Republicans have been enabling Trump’s agenda and that of the white Nazi militias for a very long time. The Bush hierarchy may say they deplore racism and other GOP leaders make appropriate noises but these words mean nothing. Gerrymandering, voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement are all GOP staples and aimed at maintaining the power of white Republican rule.
The GOP is a white supremacist outfit root and branch. Trump is just the vile face with the mask off.
The KKK chant taunting Jews, blacks, women and other non-white-males with, “you will not replace us,” is the Republican politicians’ core belief and hope. They are using all means possible–including STILL backing Trump-the-disgusting– to keep white power in spite of America’s demographic changes.
The Republican’s aim is Jim Crow. The GOP is now about only one thing: the overt disenfranchisement of people of color.
CEOs take action by leaving Trump’s “Strategy” forum, but the GOP leadership is still hanging on because — not in spite of — Trump’s racism.
Those on the so-called voter suppression commission are overtly enabling Trump’s racist agenda. So is every Republican in congress.
Any Republican lawmakers that actually wanted to distinguish themselves from Trump’s racist filth would need to repudiate their party’s race agenda. A good start would be with the GOP war on voting rights.
I’ll believe that the GOP leadership means it when they distance themselves from the KKK when they loudly repudiate voter ID laws. I’ll believe they love America more than Party when Republicans repudiate their race baiting agenda, and admit the deep historical connection between the agenda of the racist alt-right identity politics and that of the Republican party.
As Steven Rosenfeld writes on AlterNet, “America’s culture wars are back. Only this time it’s white identity politics supplanting the religious right. This is a step beyond the GOP’s formula of turning elections into a battle over faith and family, with non-Christian non-traditional values under threat, and the enemy identified as anyone embracing diversity and tolerance.”
Rosenfeld points out that maybe culture war isn’t the right phrase. Maybe what we’re witnessing is a clash of American civilization, or the start of a national disintegration based on the Republicans overt embrace of a war on changing demographics.”Make America White Again!” is really the entire GOP platform. Period. But race-centric beliefs that have been kept under wraps by many whites for decades are breaking into the open. It is getting harder for the GOP to even pretend they have any other agenda.
This is seen in Charlottesville’s marchers, in President Trump’s false-equivalency defense of the “good” people on both sides, and in polls finding two-thirds of GOP voters were okay with his response. This is seen as Trump suggested at his Phoenix rally on Tuesday that he may pardon Joe Arpaio, the race-baiting pig and former Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff. “Do the people in this room like Sheriff Joe?” he asked. Trump paused as supporters applauded.
Somehow, racist, epithet-yelling white supremacists and neo-Nazi sympathizers didn’t upset Trump. These white power nationalist and Joe Arpaio-loving voices come from within his base—those who know his “Make America Great Again” rants mean restoring their idea of white power and privilege.
The spear point of the Republican Party is now the NRA-fanatics and gun carriers who have become much more assertive … to the point of lunacy.This is the face of naked violent White Power by any means.
In 2014, a group of open carry advocates in Texas brought their guns to Dealey Plaza, where President Kennedy was assassinated, apparently in the belief that displaying guns in a place where a liberal president was murdered would somehow advance their cause.
They were correct. Texas subsequently passed an open carry law that enabled Burkhart to issue his threats with 15 police officers standing by. Art Acevedo, police chief of Austin, Texas commented, “Common sense has officially died.”
“Gun carriers at the so-called ‘Unite the Right’ rally acted more like a paramilitary force than as individual demonstrators,” wrote David Frum in the Atlantic. “They wore similar pseudo-military outfits, including body armor. They took tactical formations to surround the site of the expected confrontation” over Confederate statues.
“Taking to town squares to yell past your political opponents is a rich American custom,” wrote John Feinblatt, executive director of Every Town for Gun Safety, which is funded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Those public spaces and our rights to peaceable assembly and free speech make democratic self-government possible.”
“Open carry is not part of that tradition, and its history is that of a tool used for specifically racist ends,” Feinblatt went on in a New York Times opinion column.
“It corrodes our public spaces and infringes on our rights. It introduces terror and intimidation, where dialogue and debate should prevail. And until we close the open-carry loophole in our laws, the armed intimidation we saw in Charlottesville will continue to serve as a tactic for more extremists in more of our cities and towns.”
And that corrosion of the right of peaceful assembly is just what the GOP want. They want an American apartheid state wherein the majority multiracial voice of the people is intimidated, if need by gun-carrying thugs as well as by overt voter suppression. The GOP is not following Trump unwillingly, he’s the rude poster boy for their true agenda. And in 2018 Trump and his racist GOP must be stopped.
Our only hope as a country is that the Democratic Party takes back the House in 2018.
9 Comments. Leave new
The only reason to oppose voter ID laws is because you want to allow unqualified people to vote, such as non-citizens. There really is no other reason to oppose voter ID.
Open carry is not for whites only. Colored people can carry openly too, where the law allows open carry. . The US Constitution makes it legal to carry arms.
Gary, there have been no cases shown of unqualified people voting. I oppose voter ID laws because they are regressive, have proven to be irregularly enforced, and disadvantage those at the bottom of the economic ladder. For every anecdotal reference of someone voting illegally, there are a dozen documented cases of valid, legal voters being turned away without being allowed to cast their ballots. As to open carry, you’re right that the law allows for equal treatment of all races carrying weapons in open carry states. Like Ohio, where good ole boys made a point of marching through Target stores with semi-automatic rifles, and black men are gunned down by police after picking up pellet rifles in Wal-Mart. Hiding behind the letter of the law is, at best, delusional, and at worst deliberate cynical enabling.
This is an article (https://tinyurl.com/zttc5qw) on why many like me oppose voter ID laws which have nothing to do with allowing “unqualified people to vote.” Also, wide-spread voter fraud is a myth so voter ID laws are unnecessary.
As for “colored people” being allowed to open carry, tell that to the family of John Crawford III who picked up a BB gun in a store in Ohio only to have a hysterical customer call 911 and falsely accuse him of threatening people. The police gunned him down while he talked on his cell. Plain clothes Black police officers have also been mistakenly gunned down by white police officers while trying to confront a suspect.
The US Constitution may allow citizens to legally carry arms, but unfortunately, racism creates a gap between how white and black gun owners are viewed and treated.
So I support the banning of open carry because it is a threat to the public safety especially considering the potential of domestic terrorism from heavily armed militia members and supremacists (.https://tinyurl.com/y9hov9xl) I love how John Feinblatt of the New York Time states it: “
“When militia members and white supremacists descended on Charlottesville, Va., last Saturday with Nazi flags and racist placards, many of them also carried firearms openly, including semiautomatic weapons. They came to intimidate and terrify protesters and the police.” (https://tinyurl.com/y9u9hcx2)
“Plain and simple, public terror is not protected under the Constitution.”
Amen.
The only reason to oppose voter ID laws is because you want to allow unqualified people to vote, such as non-citizens. There really is no other reason to oppose voter ID.
Really? You ‘know’ this?
I don’t suppose that — oh say homeless citizens — being far less likely to have legal documentation might create the means to deny the vote to the poor. But then, why would we allow those with no ‘skin in the game’ to vote? I bet if you put your mind to it, you could come up with plenty of reasons for which people should not be allowed to vote.
One of the reasons to openly carry a firearm is to intimidate those who might harm you. A perfectly valid reason. And one that is constitutionally protected. Leftists would prefer their victims be unarmed.
There have been examples of non-qualified people voting. Something leftists support. You want non-citizens to vote. You deny that, but your words and actions prove you are lying.
In Texas we have open carry laws even on public college campuses (private colleges can opt out). I’m 78 years old and have an exercise class on a public college campus in my area so now I have to worry about some right-wing student deciding to carry his/her gun on campus, losing his/her temper and opening fire. I don’t run across many, if any, left-wings who are for unrestricted guns. Texas also has some of the most gerrymandered districts in the United States, based strictly on race. If by non-citizen you mean everyone of color, look again. A lot of these “people of color” got here before your immigrant parents or grandparents did. They are citizens. What you’re really trying to do is limit voters to white males.
Penny, I’m trying to limit voters to those who are legally eligible to vote. That would exclude all non citizens regardless of their race or skin color.
If you are worried about being shot, you could stay home. Or move. There are several states that don’t allow open carry. Maybe you would feel better living in one of those states.
Gary, the UK is not open carry. And I do feel better living here than in an open carry state.
Let’s contrast deaths by police shootings in 2016.
– USA: 957
– UK: 4
If you are trying to make a case for unarmed police, you might be on to something.