Advantage Republicans

Conventional thinking would be that this is a horrible time to be a Republican.  President Donald Trump is a disgrace to the office – a detestable, incurious, narcissist who likely is suffering from some form of dementia.  The Republican majority Congress has been ineffectual and, with few exceptions, unwilling to challenge the corrupt and incompetent executive office.

I will submit to you, however, that there has never been a better time to be a Republican. Thanks to decades of allowing our public education to go to seed the populace lacks the intelligence to understand relevant issues, and therefore are willing to vote against their interest.  Racism is rampant and has not been this blatant since the 1950s –  it’s not a stretch to envision a return to the days of Jim Crow.

This is a perfect storm.  We have a population that is too stupid and racist to understand that what is holding them back is the divide between rich and poor, and we have a ruling party willing to exploit their ignorance.  This is the outcome of years of capitalism run amok.

I hope I am wrong.

Mansplain the vote

The worst thing about Trump being president is having to endure countless thinkpieces, as well as mansplaining-lectures from dullards as to how the salt of the earth rust belters cast a protest vote against the Dem machine. Two years from now while these idiotic,racist idiots scratch their heads while standing on unemployment lines I’ll be sitting in my ivory tower laughing and pointing. I can do $50.00 gigs until I die, what do I care?

 

But don’t tell me that Trump was employing some kind of Machiavellian strategy, pulling the wool over the American people. Please. Americans are stupid and racist enough. They saw a celebrity with racist overtones and these cretins who couldn’t accept being governed by a woman voted for the blowhard.

 

And fuck Hillary too. That’s the best the Dems could come up with? She’s a modern-day Ralph Kramden, not even bothering to campaign in Wisconsin. That’s how cocky she was.

 

Hillary: I had it and I went with it. Easy come, easy go!

 

So keep on writing and explaining to me, media. I’ll read every wor….[brrrrring!]

 

Hello? Yes? Yes? How much? 50? What time does it start?!

Comes the deplorables

I was wrong.  For nine months I insisted that there is no way that the American people would elect Donald Trump.  Although we have a conservative, celebrity-driven culture, I insisted, we are not reactionary enough to elect an unintelligent, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, failed realtor.

How wrong I was.  Today, along with the rest of liberal Americans, I eat crow.  I over-estimated the intelligence of the American people.

And to the blue-collar, salt of the earth, working class Americans in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin I sent out a hearty and heartfelt, fuck you.   Get the fuck out of here with your high-minded morality and your hypocritical church going ways.  Because guess what?  He’s taking you down right alongside lefty, commie, kale-loving yours truly.

The fact is that you real Americans are going to need affordable health care, roads, schools, and who knows, maybe even an abortion or two.  Good luck with all of that.  Do you really believe that a crooked billionaire real estate mogul gives even the tiniest fuck about the state of blue-collar America?  If you do I was wondering if you would invest in my next recording project:  Keitho plays the music of Bud Powell.  That record has a better chance of going platinum than blue collar workers do of finding jobs under a Trump presidency.

Listening to NPR radio last night I nearly threw up in my mouth.  The general consensus was that a populist movement propelled Trump to the Whitehouse.  I call bullshit.  It was pure, unadulterated racism.  We have seen the kind of people that a Trump rally attract.  They are scum of the earth, thuggish, racist, white trash.  You can take that kind of populism and shove it up your ass.

Eight years ago I voted and for the first time in my life was proud to be an American.  Now I am ashamed to be one.  These are dark days.

 

Never forget

The most depressing two words in the English language are never forget. It’s like a mantra used by small-minded people who thirst for revenge.

Yes, September 11th, 2001 was the worst day in the history of the United States. What was worse than the attacks, however, was our response to them.  We had the world’s sympathy and support and we chose to respond like animals, waging war and murdering hundreds of thousands of people. That’s what I’ll never forget.

What does never forget imply?  What, ostensibly, are we not forgetting?  That people from the Middle-East planned and executed the attacks.  In other words, never forget is a catch phrase enabling xenophobia and racism.   The end result:  The cesspool that is the Trump campaign.

So I’m not forgetting.  I’m not forgetting that we live in a racist country filled with bible-toting freaks who, unlike Jesus, are anything but forgiving.

Our [not so] post-racist society

I was browsing through my facebook feed yesterday when I noticed a link to a video.  The title of the video was Lil Girl Gets Mobbed on by a Dude In a New York Train.  The clip shows a group of black teenagers on a subway train yelling at a girl, who screams and curses at them in return.  Everybody is posturing and at one point one of the boys rushes at her and it appears to be hitting her, but from the angle of the camera I couldn’t be certain. 

The video is fairly disturbing, but it’s nothing that one does not see from time to time in New York.  No one was hurt, and to me it just looked like a group of high school kids blowing off steam.  When you think of it, it’s a little more disturbing that someone stood by taping the incident.

What I was more upset about were the comments that ensued from the post.  Here is a sampling:

When they kill each other , it’s like a self cleaning oven !!

Thanks for sharing my Link…….[There] a bunch of Animals!

 think I was on this train..no wait..they are all the same lol

Please dont insult the animals these sub humans are scum…

There were 24 comments and not one of them took any of the others to task for the racist garbage that was written.  In short — 24 racist comments.  This is New York City, not Montgomery, Alabama, not Fargo, North Dakota, and not Phoenix, Arizona.  New York! 

What does this tell you about our society?  Are we really living in a post-racial society?  Hardly.  The vitriol that was hurled at these kids is not far removed from the garbage that I read and hear directed at Barack Obama by political candidates, pundits, and media.  It is shameful and it is not subtle. 

George W. Bush stripped us of our civil liberties, started illegal wars that benefited big oil, and nearly drove the country into a depression.  Yet you would think that Obama is the devil incarnate for trying to bring relief to struggling families, or by reforming health care. 

It’s all about race.  You have candidates that want to give tax breaks to the top 1 percent, slash funding  for health care and education, and  to take us back into the stone age by doing away with labor unions.  Why would anyone, short of a millionaire support such policies?  This agenda, believe it or not, is now considered centrist.  The radicals are those that want a national health care, or programs that support education!  Obama, for all the talk of his being a socialist, is unable to even approach this agenda.  Not even close.

 I can understand politicians motives for pursuing these policies.  They are trying to get elected, and in turn reap the monetary benefits that come with power.  The American people who allow themselves to be swayed by superfluous wedge issues are doing far more damage than the people runnung for office   — they vote against their own interests for fear that poor people might have benefits extended, or that gay couples be allowed to marry. 

It’s not about black versus white — the real divide is the rich versus everybody else.  The genius of the Tea Party, which is all but synonymous with Republican Party, is to convince the masses that they too can attain obscene wealth, as long as unions, affirmative action, or (shockingly!) gays being able to wed, do not stand in their way.

Which brings me back to the facebook post.  These people —  this online crowd, as it were, —  are our neighbors.  These are the people that we work with, interact with, and socialize with.  These are not the cultured, elite — the wealthy, to-the-manor-born denizens of Beverly Hills or the East Hamptons.  They’re not poor, white trash either — just regular, middle class people. 

The post was not in a private forum — this facebook user has hundreds of friends.  If I, a mere acquaintance, could read it, then it was hardly private.  The feeling I got was that among this crowd it was the most natural thing in the world to feel that kind of antipathy towards black people.  There was not so much as a notion that this was amoral.   

I’m sickened, but what’s more I’m a little frightened.  What’s going to happen when the divide grows wider — when pundits such as Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, thinly veiled racists as it is, become even less subtle in their diatribes?  Don’t kid yourselves, we have a long way to go, and things could well turn ugly.

It’s tea time

It’s one thing when a moderate Republican wins an election, but it’s an entirely different thing when incompetent radicals such as Christine O’Donnell and Carl P. Paladino are victorious.  I realize that Delaware had an extremely small turnout, but I was stunned that tens of thousands of people supported a candidate (O’Donnell) who believes that masturbation is commensurate with adultery.  Over in New York State, Paladino, who is running for governor against Andrew Cuomo, supports prison camps for welfare recipients.

Meanwhile, in Washington, there are enough votes in the Senate to prevent the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law — policy that prevents gays from openly serving in the military.  It is deplorable to me that a significant faction of our leaders believe that a person’s sexual orientation has a bearing on his or her ability to serve.

What is going on here?  For me there is only one explanation:  Blatant racism and homophobia.  These candidates, and for that matter a large portion of our elected officials, are clearly not qualified to lead.  O’Donnell barely graduated college.  Paladino is an anti-semite who circulates racist emails.  They have no business impacting a community election, let alone a national contest. 

I lived in New York City for 26 years, more than enough time to understand that outside of Manhattan and a few sections of Queens and Brooklyn, is right-leaning at best, and virulently racist at worst.  It is not a stretch to see how an anti-intellectual candidate such as Paladino could connect with Staten Islanders, let alone Long Islanders. 

It all boils down to the shock and outrage that a black man became president.  It flies in the face of everything these dullards were taught and believed in.  They would rather support candidates that would worsen their situation, i.e. cut taxes for the rich and decrease access to education.

 I can’t entirely blame the candidates or the Republican Party.  They are exploiting an opportunity and using it to their advantage.  It’s the voter who I reserve my outrage.  It is they who vote against health care, jobs, and education.  They won’t find opportunities for advancement from the racist Paladino, or the righteously wacky O’Donnell.  What they will find is a celebration of mediocrity.  It is a sanctification of 18th century oppression that I thought we had moved beyond.

Is he Moslem, or is he Memorex?

Every once in a while I tune into the cable news networks, and almost every time I come away feeling unclean. Tonight was no exception. I realize that the filter of the media is strong, yet it is difficult to watch these shows for any amount of tine and not come away astounded at the ignorance of the American people.

Tonight, courtesy of the Larry King show, I learned that 25% of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Moslem. One in four people, despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, believe that our president is lying about his religion. One in four!

Why should I be surprised? This is the same populace who supported a frivolous impeachment of president Bill Clinton over a romantic dalliance, yet vigorously supported an illegal invasion against Iraq.

But I am surprised. This, even more than Iraq, is willful ignorance. The pundits who slime Obama with innuendo — “I’m not saying he’s Moslem, yet there are inaccuracies.” – are the very same dolts who screamed bloody murder over his having belonged to a radical church. Well which is he, a radical Christian, or radical Moslem?

As usual it is blatant racism which fuels the argument — as if being a Moslem equates with dissidence or inherent evil. There is a significant portion of the population who could not process the tragedy of September 11th without demonizing an entire religion. If you ask me, this is the height of cowardice.

The shame of the media.

There are many things that disgust me over the forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod, Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Last week a highly excerpted video was released which featured Sherrod saying,  

 “…And here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So, I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough so that when he… I assumed the Department of Agriculture had sent him to me, either that, or the Georgia Department of Agriculture, and he needed to go back and report that I did try to help him. So I took him to a white lawyer that had attended some of the training that we had provided because Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farm.  So I figured if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him.”

In the modern political world, where Orwellian double-speak reigns, the truth becomes the opposite of what is tendered.  If a non-edited video had been released we would have learned…

“…I didn’t let that get in the way of trying to help… I didn’t discriminate … If I had discriminated against him, I would not have given him any help at all because I wasn’t obligated to do it by anyone … I didn’t have to help that farmer. I could have sent him out the door without giving him any help at all. But in the end, we became very good friends, and that friendship lasted for some years.  I didn’t let that get in the way of trying to help… I didn’t discriminate … If I had discriminated against him, I would not have given him any help at all because I wasn’t obligated to do it by anyone … I didn’t have to help that farmer. I could have sent him out the door without giving him any help at all. But in the end, we became very good friends, and that friendship lasted for some years.” 

That a hack such as Andrew Breitbart, who has a history of fabricating facts via heavily edited videos, could gain such credence with the media is a sad commentary on our current state of affairs.  The Whitehouse and the NAACP have taken a huge hit as well for their knee jerk reactions.  My god, doesn’t anyone bother to fact check?!

Sherrod is a woman who has every right to feel antipathy towards whites.  Her father, a black farmer, was shot by a white farmer because of a dispute over cows.  An all white jury subsequently failed to charge the shooter.  Instead of living her life in festering resentment Sherrod has worked to help the downtrodden, regardless of race.  She eventually came to the conclusion that it wasn’t about white versus black, but the haves versus the have-nots. 

The fact that a woman with her credentials can be so easily cast aside is disgusting to me.  Her very act of being accused of racism by such reputable sources is in itself an act of racism.  At the very least it is cynical, partisan politics. 

Now, let’s assume for a moment, that somehow Breitbart got it right and Sherrod actually did decline to help a white farmer.  He didn’t, but let’s play devils advocate.  Would you equate this kind of racism with the Jim Crow laws of the 19th and 20th centuries?  Is it racism on the scale of separate water fountains for blacks?  Of lynchings?  Of slavery?  Is it even racism?  That someone could lose his or her job over such a matter is sickening. 

Shame on you, Mr Breitbart.  And shame on the Obama administration for not stepping up to plate.