Fear of a Black Lives planet.

Wow, some people in white America are really freaking out over this whole Black Lives Matter thing. I mean really, it's not like black folks are going to rise up and  start attacking white people because they believe that only black lives matter.

Over at FOX VIEWS they are having a major meltdown because, gasp, Stephen Colbert actually wore a BLM wristband on his television show. Oh the horror! How dare one of the icons of white normalcy show solidarity with these rabble- rousers who want to rock the boat and shake up the status quo.

Down in Georgia there is a leader in law enforcement who is actually calling the Black Lives Matter activists "domestic terrorist." Imagine that, a terrorist for saying that your life matters as well.

Just imagine if a bunch of Black Lives Matter protesters show up in his jurisdiction; they would be shot on sight.

Shaun King, the white, I mean black...or...whatever. The activist who has emerged as one of the leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement was not too pleased.

"The Journal-Constitution also ran a response from #BlackLivesMatter leader Shaun King, calling Conway’s statement “one of the most ignorant, uninformed, and inflammatory statements from a man of his stature in law enforcement that I have ever read.”
Here’s part of what he says:

What Butch wants us all to believe is that police officers across the country call us [racial slurs] in their free time, but love us with their whole heart when they are on the job…Butch and many of his law enforcement colleagues are falsely promoting this notion that there is a war against police. This is a dangerous lie they are telling – when, in fact, fewer police officers have been killed during the Obama administration than any other two term administration in our lifetime and the deaths of police officers are on pace to be near record lows this year- so much that they are down 46% since Ronald Reagan was president and 87% from their all-time high."

It's not only the police, Shaun. Quite a few folks in America (particularly those of the conservative persuasion) are promoting the false notion that there "is a war against police" in this country. It's just not true. The knuckleheads and animals who kill police officers are not doing it for the Black Lives Matter cause; they are doing it because they are deranged criminals.

Colbert actually wore the wristband to fulfill the wish of a fan who was in the audience. So relax white America, it's not like he woke up and realized that he wants to be the next Tim Wise or Morris Dees. He is still just a comedian who wants to make you laugh.

* Pic from mediaite.com

"I just started screaming for someone to help me, and he began hitting me even harder and faster”

*Apparently that NYPD officer who assaulted James Blake (yes, that was an assault, not an arrest) during the US Open had some previous issues. And yet, somehow he managed to remain on the police force.

"In 2012, a Queens man said, Officer James Frascatore pulled him over for a broken taillight, opened his car door and punched him three times in the mouth, unprovoked.

 

The following year, another Queens resident claimed, Officer Frascatore punched him in the stomach several times outside a bodega and called him a racial epithet.

 

Those accounts, both made by black men, came to light after a rough arrest by the same officer on Wednesday in which he wrapped an arm around the neck of the retired tennis star James Blake and threw him to the sidewalk after mistaking him for a suspect in a credit card fraud investigation."

 

How do these police departments across the country expect to properly police the communities they serve if they don't start weeding out the bad apples? 

In Oklahoma they clearly have some work to do as well.

"Chris Barger said he was dropping off a friend at an apartment complex when a police officer pulled over and shone a spotlight through his window.

Police said Barger got out with his hand in his pocket, and that’s when the scuffle began.
It’s not an easy night for Barger to talk about.

“I just started screaming for someone to help me, and he began hitting me even harder and faster,” Barger said.

Barger suffered a broken nose and severe bruising after the incident Monday night.
It began when he was sitting in his car at 7^th and Taylor.

“He begins to shine his light in my car window repeatedly and, after a while, I decided maybe I should get out of the vehicle and ask the officer what the problem is,” Barger said.
A police report showed the officer pointed his gun at Barger, and Barger put his hands up. Then, Barger said, the officer put his gun back and put him in a headlock.
Barger tried to pull away.

“By the time he threw me on the ground and hit me a couple times with his elbow, at that point, I was like this isn’t a police officer, this is just some guy here to kill me,” Barger said.
Another officer got there and arrested Barger for assault and battery on an officer.
The police report showed Barger knocked off the officer’s glasses.

“I was flinching every time one walked by me ever since in the police station,” Barger said.
Barger spent the night in jail for the first time in his life, where he said the other inmates showed him compassion.

“They brought me chairs and helped me sit down. They were better than the police were to me,” Barger said. “It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. The police are supposed to be the good guys.”

Wednesday, the police chief said he had not talked to the officer involved but, from what he understands, the officer didn’t do anything wrong.

He did say an internal investigation is not out of the question.

Barger is due in court Friday and does not have a criminal record."

Oh, did I mention that poor Chris is white? Yep. I guess that trolls who were itching to comment with some snarky line about Field Negro's racism chasing will have to take pause and maybe skip tonight's post.

(Those lines quoted, which serve as the title for this post, are from Chris.)

Sadly, sometimes the racism chase just leads me to plain old police brutality.

*Pic from abc.news.net.au

 

The colorblind myth.

I saw a terrific article in the Atlantic that was written by Harvey Wingfield  which I would like to share.

The Field Negro education series continues.

"How many times have you heard someone say that they “don’t see color,” “are colorblind,” or “don’t have a racist bone in their body?” Maybe you’ve even said this yourself. After all, the dominant language around racial issues today is typically one of colorblindness, as it’s often meant to convey distaste for racial practices and attitudes common in an earlier era.

Many sociologists, though, are extremely critical of colorblindness as an ideology. They argue that as the mechanisms that reproduce racial inequality have become more covert and obscure than they were during the era of open, legal segregation, the language of explicit racism has given way to a discourse of colorblindness. But they fear that the refusal to take public note of race actually allows people to ignore manifestations of persistent discrimination.

For the first half of the 20th century, it was perfectly legal to deny blacks (and other racial minorities) access to housing, jobs, voting, and other rights based explicitly on race. Civil-rights reforms rendered these practices illegal. Laws now bar practices that previously maintained racial inequality, like redlining, segregation, or openly refusing to rent or sell real estate to black Americans. Yet discrimination still persists, operating through a combination of social, economic, and institutional practices.

Concurrently, it is no longer socially acceptable in many quarters to identify oneself as racist. Instead, many Americans purport not to see color. However, their colorblindness comes at a cost. By claiming that they do not see race, they also can avert their eyes from the ways in which well-meaning people engage in practices that reproduce neighborhood and school segregation, rely on “soft skills” in ways that disadvantage racial minorities in the job market, and hoard opportunities in ways that reserve access to better jobs for white peers.

The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf recently argued that the academic left errs in attacking colorblindness. He suggested that encouraging whites to be color conscious and to think of themselves in racial terms would encourage the nativism embraced by some Donald Trump supporters—that a heightened awareness of whiteness would produce a sense of persecution, and encourage some to rally in defense of white rights. He contends that there is some merit to colorblindness that has been ignored by what he describes as “the academic left,” which spends too much time focused on nitpicking colorblindness rather than drawing attention to “macroaggressions” such as “racially tinged hatred and conspiracy theories directed at the first black president” or the convenience of labeling Mexican immigrants rapists  “despite the fact that first-generation immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born Americans.”

As a presumptive member of the “academic left” that Friedersdorf critiques, I read the post with particular interest. I think that Friedersdorf makes some important points worth more detailed attention from both academics and those outside the academy who are familiar with the debates and concepts he references. For instance, academic debates can often become divorced from broader audiences. It is way too easy for academics in many fields to ground their conversations, disputes, and discussions among other like-minded scholars. He’s right to note that, by and large, academics can do a much better job engaging with folks outside of our ivory towers." [More]

This reminds me of the #PoliteWhiteSupremacy subject that was trending on twitter a day or so ago.

I, too, am suspicious of folks who like to declare that that they are colorblind. As a result I have to agree with the premise of the first part of this essay and not so much the reasoning by Conor Friedersdorf outlined in the second part.

I also side with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva who was named in the essay as someone who believes that colorblindness is "an ideology that legitimizes specific practices that maintain racial inequalities".

That's the problem with claiming colorblindness in a nutshell. And while I admire people who strive for that type of human perfection, given the social and societal imperfections that we are bombarded with on a daily basis, I believe that thinking we can see the world through colorblind lens is both naïve and unrealistic.

*Pic from timwise.org

CAPTION SATURDAY.

*
I need a caption for this pic.

Example: Ted, can you warm the limo up for me? Thanks big guy. I got this.

*Pic from abcnews.go.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

Off to jail for speeding.

True story: A friend of mine was on his way to his brother's wedding in Atlanta, he admitted that he was speeding (20 miles over the speed limit I think) because he was late and he was pushing the rental that he picked up down there to get to his brother's place on time.

Anyway, he was pulled over by a Georgia police officer who told him that he was speeding and because he had an out of state license he would have to take him to the station.

My man was with his wife, and the police officer asked her if she could drive the rental. She said that she could, and he said that because of that there would be no need to tow it.  My friend says that he was shocked when he was handcuffed and placed in the back of the patrol car and taken to the station. He was processed, forced to take a mug shot, and held in a holding cell until he could pay his bail.

Make a long story short, he had to pay a ton of money, get a Georgia lawyer, and suffer the indignity of being arrested in front of his wife. To top it all off, I think he was late for his brother's wedding.

He wanted my legal opinion of what went down and if he had a case to sue for some kind of civil rights violation. I told him, that in my humble opinion, he did not.

Down in Georgia (and other states as well) they have some funky traffic laws. I think speeding like this is considered a misdemeanor and it is punishable by fines and or imprisonment. Whether my friend ended up handcuffed in the back of a police car was up to the police officer. The officer could use his discretion in this particular situation.

Oh, did I mention that my friend is of the Negro persuasion?

Anyway, consider my friend's story when you watch the following video. [Watch]

So what do you think? White privilege? (She did get a $600 ticket.) The woman was driving 30 miles over the speed limit in a school zone.

Let me say for the record that this police officer showed tremendous restraint. Which, by the way, is what he is supposed to do.

If only poor Sandra Bland could have been around to see it.

*Pic from insurancequotes.com



  






   

Not "Everybody's All- American."

James Blake is an All American guy. He grew up in a solid middle class family in Connecticut, attended Harvard University, and spent much of his formative years in the very suburban town of Fairfield. Most important of all, though, he was a world class tennis player. He reached as high as number four on the tour and earned over seven million dollars in prize money.

James speaks "really well", looks very neat and "clean", and carries himself like a true gentleman. 
He is the kind of Negro that Joe Biden would gush over.

So imagine how poor James Blake felt when he was treated like just another Mike Brown or Eric Garner on the streets of New York recently.

"Five white undercover cops slammed retired black tennis star James Blake to the ground outside his midtown hotel Wednesday in a violent case of mistaken identity.

The 35-year-old Blake, once ranked No. 4 in the world, suffered a cut to his left elbow and bruises to his left leg as the law enforcement quintet handcuffed and held him for 15 minutes outside the Grand Hyatt.

"It was definitely scary and definitely crazy," said Blake, adding that none of the men initially identified themselves as a police officer. His right eye appeared a bit red hours later at the hotel.

The cops were investigating a credit card fraud operation when they took Blake to the ground around noon."

Five undercover cops for a credit card fraud case?! My goodness, no wonder crime is on the rise in New York. You would think that they would find better way to utilize the NYPD's manpower.

Poor Mrs. Blake must have been beside herself. What? How dare they? He is not like those other blacks. He married me for crying out loud! Let me stop.

Anyway, fortunately someone recognized the former tennis star and the police reluctantly let him go.

As is to be expected, poor James was not feeling very All American after the incident.

“In my mind there's probably a race factor involved, but no matter what there's no reason for anybody to do that to anybody,” Blake said. “You'd think they could say, 'Hey, we want to talk to you. We are looking into something.’ I was just standing there. I wasn't running. It's not even close (to be okay). It's blatantly unnecessary.”

Now now James, don't go playing the "race card', America has been very good to you.

"A police source said Blake was misidentified as a suspect wanted for buying a cellphone with a bogus credit card. A man who was standing near Blake was arrested in connection with the scam, police said.

“Once Blake was properly identified and found to have no connection to the investigation, he was released from police custody immediately,” the NYPD said in a statement." [Source]

Well James, look at the bright side. You could have been some poor unknown black man minding his business in New York City, when New York's finest decided to act on their all black men look alike conditioning. Trust me when I tell you, your experience would have been a whole lot different.

Now go and enjoy the rest of the US Open with your friends.  Maybe your buddy John Mayer will write a song about the incident.

*Pic from Wikipedia.













 

Anger in the house.

"So whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself. When his master said, "We have good food," the house Negro would say, "Yes, we have plenty of good food." "We" have plenty of good food. When the master said that "we have a fine home here," the house Negro said, "Yes, we have a fine home here." When the master would be sick, the house Negro identified himself so much with his master he'd say, "What's the matter boss, we sick?" His master's pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master's house out than the master himself would." ~Malcolm X~

I was thinking of this portion of Malcolm X's famous speech (from where the name of this blog comes)  while reading an article sent to me by a friend today. (h/t Greg)

The article was written by a republican brother bemoaning the fact that republicans are not showing black republicans any love.

The more I read the more sorry I felt for the brother. Imagine viewing your entire self- worth and self-esteem through the lens of how others view you.

To be fair, there are brothers (and sisters) like this on the dumbocratic side as well. Their entire life is built around the politics of their party. Nothing comes before the party. Not community, not family, nothing. It's all about the party staying in power and getting whatever rewards those in power decide to throw their way.

But back to Raynard Jackson, because his rant is the most pathetic of all.

"I am fond of saying that many times Republicans try to do the right thing, but do it the wrong way. 

Branch Rickey, former president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, scoured the Negro Leagues in 1943 to find the best and brightest baseball players who he could sign to integrate baseball.  He wasn’t just looking for raw talent; he was also looking for the “right” person(s).

 

Jackie Robinson was not the only good ball player in the league back then; for sure he was definitely one of the elite.  But he also had the other skillsets that would allow him to endure the racist taunts he was about to encounter as the first Black to play professional baseball with white folks.

 

Rickey chose Robinson not only because of his skill, but also because of his personality which would allow him to keep his composure under the strain of hostility he was about to face.  Rickey constantly validated Robinson specifically and constantly discussed publically the need for diversity within baseball and ultimately America.

 

Where are the Branch Rickey’s of the Republican Party today?  There are none.  The last one was former N.F.L. quarterback and former congressman Jack Kemp who died in 2009.

 

I was plucked out of obscurity by the Bush family in St. Louis when I was fresh out of college from Oral Roberts University.  They had no prior relationship with me, but they, like Rickey, scoured Missouri politics to find the best person(s) with the right political background; but also with the right temperament to proudly represent the Bush family’s name as the then vice president was about to launch his presidential campaign in 1988.  According to them, “they had been following my career and noticing my work in the Republican Party in Missouri.” 

 

My work got me noticed, but my relationships got me opportunity.  I didn’t have to run to be a delegate to our party’s national convention, I was told I would be a delegate; and thus it was so.

 

My point is very simple, I grew up in a Republican Party when relationships mattered and the party took care of their own.  This is no longer the case.

 

Republicans today spend more time rewarding their enemies versus rewarding their friends. 

 

Why would Rand Paul have lunch with Al Sharpton last November in the Senate dining room?  By doing it in the Senate dining room, he meant for the media and other members of the U.S. Senate to see them together; thus validating Sharpton as someone to be sought out for private counsel.  I wonder why there is no account of Paul making a similar validation of a Black Republican with relevant party credentials.

 

Why would Jeb Bush meet with members of the Black Lives Matter group when he has never met with any relevant Black Republicans?  Are you kidding me?  When you have no Blacks in your inner circle you tend to make foolish decisions like this.

 

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is the most recent example of validating Black Democrats and ignoring Black Republicans.  She was in town last week to speak before the National Press Club.  I thought the section of her speech about her accomplishments as governor was very good; but the speech was horrible when she began to talk about race relations and the Black community.  I also found it to be very offensive." [Source]

 

My lord this Negro is sad. What does he think they owe him? Yes the Bushes hand picked him to be their Negro of the moment, but surely he understand that he ---and others like him---are not going to get a seat at that table.   

 

"I didn’t have to run to be a delegate to our party’s national convention, I was told I would be a delegate; and thus it was so."

 

Translated: I never had to work. I always had a place in the house.

 

The problem is, my misguided friend, your place in the house is just a room. You will never have a say in how the house should be run. Maybe it's time you tried to own your own. 

 

 

 

 

Driving while fresh.

Lord have mercy! A brotha can't even drive and keep his car fresh anymore.

Tonight my racism chase takes me to Rhode Island.

"A black Rhode Island man was pulled over because of the air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.

As soon as he was pulled over, Dana Harris Jr. began recording, and the video has since been posted to YouTube.

“What’s the problem, big dude? What’s the problem?” Harris asks the officer, Brian Murphy, when he arrives.

“You seen me come out of my driveway. What did I do wrong?” Harris asks, adding, “I have a cousin who’s a Providence police officer for 23 years. What’s the problem? … I’m tired of this. I’m not a gangster. I’m not a thug.”

Murphy ignores Harris’ questions and asks for his insurance information. After Murphy looks over the paperwork, he hands it back to Murphy and says, “You can’t have this obstructing your view,” as he points at the air freshener.

“Come on, are you serious?” Harris replies.

“Yeah, I’m serious, you can’t have that there.”

“Air fresheners? … That’s the reason you pulled me over?” Harris asks.

“Yup,” the officer says, not giving a ticket and the returning to his cruiser.

“You’re bored, I can tell you’re bored,” Harris says to Murphy as the officer is walking away. “Have a good day, man.'”

Come on Field, you are making a mountain out of a mole- hill. He didn't even ticket the man, what's the big deal?

This one incident might not be a big deal, but it's like Chinese water torture.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Field, the police have an explanation, it was all a big misunderstanding.

"The video has since gone viral, and police authorities have since explained that Murphy was watching the house for Harris’ 18-year-old brother, Justice McLaren. Murphy had pulled Harris over to look for his brother and was unsure if he could tell Harris about the warrant, so he pointed out the air freshener instead." [Source]

I would tend to believe that this incident was just a big misunderstanding, but there are too many other folks in law enforcement like Officer Murphy. Take this next guy all the way across the country in Oregon, for example.

"A police chief in Oregon retired this week after officers say he responded to an accusation of racism by imitating a monkey, singing “Dixie” and pantomiming a beating, KOIN reports.

In papers obtained by the station, officers allege that Clatskanie Police Chief Marvin Hoover made the racist display when they attempted to debrief him on the arrest of black woman who threatened to file a discrimination lawsuit.

“I relayed several of the arrestee’s remarks such as, ‘When you look at me, my black and my nappy hair, all you see is animal,’” writes Officer Dustin Stone in his official report to the Oregon Department of Public Safety. “Chief Hoover interrupted me and said, ‘That’s what she is.’” [Source]

Oh come on Field, are you going to indict everyone in law enforcement because of one bad apple?

Ok, how about two bad apples.

"LAKE ARTHUR, La. – A police officer in Louisiana has been fired after a photo of him at a Ku Klux Klan rally in North Carolina has surfaced.

KPLC reported that the Lake Arthur town council unanimously voted to terminate Raymond Mott earlier this week after the photo started circulating on Facebook.

“The picture speaks for itself,” Mott said. “I’m standing at a rally against illegal immigration. There’s not much to be said about the picture. I’ve never denied it was me.”

The photo was apparently taken at a Klan rally at an undisclosed location in North Carolina last summer. It was said to have been an anti-immigration rally.

The former Lake Arthur officer said the town council did not follow proper protocol in firing him and that his termination was illegal. He said he plans to take legal action against the town." [Source]

Oh Field....

 I know I know, a mountain out of a mole-hill. It's just one cop, and just because he attends klan rallies that doesn't mean that he is a member.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

*Pic from nytimes.com

No love in Leith.

*The following news article from The Daily Beast should give my friends in the republican party some reason for concern, and it should make them very leery of who they invite into their tent. (This is true for you dems as well.)

My fellow Negroes, I hope that Leith, North Dakota is not on your bucketlist of places to visit before you die. If it is, this might be a good time to take it off.

"When hate first arrived in rural Leith, North Dakota, late in the summer of 2012, denizens of the sleepy farming hamlet (pop. 24) barely took notice.

“At first I thought he was a quiet, keep-to-himself kind of guy,” recalls the town’s cowboy-mayor Ryan Schock in the documentary Welcome to Leith, an unsettling case study of one quintessentially democratic American conflict.

Bobby Harper, Leith’s sole African-American resident, remembers a stranger in a long coat coming around the neighborhood asking about land for sale.

Even Schock’s wife, Michelle, strolled over with a welcoming hello when that newcomer, a loner with glasses and wild silver hair, took up residency in Leith and started buying up plots of property around town.

It wasn’t until the ugliness of the outside world started to invade Leith’s city limits that locals realized who their new neighbor really was: Craig Cobb, the notorious white supremacist leader who’d been kicked out of Estonia and Canada and now had designs on turning Leith into his own personal Aryan utopia.

Cobb’s documented history of incendiary missives and advocacy of hate crimes against minorities had already landed him on the radar of concerned watchdog groups. When he put his plan in motion to bring fellow white supremacists to live in Leith in order to take over the town’s electoral vote and slowly establish a home base for white nationalism in the heart of North Dakota, critics and national media descended en masse to protest and bear witness.

The people of Leith, however, were hardly equipped to deal with their new problem neighbor. After all, folks move to Leith for the privacy—the antithesis of big-city living with its own endemic urban crowds and cultural conflicts. At first, Cobb justified his presence by invoking the American principle that would become the linchpin of his war with the townsfolk: Everyone has a right to live in peace. Even racists. Right?

With his constitutional rights protecting him under the law and several high-powered supremacist leaders and organizations behind him, Cobb mounted his Leith campaign by utilizing increasingly loud and antagonistic tactics against the townsfolk who opposed him, taunting and even doxxing his detractors." [More here]

Now, to be sure, Leith is not as large as the republican party. But I suspect that there are a lot more folks like Craig Cobb in that party right now.

It might be time for their leadership to start paying attention before, like the people of Leith, they wake up one day not knowing what hit them. Or, more appropriately, who infiltrated them.  

*Pic from Sundance  Film Festival.  

CAPTION SATURDAY.

*

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: You said I would get to meet Sasha.

*Pic from twitter/ theobamadiary.com