White Men Behaving Badly

It feels like we are all watching a reality show about wealthy white boys in college getting into mischief and pushing the envelope on all levels, without really worrying about the consequences.

The appearance of Attorney General Jeff Sessions in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee was troubling on many levels, but the biggest issue for me is that Sessions and others in the administration appear to be twisting the truth – if it can be called even that – boldly and arrogantly without any fear, it seems of being called on it.

The outrage that the current administration voiced during the campaign about Hillary Clinton being investigated by the FBI is strangely absent now, save the president’s complaints that he is being treated unfairly. The Congress is silent and pliant and is letting this administration get away with lying and with attacking the basic tenets and rights of American citizens.

They are being silent as the administration moves toward an authoritarian regime, in violation of all that the United States Constitution calls for. Sen. Mitch McConnell is immersed, it seems, in his desire to undo any and everything that was done by the previous administration, which accounts for him continually saying that, as concerns health care, the Republicans are keeping a promise made “to the American people.”

I guess he is not aware that “the American people” have changed their minds for the most part in terms of opposing the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” and that “the American people” are rebelling against proposed changes to health care legislation. I guess he cannot hear “the American people” crying out, saying, “leave our health care alone.”

These white men – old, for the most part, ensconced in America’s history of racism, sexism and yes, capitalism and materialism – are tone deaf to the people whom they are supposed to be representing. They seem not to care that their drive to protect the wealthy means that their own constituents will suffer greatly. It feels like the GOP leaders are pushing their weight around, throwing into the faces of many that they are, in fact, privileged, and can do pretty much what they want.

The most troubling aspect of all of this is that none, or few, of the GOP have the courage to stand up against the oligarchs who are systematically seizing control of our democracy and thrashing it around like a puppy playing with a stuffed animal. They are silent and obsequious, more interested in honoring “the Donald” than they are in protecting the United States.

Not even the fact that the United States has been cyber-attacked by Russia is or has been enough to shake them from their desire to “fit in” with the jocks. They seem not to care that the administration is making friends with dictators and fellow oligarchs and insulting our allies. They are selling their souls and, by extension, betraying “the American people.”

It is puzzling and frightening, what is going on, and talking about it is not productive. Cable news programs are as impotent as is the Congress. The administration is leading everyone around by the nose, teasing here and taunting there, daring someone to truly challenge them.

I never thought I’d see the day when I could not depend on the government of America to protect its citizens. Contrary to the administration’s claims, it is not making America safer. No, instead it is releasing all of the venom which has been at the core of America since its inception – the racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious snobbery and prejudice which too many Americans have. This administration seems to be in exact opposition to everything the Founding Fathers stood for, at least on a theoretical basis. They didn’t want blacks to be equal to whites, and they didn’t think women had a place on the equality spectrum, either, but they sure did not want an oligarchy or monarchy, or so they claimed.

Anti-Obama people “wanted their country back. Well, they’re getting it …and then some. The white men at the top are having a party at the expense of “the American people.” They are behaving badly, and nobody has yet figured out how to stop them.

A candid observation.

Is White Supremacy a Disease?

As I have watched and listened to the GOP fight to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, the ACA (Affordable Care Act), and have listened to the president say he is undoing policies put into place by President Obama, I have found myself wondering if what we are seeing thus far is nothing more than a serious backlash against the former president, instead of a desire to govern our country.

The current president seems to be competing with Obama, even now; he seems obsessed, actually. It began on Inauguration Day, with the president worrying about his numbers. He clearly wanted to be able to say that he had drawn more people than had his predecessor, though the pictures of his crowds, as compared to Obama’s, clearly showed that he had not.

He and the GOP have been intent on repealing and replacing the ACA because “we made a promise to the American people.” They did. When the ACA rolled out, there was stiff and virulent opposition to it. The Tea Party was able to organize around its opposition to the law, but now, even Trump supporters realize that the ACA, though not perfect, has enabled them to have health care …and they want the law to stay in place. The town halls being held not just in Democratic strongholds, but also in places where the president is loved and supported, are showing that people want the ACA. They don’t want it repealed. They want lawmakers to fix it and then leave their healthcare alone.

In other words, the people do not care about the GOP keeping that particular promise. They like what they are getting, flaws and all.

That being the case, why isn’t the GOP hearing “the American people?” If they want to get rid of the bill so that they can give the wealthy a tax break, and give advantages again to the insurance companies, they should say that. That’s an OK goal, meaning, it’s in line with what seems to be Republican ideology. “The American people” don’t want that, but the GOP and the president ought to at least be honest in why they want to repeal the ACA.

But the ACA was attacked as soon as it was passed, even attacked as it was being formed. The anger was real; the Republicans felt like the bill had been “rammed down their throats,” an ironic complaint since the Republicans really tried to do in three weeks what the Obama administration took over a year to get into place.

What the GOP and the president seem to be intent upon, however, is undoing Obama’s signature piece of legislation. That would be an apt slap in the face for the black man who dared be president of these United States. The president seems hell bent on erasing Obama’s legacy and it is proving to be harder to do than he thought it would be.

I can’t help but go back to the fact that on Obama’s first inauguration day, there were GOP leaders meeting to decide how to make him a one-term president. Before he had done a single day’s work as president, the Republican leadership was working to destroy him. Mitch McConnell said in October, 2010 that his party’s primary goal was to make Obama a one-term president.

The Republicans obstructed Obama at every turn. in January, 2016, he had a budget which called for $4.15 trillion in spending – and the Republicans refused to seriously consider it. The president is busy undoing policies Obama put in place to protect the environment, to protect immigrants and children of immigrants…It feels like “anything Obama” has to go, according to the GOP mindset.

And it feels like nothing more than racial resentment, boiling over.

Rev. William Barber, the creator of the Moral Mondays movement, talks about this being a time of the Third Reconstruction. The first rReconstruction happened after the gains made by blacks after the Civil War. Whites did not like it, and after the federal government took troops out of the South to protect black, all hell broke loose. Whites put laws and policies into place that not only undid all of the gains made by black people, but also to prevent any more progress from being made.

Whites wanted to “make America white,” and therefore, “right” again, in their eyes.

It feels like that is what is happening now. The operative mindset – that of white supremacy, believing that America was made by white people for white people …is running wild. People of color will be put in their place, if these lawmakers have their way. White supremacy as a way of life corrodes the capacity for compassion and care, and makes people blind with a false notion of white superiority.

It is hard to watch. It is even harder to manage the feelings of resentment that the diseased lawmakers are stoking.

A candid observation …

The Season of Dis-ease

Since the election of the new president, I have heard more than a few people say that they do not feel safe. People of color, Muslims, members of the LGBTQ community have all said something to the effect of “I don’t know anymore, when I look at people, who is with me and who hates me.”

I feel them. I have felt the same way.

Not long ago, I was in a doctor’s office just to drop off a form. I went to the front desk and said why I was there and the receptionist, without really looking up, said, “You’ll have to sign in.”

OK. All right. There were about six names ahead of me. For the life of me I could not understand why I should have to sign in, but I did. I was irritated because I had somewhere else to go and had thought I would just be able to whisk into and out of this office.

After a half-hour wait, the receptionist called my name. Yes, by this time I was ticked off, but was relieved that I could finally just drop off the form. But another woman said, “you’ll have to sign in” as she looked at me.

Totally irritated now, I said – and my irritation came through my voice – “I already signed in” and someone else in the area, feeling the tension, verified that I had in fact signed in. The woman at the desk rolled her eyes at me and said, grudgingly, “oh, all right.”

This happened after the presidential election. I had heard of increasing incidents of racial hatred in schools and in businesses and saw a truck slowly moving in my neighborhood sporting a Confederate flag. It had all made me uneasy. I thought white Americans were pretty much moving away from racism.

But what I’d seen and heard since the election did not verify my beliefs, and raised in me, I admit, some concern and anticipation of what to expect from people who were happy with who was now in the White House.

They were glad; they had a guy in place who would “make America great again,” which meant, in my mind, that he would make America unabashedly embrace her white supremacist world view.

The fact that I have heard so many different people say the same thing boggles my mind. At a recent direct action rally, a man of Hispanic descent said the same thing. I have heard Muslims, little black and brown children, members of the LGBTQ community all say the same thing – and I have read stories where even the little children, little white children, have picked up the language of division and hate and are spewing it to their classmates.

Nothing, when it comes to race relations and tolerance and acceptance and affirmation, and egalitarianism and pluralism has changed. In spite of her boast of being the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” America is still a foundation ally racist country which espouses and supports hatred toward people of color and people of different religions.

It is very disheartening, but true.

I don’t know if that woman in the doctor’s office that day rolled her eyes at me because I sounded irritated or if because she felt her whiteness gave her the right to do so. I know I raged inside because of my now heightened distrust of the fundamental American spirit when it comes to people of color.

None of us feel safe …here. Radical Islamic terrorism are the battle-cry words of those in power, but for us who are black, brown, members of marginalized groups, Muslim…for us, “radical American Christian terrorism and hatred” are far more real to us. I and many like me are in a state of dis-ease, the same dis-ease that people of color have felt for literally hundreds of years.

Little has changed, in spite of our hope that it would.

A candid observation.

Defining Racism

I am at a loss.

In spite of the rhetoric of president-elect Donald Trump, which reeked of racism and sexism, Trump and his surrogates insist he is not a racist.

Neither, they say, is Stephen K. Bannon, who served as candidate Trump’s campaign chairman and who ran, Breitbart News, the platform for what is called the “alt-right.” The alt-right adheres to the belief that the United States is supposed to be a white man’s country.” Richard Spencer, leader of the alt-right movement, said as late as last Saturday that the alt-right is a “white identity movement.”

Spencer said that many people who voted for Trump will not admit that at its core, the support for the president-elect is mired in identity politics. In a recent article, Spencer said, “White identity is at the core of both the alt-right movement and the Trump movement, even if most voters for Mr. Trump “aren’t willing to articulate it as such.”(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/alt-right-salutes-donald-trump.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0)

A cry of protest, “we want to take our country back” has been loud and persistent ever since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and again in 2012. Many heard that statement as dog-whistle language, putting out the message that people of color had gotten out of their place. The country was becoming “too brown,” and the ascendancy of Obama, a black man, to the White House, was the last straw. The Tea Party was formed, many believed, not merely as a backlash against the passage of the Affordable Care Act, but against the election of Obama, and as a protest against establishment politics which had allowed the situation to develop.

At the heart of the backlash that erupted after Obama’s election was racial identity politics. In private circles, white people would admit it; I know it because enough of my white friends have said the same. But in public, whites – in politics and out – have insisted they are not racist, despite supporting a political movement which is based, it seems, in the belief that America’s whites have been marginalized and disrespected.

So, what is racism, exactly? One woman in an interview on NPR last week said, “this word racism is used so much that it’s losing its effectiveness.” Other white people have outright laughed even as they have totally rejected the notion that they are racist.

It seems that people are confused. I have heard white people declare they are not racist because they do not use the “n” word and do not wear white sheets. They have black friends …and they voted for Barack Obama. That ought to be proof, they say.

They deny that there is such a thing as institutional racism, implemented and supported by the power structure – which in this case is based in white supremacy – in determination to maintain its power. They deny that people of color and of different religions have been used to bolster the economic and political power of the white ruling class.

They deny that voter suppression has been a part of American history from the beginning. Black people have been seen as being “a problem,” as W.E.B. DuBois once wrote, and every effort has been made down through the years to keep blacks from gaining too much of a political presence.

That’s not opinion. That’s historical fact.

Donald Trump’s followers have been openly racist, many of them, in their language and attitudes toward people of color. Indeed, Mr. Trump’s history reveals that he has been less than supportive of black people in this nation.

But he’s not racist. Right?

I need someone to tell me, explain to me, what the white definition of “racist” and “racism” is. If we are not seeing racism walking this land now, then what is it we are seeing? When Donald Trump stood up and warned his followers, for example, to “watch the voting in “certain areas” because, he said, “we all know” that voter fraud goes on in these areas, what was he saying? I think we all know …but nobody wants to say it. If implying that in areas where a large number of minorities vote is automatically prone to have voter fraud is not racist, then what is it?

People get immediately defensive if called racist, and yet, the speech and actions of so many people say that they believe in the concept of white superiority. Their speech and actions say that they want their country “back,” back to a day and time where white supremacy ruled unfettered, not having to worry about so many people of color in this, the country that many believe was and is supposed to be for white people.

There is a need for reconciliation between the races in this country – most specifically between white people and native Americans and white people and people of African descent. But reconciliation and therefore the “healing” that everyone is talking about is and will be impossible unless and until we come to a consensus of what racism is. White people deny not only that they are racist but that racism as an entity even exists anymore.

That is a problem …and it also is not true.

Ask Richard Spencer and participants in the alt-right movement, and then go to a respectable gathering of establishment white people and ask the same question. Over a glass of wine, the educated and uneducated alike will admit what few will admit publicly – that of course, most of what is going on is evidence of the racism which still runs rampant in this country.

A candid observation…

Make America “Great” Again!

The battle cry for Donald Trump is that he will “make America great again.” He will get the jobs back, he will defeat ISIS, he will build that wall and keep all the illegal Mexican immigrants out, even as he deports literally millions of Muslims from this country.

He will take us back, back to the time when, he says, America was truly great.

When was that? What made America great and for whom was it great?

America may have been “great” when Founding Fathers crafted the concept of democracy, using and relying on the words “all men are created equal and are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights,” which included “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

But from the time of the crafting of the Constitution, it was clear that those words were woefully mythic in nature. The Founding Fathers never intended for some people to be free, to be considered equal, or in the case of African-Americans, to even be considered full human beings.

Nearly every endeavor engaged in by those who “made America great” involved the subjugation, oppression and discrimination against people who were not white and male. Indigenous Americans were killed off; that is called genocide. White women were considered second class citizens, prizes to be used for the sexual fulfillment of their men and to be used as an excuse to indiscriminately lynch black men.

Black people were, simply, the backbone upon which the local and global economy was built. They were objects to be used, traded, and ultimately discarded.

So, given that reality, when was America great? Or, maybe the better question is, “what” does “great” mean? What is the definition that Trump and his followers are using?

At one of his rallies, Trump ordered a protester out, saying, “remember how it used to be,” and going on to explain people who “caused trouble” were often handled. (http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-tells-crowd-to-knock-the-crap-out-of-protesters-offers-to-pay-legal-fees/ ) Wild West” mentality, a man was considered tough by the way he handled his enemies, real or perceived. If he had to take someone out, then so be it. “In the good old days,” Trump mused at one of his rallies, “this didn’t happen because they used to treat them very, very rough. (http://mashable.com/2016/03/12/trump-rally-incite-violence/#ytvHzFqipiqh)

He is right. In the “good old days,” black people could be and were lynched at worst, or at least badly beaten, for merely being accused of a “crime,” which could be something as petty as being out at the wrong time of night. In those “good old days,” African Americans returning from battle in World Wars I and II were treated like common criminals, often being beaten by whites while still in uniform. Brutal, barbaric lynchings of blacks were carried out by white people as a matter of course, increasing in the time period after Reconstruction, with white perpetrators never having to worry about being held accountable, and with white law enforcement officers often part of the lynch mobs.

In spite of the US Constitution saying that every American citizen had a right to a trial by a “jury of his peers,” black people were almost always tried by all-white juries – which almost always convicted them. After slavery was abolished (except for people who had been convicted of a crime, per the 13th Amendment), white people and white systems sought to criminalize as many black people as possible, via the Convict Leasing program, which kept blacks virtually enslaved for the duration of their lives.

And so I ask again, when was America so great, and for whom was it great?

Trump knows what he is thinking. His definition of a great America is a time when people did not have to care about, worry about, what black people and brown people and Muslims and Mexicans needed. The great America was a place where women were objectified and used at the discretion of sexually and physically abusive men. “Great America” is a time when white people could enjoy their whiteness basically undisturbed.

That America is long gone; the demographics of this nation have shifted too much. Women have gained too many rights. A way has been made for “the marginalized.” Jobs have been outsourced by business moguls like Trump so that they can realize the greatest profits possible with as little output of capital as possible. “Great America” is now, as Fareed Zakaria says, “post America.” That idea is scary to everyone, not just white people.

But Trump is seeking the triumph of white male supremacy in an era where the resistance against it is behemoth. Trump is calling the troops for a fight that has been in the losing lane for years. The question is, if Trump wins, and those who want “Great America” back as it was, and it doesn’t come – which it most probably will not – what will they do?

What will America do?

America the beautiful is now America the embattled. Not even Trump can change the course of history that has been in place for generations.

A candid observation …