Pull the Lever…
The racial slot machine Donald Trump has used, since he trundled down an escalator in the late Spring of 2015, reached its’ newest low yesterday. Starting in the late 1880s through the 1960s, when black lives were deemed even worth counting, over 4,700 lynchings took place in the United States. Of that number, 3/4 were black men, women and yes children. Despite the GOP's [Newt Gingrich] efforts to equally spread the atrocity of lynching to Italians, in an effort to justify Trump’s latest racist meandering, lynching in this country is most identified as a humiliating, murderous, retaliatory action against its black population. Criminality was not required, just being black made you eligible.
“The story here is not the word, it’s the conduct of the Democrats in the House. If the Republicans were doing this, you’d be OK with calling it a political lynching because that’s literally what it is,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Graham hitched his wagon to Donald’s anti-impeachment buckboard and willingly brought an extra rope. If that statement seems harsh, it pales in comparison to the severe pain of the survivors of the reported 147 black people lynched in Graham’s state of South Carolina. Sometime in the next 24 hours, I will hear about the Party of Lincoln and the Democratic plantations in sprawling urban cities as a defense; Hiya’ doing Fox News?
On a day when Vladimir Putin stood next to President Erdogan of Turkey and formerly waved a fond goodbye to America troops on the Syrian border, who are following the orders of Donald Trump’s official cut and run strategy, his use of racial animus to distract the American people, kicked into gear. Someone asked me today if the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau’s reelection upset me? If you remember, photos of Trudeau in blackface emerged during his campaign. That immediately made me think of why I was willing to forgive one and not the other. When someone accuses a Democrat of being a racist I wait to hear if it is true, when someone accuses a Republican of being a racist I wait for proof he or she is not. Trudeau apologized, for what it is worth, but he made the effort, Trump looked for an ally and Gingrich brought scissors to cut bigger eye holes in the hood.
What should not be overlooked is the reaction of Graham’s Senate mate Tim Scott. Scott is the only black Republican in the Senate and in his twisted turn of phrase he said, “The impeachment process is the closest thing of (sic) a political death row trial, so I get his absolute rejection of the process,” Scott told reporters. “I wouldn’t use the word ‘lynching.” Senator Scott, Mr. Trump is not a victim of a misstatement or faux pas, he is a racist and this was not accidental language.
He leads the band with a drumbeat of racism thumping just beneath the surface, banging out insults like Mexican are rapists and criminals, black NFL players are SOBs, and African and Caribbean countries are Sh*tholes. Mr. Scott, Get Out, you have a lot to lose.
Vote in 2020 for Change.
