Supermoon Whitelash

Waiting for the supermoon was enough of a minor distraction to pull me out of my post-election doldrums. Then I saw this.

Former Reaganite and Trump anger translator Jeffrey Lord says Democrats started the Klu Klux Klan.  Understanding the truth behind this statement requires much more nuance than a hamfisted shill for Donald Trump is capable of, at least on camera. I followed the breadcrumbs to where this line originated. As usual, I expected nothing and I was completely disappointed.

When Bishop E.W. Jackson -- lawyer, staunch Republican, conservative political pundit, former radio talk show host and ex-marine, amongst other things -- was a nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia in 2012, he released a video through his organization S.T.A.N.D. (Staying True to America's National Destiny) to push an agenda called Exodus Now. 

His goal? To convince black people to leave the Democratic party. What motivated all this? The Democrat's support of gay marriage at the 2012 convention.

Bishop Jackson says that Black people should leave the Democratic party because Democrats are the ones who started the KKK. In the wake of this claim, Virginia State Senator Stephen Martin repeated it -- adding that Democrats also created Planned Parenthood. When Senator Martin realized that there is no evidence to support his claim regarding Planned Parenthood (or the Klan), he said he misspoke. By then, the misinformation was out there, parading itself as the truth, and the alt-right was off to the races, embracing this statement as a call to action.

During the most recent election cycle, the ads imploring an ethnic mass exodus from the Democratic party have been nonstop -- from Republicans who declare themselves "the party of Lincoln", no less.  Now, making a statement like "The Democratic party started the Klan!" is the gigantic turdbomb of epic proportions that any neo-con can use to dead-end a political discussion. And no one wants to dismantle it. 

A simple fact check and a brief history lesson proves that this statement is not entirely true.  

Political parties evolve over time.  In the 19th century, they simply didn't exist as we know them today. Instead of identifying everything and everyone as Republican or Democrat, it's much more helpful to see where the shift in white supremacy takes place, and take it from there. Why? Because each party is made up of people who think a certain way and that's what shapes the party's beliefs and defines its platform -- not the name of the party itself.  Over time, the white supremacists, racists and bigots have shifted from one party to another.   That's the American way. 

 

As a Southerner and an African-American woman that's two generations removed from slavery, the question I ask constantly is this: Which one of you are white supremacists and what party are you affiliated with now? Political parties are not stagnant, fixed, immovable. As white supremacists change directions and affiliations, the parties are redefined. What was liberal is now conservative, and vice versa. 

Yes -- during the 19th century, Democrats were much more racist than Republicans.  Were Klan members Democrats? In all likelihood, yes -- but the Democratic party didn't start the KKK.  Then the Civil Rights Movement happened, polarizing Southern Christians against the Democratic party. When African-Americans gained the right to vote and became Democrats, those white supremacist Southern Christian became Republicans. In this regard, Republicans weren't a force for civil rights. For the Dixie-crats who joined their ranks, they were a refuge from it.  Those KKK Democrats are Republicans now -- and celebrating their win in The White House.

For days after the election, I fielded phone calls and texts and DMs and IMs from friends near and far, offering support, asylum and solid advice.  I got a text from my German sibling in Berlin that made me very happy.  I've chatted with lots of musicians who say they're not working or associating with anyone who voted for Trump.  One friend couldn't stop crying.  Another didn't know what to do about her Republican relatives.  Because Thanksgiving.

No one wants to spend the holidays with parents who voted for a bigoted, racist white supremacist.  No one wants to buy Christmas presents for anyone who put the alt-right in The White House.  No one wants to spend any quality time with someone who refuses to acknowledge that by campaigning on hate and fear, Trump created this climate of
violence and open hostility against people of color, women, the disabled and LGBTQs.  This is what we're left with: everyone getting bullied, even children (it's become a disturbing trend); women getting groped when they least expect it; African-American college students, harassed; and yes, murder.



Like a monkey gleefully flinging it's own excrement, way too many white people are spewing all kinds of racial epithets in every direction and smearing their ignorance all over everything with a fervor that is nothing short of stultifying. A friend in his 50s told me that he didn't recognize his high school friends anymore. He couldn't believe the things they were saying. When I hung up the phone, I remembered that his ex-wife was Jewish. His daughters -- both in college -- were at risk. One of them was in a march somewhere on the west coast and some guy hit her in the head with a rock.

He felt helpless, scared.  "How do you know who the good guys are?" he asked me.  Welcome to my black world, I must have said. Or something like that. And then I laughed.

"But she's my Mom," a gay friend whispered tearfully.

"Does she know who Mike Pence is? Does she realize what she's done?" I said flatly. 

"Yeah," he said weakly.  "She keeps going on about how Trump is going to bring morality back..." And then his voice trailed off.  He's a musical theater performer. His husband is a musician. They've got Obamacare.  They've got a great life. And it's over.

The moon hasn't been this close to the earth since 1948 -- when African-Americans were at the mercy of home-grown terrorism by the Klan (all over the country, not just the South) and the federal government did nothing to stop them.  There'll be other supermoons that will make you press pause and look up and wax poetic, but it won't be this close again until 2034 -- and God only knows what this country will be like when that happens.  We won't be where we were in 1948 -- but where are we going? 

Hopefully, you did something momentous on Sunday night.  (If you didn't, tonight is your night.) MPB and I had a mutton chop at Keen's and ate like it's 1889. Then we went for a walk in the moonlight and this depression rose and floated away from me like smoke. By the time I got home, something had shifted. 

As this new reality sets in and the climate of hate refuses to go away, it'll be interesting to see and hear what your favorite artist has to say about any of this in 2017.

The Third Day of Kwanzaa: Ujima

This means "to build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and solve them together." 

My immediate thought turns towards volunteer work within the community but it's much bigger than that.  The African proverb of the village that is required to raise a child holds true here, too. In the same way that the parents aren't the only ones who grow a child into the fullness of adulthood, we help or hinder each other in a myriad of unseen ways that reverberate through our inner selves constantly.

No man is an island. No one does it on their own.  You may have a great idea but it's going to take a lot of people to help you pull it off. Quiet as its kept, it takes a village to live a life.  It certainly takes a village to have a career. 

How could we possibly have made it through The Middle Passage, over 400 years of slavery, the Antebellum South, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the homegrown terrorism of the KKK and the overall violence, the degradation, the virulent racism (institutionalized and otherwise), the microaggression, the indignity, the almighty insufferable all-consuming flat-out ignorance of much of the American populace has towards us if we did not have each other?

Remember this, loud and clear: we were not supposed to survive any of this. Millions of us were lost as slave traders crossed the Atlantic Ocean. The work was much too hard for anyone else. We were not supposed to make it.

To read the best explanation for Ujima that I've gotten so far, please click here.

Oh, Kanye -- Part 1: That Confederate Flag

 

In an interview with AMP Radio, Kanye West said, "The Confederate flag represented slavery in a way. That's my abstract take on what I know about it, right? So I wrote the song, 'New Slaves.' So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. It's my flag now. Now what you gonna do?"

Later in the same interview, he said, "It's colorless also. It's super-'hood and super-white-boy-approved at the same time."

When I heard about Kanye West's latest controversial explosion -- incorporating the Confederate flag into his tour merch designs as well as his personal life (wearing it as a patch on a green bomber jacket on a recent visit to Barney's) -- I thought it was a gag someone made up at The Onion.  Things are going so well with this latest flap that he's opened a pop-up store in Soho that sells these Confederate items.  While the irony of rednecks the world over lining Kanye's pockets by showing up at his concert and purchasing a t-shirt that bears the symbol of his ancestor's pain and oppression isn't entirely lost on me, there is much, much more to all of this that completely and utterly misses the mark. 

Of course, we expect these "outrageous" antics from Mr. West, and while many (but certainly not all) are standing in what appears to be a long, long line to congratulate him on his latest bit of controversy, let's be clear on one thing: Kanye West is hardly the first black rapper to embrace the Confederate flag.  Lil' Jon did this more than ten years ago -- and on the cover of his third album with The East Side Boyz, no less.

The picture is one of complete defiance. Look at that stance. There's nothing agreeable or subservient or compliant there. He is flanked by The East Side Boyz, their expressionless faces and white t-shirts further exaggerating Lil Jon's approach as well as the entire scenario.  As the flag drapes his shoulders like a cape, Lil Jon is almost daring the viewer to take that flag away from him.  Both of the flags in the background are on fire -- as if to counter the crosses that the KKK would burn "religiously" to intimidate black folk and other undesirables, he now burns their flag to intimidate them -- and he is on fire, too.  He is burning it down, as it were -- symbolically burning down the old South and what those traditions represent while holding onto what it means to him. Very nearly lit from within with a kind of makeshift rage that some would want to call urban propaganda, and with that gleaming trademark dental work run amok, he is the living embodiment of what some consider to be The New South. 

Kanye West, on the other hand, is from the Midwest (yes, he was born in Atlanta, GA but he left as a toddler, was raised in Chicago and is about to relocate to a Bel Air mansion). The flag may symbolize many things for him as an American and as an African-American but because it's not a part of his culture, he is far removed from it in a way that Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz are not. 

He is also extremely well off, quite famous and insulated from much of the reality of (Southern) black life, so its altogether likely that there's a quite a lot that he's probably not aware of. It should also be noted that Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz -- along with several other black Southern rappers like Outkast, Ludacris and David Banner -- have used the Confederate flag in the recent past. Kanye, on the other hand, is flat-out selling it.
What did Lil' Jon say when the press questioned him about draping himself with what many consider to be a symbol of racism and hate? "I'm from the South. That's what it represents to me.  We're Southern-born and raised. The flag is part of us. We look at it as just being proud to say we're from the South." 


In a review of the CD, Lil Jon elaborated thusly: "As a Southern group, we chose to bring the issue to the forefront in our album packaging. We're basically mocking racists on one hand by wearing The Confederate Flag, but at the same time we're repping the South. Do you know how infuriating it will be for a redneck to see me, a black deadlocked rapper, wearing The Confederate Flag around my shoulders? It's almost as bad as me dating his daughter. The Confederate Flag ain't going nowhere. It's part of Southern life and a reality of where we're from. Getting rid of the flag will not get rid of racism. Our album cover was our way of burning The Confederate Flag and all the racist mentality that comes with it; but we're also wearing it to show our love for The South." 

Lil Jon went on to say this: "The flag is a symbol and people attach their own meaning to it. To me The Confederate Flag is just that, a flag. We grew up seeing that flag everywhere. It's more offensive to the older Southern black folks who understand first-hand what the flag symbolizes, but I don't think younger folks view the flag in the same way."

Furthermore, Lil' Bo, one of the East Side Boyz, said: "Being born in the South, the flag has a different meaning for me than it would to people who aren't Southern. On one hand, I know a lot of lives were lost on both sides over it, but on the other it's a symbol of racial hatred that Black people in the South want to forget. It depends on which side of the line you're on."

Even if Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz did this as some sort of marketing ploy that would differentiate them from the rest of the Southern hip-hop herd and sell more albums, it makes the powerful statement that Kanye's flag-waving cannot because it's coming from young Southern black men.  For Lil Jon, waving this flag carries the weight and meaning and rebel intensity for which it was initially intended -- and in doing so, it is innately subversive.

In the next installment of Oh, Kanye -- Part 2: That Confederate Flag, we'll do the unthinkable and look at the flag in context.

I voted already. Did you?

I went to a local elementary school with MPB a few blocks from home and voted this morning. I didn't have to show any ID whatsoever.  I signed where indicated, took a numbered card, and then I gave that card to a volunteer before I stepped into a booth, pulled a lever and did my civic duty.  We got there so early, we were actually the 8th and 9th voters for the day. Huzzah!

I can't even begin to imagine what we as a people had to endure as we as newly freed former slaves were systematically disenfranchised from every aspect of society, including the voting process.  Tens of thousands of honest, hard-working, tax-paying Americans lost their lives to the brutality of home grown terrorism run amok, simply because they wanted to exercise their right to vote -- while the federal government looked the other way. The Voter ID Laws -- now active in 30 states -- shouldn't surprise anyone that's paying attention.

Was any of that 2012 voter fraud information real? No, it wasn't.  (Surprise!)

Here's your challenge for the day:  can you can pass the voter's test that the state of Louisiana gave to African-Americans in the 1960s? If you'd like to try, please click here.

home-grown terrorists

okay. i'm going to say it.

i don't understand how anyone in this country can go on about the threat of domestic terrorism and how wrong it is and not make any mention whatsoever of the klu klux klan -- defined by any real dictionary as a domestic terrorist organization -- and the way that they tortured, lynched, raped, murdered, bombed, assassinated and massacred african-americans and native americans and asian americans and many others for hundreds of years with scant interference from the state or federal government. as a matter of fact, the KKK is still very much alive and well, and they're still at it. so many in their ranks are guilty as sin itself, and they're completely and utterly free -- and in some communities, they are celebrated heroes. evidently, the federal government doesn't care about justice for the crimes committed against african americans.

that's right, mrs. carolyn bryant -- the accuser that got emmett till killed -- i'm talking to you. everybody knows where you live and that your children are protecting you at gunpoint. why do you suppose the federal/state/local officials won't come and get you and put you in prison where you belong? you make me sick. but i digress...

what about congressmen who are members of the klu klux klan or who are klan sympathizers? if it's true that "once a terrorist, always a terrorist" rule applies to ayers, does it also apply to membership with the KKK?  because if it does, there are millions of americans out there who are palling around with terrorists and who probably don't even know it.

here's a bright shining example of what i mean: robert byrd, a senior congressman from west virginia and a democrat, joined the KKK at the age of 24 and was unanimously elected exalted cyclops and kleagle (recruiter). he remained active in the klan for years and was proud to be counted amongst its ranks.  (see? i didn't even have to mention racist/segregationist/bigoted ol' strom, or the lovely daughter that came along after he raped the family's black maid.)

of course senator byrd is very sorry about his involvement with the KKK now. he's all set to apologize for it for the rest of his life -- because according to him, he'll never be able to apologize enough. here's what he had to say then about african-americans in the military in a 1945 letter to mississippi senator theodore bilbo:

"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

charming.

if obama is guilty of crossing paths with ayers -- because a crossing of paths is all their relationship has amounted to, really -- is it so farfetched to accuse politicians of associating with terrorists by mingling and socializing with the klan members in their midst?

and hey -- what about the secessionists? we all know about the racist militia groups and how they've grown exponentially in recent months. what about the fact that todd "the first dude" palin was a member of the alaskan independence party until as recently as 2002? yes, they're the ones that were seriously thinking about breaking away from the US and joining canada a few years ago. how patriotic is that?

but the fact that gov. palin refuses to see the national "home grown" terrorists in her midst -- even when she's probably married to one of them (and is one, actually) -- isn't the the kicker.

the kicker is that she would "read" an article in the new york times about obama and ayers (you and i both know one of her minions signed off on that one -- she wouldn't touch the times with someone else's hand), cherry pick her way through the facts, twist all of it into a hot steaming pile of jingoistic rhetoric and feed those half-truths to a seething crowd of republicans who are so full of fear that they are foaming-at-the-mouth ready to accept any reason to take a stand against obama. even if it's an outright lie.

the truth is, obama doesn't pal around with ayers -- or any other terrorist. they haven't spoken to each other since 2003. and what about the other politicians -- both democrat and republican, by the way -- that have worked with ayers over the years? why isn't anyone mentioning any of them?

so many in the republican party seem convinced that he's an arab, a terrorist, and that he's muslim -- when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. with every gathering, they are becoming increasingly agitated and violent. and racist. senator john lewis was right when he compared senator mccain to george wallace and the birmingham church bombers. he and palin are inciting a riot. God only knows which "good american" will take it upon themselves to show their patriotism with an act of violence towards obama, their percieved enemy.

here's the CNN report on the "terrorist" scare that gov. palin created.



...and here she is, taking the new york times article in question totally out of context.



and finally, CNN's truth squad debunks everything that gov. palin has said. we now know that obama doesn't pal around with terrorists.



now, how many "good americans" saw this report and ignored it because gov. palin said otherwise?

perhaps the real question that should be asked is, will the federal government step in and put an end to the mccain/palin race baiting and hate mongering? or are they going to keep this up until something bad happens?

the problem with obama's minister

i think it's important to read as much as possible from every and any perspective about the issues that concern this campaign (and of course, the war). this article is one that you're not likely to hear on the "fair and balanced" reporting that doesn't happen at ultra-conservative right-wing arch-republican FOX News. so i thought i'd post it here.

frankly, when taken in context, i agreed with much of what obama's minister said. i challenge anyone to take what he said in context and examine his words closely. want an example? it's true that the Klu Klux Klan in its inception was a terrorist organization that was condoned by the government -- and truth be told, they still are. they systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of black men, women and children and used terrorist tactics to intimidate and control them.

no one has ever acknowledged this publicly on a national level. no one puts this in schoolbooks and such so we can all learn about our collective past as americans. and definitely, no one has EVER apologized for it.

how could hard-working, tax-paying american citizens be treated this way? how could the american government stand by and let this happen to its citizens for more than a hundred years? why is the Klu Klux Klan still alive and well in this country? why hasn't the government called them the terrorists that they are and dismantled them?

i was talking to this aging white hippie the other day who agreed with much of what rev. wright said as well. and in a way, that's to be expected. think about it. old hippies are always going off about "the man" and "the government" and "foreign policy" and our tax dollars being used to fight unnecessary wars, because they lived through it in the 60s and 70s. the war in iraq is only the latest in a long line of dirty deeds done at our expense. there are many people in the world who've observed our foreign policy from a distance for quite some time and many more who are still living through its damaging aftereffects. it's lunacy to think that we could do so much harm in the world under the guise of freedom and democracy and not eventually have any of it impact us in some horrible way. according to that old white hippie, that's just not the way karma works.

the problem with obama's minister isn't that he's divisive or racist or homophobic or anti-semitic. (i mean, come on. didn't i just describe most of the presidents we've ever had? didn't i just describe nixon? get this: president wilson loved the movie birth of a nation and was completely and utterly pro-KKK. but i digress.) the problem is that rev. wright is not a well-dressed, well-heeled conservative white man -- because if he was pat robertson or jerry falwell, people may have batted an eyelash but it wouldn't have upended someone else's presidential bid. remember when they said that hurricane katrina happened because new orleans was a modern day sodom, that 9/11 happened because of the sins of the nation? who rushed to denounce them? i don't recall a national furor on a level that would come anywhere near what rev. wright has experienced. well. actually john mccain made a statement against what they said. but he needs the votes of the religious right, so he's taken all of that back now.

why isn't anyone focusing on the divisive things these conservatives said in comparison to rev. wright, or john mccain's latest flip-flop? you tell me.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" But When My Father Said The Same Thing, He Was An American Hero by Frank Schaeffer

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.

Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.

Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:

If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.

And this:

In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....

Then this:

There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...

Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop).

Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.

Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."

We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.

The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.

Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html )

Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back