roof of a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia. I remember this story from my grade school book of the Civil War. I remember the story well. It was illustrated with the same painting Smithsonian includes in their story here. Hard to believe we still see people proudly flying the flag of a treasonous army the U.S. defeated 150 years ago this year.

On a more self-aggrandizing note, media critic Jim Romenesko ran my short piece about the group that kidnapped the New York Times url (or a very convincing counterfeit of it) to prank people. It is getting harder to tell news from satire these days, especially when the stories are about Republicans. But it doesn’t help us when the joke makes people cynical.

Differing Takes On The Shooting In Charleston

"I honestly have nothing other than just sadness once again that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal, yet we pretend doesn’t exist. And I’m confident, though, that by acknowledging it, by staring into that and seeing it for what it is, we still won’t do jack shit. Yeah. That’s us.

And that’s the part that blows my mind. I don’t want to get into the political argument of the guns and things. But what blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us, and us killing ourselves.

If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would fit into our — we invaded two countries and spent trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over five or six different countries, all to keep Americans safe. We got to do whatever we can. We’ll torture people. We gotta do whatever we can to keep Americans safe.

Nine people shot in a church. What about that? “Hey, what are you gonna do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?” That’s the part that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around, and you know it. You know that it’s going to go down the same path. “This is a terrible tragedy.” They’re already using the nuanced language of lack of effort for this. This is a terrorist attack. This is a violent attack on the Emanuel Church in South Carolina, which is a symbol for the black community. It has stood in that part of Charleston for 100 and some years and has been attacked viciously many times, as many black churches have.

I heard someone on the news say “Tragedy has visited this church.” This wasn’t a tornado. This was a racist. This was a guy with a Rhodesia badge on his sweater. You know, so the idea that — you know, I hate to even use this pun, but this one is black and white. There’s no nuance here.

And we’re going to keep pretending like, “I don’t get it. What happened? This one guy lost his mind.” But we are steeped in that culture in this country and we refuse to recognize it, and I cannot believe how hard people are working to discount it. In South Carolina, the roads that black people drive on are named for Confederate generals who fought to keep black people from being able to drive freely on that road. That’s insanity. That’s racial wallpaper. That’s — that’s — you can’t allow that, you know.

Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them, who wanted to start some kind of civil war. The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina, and the roads are named for Confederate generals, and the white guy’s the one who feels like his country is being taken away from him. We’re bringing it on ourselves. And that’s the thing. Al-Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS, they’re not s— compared to the damage that we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis."


~Jon Stewart, The Daily Show


“I find it extraordinary that people would call this a hate crime.”

~Steve Doocy, Fox-N-Friends

“Wait for the facts, don’t jump to conclusions ... most people jump to conclusions about race… There does seem to be a rising hostily towards Christians across this country because of our biblical views… [The shooter] didn’t choose a bar, he didn’t choose a basketball court [i.e. places where “black people” are usually found]… He chose a church. I would urge pastors and men in these churches to prepare to defend ourselves. We’ve got to arm ourselves... when women and children are attacked.”

~E.W. Jackson, a pastor and the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 2013, speaking Thursday morning on Fox-N-Friends

Racism Top to Bottom

Racism top to bottom.

No matter if you’re president of the United States.

(Obama's re-election resulted in a flood of deeply racist tweets)

Or those trying to advance the agenda of this black president of the United States.

(The Atlantic reported on the Republican obstruction of Obama)

Or if you’re the best female tennis player ever to play the game.

(Serena Williams gets more racist catcalls on court than Sharapova does.)

Or some middle class black kids using a public pool.

(You no doubt heard about the mass arrest of teens swimming-while-black in Texas)

(Reported in The Guardian)

Or if you are black and behind the wheel of your own damn car.

(Reported by the Washington Post)

(The ACLU began responding to this problem 16 years ago)

God help you if you are voting-while-black

(The National Memo reports on the GOP push to limit voting)

If you are black or a person of color in this country, you have powerful enemies who will oppose your right to do anything. Still. In 2015.

If you are president and black and are attempting to advance the interests of ALL working Americans, there are many millions of white Americans who will despise and oppose you because you are doing this while black.

Voting while black. Getting elected while black. Driving while black. Playing tennis while black. Using a public pool while black. Walking on the public sidewalk while black. Breathing while black. All these things are up for debate, insulting opposition, hatred, violence and arrest.

Diagramming the Modern Confederacy

Think of this as a map of the Civil War. Picture America as if that sad conflict never really ended. What you’re looking at is the last die-hard remnant of the old Confederacy.

(From VOX)

For 150 years we’ve continued oppressing Americans of color, compounding 450 years of organized theft.

(Yes Magazine has put all of America's racist injustices into a simple illustrated story.)

An interesting graphing of the Confederacy's… I mean the GOP’s… demographic trend. Whoa! Can that really be happening?

(Graphs courtesy of the Washington Post)

Of course, a lot of Americans are unaware of America’s lack of racial uniformity because they get very blonde news.

(New York Magazine examines FoxNews's complaint that we envy their gorgeous blondness)

The Supreme Court is there to fix problems. Say, for instance, you’re frustrated that it’s getting harder every year to keep darker people from electing non-white and non-conservative people into office. Say you preferred it when America looked like the boxes of whiteness in the opening credits of the Brady Bunch. Realizing America isn’t Wonder Bread would make you very sad and disoriented. The Supreme Court is there to make sure people of different colors don’t upset your narrow racist right wing notion of how America should be…

(SLATE analyzes the judicial gymnastics of the Supreme Court in aid of white folks and rich folks)

Think of the Supreme Court as the Big Way Back machine. The Big Fixeroo. A sanctioned Do-Over for people born with privileges who feel cheated by life. Like in 2000 the way they kept the guy who got the most votes from being president on the grounds that letting the votes be counted would deprive George Bush Jr. of “equal protection.” Letting votes be counted would harm the wealthy heir of a political dynasty that had conspired to overthrow FDR back in the thirties. The Supremes worried all kinds of bad things might happen if Bush were not appointed president.