The KKK president.

    I am not sure what all the fuss is about this Michael Wolff book about Mr. trump.

I mean let's face it, everything in the book only confirms what those of us with half of a brain already knew about the man.

Still, what  I found most fascinating was the revelation about his views when it comes to the Klan.
(We already know how the Klan feels about him.)

"After a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Donald Trump privately rationalized why someone would join the KKK, suggesting the racist group doesn’t believe what it used to, a book published this week with insider details on the Trump White House claims.

In Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, author Michael Wolff wrote that when Trump finally addressed the August 2017 rally—saying “racism is evil” and that the KKK and other groups that cause violence around it “are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans”—it was “a reluctant mini-grovel,” and the president “was clearly reading forced lines.” 

After his KKK remarks, Trump got on Marine One and spewed his actual beliefs while traveling.

Trending: Diet Coke Is The Secret To Long Life, Centenarian Claims

"Privately, he kept trying to rationalize why someone would be a member of the KKK—that is, they might not actually believe what the KKK believed, and the KKK probably does not believe what it used to believe," Wolff wrote. "And, anyway, who really knows what the KKK believes now? In fact, he said, his own father was accused of being involved with the KKK—not true. (In fact, yes, true.)."As Wolff notes, Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was arrested after a KKK riot in Queens, New York, in 1927." [Source]

"There are good people on both sides'", says the president. 

Now we know why he feels this way. 

*Pic from dailymail.co.uk.

The death of democracy.

Did the greatest democracy on earth die with the election of Donald trump?

The following article might help with some answers to that question.

The Field Negro education series continues.

 "It’s been one year since the election of Donald Trump as president and, despite his questionable commitment to the country’s political traditions, American democracy is still standing. Some of Trump’s most dangerous policies have been stopped by the judiciary. Others have not made it through Congress. Special counsel Robert Mueller is closing in on the dangerous liaisons between the Trump campaign and Russia (and perhaps much more). The president’s approval rating has hit a dismal 38 percent, and Democrats scored a landslide in Virginia’s elections last week.

Is it time to rejoice in the strength of American institutions? That would be underestimating the threat on the horizon and overestimating the strength of U.S. institutions. There are two complementary prongs to Trump’s onslaught on American democracy, and both are still clear and present threats.

The first is a systematic attack on democratic political norms.

Democracy is supported by a complex set of political norms that encourage restraint and compromise from the main political actors. These norms are the lifeblood of democratic institutions because no constitution can specify a complete recipe for resolving conflicts in the disparate situations in which politicians, political parties, and other powerful actors will find themselves. Even when certain rules are specified, they need to be interpreted and are often vulnerable to abuse. Democratic political norms fill in this vacuum. They encourage compromise and rule out actions that enable those who currently hold power from impairing rivals. Without these norms, those in office will find ways to abuse their power, undermining the workings of democratic institutions.

The recent history of Argentine democracy illustrates the disastrous consequences of the violation of such norms. Argentina’s famous strongman Juan Perón was elected as president in 1946, after his stint as minister of labor in the former military regime. One of his first acts was to replace three Supreme Court justices with his cronies. Thereafter, Argentina’s Supreme Court ceased to be viewed as a check on presidential power, and it became a new normal for every president, even those who came to power via democratic elections, to oust justices and replace them with loyalists.

Of course, the political norms of democratic compromise in the United States were seriously strained even before Trump’s presidency, as illustrated, for example, by systematic gerrymandering to lock in the domination of the party currently controlling a state’s legislature or by the unwillingness of Senate Republicans to even consider former President Barack Obama’s final nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland. But Trump’s demonization of opposition and media, blurring of lines between personal and presidential, removal of all types of auditing and other control mechanisms on the administration, and legitimization of uncompromising, or even hateful, views via his implicit support for far-right protesters in Charlottesville and his pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio have set new lows not just by U.S. but by any international standards.
Political norms that are the bulwark of our democracy cannot be easily repaired once damaged, even if Trump’s most dangerous policies are stopped. Nor can white supremacist, anti-immigrant, and nativist rhetoric be swiftly sidelined once condoned by the U.S. president.

The second prong of the Trump onslaught is an attempt to weaken institutions so as to elevate the personal power of a would-be autocrat. The recent history of democratic institutions succumbing to such attacks in Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela illustrate that the takeover of democratic institutions is often a slow, gradual process. First comes the silencing of internal opposition within the party or the political movement of the strongmen. Then, there is the slow process of neutralizing the judiciary, followed by a systematic, if uneven, sidelining of independent civil service. All throughout, the media and other civil society organizations are increasingly muzzled and silenced by threats, co-option, and smearing.

Of course, if democratic institutions are truly strong and alert against threats, these attacks can be resisted. But the performance of U.S. checks and balances so far gives no comfort.

The last several months have shown clearly that Congress, so long as it remains under the control of Republicans, will provide none of the checks on the president’s power that are often presumed. On the contrary, the fact that only senators not seeking re-election have been able to speak against Trump underscores the near-complete capitulation of the Republican Party. And it is set to get worse as Republican lawmakers are witnessing how the small but highly motivated and mobilized minority of Americans devoted to Trump will bombard them with tweets, messages, or even threats if they so much as disagree with the president.

Several judges stood firm against Trump’s travel ban for several Muslim-majority countries. But in the next three years, Trump, through appointment, can completely change the balance of the judiciary, especially for cases that make it up to the Supreme Court, where he may have an opportunity to appoint several more justices. Banking on the judiciary to defend democracy would be foolhardy indeed.

The growing chorus of Trump supporters demanding the termination of Mueller’s investigation, fully anticipating that Republicans in Congress would not stand in the way, should dispel any notion that the judiciary can single-handedly defend American institutions.

It is heartening to see how several states and cities have stood for the rights of immigrants and taken actions for protecting the environment, even as the Environmental Protection Agency has turned into an anti-environment agency under Administrator Scott Pruitt. But states can neither stop the buckling of federal institutions under the president’s onslaught nor counter the collapse of political norms undergirding American democracy.

America’s most effective safeguards against Donald J. Trump so far are not to be found in Congress, the judiciary, or the states, but in the media and in civil society.

Many media outlets, led by the Washington Post and the New York Times, have enthusiastically embraced their critical role in these turbulent times and have spearheaded the defense of our democracy, keeping the spotlight on the president’s campaign against U.S. institutions and his and his family’s questionable business deals. But can we be sure that Trump’s unremitting attacks on the New York Times, CNN, and other critical outlets won’t work? It is true that when another would-be autocrat, Argentina’s previous president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, tried to browbeat her country’s opposition media group Clarín, it did not succeed. But that’s small comfort. Independent newspapers did at first stand up to Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan too, but they got worn down slowly by threats, financial pressure, and relentless smear campaigns by other media blindly loyal to these strongmen. Even if the tradition of fierce, investigative and sometime rambunctious journalism in the United States gives us some hope, we cannot bank on these media outlets to defend our democracy in this age of weaponized fake news.

The people who get their voice from democratic political institutions are — have to be — their last line of defense. The American people have risen up to this challenge. Their mobilization against the policies and the values of Trump’s administration are the true silver lining of the dark clouds of today. It is this mobilization that has paved the way to the defeat of the president’s ban on citizens of several majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States, that made it impossible for even Republican congressmen to repeal Obamacare, and that has egged on Democrats to stand firm against the president. But history is full of examples where such mobilization peters out, especially when faced with soft (and even worse, hard) repression, or when it runs out of steam or gives way to internal squabbles (witness the emergence of Democratic litmus tests, already starting to divide the opposition).

So the slow battle between America’s democratic institutions and its 45th president is set to continue. But even more worryingly, there are the wild cards.

Putin’s subversion of Russian institutions would have been much harder without the Chechen War and the alleged Chechen attack on four apartment blocks in Russia in 1999. The suspension of the remaining constitutional checks on Turkish President Erdogan would have been all but impossible without the intensification of the war between Turkish security forces and the Kurdish rebels. What would happen if we witnessed a series of foreign terrorist attacks on U.S. soil? Or if war broke out against North Korea?

It’s too soon to rejoice, and too dangerous to be complacent. We are still the last defense." [Source]

The "unmasking".

The Field Negro education series continues: 

"Trump's White Supremacist DNA On Display Again

by Neil H. Buchanan

Who could have predicted that an unhinged attack on professional athletes would be Donald Trump's final unmasking as a full-on racist?  After everything that he has done and said -- not merely since he announced his candidacy in 2015 but throughout his life -- Trump finally found a way to remove the last shreds of doubt about his bigotry.

This is a good occasion to revisit a point that I made during last year's election campaign, which is that Trump's supposed devotion to America and our values becomes inoperative when he has a chance to be a white supremacist.  When he has a choice, Trump goes with the racist approach, not the American one.

For those who might have been on vacation (or living under a rock) for the past week, a quick summary of Trump's latest outburst might be helpful.

In a bizarre sequence of events, Trump spent last weekend trying to get back in the good graces of his white supremacist base.  The people who were infuriated by Trump's willingness to work with non-bigots to allow "dreamers" to stay in the country were hopping mad, and Trump needed to exploit a quick-and-easy cultural grievance that combined just the right blend of sophistry and racism.

Looking for nonwhites to vilify, Trump decided to attack African-American sports stars, in particular Colin Kaepernick, an involuntarily unemployed football player who last year began silently protesting America's systemic racism by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem at the beginning of NFL games.

The target was not just Kaepernick and other football players, however, as Trump quickly attacked large numbers of black basketball and baseball players, scolding them for supposedly disrespecting America even though our country had allowed them to become rich.  He might as well have complained that they were being "uppity."

For those who might have missed the point, Trump also made sure to say that these young black men were attacking our "heritage," which is the code word that Trump and other white supremacists use to defend things like Confederate statues and other relics of the Jim Crow era.

And if that was not enough, Trump lauded NASCAR for being pro-American, and he then tried to pull hockey into the mix by inviting the NHL champion Pittsburgh Penguins (whose roster actually happens to be Canadian- and Russian-heavy, but no matter) to the White House.  Even in accepting the invitation, the Penguins tried to make it clear that they are uncomfortable being associated with Trump.

So, we now know that football, basketball, and baseball are un-American, whereas auto racing and hockey are patriotic.  No subtlety there.  Why not just go for every other stereotype, waxing poetic about mayonnaise on white bread, segregated lunch counters, and Pat Boone records?

The final proof that this is all about race, of course, was when Trump tweeted that it is not about race.  Even Trump realized that he had to pretend it was about "respect for America," or his twisted version of it.  As NeverTrump conservative Peter Wehner quickly responded: "Of course it’s about race."

Kaepernick is a particularly helpful test case, because he is not one of the supposed "thugs" that Trump and other racists like to talk about as a way to dismiss African-Americans' complaints about injustice.  Kaepernick has a very public profile as a devout Christian, and he justifies his protest (including the act of kneeling) in the explicitly religious terms that Trump's base typically loves.

Kaepernick is understandably appalled that America treats black lives so cavalierly.  Trump obviously does not care about that at all.  When Kaepernick says, "America is doing something wrong, and we can and should do better," he is in an odd way a more articulate version of Trump, who constantly disparages this country and its institutions while claiming that he alone knows how to do better.

Yet it is Kaepernick, not Trump, who is deemed not to love America.  "America, love it or leave it" evidently applies only to those whose criticisms white people do not want to hear.

It is amazing that Trump's DNA-level racism was still not clear to some people after Charlottesville, and I have no doubt that some people will continue to claim that Trump is doing nothing wrong now.  Yet there is something about Trump's attack on black athletes that has clarified the issue for many people in ways that his defense of some "fine people" marching with neo-Nazis and Klansmen did not.

There are, moreover, other "tells" in Trump's repertoire of racism.  When the surprising Brexit vote hit the news in the Spring of 2016, Trump was pleased.  As I noted in a column at the time, however, there was absolutely no reason for an avowed America Firster to care about that vote at all:

"One group of non-Americans voted to harm themselves, based on unfounded fears about other groups of non-Americans who have moved into a country that is not the United States."

What if we were to put something like the Brexit vote anywhere else, not with white (nominally Christian) distant cousins of people like Trump voting to kick out nonwhite newcomers but with, say, one country in South America splitting along some nonracial dimension?

Would Trump care?  No, but in the UK it was all about white people "taking back their country" from the hordes of illegitimate outsiders.  Just as he does not mind using white Canadian and Russian hockey players as props for his "no black athletes at the White House" reception, Trump shows that skin color matters more to him than nationality.

As I further argued last year, Trump's embrace of Brexit was an especially clarifying moment, because Trump indirectly acknowledged that Brexit would be bad for U.S. workers.  That is, he noted that the British pound would probably weaken, which would be good for tourism to the UK and thus Trump's golf courses.

But that change in exchange rates also necessarily means that American goods will be less competitive, hurting especially the current and former manufacturing workers who have rallied behind Trump.  The expression of racist resentment by whites in Britain was more important to Trump than helping American workers (of all races).

As I was thinking overnight about what I would write in this column, I recalled that I had revisited the Brexit issue in a column last August, where I pointed out that Trump had asked one of Brexit's leaders, Nigel Farage, to speak for him at a rally in Mississippi.  Farage was the perfect white supremacist spokesman, and he was obviously not one who puts America First.

And sure enough, when I opened my news feed this morning, I saw that Farage is now campaigning in Alabama for the crazier Republican in the Senate primary, the ousted Supreme Court justice Roy Moore, who has been embraced by the racist, nativist right.

On the surface, this is a bit of a puzzle, because Trump has formally endorsed Moore's opponent, Luther Strange, who was appointed to the Senate when Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III became Trump's Attorney General.  This would suggest that Trump is backing the candidate who is not a white supremacist (or is at least less of one), but that would be misleading.

Trump blurted out his initial attack on Kaepernick and black athletes, in fact, when Trump was speaking at a rally for Strange.  Trump all but said there that he preferred Moore to Strange, but he was being forced to mouth support for the appointed incumbent.  Given that so many of Trump's core supporters in Alabama are Moore supporters, Trump was doing everything possible to say, "Hey, I'm still one of you.  Let's unite again behind our shared hatred of black people!"

Farage's presence, then, can be seen not as a repudiation of Trump but as a matter of surrogacy.  For complicated reasons, Trump cannot currently admit that he prefers the more extreme of the two candidates, but his British mouthpiece is there to tell everyone what white supremacists on both sides of the Pond know: Moore is Trump's kind of guy.

In the end, this strange interlude will be best remembered for Trump's decision to use race once again to divide the country, elevating what had been a minor issue into a major racial clash.  That so much of the country -- even the morally backward NFL leadership and many team owners -- rejected Trump's provocations is a good thing, of course.

We could, therefore, come out of this with a double win.  Trump has proved once again that he cares more about white supremacy than anything else, convincing ever more people to stop pretending that he is redeemable.  And large numbers of people -- even his friends -- told Trump that he is wrong.  Not a bad week." [Source] 

*Pic from ibtimes.co.uk.com

The myth of "post-racialism".

"What the hell do you have to lose?"

That's what Donald trump told African Americans when he was trolling us for our votes in the last presidential elections.

Well, here we are nine months into his presidency, and already his question has been answered: It seems that we have quite a lot to lose with a Donald trump presidency.

Jamelle Bouie certainly things so.

"Most Americans believe active discrimination is a declining concern. They believe that despite the challenges our society currently faces, we are at least past the era of outright and explicit exclusion. The case for this belief rests on the fact that black Americans and other nonwhites have seen increased opportunities for professional advancement since the civil rights movement, as well as a growing prominence in American life. Our culture has also by now generally accepted inclusive principles. It helps, too, that this belief fits our national narrative of progress: our broad sense that, despite lingering conflicts and resentments, the present is a more just and humane place than the past and that the future shows the same promise.

 

But it isn’t true. Things may actually be getting worse, and not just in the casual interactions that comprise daily existence. There is hard evidence that explicit racial discrimination remains a major part of American life in the early 21^st century.
 

Just look at the startling results of a recent meta-analysis of available research into job market discrimination that found “no change in the level of hiring discrimination against African Americans over the past 25 years.” After identifying all existing field experiments (published or unpublished) on labor market discrimination in the U.S, the researchers narrowed their field of inquiry to 24 studies containing 30 different estimates of discrimination against blacks and Latinos since 1989—a data set representing tens of thousands of applications submitted for tens of thousands of jobs. In analyzing that data, what they found was stasis. Throughout the period, whites received an average 36 percent more job callbacks than blacks, and 24 percent more than Latinos. “Contrary to widespread assumptions about the declining significance of race, the magnitude and consistency of discrimination we observe over time is a sobering counterpoint,” they conclude, while offering the caveat and possibility that discrimination diminished in the two decades prior to 1989. If true, that still leaves the United States with pervasive discrimination in hiring, a phenomenon that may explain part of the racial employment gap, which leaves black Americans with double the unemployment of white Americans, in good times and bad.

How do we square this reality of discrimination with the acceptance of racially egalitarian views among white Americans? The short answer is that there’s a disconnect. Many white Americans express opposition to the most hateful forms of racism while holding prejudiced views and facilitating racist behavior. A new Reuters-Ipsos poll, taken in the aftermath of August’s violent neo-Nazi protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, illustrates this paradox, showing both wide condemnation of white supremacists and substantial support for white nationalist slogans. Although 89 percent of respondents agreed that “all races should be treated equally”—and 70 percent agreed that “all races are equal”—35 percent of whites said that America must “protect and preserve its White European Heritage” and 47 percent agreed that “white people are currently under attack in this country.”

It’s possible this disconnect stems from the profound segregation that still shapes and defines life in the United States. Even if they live in diverse metropolitan areas, most white Americans still live in largely white neighborhoods and suburbs (some white by circumstance, others by policy, intimidation, and worse), send their children to white schools, and attend white churches. Their actual contact with nonwhites is minimal and circumscribed, an environment that can inculcate discriminatory beliefs, habits of mind, and behaviors, even as they endorse America’s egalitarian civic creed.

More pressing than the sociology of white racism, however, is its practical effects: a widening wealth gap between blacks and whites. Between 1983 and 2013, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, the wealth of the median black household declined 75 percent (from $6,800 to $1,700), and the median Latino household declined 50 percent (from $4,000 to $2,000). At the same time, wealth for the median white household increased 14 percent from $102,000 to $116,800. It’s an almost unbelievable contrast, and by 2020, black and Latino households are projected to lose even more wealth: 18 percent for the former, 12 percent for the latter. After those declines, the median white household will own 86 times more wealth than its black counterpart, and 68 times more wealth than its Latino one. This isn’t a wealth gap—it’s a wealth chasm.

If nothing is done, that chasm will grow larger. By 2024, “the continued rise in racial wealth inequality between median black, Latino and white households is projected to lead White households to own 99 and 75 times more wealth than their black and Latino counterparts, respectively.” Even black incomes are stagnant and declining: The median black household makes substantially less today than it did in 2000. And if the wealth gap is left unaddressed, then by 2053, median household wealth for whites will grow to $137,000, while that for blacks will hit zero.

The myth of “post-racialism” has by now largely been dispelled, in part because of movements like Black Lives Matter—as well as the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. And there seems to be a growing awareness that “colorblindness” does more to entrench racial disadvantage than rectify it. Thankfully, there are policies that can begin to address this profound racial wealth gap. But we have yet to have any kind of discussion about it, even as we barrel toward a world where most blacks and Latinos live on the edge of immiseration. The racial wealth gap isn’t yet a national priority. It needs to be." [Source]

Unfortunately, Jamelle, we will have to wait at least four more years for that to happen.

 

Well that didn't take long.

  I saw some reruns of trump's rally in Phoenix last night. So much for trying to unify the country.

The man literally told the crowd that we are losing our culture and that he would rather build a wall to keep the Mexicans out than to keep our government running. To top it off, he even hinted that he might pardon the racist sheriff, Joe Arpaio.  

trump was unhinged and out of control, and at one point I honestly thought that he would start waiting for a laugh track after he completed every sentence. His new chief of staff, poor man, has to be wondering how he got himself into this mess.

trump, once again, made himself out to be the victim, and he flat out lied about what he said after the happenings in Charlottesville. In case you are keeping track that's 1,001 lies to the American people since taking office.  That, my friends, is a lot of lies. Even for a politician seeking political office.
Imagine that, a woman died in the protest, and trump is still running around whining about what transpired like he is the true victim.

But even worse than the lies andred meat he was throwing to his (half-full) auditorium of "deplorables",  was the shameful way he calle the rancid d out the two senators from the state that he was standing in. It was bad enough calling out Jeff Flake, but calling out the other senator who is battling cancer ---and who some consider a war hero--- was beyond the pale. It fired up his crowd so much that one of his sick deplorables was calling for the death of the man.

Hillary Clinton leaked portions of her new book today, and in it she called trump a "creep" that made her skin "crawl".

Yo Hillary, welcome to the club.                                                                                                 

Thursday news.

America, I would like to remind you of a few things:

First, your president has still not visited Charlottesville, Virginia.

Second, he is planning another rally to stroke his ego in Arizona, where he is apparently planning to pardon a known racist and convicted criminal. (The mayor of Phoenix is asking him not to come.) You would think that he would head to Virginia first.

Third, there was a terror attack in Spain today, and the president of the United States tweeted a debunked urban legend from history in response to it.

Fourth, there are debates going on in this country now about confederate statues. (Where are all the statues for the abolitionist and the brave people who led slave revolts?) Believe it or not most Americans are cool with having them around. Personally, if it was up to me, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would be taken down from Mount Rushmore.

Fifth, How long will General Kelly last in the White House?

Finally, the fact that Mr. trump's lawyer felt it necessary to show us a collage of all of his black friends on twitter is telling. (See, some of his best friends are black,)


  





   

Profile in cowardice.

It's hilarious to me how some folks (see white people) are shocked at what they are seeing in Charlottesville, Virginia They are openly wonder how we could have come to this. "We have taken a step back when it comes to race relations." Or, "What happened ? We are a better country than this."

Ahhhm, no we are not.

Where have these people been for the past two years? Didn't they notice how the man who is sitting in the White House came to power? How can they watch Donald trump's rise over the past two years and not be convinced that racism is alive and well? I guess many of them were suckered into the phony narrative that all those trump voters were just disgruntled blue collar white folks who had lost their jobs. Some of them even believed that a lot of them were Obama voters at one time. Just like the pundits on television were telling them.  Obviously this is not the case.

Anyway, the alt-right came to UVA this weekend,  and after marching with torches on Friday night, they took to the streets Saturday. That's when things got ugly. Three people are dead after a domestic terrorist used his car as a weapon to kill an innocent protestor,  and two state troopers lost their lives when a police helicopter crashed on the way to the scene. 

As of my writing this post, the president has failed to condemn the white supremacist and his alt-right friends for their actions that brought terror to the streets of Charlottesville. Rather than forcefully and openly condemning them, he blamed "many sides" for the madness and mayhem that visited the sleepy college town of Charlottesville, Virginia.

But why would he condemn them? He needs them to even have a chance of winning again, and they have been his most loyal supporters.  It would have taken real courage to condemn, and our president is a coward. So that was not going to happen.  

We are all the mayor of Charlottesville tonight.

“Well, look at the campaign he ran. I mean, look at the intentional courting––both on the one hand of all these white supremacists, white nationalists, groups like that, anti-Semitic groups, and then look on the other hand––the repeated failure to condemn, denounce, silence, you know, put to bed all those different efforts just like we saw yesterday. This is not hard.”

He added, “There’s two words that need to be said over and over again. Domestic terrorism and white supremacy. That is exactly what we saw on display this weekend, and we just aren’t seeing leadership from the White House.”

*Pic from youtube.com