Caption Sunday.

                                           

I  need a caption for this pic. 

Not all protests are created equal.

I'm sorry people, but I have to attack black tonight.

We all know by now about the mass shooting in Philly this past Wednesday. Six police officers shot, an entire neighborhood put on lock down, and one urban terrorist with a rap sheet as long as Broad Street keeping an entire city and community in a state of fear and terror for damn near three hours. (He was firing shots out of a trap house while little children in the area were being let out from their day- care for crying out loud!)

Fortunately for all those involved , there was no loss of life, and the urban terrorist was taken alive. (Shout out to Philly's police chief for a job well done.)

So having said all that, I am mad at my people tonight because I was shocked to hear that some folks in the community were actually holding a rally on behalf of....wait for it....wait for it.....the urban terrorist who allegedly created all of this mayhem and chaos in the first place. Now why in the name of Huey P. Newton would folks march to protest his treatment at the hands of police?  It seems to me that the folks in our various communities should be coming together to figure out just what in the hell is going on with these young bucks who have no respect for human life. There were five more injured in one shooting incident yesterday. And I am quite sure that there will be more just like this in the days to come. 

And yet....

"Organizers of a protest in support of Maurice Hill, the suspect in the Philadelphia shootout earlier this week, expected 200 to 300 people to show up, CBS affiliate KYW-TV reported.

The chaotic and lengthy shootout that played out in the Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood Wednesday left six police officers injured and captured national attention.

 Richard Ross, the city’s police commissioner, said cops would show up at the Friday night demonstration in North Philadelphia, according to KYW-TV. “There’s certain marches I do understand, this is definitely not one of them,” Ross said." 

I couldn't agree with the commissioner more

My brothers and sisters, this is not a hill you want to die on. It diminishes the real struggle for social justice when we rally around urban terrorists who do not deserve our support. 

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Give me your Europeans yearning to be free.

           As America lurches closer to becoming a a white nationalist dystopian state, the crazies under their supreme leader are starting to show their true colors. (Pun intended.)

First, let's turn our attention to the Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, who, incredibly, declared yesterday that the Emma Lazarus poem written on the Statue Of Liberty was meant for people coming over from Europe only. Yes, he really said that.

"Well, of course, that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren't in the right class, and it was written one year after the first federal public charge rule was written. "

It's scary stuff, but this is just how Mr. trump wants it. The White Nationalist in chief has drawn a line in the sand. And with the help of people like Stephen Miller and the elected republican sycophants enabling him, he will purge this country of brown and poor people if he can. Ken Cuccinelli earlier gave us his own personal take on what Lazarus really meant with her poem. To him it was only poor people who could stand on their feet that we should welcome to our shores. And just in case we weren't clear, he wanted us to know that it was European poor people who could stand on their feet and not those other people.

Now, obviously, with the white nationalist in charge, the white nationalist mass has been emboldened.

Don't believe me?

Just look at these few examples:

A sheriff in Mississippi. 

A jailer's wife in Arkansas.

Young high school graduates in Illinois. 

And, of course, the police are still being called on black men for....well... being black men. 

Thoughts?

"A bizarre cosmic joke."

This is not normal. The president of the United States just endorsed the thought of a former president being a rapist and a pedophile.  But this is where we are in America. trump and his deplorables have normalized what was previously unthinkable in this country.

David Frum (I can't believe I am posting an essay by this guy on this site.) wrote the following article for The Atlantic about the shame and ignorance of this presidency.

"August 10, 1969: San Clemente, California—President Richard Nixon accused his predecessor Lyndon Baines Johnson of complicity in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Speaking with reporters on the first day of a 10-day stay at his Pacific Ocean vacation home …

Of course, that never happened. Obviously. How could it; how dare it? But had it happened, such an accusation—by a president, against a former president—would have convulsed the United States and the world. Today, President Donald Trump accused his predecessor Bill Clinton—or possibly his 2016 campaign opponent, the former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—of complicity in the death of the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Many seem to have responded with a startled shrug. What do you expect? It’s just Trump letting off steam on Twitter.

Reactions to actions by Trump are always filtered through the prism of the ever more widely accepted view—within his administration, within Congress, within the United States, and around the world—that the 45th president is a reckless buffoon; a conspiratorial, racist moron, whose weird comments should be disregarded by sensible people.

By now, Trump’s party in Congress, the members of his Cabinet, and even his White House entourage all tacitly agree that Trump’s occupancy of the office held by Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and Eisenhower must be a bizarre cosmic joke, not to be taken seriously. CNN’s Jake Tapper on August 2 quoted a “senior national security official” as saying: “Everyone at this point ignores what the president says and just does their job. The American people should take some measure of confidence in that.”

So even though Trump just retweeted the comedian Terrence K. Williams accusing the Clinton family of murder, the people who work for Trump may ignore that, too. They know that the president punching the retweet button like an addled retiree playing the slots through a fog of painkillers means nothing. The days of “taking Trump seriously, not literally” have long since passed. By this point, Trump is taken neither seriously nor literally. His words are as worthless as Trump Organization IOUs.

But cosmic joke or no cosmic joke, Donald Trump is the president of the United States. You may not like it. I don’t like it. Mike Pompeo doesn’t like it. Mitch McConnell doesn’t like it. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t like it. But it’s still a fact, and each succeeding outrage makes it no less a fact. Grinning and flashing a thumbs-up over an orphaned baby? Yes, still president. Tweeting that a third-tier dictator has threatened him with more missile tests unless he halts military exercises with a U.S. ally——and that he has surrendered to that blackmail? Shamefully, still president. Accusing a former U.S. president of murder? It’s incredible, it’s appalling, it’s humiliating … but, yes, he is the president all the same.

Trump’s circle probably expects the world to sputter for a while and then be distracted by some new despicable statement or act. That is how it has gone for nearly three years, and that is how it is likely still to go. Trump is steering the U.S. and the world into a trade war, and perhaps a financial crisis and recession along with it. He is wrecking the structure of U.S. alliances in Asia, and his rhetoric is inciting shooting rampages against minorities. Compared with that, mere slurs and insults perhaps weigh lighter in the crushing Dumpster-load of Trump’s output of unfitness for the office he holds.

But it shouldn’t be forgotten, either, in the onrush of events. The certainty that Trump will descend ever deeper into subbasements of “new lows” after this new low should not numb us to its newness and lowness.

Neither the practical impediments to impeachment and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment process, nor the foibles and failings of the candidates running to replace him, efface the fact that this presidency shames and disgraces the office every minute of every hour of every day. And even when it ends, however it ends, the shame will stain it still." [Source]

*Pic from thestar.com

Caption Friday.

I need a caption for this pic.

"Making America white again."

Toni Morrison passed away recently, and in honor of her memory I am going to post this wonderful essay that she wrote for The New Yorker Magazine after the election of Donald trump. It is sadly apropos to what is taking place in America today.

"This is a serious project. All immigrants to the United States know (and knew) that if they want to become real, authentic Americans they must reduce their fealty to their native country and regard it as secondary, subordinate, in order to emphasize their whiteness. Unlike any nation in Europe, the United States holds whiteness as the unifying force. Here, for many people, the definition of “Americanness” is color.

Under slave laws, the necessity for color rankings was obvious, but in America today, post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s conviction of their natural superiority is being lost. Rapidly lost. There are “people of color” everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America. And what then? Another black President? A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening.

In order to limit the possibility of this untenable change, and restore whiteness to its former status as a marker of national identity, a number of white Americans are sacrificing themselves. They have begun to do things they clearly don’t really want to be doing, and, to do so, they are (1) abandoning their sense of human dignity and (2) risking the appearance of cowardice. Much as they may hate their behavior, and know full well how craven it is, they are willing to kill small children attending Sunday school and slaughter churchgoers who invite a white boy to pray. Embarrassing as the obvious display of cowardice must be, they are willing to set fire to churches, and to start firing in them while the members are at prayer. And, shameful as such demonstrations of weakness are, they are willing to shoot black children in the street.

To keep alive the perception of white superiority, these white Americans tuck their heads under cone-shaped hats and American flags and deny themselves the dignity of face-to-face confrontation, training their guns on the unarmed, the innocent, the scared, on subjects who are running away, exposing their unthreatening backs to bullets. Surely, shooting a fleeing man in the back hurts the presumption of white strength? The sad plight of grown white men, crouching beneath their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic stops, to push black women’s faces into the dirt, to handcuff black children. Only the frightened would do that. Right?

These sacrifices, made by supposedly tough white men, who are prepared to abandon their humanity out of fear of black men and women, suggest the true horror of lost status.

It may be hard to feel pity for the men who are making these bizarre sacrifices in the name of white power and supremacy. Personal debasement is not easy for white people (especially for white men), but to retain the conviction of their superiority to others—especially to black people—they are willing to risk contempt, and to be reviled by the mature, the sophisticated, and the strong. If it weren’t so ignorant and pitiful, one could mourn this collapse of dignity in service to an evil cause.

The comfort of being “naturally better than,” of not having to struggle or demand civil treatment, is hard to give up. The confidence that you will not be watched in a department store, that you are the preferred customer in high-end restaurants—these social inflections, belonging to whiteness, are greedily relished.

So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.
On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

William Faulkner understood this better than almost any other American writer. In “Absalom, Absalom,” incest is less of a taboo for an upper-class Southern family than acknowledging the one drop of black blood that would clearly soil the family line. Rather than lose its “whiteness” (once again), the family chooses murder. " [Source]

After reading this brilliant essay, I have come to the conclusion that we shouldn't be surprised that America elected a white supremacist to be president.

*Image from msmagazine.com

Disparate treatment.

The young man above slaughtered 22 people. 

This man was trespassing. 

See the difference?   

Leading us to a darker place.

After twenty nine people were slaughtered in two different regions of the country within 24 hours of each other, Americans find themselves in a state of shock. Of course we know that the shock won't last, because mass murders have become the new normal here in America. Thanks to the powerful gun lobby, and the politicians in their pockets, guns and killings have become as American as apple pie.

But this post isn't about guns tonight, it's about why these angry young white men felt a need to take out their rage on innocent people.

We know why one of these young man did what he did. He told us why he did it in a manifesto that he posted just minutes before he went on his deadly shooting spree. He did it because of the immigrants "invading" his country, and, in his mind, they were taking jobs that belonged to Americans and browning up a country that should always be white. But this did not happen in vacuum. If you listen to what the president of these divided state of America have been saying for the past few weeks you will understand why this animal felt emboldened to act out his evil fantasies.

Republicans and those who support this president will deny it. They were on Sunday talk shows today blaming these racist malevolent acts on the video game industry, a lack of spirituality, and mental illness. (Why is it when young white men commit acts of  evil we play the mental illness card?) They pointed fingers at everything else except where they needed to be pointed: The president of the United States. It is his divisive racist and angry rhetoric that has caused these young men -and others like them- to take up the mantle of hatred and  division and act out in such a violent way. It is Mr. trump who has actually laughed when his supporters shouted that immigrants should be shot, that people of color --who were born here- should go back where they came from, and who encouraged his supporters to be violent to peaceful protesters. What now can the GOP say in defense of the indefensible? There is nothing that they can say, and so they have decided to gaslight us and trot out the mental illness talking point on cable news shows. This is sad on so many levels, because it stigmatizes those who have a mental illness as being violent (which clearly is not the case), and it promotes the narrative that certain types of people who happen to be evil must have a mental disease.

Mr. trump is supposed to address the country tomorrow. He  couldn't do it today because I am sure that he was busy playing golf at his New Jersey course. It will be interesting to see what he has to say. He can't walk back all the evil and divisive things that he has said in the past (fine people on both sides), and the country will be looking for someone to say something that will unite us and give us hope that better days are ahead. It's hard to have hope and optimism for a more united America with this president delivering the message. He is the reason that we are in this dark place, and there is nothing that he can say to change that. Especially when we all know that he will lie and say anything in the moment to make himself look good.

Steve Scalise, one of those complicit republicans who is allowing Mr trump to destroy the country, and who himself has been a victim of gun violence in the past, tweeted the following:

"These events are tragedies. Reducing them to talking points and name-calling in support of narrow political agendas only further divides our country. Jennifer and I pray for the people of El Paso and Dayton. May God help us and heal this great nation." 

Sorry Steve, God might be a little busy right now. How about asking the leader of your party to stop trafficking in hate and get off his ass and try to do something.

*Bingcom/images

Should the #ADOS movement be trusted?

There has been a raging debate on my twitter feed between folks from the #ADOS movement, and other blacks who consider themselves supporters of the Pam-African movement. For the most part I have tried to stay clear of it, because, frankly, this ADOS movement is new to me, and I wanted to understand a little more about what they are about, and why they are becoming so popular before I take a definitive stand.

For the record, I would not qualify as a true member of ADOS because I was born in Jamaica, and I immigrated to this country later on in life. I have always considered myself firmly in the Pan-African camp, because I believe that there is strength in  numbers, and all black people, regardless of where they were born, share a common bond and interests when it comes to the improvement of our race and out collective struggle.

Some of  my ancestors were Maroons, and I am very proud of that fact. They were sold into slavery from West Africa like the ancestors of  my African American brothers and sisters. They just happened to get off the slave ships a little sooner, and they fought the British like crazy for their freedom.  The folks in the ADOS movement do not consider me a part of the movement because my ancestors were not enslaved here in America, and that's fine, but I do need them to respect and understand the struggle of my ancestors as well.

I suspect that the folks who found the ADOS movement were more concerned with reparations and financial justice than anything else, and so there had to be a weeding out of the blacks who they did not consider worthy to benefit from whatever reparations the American government is willing to give out. This aspect of it seems reasonable. If your ancestors did not contribute to the building of America, you shouldn't benefit from the financial compensation that is due to your family.

My issue with the ADOS folks, though, is this: They seem to be more exclusionary than anything else, and there is a gleeful us against them projection whenever they write on message boards and engage other members of the African diaspora. It shouldn't be about that. I want no part of whatever reparations you they due, but I do want to see folks from my race thrive and be uplifted, wherever in the world that they happen to be.  . 

I get it, some Africans (and Afro- Caribbeans as well) at times tend to treat their African American brothers and sisters as less than equals. They buy into the majority population's stereotyping of the African American as lazy and non-industrious. They think that they are different because they came to America for a better life and were, for the most part, accepted into white American society. They even allow some folks in the majority population to let them think that they are somehow different and better than their African American brothers and sisters. (I know some West Indians like this.)The folks who are down with ADOS have a right to be upset with these immigrants, because they are not about unifying, either. But I certainly don't want them to lose sight of the divide and conquer tactics that is so frequently used against us. 

I just worry about the the end game, and who benefits from all this infighting among black folks. My twitter feeds have been like a war zone of late between these two groups.

Now, more than ever, is the time to come together around what unites us. The things that divide us should not take up so much of our energy.

I have my suspicions about some of the folks in this movement and their social media personas. Why now? Is this some kind of political disinformation movement spurred on by the Kamala Harris campaign for president? Her parents were immigrants. And so, like Barrack Obama, she is not 100% ADOS.

Still,  I also know that some of the people in ADOS are genuine true believers, and that they really want what's best for their fellow African American brothers and sisters.

I want what's best for them as well, but I don't want them to lose sight of the bigger picture, which is where they stand in the world itself, and how, ultimately, we can all be better off in the long run. 

The cult of racism.

The following article by Kathleen Parker is the best I have read to date about Mr. trump escalating his racism and the republicans being willing cheerleaders and defenders.  

"Going out on a limb here: President Trump is a racist. And a sexist. And a xenophobic nationalist. Among other things.

Not to name call or anything.

And all of those observable facts seem to sit quite well with his base of supporters, most Republicans in Congress and, apparently, with the evangelical Christian community whose members have ceded the floor to crickets.

Not even the chilling moment at Trump’s Wednesday rally in North Carolina  when the crowd chanted “Send her back!” can apparently budge them from their repose. The chanters were referring, of course, to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of the four women of color known as “the Squad.” And the crowd’s clarion Trumpeter was the president himself, who, though he didn’t start the chant, certainly seemed to enjoy it.

His expression during the 13 seconds that he allowed the chant to reach its desired pitch was most chilling of all. His jutting jaw, his down-the-nose gaze, his seeming serenity in the eye of a storm — all spoke louder than the metronomic mass surrounding him.

The king was pleased.

Trump allowed ‘Send her back!’ chants for 13 seconds.

That moment encapsulated Trump’s reelection strategy and reminded everyone of three years ago, when retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn led the 2016 Republican National Convention in a similar chant aimed at Hillary Clinton: “Lock her up!” (We’ll resist the temptation to remark on the three-syllable limit when Republicans think aloud.)

In the language of “Criminal Minds,” Trump is escalating. Lock her up. Send her back. What’s next? One shudders to wonder.

This recent episode can be dissected in several ways. First, the four women composing the Squad are of color. They are minority women, in other words, by virtue of race or ethnicity but also by religion. (Two are Muslim.) Women aren’t a voting minority, or even a numerical minority, but they retain minority status in most measurable ways, from income to political power.

Thus, the Trumpeter was able to offend pretty much everyone group-wise — other than, of course, white males. There the GOP goes again.

Discussions the past few days about Trump’s strategy or purpose have been clarifying if not precisely revelatory. Some have said it isn’t necessarily racist to call out people who just happen to be of color. Others say, no, no, no, Trump was merely saying that these women, who, indeed, have said outrageous and offensive things (to some), ought to either get right with America (meaning white people) or skedaddle.

How did he put it: “If they don’t love it, tell ’em to leave it.”

This was Trump’s attempt at clarifying the tweets that started this whole saga, basically that the four representatives should go back to their horrible, filthy, corrupt countries, by which, one presumes, he meant some of those “shithole” countries he identified in 2018. Of course, the only woman not born in the United States is Omar, who came here more than 20 years ago as a refugee from Somalia.

To many Trump supporters, his “shithole” comment, which Trump denied saying though he admitted to using “tough” language, was likely viewed as an off-the-cuff remark not intended for public consumption. That’s fine to a point. We all say things privately that we wouldn’t dare utter elsewhere. However, what comes out of one’s mouth in private is what is inside one’s head, no matter who doesn’t hear it.

This is who Trump is. This, and I quote, is what he thinks: Nigerians will never “go back to their huts” after setting foot in the United States; Africa sends its “worst of the worst” to the United States; Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS.”

These cruel remarks are easily disproved. Nigerian Americans can boast a median income that exceeds the U.S. average. Forty-three percent of immigrants from African countries have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with only 33 percent of all Americans.

The larger point, however, is that Trump obviously feels comfortable dismissing people of color as primitive, diseased and worse. Attributing stereotypical, denigrating characteristics to a group of people belonging to a particular race is the definition of racism. That the four women just happen to be of color is more than a blip precisely because of Trump’s consistent, default bigotry.

Republicans and evangelical Christians who fail to condemn this president’s use of the pulpit to preach down (not up), to employ and incite abusive language, to essentially put a target on a duly elected congresswoman’s back — can be presumed to concur and, therefore, to be complicit in whatever further degradation or violence follows.

That’s the plain and awful truth." [Source]

She makes some great points. But I also have to ask: What does Mr. trump have over all these supposedly powerful republican politicians ( I see you Mitt, Lindsey, and Marco) that they would put a stain on their legacy and embarrass themselves and their families by joining this cult?     

*Pic from reason.com

Someone remind Mr. trump that he is the president of Baltimore as well.

*

I really don't know why Mr. trump won't just come out and call us black folks the N- word. It wouldn't cause him to lose any of his supporters, and it darn sure wouldn't be any worse than what he is doing now. 

We are all aware by now of his latest attacks on the city of *Baltimore (which happens to be a nice city) because he views it as a primarily black city. Some pundits are saying that this is no accident and that it is by design. They are calling it some kind of Jedi mind trick political strategy that he is using to divide the electorate and fire up his base. I disagree. Folks are giving Mr. trump way too much credit. 

Frankly, he is not that smart, and to suggest otherwise would be foolhardy. Mr. trump says all these things about Mr. Cummings and his primarily African American district for the same reason he attacked four women of color who represent their American districts, and told them to go back to whatever "shithole" country they came from. They are all people of color. And he does not like people of color, because he is a racist. It's really that simple. It's why he carried on a racist and vicious lie about Barack Obama's place of birth for many years,  it's why he gets visibly upset when a reporter of color asks him a question, and it's why he believes that by embracing a rapper who is in prison in Europe he will appeal to black people/ 

Mr. trump's language to describe Baltimore and other places that he believes are "infested" with Negroes (infested is the new racist term for places where blacks live) is certainly going to appeal to some members of his base, and he is hoping that it will energize them, and cause them to turnout and vote for him in 2020. It will be interesting to see what a lot of these white folks who are now clutching their pearls and acting shocked that their president is a racist will do when they get in the voting booth as well. 

I find it amusing that all these people in the majority population are now just discovering  that Mr. trump. I mean where have you been for the past thirty years? 

So now that trump's racism has been exposed for all the world to see, what will happen to the republican party? Will elected republican officials show some courage and call out the president for his ignorance and bigotry? I think that we all know the answer to that. Cowardice will win out over courage, and the republican senators and congress men and women will remain silent and complicit. 

“Cumming [sic] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”

The only dangerous and filthy place that Mr. trump should be worried about is the one right between his ears.

Caption Saturday.