Bad timing for Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who authored an OpEd published in the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday on the same topic as Biden's "divisive" speech. DeWine focused on anti-Semitism rather than racism, but it's an anti-White supremacist article, and good for him. He hasn't gotten any pushback as far as I can tell. All just goes to show it's not the message the right-wing objects to, it's the messenger. Democrats simply aren't allowed to mention racism at all anymore without a national media fit being thrown.
Rachel Campos-Duffy: “America is not racist. America is the least racist country in the whole world, which is why we have right now people clamoring to get into our country. That’s just a fact.”
No. Actually, it's bullshit.
In this case we see as well as we hear. We see evidence, everyday, with our own eyes, that our nation is infected with a deadly disease, a toxic mixture of hatred, anger, grievance, and revenge. We hear, everyday, with our own ears, the narratives of scared foreign-born, gays, those of dark skin, and others who are being marginalized and excluded in real time by those who feel threatened by their presence. We liked to think that so much of it had gone away when we elected an African-American as President. Not so. Instead they just hid under their rocks and kept quiet until an enabler came along who tapped into their culture of victimization and made it okay again to practice hostility and prejudice, in both word and deed. Those fine folks in Charlottesville. The shooters who target immigrants and minorities and their communities. Misogynists. Politicians whose witch hunt agenda ranges from book bans to Down With Disney to Woke! to attacking universities, teachers, school administrators, and others who do not conform. And on and on. They are the cause. We know what the effect is.
That is what America has been. That is what America is now. That is what America will be in the future. Rinse and repeat. At some point you are what your track record says you are, not what you want to believe or what you seek to peddle for personal gain. For all of its many virtues, America has problems. Some of them are very big. And it fails to address them at their root cause when the Campos-Duffys of the nation default into fairy tale mode. People are clamoring to get into our country for various reasons. Some are push factors (major problems in their own homeland). Some are pull factors, most notably better economic opportunities here. But few, if any, are arriving because we are a racial, ethnic, or other paradise of human conditions, living in perfect harmony. It's okay to admit it. Better still would be to fix it. But that requires effort, rather than meaningless and mendacious soundbites that ignore the elephants in the room in favor of the equivalent of a high school pep rally. Three cheers for America. And now let's get down to work, fixing the problems that too few are willing to admit actually exist.
If there is a plan to replace native born Americans with immigrants it has been in place since the 1600s and contentious in politics since before the Adams/Jefferson election of 1800. Immigration has always been a net boon to the United States and the far rights complaints are only about the color of skin of the most recent wave.
The Moms for Liberty member who objected to the movie appears to want no mention of LGBTQ to exist so her child is not stripped of their innocence. She wants the state to assume the responsibility of seeing to it that her child encounters no knowledge that she would disapprove of. This is an impossible task for the state to take on, and neither teachers nor librarians can perform the responsibility they are tasked with, since each parent will want something different and there will not be consensus.
The truth of the matter is that these moms need to do their own parenting instead of relying on the state to do it for them. To achieve their personal parenting goals, they should consider removing their children from public interactions and homeschooling them.
MAGA's most notable flaw is that none of their policies actually work. Trying to make the state responsible for the capriciousness of parents is impossible. Instead of taking personal responsibility for the outcomes in their own lives, Republicans see external structures as necessary to their success, and it's why they fight these culture wars. They are trying to force the culture to meet their personal needs.
"When our default right now as Americans is to want to love each other, want to work together, want to be together."
Where have they been the last 12 years?
Meanwhile, in the real America, we have so many mass shootings that I initially couldn't tell if there had been a new one in Buffalo or if the article was referring to the old one. It's all just one big blur of terror and violence...
What doesn’t trigger Republicans these days? It sure seems like short of kissing their feet and/or ass and catering to their every whim, they are not happy. I’m struggling to even try and care about their wants when it comes to finding solutions. They’re such bad-faith actors at this point I’m a almost a reflexive no with any policy they present. The more they keep doubling down on their white nationalist and Christian nationalist beliefs, the more and more reflexive I get.
It's interesting to see a Fox pile on over something Biden didn't actually say. They call him a liar for saying America is a racist country. But what do you call THEM when they say he said something he didn't actually say?
Is America a racist country? It's complicated. There are racists in America. White supremacist ideology does indeed represent the most dangerous terrorist threat within the country. But we also elected a black man president, then reelected him, and I find it inconceivable that any such thing would be remotely possible in an irredeemably racist country. But what Fox is doing is attacking Biden for what he didn't say, while ignoring his actual critique, which is spot on and irrefutable. So Fox is still as atrocious as it was before the Dominion lawsuit. No change is forthcoming.
I find few things more disingenuous than these self-styled history buffs who try to link the present-day Democratic Party to the days of the Dixiecrats, in order to suggest that efforts to combat racism, racial disadvantage, or racial disparity are somehow the work of a modern, neo-KKK.
So lets get something straight - it wasn't the Democratic Party as a whole that promoted racism. It was the part of it that hailed from the American South. Remember that? The Confederacy? It wasn't the Democratic Party that tried to tear our country in half over the right to enslave black Americans. It was the states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas. The same places where Jim Crow laws disenfranchised blacks until the 1960's, and which had to get changes in voting practices cleared with the Federal government until 2013. Pop quiz: Of these eleven states, which party currently holds eight of their governorships and 21 of their 22 legislative chambers?
Southern Democrats were a portion of the party that often found itself at odds with the rest of it, even going so far as to nominate a separate candidate for President in 1860. They were allied with northern Democrats because they were, generally speaking, the party of the common man: the farmers and the working class. The interests of poor whites generally overlapped with those of free blacks, though the Dixiecrats did their best to avoid helping blacks if they could.
Regardless, the fact that Democrats in these states supported slavery, then Jim Crow and segregation, was not some top down decision by the party - it was the will of the people of those states. If the Democrats had decided they were only going to run candidates in the South that were non-hostile to blacks, they would have lost. Had they decided to simply expel that element of the party, they would have sacrificed a tremendous amount of political power and the interests of those they represented would have suffered. At best the Dixiecrats would have formed a third party that often found itself allied with the Democrats, which would not have been too far from the actual reality at the time.
But ultimately, starting in the Civil Rights Era and gradually throughout the course of the late 20th century, that element of the Democratic Party left and joined the Republicans, while the latter began to shed the affluent, enlightened urban elites which had previously comprised a substantial chunk of its base. This is why the deep south is now ruby red and New England and California are sapphire blue. It wasn't because all those southern good ol' boys decided to move to Yankee country, or reformed their ways enough to be worthy of the party of Lincoln.
The parties just swapped key components of their respective constituencies, and the toxicity of the American south became the Republicans' problem. There is no real connection between the racism of the old Democratic party and its modern incarnation, which is less than half white. And the modern Republicans can only laughably claim the legacy of honest Abe.
The guy who lives in a country where "e plubus unum" (out of many, one) is literally written on currency and was the unofficial motto for the first 150-odd years of the country's existence wants to know why diversity is such a strength. And they accuse *us* of failing to know our history.
A quote from Tucker Carlson: "Do you get along better with your neighbors, your co-workers if you can’t understand each other or share no common values?”
And a quote from The West Wing: “I reject the premise of your question.”
My take: The strength of diversity isn’t how comfortable it makes me, it’s how it opens my eyes to see more possibilities. That includes the very uncomfortable process of opening my eyes to see more problems than my white privilege has previoiusly made clear to me.
Diversity is a strength, because of the variety of experiences that can be shared and learned from. I don't have enough lifetimes to learn everything. To be stuck with one line of thinking is soul-killing. If the GOP is afraid of diversity, they know that their ideas are not sustainable and cannot meet the future, but this does meet their need to control their environment. This will kill them in the end.
Biden: white supremacy is bad
Right Wing Media: stop insulting us!!!
Perhaps some soul searching is in order.
Bad timing for Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who authored an OpEd published in the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday on the same topic as Biden's "divisive" speech. DeWine focused on anti-Semitism rather than racism, but it's an anti-White supremacist article, and good for him. He hasn't gotten any pushback as far as I can tell. All just goes to show it's not the message the right-wing objects to, it's the messenger. Democrats simply aren't allowed to mention racism at all anymore without a national media fit being thrown.
https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2023/05/15/from-holocaust-to-nazis-at-columbus-ohio-drag-brunch-protest-history-teaches-can-repeat-mike-dewine/70212876007/
Rachel Campos-Duffy: “America is not racist. America is the least racist country in the whole world, which is why we have right now people clamoring to get into our country. That’s just a fact.”
No. Actually, it's bullshit.
In this case we see as well as we hear. We see evidence, everyday, with our own eyes, that our nation is infected with a deadly disease, a toxic mixture of hatred, anger, grievance, and revenge. We hear, everyday, with our own ears, the narratives of scared foreign-born, gays, those of dark skin, and others who are being marginalized and excluded in real time by those who feel threatened by their presence. We liked to think that so much of it had gone away when we elected an African-American as President. Not so. Instead they just hid under their rocks and kept quiet until an enabler came along who tapped into their culture of victimization and made it okay again to practice hostility and prejudice, in both word and deed. Those fine folks in Charlottesville. The shooters who target immigrants and minorities and their communities. Misogynists. Politicians whose witch hunt agenda ranges from book bans to Down With Disney to Woke! to attacking universities, teachers, school administrators, and others who do not conform. And on and on. They are the cause. We know what the effect is.
That is what America has been. That is what America is now. That is what America will be in the future. Rinse and repeat. At some point you are what your track record says you are, not what you want to believe or what you seek to peddle for personal gain. For all of its many virtues, America has problems. Some of them are very big. And it fails to address them at their root cause when the Campos-Duffys of the nation default into fairy tale mode. People are clamoring to get into our country for various reasons. Some are push factors (major problems in their own homeland). Some are pull factors, most notably better economic opportunities here. But few, if any, are arriving because we are a racial, ethnic, or other paradise of human conditions, living in perfect harmony. It's okay to admit it. Better still would be to fix it. But that requires effort, rather than meaningless and mendacious soundbites that ignore the elephants in the room in favor of the equivalent of a high school pep rally. Three cheers for America. And now let's get down to work, fixing the problems that too few are willing to admit actually exist.
The President hit too close to home for the Tiki Torchers.
If there is a plan to replace native born Americans with immigrants it has been in place since the 1600s and contentious in politics since before the Adams/Jefferson election of 1800. Immigration has always been a net boon to the United States and the far rights complaints are only about the color of skin of the most recent wave.
The Moms for Liberty member who objected to the movie appears to want no mention of LGBTQ to exist so her child is not stripped of their innocence. She wants the state to assume the responsibility of seeing to it that her child encounters no knowledge that she would disapprove of. This is an impossible task for the state to take on, and neither teachers nor librarians can perform the responsibility they are tasked with, since each parent will want something different and there will not be consensus.
The truth of the matter is that these moms need to do their own parenting instead of relying on the state to do it for them. To achieve their personal parenting goals, they should consider removing their children from public interactions and homeschooling them.
MAGA's most notable flaw is that none of their policies actually work. Trying to make the state responsible for the capriciousness of parents is impossible. Instead of taking personal responsibility for the outcomes in their own lives, Republicans see external structures as necessary to their success, and it's why they fight these culture wars. They are trying to force the culture to meet their personal needs.
For once I agree with the dumbest piece of peckerwood white trash in the Senate, Tommy the Tub:
"I look at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican..." BECAUSE IT'S TRUE.
We need to call out Conservatism Inc. on this till they dread waking up in the morning.
They've "been there" ever since Sainted Buckley defended white supremacy in the National Review - and before.
"When our default right now as Americans is to want to love each other, want to work together, want to be together."
Where have they been the last 12 years?
Meanwhile, in the real America, we have so many mass shootings that I initially couldn't tell if there had been a new one in Buffalo or if the article was referring to the old one. It's all just one big blur of terror and violence...
What doesn’t trigger Republicans these days? It sure seems like short of kissing their feet and/or ass and catering to their every whim, they are not happy. I’m struggling to even try and care about their wants when it comes to finding solutions. They’re such bad-faith actors at this point I’m a almost a reflexive no with any policy they present. The more they keep doubling down on their white nationalist and Christian nationalist beliefs, the more and more reflexive I get.
It's interesting to see a Fox pile on over something Biden didn't actually say. They call him a liar for saying America is a racist country. But what do you call THEM when they say he said something he didn't actually say?
Is America a racist country? It's complicated. There are racists in America. White supremacist ideology does indeed represent the most dangerous terrorist threat within the country. But we also elected a black man president, then reelected him, and I find it inconceivable that any such thing would be remotely possible in an irredeemably racist country. But what Fox is doing is attacking Biden for what he didn't say, while ignoring his actual critique, which is spot on and irrefutable. So Fox is still as atrocious as it was before the Dominion lawsuit. No change is forthcoming.
I find few things more disingenuous than these self-styled history buffs who try to link the present-day Democratic Party to the days of the Dixiecrats, in order to suggest that efforts to combat racism, racial disadvantage, or racial disparity are somehow the work of a modern, neo-KKK.
So lets get something straight - it wasn't the Democratic Party as a whole that promoted racism. It was the part of it that hailed from the American South. Remember that? The Confederacy? It wasn't the Democratic Party that tried to tear our country in half over the right to enslave black Americans. It was the states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas. The same places where Jim Crow laws disenfranchised blacks until the 1960's, and which had to get changes in voting practices cleared with the Federal government until 2013. Pop quiz: Of these eleven states, which party currently holds eight of their governorships and 21 of their 22 legislative chambers?
Southern Democrats were a portion of the party that often found itself at odds with the rest of it, even going so far as to nominate a separate candidate for President in 1860. They were allied with northern Democrats because they were, generally speaking, the party of the common man: the farmers and the working class. The interests of poor whites generally overlapped with those of free blacks, though the Dixiecrats did their best to avoid helping blacks if they could.
Regardless, the fact that Democrats in these states supported slavery, then Jim Crow and segregation, was not some top down decision by the party - it was the will of the people of those states. If the Democrats had decided they were only going to run candidates in the South that were non-hostile to blacks, they would have lost. Had they decided to simply expel that element of the party, they would have sacrificed a tremendous amount of political power and the interests of those they represented would have suffered. At best the Dixiecrats would have formed a third party that often found itself allied with the Democrats, which would not have been too far from the actual reality at the time.
But ultimately, starting in the Civil Rights Era and gradually throughout the course of the late 20th century, that element of the Democratic Party left and joined the Republicans, while the latter began to shed the affluent, enlightened urban elites which had previously comprised a substantial chunk of its base. This is why the deep south is now ruby red and New England and California are sapphire blue. It wasn't because all those southern good ol' boys decided to move to Yankee country, or reformed their ways enough to be worthy of the party of Lincoln.
The parties just swapped key components of their respective constituencies, and the toxicity of the American south became the Republicans' problem. There is no real connection between the racism of the old Democratic party and its modern incarnation, which is less than half white. And the modern Republicans can only laughably claim the legacy of honest Abe.
The guy who lives in a country where "e plubus unum" (out of many, one) is literally written on currency and was the unofficial motto for the first 150-odd years of the country's existence wants to know why diversity is such a strength. And they accuse *us* of failing to know our history.
Why the masks, boys?
Once again, someone speaks the truth and the crazies go into a total frenzy. Joe, you hit a nerve here. Keep hitting it.
A quote from Tucker Carlson: "Do you get along better with your neighbors, your co-workers if you can’t understand each other or share no common values?”
And a quote from The West Wing: “I reject the premise of your question.”
My take: The strength of diversity isn’t how comfortable it makes me, it’s how it opens my eyes to see more possibilities. That includes the very uncomfortable process of opening my eyes to see more problems than my white privilege has previoiusly made clear to me.
Diversity is a strength, because of the variety of experiences that can be shared and learned from. I don't have enough lifetimes to learn everything. To be stuck with one line of thinking is soul-killing. If the GOP is afraid of diversity, they know that their ideas are not sustainable and cannot meet the future, but this does meet their need to control their environment. This will kill them in the end.