- I must admit when I first read “Thoughts on Color”, I thought it was frivolous and reaching to make a point. How foolish to put racism into the color one chooses to wear or the color of the car one chooses to drive. Then I saw Donald Trump on his trip yesterday to #TheWall. I was struck dumb for a few seconds. If ever I have seen a “dog whistle” there it was. If ever I thought the wall was about other than racism, Trump’s appearance at the wall in his MAGA Cap brought those thoughts crashing down.
The red MAGA cap was gone. In its place was a white MAGA cap. As I researched, that is not the first time the MAGA Cap’s color has changed. I owe an apology to the person who wrote the “Thoughts on Color” article. It is a powerful way to look at many of the things happening in this society. They range from dog whistles on bigotry to bull horns, all camouflaged with the color one uses.
Given the fact that #TheWall goes back to the KKK, White Nationalists, White Supremacists as one of their projects – made of steel – that they did not complete and have tried through others to bring life back to again – a white MAGA hat conveys the message symbolically, the way Trump’s call to Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails was made. That didn’t take a genius to understand, neither does Trump’s white MAGA hat. His arrogance knows no bounds.
It has been clear from day one with Trump that the presidency for him is all about re-aligning the races and bringing us back as close as he can get to slavery. Trump, in the middle of treason with Russia, has to be concerned about the color of people in the U. S.
Russia is a white country – as are the others with which he is trying to align himself. Kim Jung Un may be basking in glory today, but he needs to realize he heads a nation of people of color and his involvement with Russia et al will be as a minority nation.
Trump changed the color of the U. S. cabinet and every place else in his administration he has eliminated, almost entirely, people of color and replaced them with people today we call “white”. Where he has reach and influence, we have moved from the beautiful flower garden of the Obama’s with its many colors and kinds of flowers to the Trump manufactured and very artificial white flower which looks as though it was produced in a factory producing the same product on its assembly lines day after day. A flower that was designed by a robot.
2. This Wall thing is not a dog whistle it is a bull horn. Go back into your history and look at the parallels. There was the Emancipation of slaves under Abraham Lincoln. That was followed by Reconstruction. After Reconstruction came the reaction which saw the KKK grow into an organization which could march down Pennsylvania Avenue in the 1920’s with tens of thousands of people in white sheets and pointed hats declaring white supremacy, making the country miserable and scared. Donald Trump’s father was one of the people in the white sheet with pointed hat walking with that group of klansmen. He was one the police arrested during the “march” which is one reason why we know Trump’s father was involved with the KKK.
One thing the KKK wanted was a wall on the southern border to keep out people of color – only they were called much nastier names by the klan. They wanted #TheWall to be made of steel. When Trump changed from cement to steel, I think you were right in your blog saying that was a clear message to the extreme bigots of this country. Isn’t that why racism has lasted so long? Because it is overtly and coverly supported by people like Trump with a long line of predecessors, many in Congress, who saw an opportunity and a way to gain power with as much cheating and illegalities as they could muster. All they had to do was to rise up on the backs of all of us – white, black, brown, tan, purple, pink. orange.
Today you can’t call someone the N word without getting into trouble, but you can push to build #theWall and you will be doing the same thing with an excuse and defense against people who will call you racist.
You can let the world know sexism is back and stronger than ever by making sure an alleged sexual assaulter winds up on the Supreme Court. You can have pictures go around the world of the U. S. Cabinet being made up of White Males and the Republicans in Congress being the same with only a 1% difference. That sends out a huge, direct message.
That is what #thewall is all about. Trump even changed the color of his MAGA hat, in case his followers didn’t catch on. That was a more specific signal.
The atmosphere in this country has been changing and it has become very tense with white males feeling their “superiority” threatened, as more people of color move into positions where once an unqualified white male would be hired rather than a more qualified person of color.
We had Mexico – where years ago its borders changed so parts of Mexico would become Texas – remember that piece of history?. The Mexicans who had lived for generations in the areas where the borders were redrawn didn’t leave. Their property and goods were taken and they were thrown out on the streets, but they stayed – what choice did they have – and the work then began by the “ruling class” in this country to make sure the ex-Mexicans were pushed as close to the bottom of the ladder as possible and kept there for generations. Got to keep people around to do the “dirty work”. With those “Texas” brown and black people threatening white supremacy, just by their numbers”, something had to be done.
To be sure some things were done even into the time of Hitler’s Germany. The Nazi prisoners of war were brought to Texas for their incarceration while the war was still going on. African American soldiers, on leave or visiting Texas, or working in Texas, were denied entrance into restaurants and other places because of their color supported by the separate and unequal laws. The Nazi prisoners were picked up on Sundays by the locals who took them to dinner at those same restaurants where the German prisoners of war were welcomed in their native language.
Much upheaval happened and the klan, among other groups, grew exponentially. They could never quite keep those ex-Mexicans down – although they made their lives a living hell most of the time. When you are next in Texas, think of this history as you look around at the substantial Mexican culture you see all around. That culture didn’t pop up as Mexicans came into the United States over the past couple generations, that has been there for quite a few years.
And now along comes Trump. In this time after our modern day equivalent of Reconstruction as Trump and his minions do their job of deconstructing and trying to turn as negative as possible the accomplishments of the Obama Administration, they have reached back into the history of one of our most racist times and come up with #theWall. That unfinished piece of White Nationalism, which they were not able to achieve before they were diminished.
Trump has brought back as much bigotry as he could possibly muster and when folks talk about his “base” they never quite talk about what that means. That means, for those of us who are a little obtuse and did not live that history, Trump’s base means the most bigoted people in this society gravitate to him and his administration because it means a little more time hanging onto their claimed white supremacy and a letting loose of their evil to make life as miserable as possible for the people of color amongst us. Let me note here that this also includes some few lost souls who are not white, but are overwhelmingly lazy, jealous, believers in their own inferiority and more. Even the KKK had those people of color, especially of African descent, who attached to their organization.
Amongst the other things he has done, Trump has certainly done an amazing job of bringing back the modern day equivalent to the Supreme Court which kept Plessy v Ferguson around for generations and guarded against anything that looked like it might facilitate a break in the extreme bigotry in which this country has been gripped almost from its beginnings. The Plessy v Ferguson racial apartheid ruling stayed in this country kept there by the U. S. Supreme Court because of the political beliefs of those on the Court for over 50 years. Isn’t that why Conservatives are so adamant about accepting anything Trump does if he appoints the” right people” to the Court? Look at the straight jacket in which the U. S. Supreme Court kept this country because of its own racism and look at how many years and how many attempts were made unsuccessfully to bring about a change. Thurgood Marshall and those who served with him are justifiably celebrated as “heroes”.
To get the Democrats to contribute to #TheWall would be a huge step forward for Trump’s connection to his followers. It would fulfill one of their great needs. That is why his advisers are saying if he caves on this he is finished politically.
Hopefully, something decent gets into his brain which moves him into joining the forces of good instead of the evil to which he has apparently irrevocably attached himself. It has brought him a future, not of hundreds of millions of dollars, but of total disgrace. How much better to stop lying and start living a decent, respectable, God filled life. He certainly isn’t even close to that today. He is moving in the other direction sending his Secretary of State to the Middle East to attempt to dismantle Obama’s foreign policy and turn it into something ugly. What that has actually managed to do is to remind people of Khashoggi and just how low the Trump administration has sunk. His activities in trying to pull down Obama has reminded everyone that Trump’s foreign policy includes condoning and giving cover to murderers who do gruesome things in addition to all of the rest – the adultery, the lying, the cheating, the stealing, the setting up a criminal enterprise in the White House and so much more.
How long is this going on? Will we find relief soon or will this carry on for years to come? Will we be free of bigotry when Trump moves off stage? Or will something or someone else replace him to keep the U S. bigotry within its borders simmering and waiting for another chance to explode? Will the narrative of the United States contain long chapters of the goodness we have wrought and the road we have taken to walk with others to a better life? Or will we forever replicate a government which leads us down the ugly path finally to perdition.
3. Bar (r) the fixer. It is time – actually past the time – for Congress to put on its “big boy pants” and refuse to clear Barr for Attorney General.
As Trump brings ever more disgrace to these United States and moves us back into a morass from which it will take generations to extricate ourselves, we are also seeing and learning about the sins of those who went before and how they are coming home to be repeated.
Barr was a part of the Reagan/Bush disgrace. Some say he was one of the architects who made sure all of the sins of the Reagan and Bush administrations were not revealed to the voting public.
He was a “cover up” artist and he is now being pushed for Attorney General to do the same thing under Trump. Do we see the invisible hand of Bush, Jr. in this? There can be no equivocating as to why Bar (r) the Fixer was nominated. He volunteered for the job of “cover-up artist” and the only thing he will actually do is denigrate the name and reputation of George H. W. Bush. A lot of what happened in the Bush administration as he became president after Reagan has flown under the radar. Bush the Sr. got away with his reputation intact because of the machinations of Barr. With the ascendancy of Barr to Attorney General in this atmosphere and environment, that will no longer be true. Already the stories have started to uncover and dig up what would have been exposed to the Americana voting public and then to the world, but for Barr.
Are we going to allow that to happen again? Thanks to the Bush family we now have a Supreme Court with TWO sexual deviants. One an abuser and one an alleged assaulter. What Bush started Trump is finishing. The alleged sexual assaulter was started on his career which brought him to the Supreme Court by the Bush family. George Sr. and Jr. The alleged sexual abuser was moved into his career as a Supreme Court Justice totally by Bush, Sr. who in the pictures of them together with members of their respective families, Bush Sr. seems very proud to have moved up into society an African American man who could fit into the negative stereotype of African American men and carry that negative stereotype several degrees uglier and further into this society.
Barr brings the Bush family several steps down and negate their reputations. He is the latest star in the – from Bush to Trump saga. It is time for all of this to be acknowledged and stopped. This society has carried a heavy weight for most of its life. It is time for that burden to be lifted, not for more stones to be put on the backs of those carrying this society forward.
It is time for us to move out of the muck, the filth, the dirt we have walked through and take a hot shower to wash off the muck so we can keep on moving forward with respect for ourselves and to gain some of the world’s respect. It is time for us to treat all parts of the world as equals, not as people to whom we respond with noblesse oblige as we have in the past. Trump has been so outrageous and full of evil that he has presented us with an imperative – “shake off the dirt from your feet” and walk into the beautiful sunlight over lush grassy grounds.
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