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]

A disguised Muslim ban goes wrong.

Herbie Hancock was recalling a story about the great Miles Davis when he just started playing in his band. Not wanting to play the wrong note, he asked Davis what he should play. According to Hancock the response was classic. Davis looked at him and said, "The piano motherfucker".

I suspect that if trump--- or someone in his administration---- were to ask someone how to be president, the simple answer would be, to stay with my metaphor,  just play the damn piano.

All these Executive Orders just to show his loyal followers that he is not Obama (even though he has followed some of Obama's word for word) is not working out so well.

Trump, in the first few days of his presidency, has been trying to  play every damn instrument in the band, and, instead of mastering just one, he has been making a mess of every instrument that he has touched.

The latest disaster for team trump, is his racist and possibly illegal ban on travelers from certain countries with populations that he considers a threat. It's actually a Muslim ban but he can't say it because that would be unconstitutional.

Needless to say that it has been an unmitigated disaster. 

I am not sure what made him think that this would be a good idea, although I think that moving the white supremacist in his inner circle to  his National Security Council might have had something to do with it.

Mr Bannon, I am sure, has his own ideas about who should be let into this country, and trust me, it has nothing to do with our safety. 

I have been watching trump's minions appear on television all day while they try to defend him, and needless to say that it has not been going well. This might be because it's hard to defend something that is morally indefensible.

The trump administration is doing what you would suspect is the next step in what could be a short march to totalitarianism. They are upset with the free press, and they want journalists fired if they disagree with him.  The above mentioned Bannon actually said that the press should keeps its mouth shut.

Through all this, Herr trump, (to stay with my analogy) should be working on his piano skills, but instead he was watching Finding Dory  and tweeting about World War III today, and that is not a very presidential thing to do when the country is going through a crisis.

"Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III."

No Führer, the person "looking to start World War III" might be you.

*Pic from huffingtonpost.com














 

"HAIL LEPAGE!"

      I saw Chris Christie making excuses for the racist knuckle -dragging governor from the state of Maine on television.

Christie actually had the audacity to declare that Governor Paul LePage is a "good man" who just said a bad thing. I am paraphrasing now, but basically he said that the governor apologized for it, and now it's time for us to all move on. 

Christie excused the man's racism and doltish behavior by saying that he was born poor and a had a very hard upbringing, as if that's an excuse. He wanted to know if we didn't all make statements like this from time to time.  

Sorry Chris, we can't move on; not just yet. The man is a governor and you are running to be president of the United States. Insulting an entire community with asinine stereotypes is not something you just apologize for (sort of) and  move on. (BTW, the real D-Money is white.) Sadly, if you are a bi-racial person living in the state of Maine, you are probably calling U-Haul as you read this. Your governor has just put a scarlet letter on you.

Chris Christie in his capacity as a presidential candidate, cannot just declare that it's alright to make such comments and that we should all move on from them. At some point Chris Christie has to cut his racist friend loose. He might not want to, but politics demands it. (I see you Rev. Wright.) 

I have to give it to the governor, though, he hit the holy racist grail with his comments: Black drug dealers sexually assaulting innocent white girls. Just wow!

Again, one of the sad aspects of this story, is that Chris Christie, a man who is trying to become the leader of the free world, found it necessary to defend this cretin. 

But we get it, Chris is trying hard to catch a man in the presidential primary who actually has white supremacist making robocalls for him.  Hey, it's tough keeping up with the racists these days. The bar has been set very high low.

But hey,  I am not alone with my outrage. 

"For anyone who truly loves Maine, it’s no longer just embarrassing to see this state’s once proud name reduced to so many national punch lines. It’s agonizing.

It’s also beyond counterproductive: The longer LePage portrays his state as a backwater of ignorance and intolerance, the less attractive Maine appears to the newcomers – of every age, religion and ethnicity – we so desperately need.

Instead, we get this endorsement from the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, described by the Southern Poverty Law center as one of the leading hate websites on the Internet: “Maine Governor Calls Out Black Drug-Dealers for Impregnating ‘Young White Girls’ … Excellent. Hail LePage!” [Source]

"Hail Christie, and Hail Trump.

*Pic from huffingtonpost.com

Losing their religion.

The Field Negro education series continues.

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. " ~Ephesians 6:5 ~


"Donald Mathews explicated the connection between white supremacist lynchings and the religious milieu that existed among whites in the South in his article “The Southern Rite of Human Sacrifice” (2000). He concluded his manuscript by writing, “The primary focus has been to suggest a connection between the South’s most dramatic act of brutality and the pervasive drama of salvation preached from pulpits throughout the region.”

The connections Mathews highlights are certainly intriguing and insightful, but whatever the connections between lynchings and white Southern religion, the primary aim of lynchings and other forms of anti-Black violence can be simplified. Lynchings were about reinforcing white economic power and social control over Black lives. Ida B. Wells, the most renowned anti-lynching activist during the height of the lynching era, explains in her autobiography (Wells 1970) that lynching was simply “[a]n excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized and ‘keep the nigger down.’” In other words, lynchings were conducted to stymie Black economic progress and to instill fear in affected Black communities.

Economic power and social control are also implicated as the rationale for white extra-legal violence in one of the most influential movie pictures in the early 1900s: The Birth of a Nation. Released in 1915, the film depicted the Klan redeeming the white South from the clutches of “Negro rule” (Blum 2007). A white Jesus appears at the end to bless the machinations of the Klan, which, at first glance, dovetails nicely with Mathews’s thesis. But the appearance of white Jesus is not for the purposes of sanctifying a lynching or accepting a blood sacrifice. Instead, the white Jesus appears in order to bless the rise of the Ku Klux Klan which has wrested control of the South away from the depicted predatory black beasts and placed them under the control and authority of white men (Hutchinson 1996).

Near the end of the film, the horse-riding Ku Klux Klan sweeps into town to save white families besieged by Black Union army veterans (portrayed by a combination of Black actors and white actors in blackface). Klan members align themselves on their horses in the fashion of a blockade in order to prevent Black men from voting (as women were not yet allowed to vote). By blocking Black men from voting, white Klan members were solidifying and securing white political power for future generations. When the white Jesus appears on the screen, it is a divine seal of approval for white power and control.

Whereas Mathews describes how religion in southern white society helps to contextualize and explain lynchings, it may be that the reverse is also true. Perhaps it is truer that lynchings helped reveal the real religious impulse of white lynchers. In his book The Cross and The Lynching Tree, James Cone elucidates the connection between lynching and racial power even further:

Lynching was the white community’s way of forcibly reminding blacks of their inferiority and powerlessness. To be black meant that whites could do anything to you and your people, and that neither you nor anyone else could do anything about it.

This is illuminated further in Edward Blum’s W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet, where Blum discusses “white supremacist theology” and highlights a phalanx of white racist authors, clergy, and novelists who fashioned racism into virtual articles of faith at the beginning of the 1900s. He notes:

They had tried to sanctify the segregation of African Americans and widespread racial violence by characterizing “Negroes” as soulless beasts. …whites crafted a variety of religious and theological rationales for structures of exploitation…. By 1900, white supremacist theology was firmly rooted in white American mainstream culture.

Hence, white supremacist theology was rendered even “crafted” to justify racial violence, domination, and exploitation as “lynchings became acts of Christian service, black men became devils incarnate, and white women became angels”' (Blum 2007). [More]

What do you think?

*Pic from bytheirstrangefruit.blogspot.com

"The oblivious, casual racism of modern conservatism"

The Field Negro education series continues with this timely article from salon.com.


"Sometimes racism isn’t about vicious bigotry and hatred towards those with different skin color than your own, let alone a willingness to walk into a church and massacre nine of those others because you think they’re “taking over your country.” Sometimes, racism is manifested in the subtle way a person can dismiss the lived experiences of those racial others as if they were nothing, utterly erasing those experiences, consigning them to the ashbin of history like so much irrelevant refuse.

In the last few days, since Dylann Roof’s terrorist rampage in Charleston, we’ve seen some of that on the part of those who steadfastly defend the confederate flag, which Roof dearly loved, from its critics. As the flag has come down in Alabama and is poised for removal from the statehouse grounds in South Carolina, its supporters have insisted that the flag is not a sign of racism, even if the government whose Army deployed it made clear that its only purposes at the time were the protection of slavery and white supremacy.

Those who defend the flag consider the black experience irrelevant, a trifle, hardly worthy of their concern. Who cares if the flag represented a government that sought to consign them to permanent servitude? Who cares if segregationists used that flag as a blatant symbol of racist defiance during the civil rights movement? Remembering the courageous heroics of one’s great-great-great-grandpappy Cooter by waving that flag or seeing it on public property is more important than black people’s lived experience of it. That such dismissiveness is intrinsically racist should be obvious. But what of less blatant examples?

For instance, what are we to make of certain comments by Congressman Louis Gohmert, Senator Ted Cruz and conservative media personality Sean Hannity in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing marriage equality nationwide? While those comments were not about race per se, it is hard to deny that their implicit subtext demonstrates a worldview entirely shaped by a white racial frame, viewed through a white racial lens, and one that takes as it starting point a profound disregard for the lives of persons of color: in short, a worldview that is (whether consciously or not), white supremacist to the core.

Start first with Gohmert. Given to hyperbole, one is loath to pay too much attention to the likes of Louis, and yet, his comments in the wake of the marriage equality decision represent far more than his solitary views, so similar are they to the kinds of things heard from many an evangelical white Christian whenever their moral sensibilities are offended. According to the Texas Congressman, because of the ruling, “God’s hand of protection will be withdrawn” from America. In other words, God so loves the world (but hates the gays) that he will either smite us directly, or at the very least no longer offer his thus far really impressive protection from things like economic recession, killer tornadoes, scorching heat waves, disastrous blizzards, a crumbling national infrastructure, and for that matter, racist young men who walk into churches and slaughter nine of his followers in cold blood. Got it? No more “protection” from those things!

At first glance, perhaps this comment seems to have nothing to do with race at all; but think about it. For Gohmert to claim that now God’s protection will be withdrawn is to suggest that prior to this time we were the active recipients of that protection, that to this point God had shined his light upon America, blessing us with all good things, happy at the sight of our superior morality. And yet, for that to be true, one would have to believe that God saw nothing wrong with the enslavement of African peoples for over two hundred years, the slaughter and forced removal of indigenous peoples from their land, the invasion and theft of half of Mexico, the abuse of Chinese labor on railroads, the internment of Japanese Americans—nothing wrong with lynching or segregation. You would have to accept that God is more offended by marriage equality than any of those things, that God was essentially sanguine about formal white supremacy, and willing to extend his protective blanket over us even in the face of that, but somehow so-called “gay marriage” is a bridge too far.

Aside from the loony-tunes nature of such a belief as this, on its face, is it not obvious that the position amounts to an erasure of the lived experiences of people of color? That it diminishes the horrors with which they lived and suggests that those horrors were not horrors after all, at least not in any moral sense that the presumed Creator might recognize? And if so, how can such a belief not be called racist? If I deny your experience, relegate it to the category of the irrelevant, or suggest that the denial of your rights as people of color was morally less problematic than the extension of rights to others, how can I possibly claim exculpation from the charge of holding an implicitly white supremacist worldview? Is one such as Gohmert not clearly implying here that the experiences of people of color do not matter? Or at least not that much? Is he not suggesting that whatever terrors they experienced were basically no biggie so far as the Lord was concerned, and as such, should certainly prove no great distraction for the likes of mortal men and women like ourselves?

Indeed, to believe that God protected America all through those periods of formal and overt white racial fascism is to believe that those days weren’t so bad after all—a fundamentally racist worldview that disrespects people of color by definition—or that God is a white supremacist, which view not only disrespects people of color but would likely displease any Creator should he exist and actively intervene in the affairs of man. In which case, Louis Gohmert might want to chew his food especially well from this point forward.

Then there’s Ted Cruz. In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, Cruz took to Sean Hannity’s radio program, where he proclaimed that the previous twenty-four hour period (in which the court not only legalized marriage equality but also saved affordable health care for between 6-8 million Americans) had been “among the darkest 24-hours” in the history of the nation itself. It was a claim to which Hannity responded that he could not have said it “more eloquently” himself.

Really? A 24-hour period during which the court extended rights to millions of people and guaranteed that upwards of eight million wouldn’t lose their health insurance was among the worst 24-hour periods in history?

As bad or worse than any 24-hour period under slavery, under segregation, or during which day-long progression multiple black bodies may well have been strung up from tree limbs?
Worse than the 24-hour period in which the same court issued its decision in Dred Scott, holding therein that blacks had no rights the white man was bound to respect?

Worse than the 24-hour period in which whites bombed and burned the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma or slaughtered dozens of African Americans in East St. Louis, Illinois in orgies of racial terrorism?

Worse than any 24-hour period in which multiple slaving ships pulled into port in cities like Charleston or New Orleans and offloaded their human cargo for sale at market?

Worse than any 24-hour period in which Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Muscogee Indians were forcibly marched westward during the Trail of Tears, or any 24-hour period in which Lakota and Dakota peoples were being hunted in the Black Hills, or the 24-hour period during which Colonel John Chivington led his forces in a sadistic massacre of Cheyenne families at Sand Creek?

Fascinating.

It would seem axiomatic to rational people that any day under enslavement or Jim Crow segregation, or debt peonage or the Black Codes, or the virtual re-enslavement of African Americans that existed even well into the twentieth century in many parts of the South, would have been worse than the 24-hour period about which Cruz and Hannity are so exorcised. But then again, that would only be true for black people, and as such, would not count to the likes of men such as they. And that’s the point: to disregard the racialized horror that defined the black experience every single day for centuries, or to consider it somehow less horrible than a 24-hour span in which LGBT folks were treated as full and equal citizens and eight million people were kept from being thrown off of health care rolls, is to possess a worldview that is not only stupendous in its thoroughgoing mendacity, but also embarrassingly white and implicitly racist. Only someone who didn’t care about the history of America as regards people of color could say such a thing; and one who doesn’t care about said history is engaged in a form of racism by default—guilty of committing racial memoricide by way of their dismissiveness." [Read more]

What's that saying? "Not all right wingers are racist, but all racists are right wingers."

The "rhetoric of modern racism", as Tim Wise calls it, always comes from the right.

Coincidence? I think not.

And I take issue with the title of this piece. They are not "oblivious" to it, and there is certainly nothing "casual" about it.


*Pic courtesy of timwise.org.

A couple of things.

I never like to blog about real personal shit, but since none of these people read my blog I have to share it.

It's like this, I have this partner who is having some serious "spider web sex" (his words, I guess it means she has him hooked) with this jump off. So Friday evening he leaves a message on my cell phone and tells me not to answer my calls for the rest of the evening. He doesn't want me to answer because he told his wife that he is hanging out with me, and he doesn't want me talking to her by accident. The nerve of this mother fucker, I can't answer my cell phone because he wants to spend the evening playing Michael Douglas with his jump off.

But I am still torn with this shit. Who wants to contribute to the downfall of yet another black family? On the other hand, my man and I go back a little, and lord knows I don't want to make the shit any harder for him at home.

Hey, I have been there, but as Bernie Mac says, that was a "long long long time ago". And I am sure there are many of us (men and women) who used to, or are still doing that same juggling act now. But I am too old for that shit, and so is he.
My man is supposed to be me calling today with a story, but I swear I don't even want to hear it.
I just hope I won't see his wife any time soon. I am just not as good at lying as I used to be.


****************^^^^^^^^^^^^^******************^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^*************

Now on to a separate issue I want to share with you all.

It seems that I attract more than a normal amount of white supremacist and racist to my site. (I think it has something to do with my handle, and the fact that when they google words like Negro, and nigger, my site pops up) These cretins always end up e-mailing me or trying to engage me via comments on this site. They like to make threats and tell me what the will and will not do to me when they come to my hometown or if they ever meet me wherever.


Here is the deal my racist friends; if you do come to my hometown, and I find out who you are, I will have your ignorant asses arrested. Because you are not worth losing my career or my freedom over. And I think I will be doing the public a favor by getting your type off the street. Ten years ago if you stepped to me with the bullshit, your bodies could have been found burning in the trunk of a car in South West Philly somewhere. But this is the kinder gentler field; so rather than coming down to your level, or entertain your ignorance, I will just let the authorities do their job.


But please keep coming to the fields (I will never ban you, that's not my style). I think we all need to know that you are out there, and what you are capable of.


Oh, and if you happen to see me at any event or function (in or out of Philadelphia), please feel free to approach me. You can tell me everything you have been saying via e-mail and comments to my face.