Just what is the GOP going to do about Mark Robinson? The North Carolina Republican candidate for governor has given the party the political equivalent of an atomic wedgie. Recent revelations about inflammatory comments he made on a pornographic website a decade past have understandably left party leaders flumoxed. A few of them appear to have some reservations about Robinson’s character, but they are sticking with him. After all, Robinson already had a known history of racist and mysogynistic remarks and this is one of Trump’s hand picked characters. Martin Luther King on steroids, as Trump believes. It isn’t a logical leap to conclude Trump sees something of himself in Robinson. Everything except skin color of course. Interesting fact. Robinson once called Martin Luther King “Martin Lucifer Koon” and on this porn site messaging board described himself as a black Nazi and said he condones slavery.
I can’t get my head around that last thing- a black man condoning slavery. In fact Robinson said if that was the case he would go buy a couple. So I don’t get it, but what it does for me is put a fine point on America’s continued burden- racism.
I have never been an intransigent racist, but there was a time when I was ignorantly bigoted. I grew up in Sheridan Wyoming, at the time a city with few Hispanics. Though I never saw him, it was pointed out to me there was a Black man who lived in town, and worked as a food server at the local Elks Club. The first Black person I actually saw was the conductor on a passenger train I took in high school. When I attended college at Creighton University’s School of Pharmacy in Omaha Nebraska in the mid 1960’s, there were only a few Blacks on campus. My friends were all white and about as racially naive as I was. Racial slurring and joking was something I am embarrased to say were things I participated in.
My perspective of race started to morph in 1969. The summmer of that year a Black teenage girl, Vivian Strong, was carelessly shot in the head by a cop, and within hours the local Black community went up in flames. I lived with four classmates a couple of miles away, and as the evening turned dark we noticed that the horizon was lit up in bright amber. My friends and I reached a consensus that that was something we should definitely investigate. We drove to the perimiter of the destruction where a group of agitated Black men alerted us to our folly from which our quick thinking driver deftly managed to extricate us from. That episode has been an enduring memory. I figured then maybe there was something to all the racial unrest I had been hearing about.
There were lingering prejudices. In the 1980’s I was a Reagan Republican. As an employed pharmacist I felt I was a direct witness to a few of Reagan’s “welfare queens.” But for me that was an economic issue more than race. At that time I resented the entire welfare system. Most of my friends felt the same way. Over time, I became more open minded. A lot of it had to do with pharmacy, the price of medication in particular. Drug prices started accelerating in the mid 1990’s and I delt with a lot of people without insurance who really struggled to pay for their prescriptions. The cost of insulin unrelentingly increased every 4 months or so for no apparent reason except greed. I can’t say I became a bleeding heart liberal, but by the time Bernie Sanders started pounding away with his criticism of the 1 percenters, I found myself agreeing with him. And by then I had a very close Black friend who occasionally reminded me of my white privelge with his stories of unprevoked traffic stops by law enforcement.
Ever since the civil rights legislation in the 1960’s I always felt this country was making racial progress, that for every step backward, we made a couple steps forward. I was confident my own experience was verification. And then along came Trump. The Republican candidate for president stepped off his golden escaltor and delivered an insultingly racial speach that horrified the plurality of people who heard it, but triggered an awakening of prejudicial animosity in many others.
it’s no secret I do not hold Trump in high esteem. He is a convicted sex offender , convict, racist, and all around shallow human being. One thing you have to appreciate though is his cunning ability to recognize vulnerability. He saw someting in the Republican party that he could take advantage of. Starting with Black civil rights, party elites started taking positions that would ultimately attract a different party base than the one previous Next it was opposition to the Equal Rights Ammendment, abortion rights then LGBTQ rights. Trump realized the real glue that would hold MAGA together is racial animus and resentment towards minorities. Read Activating Animus
It is difficult to deny that Trump has moved Republican politics toward the hard edge “us vs them” view that dominates the GOP base. Still, it’s a sensitive issue with Republicans. Accuse one of being racist you will no doubt provoke a hostile denial, Of course not all Republicans are racist, but there are many who are not afraid and even proud to project it. Simple observation of Trump’s hard core MAGA crowd at one of his rallies you will get the feeling you were time-shifted back to the Berlin Sportpalast in 1932. THIS is racism. American Reich
Why do we have to get ’em the hell out? Because they are Black! Straining services and driving up housing costs is MAGA bullshit. Those things are happening as they naturally would anywhere there is a sudden inlux of residents But that’s not the claim made by Trump and Vance as they hyped this crap. It has everything to do with ‘demonizing and other-izing people who have already suffered enough that they chose to leave the nation of their birth. They did so exactly the way the MAGA people who claim to have “no problem with legal immigration” said they should. They went through the system. They got their paperwork. And their reward is bomb threats. Because, I’ll say it again, they’re Black’ ( Michael Ian Black- The Daily Beast)
What Trump failed to mention during his eviction notice speach is the chaos in Springfiled is of his and Vance’s own making. They found this ficticious, outlandish conspiratorial story about Haitians eating pets on social media and continue to promulgated it even after it has been disproven and denounced by anyone even remotely involved, as well as every state and city official. It is an inconceivably cruel stunt to perpetrate, nevermind these two are positioning themsleves to run the country. Trump is definately a racist. He will absurdly try to deny that charge, but here is his racist history if you care to read it. Yes It’s as Bad as You’ve Heard
Trump is counting on like minded people to propell him to the presidency. Racism really is the glue that cements his base together and solidly with him. How many citizens are truly that bigoted? It’s a substantial number if you believe the polls. All those rally attendees are certainly in his corner. They can’t get enough of all the hootin’ and hollerin’ that goes on at one of those things. However, just maybe some of those people go to his perfomances only for that- the entertainment. It indeed is a show. Trump as the entertainer is the real motivator of the MAGA movement. It did not take him long to realise what worked best as performance schtick was fear, hate and racism. It is how he once got elected, how he maintains his base, and anything uttered that is appaling is sane-washed as being just part of the entertainment. Just Trump being Trump.
Maga world loves a show, and boy they really got one the last week end of October at Madison Square Garden. This was racist ecstasy for the Maga crowd. The MAGA Reality Show A regular smorgasbord of crass racism and mysoginistic crudeness, interspaced with nazi innuendo, like Representative Byron Donalds walking onto the stage to the tune of “Dixie.”
Of course Trump isn’t going to disavow this stuff. He lives for the adulation of the crowd, and he is well aware nothing juces his crowds more than racist slurs and minority denigration. What the Trump campaign offered in the way of abjuration for the offensive remarks at the Garden was what you would expect. It was delivered by JD Vance and basically it was reiteration of how the country in general has come to accept Trump repugnancy- no big deal, it’s just the way of Trump and we should be used to it.
According to Vance, the rally was a fun fest that we shouldn’t take seriously and people should quit being so sensitive. The Comedy Roast that Never Ends Vance says he is “over it.” Really? Does that mean he and Trump will quit featuring blatant racial denigration as their main driver in this election? Of course not. Every rally, every speach Trump delivers is a plunge into a national dystopia and it is always immigrants and minorities who are responsible for it.
Is Trump a racist? It’s pretty difficult from all we see from him to conclude he is not. Is everyone who supports Trump a racist? Of couse not. But if you are not offended by at least the volume of racist remarks Trump makes, you likley are a racist. Even if you can claim to just be numb to all the degrading remarks, it’s hard to believe that fawning over his every word wouldn’t trigger inherent prejudice.
For sure many of the people attending a Trump rally are racists. Those people see nothing wrong with the constant vilification of minorities. But in rebuttle to Vance’s comment that the Garden rally was all in good fun, I would point out that you make racism your perpetual theme, it is not funny at all. It is not funny when an entire community is terrorized by lies you spred about Haitians eating pets in Springfield. It’s not funny when a Latino gas station attendant in Florida gets punched in the head by a white man who gets caught on a survailence camera uttering “this is for Trump.” It’s not funny when a man explains to police the reason why he threatened to kill a Syrian born man was because he wanted him to “get out of my country” and “That’s why I like Trump.” Haters Gotta Hate
It is that resurrection of our prejudices that is so alarming. Overcoming flat out racism is a monumental challenge. As a country we have been working on irradicating it for over 240 years. That is why, or at least one of the main reasons why, Trump is so dangerous. He incites people to do their worst. Trump is especially proficient at doing so at his rallies. If your underlying bias and prejudice is buried under years of racial progress and you attend a Trump rally, it’s not difficult to imagine how those atitudes could resurface and progress to something vehemently racial. It’s the tactic of a fascist tyrant.
I do believe Trump is a racist, and that is something completely antithetical to what America is. We do have an immigration problem. It has been ignored for decades. Ironically, Trump, in his first year in office, had a very good chance of doing something about it. He seemed sincerely adamant about initiating immigration legislation, including funding for a border wall, but he caved when the ultra conservative wing of his party refused to make any consensions concerning DACA recipients. More disgracefully, when he was not in office but still leveraging his MAGA clout, he torpedoed a bill written and backed by very conservative legistators only because he wanted to keep the immigration discord alive so he could use it as a political, election tool. The man thinks only about himself.
Another Trump administration would be enormously threatening in multiple ways. He is a careless, vindictive man bent on alloting his time in governance settling perceived grievances rather than managing the affairs of the county and improving the lives of American citizens. His plan for our democracy is to disable it to his advantage and profit. Sadly the damage he has inflicted socially since his political presence is insidiously apparent. By stoking hatred and fear of “the other” he has exposed and elevated the divisive embarrasment of racism in this country to post reconstruction levels. So far backward has Trump taken us it will take years before racial resentment is abated. The beginning of the repair starts by making sure he does not get elected again.
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