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.

...that Clinton/Trump double standard, though...

Bingo. pic.twitter.com/4tl0cvktch

— Rosemarie Robotham (@rarobotham) October 13, 2016

Just when I think, no one is saying it so I'll say it -- somebody says it. Beautifully.  Kudos to this guy for summing up this election cycle so succinctly.

Michelle Bachman says God "raised up" Trump to be the Republican nominee, and I think she's right. Because of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton will be our next president -- and because of the Republican senators and congressmen who care more about the GOP than jobs or healthcare reform or anything else that concerns the rest of us, the Democrats will probably take the Senate and the House. 

America was never great.

"I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. 

Never was there a clearer case of "stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in." I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families — sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers — leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate. 

We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. 

The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other — devils dressed in angels' robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise." — Frederick Douglass, Life of An American Slave, 1845

America was never great.

That State of the Union Address, though...

If you missed it, here it is -- President Obama takes what can only be described as a victory lap as he outlines his two year plan for the nation. Jump to 21:53 for the start of the speech. To read along, click here. 



The response from Republican Senator Joni Ernst -- proud Iowan, wife, mom, military veteran, pig farmer and former child hog castrator -- is not to be missed.  That bread bag remark alone launched a jillion well-aimed memes.

Who is Senator Joni Ernst? Five minutes ago, she was a rural county auditor. Once she landed in the Iowa legislature, the Koch brothers came along -- and yes, so did several other billionaires -- to bankroll her political rise. A scant three years later, she's a senator -- the first woman to represent Iowa and the first female veteran in the Senate. A week after being sworn in, she's tapped to give the Republican response.  Coincidence? Not according to Senator Ernst, who (along with several other Republican politicians) credited the Koch brothers for their success. 

Cindi Lauper was right. Money changes everything.

When you realize Senator Ernst is working hard to strengthen the agenda of a few very powerful billionaires who, like Simon Bar-Sinister, would like to take over the world, it really puts all that folksy, homespun, rural, (lower) middle-class talk in a different light. To my ears, it sounded sardonic. They don't call her Exxon Ernst for nothing.

Here's the must-see political ad that put Senator Ernst on the map.  Because going on and on about liberals and government waste of our hard-earned tax dollars and such is more than enough to distract people from the fact that you're basically an ambitious tool.

That should be enough to make anyone squeal.

Fun Fact of the Day

colin powell endorses senator obama

it came from california

senator mccain has said that in this political season, he has had to endure the same degree of vitriol as senator obama. after perusing what the republicans have said and done against senator obama, i'm inclined to disagree.

here's a good example of what i mean.

a women's group in california called chaffey community republican women federated put this in their october newsletter. it said that if senator obama is elected, his image would be on food stamps instead of actual money like other presidents. apparently, this is what it would look like.

the caption for this image? "Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on????? Food Stamps, what else!"

who's responsible for this? mrs. donna fedele, the president of the group.

mrs. fedele says she created this in response to obama's statement that as an african-american, he "doesn't look like the other presidents on the dollar bills." she was offended at the way he made race an issue -- "playing the race card," as it were. she thought this illustration would point out the outrageousness of his statement.

i don't understand what was so outrageous about what he said. he simply pointed out the truth. maybe she and other republicans were upset because he was right.

if she had an issue with the facts or the way that he stated them, then she needed to -- as they say in california -- own her discomfort and seek the help of a licensed therapist to get to the root of why she finds an intelligent, educated black man who simply states the obvious to be such a patently offensive thing.

what did she think this would accomplish? what was she trying to prove? was she cracking a joke?

where did she get this image, anyway? did she take an afternoon out of her busy racist day to photoshop it together herself? oh, no. according to mrs. fedele, it was emailed to her "in a number of chain emails." she refuses to name the source. she also refuses to discuss this any further.

isn't it a federal offense to use the u.s. postal service to send things like this?

she's already given what she calls an apology but in the next breath, she says she didn't see what was so racist about it in the first place, so clearly she's not sorry at all. saying "i apologize if i offended anyone..." is a rubbery, backhanded way to absolve yourself and not flat out admit that you were wrong. let's face it: "if" is a funny word. it's conditional. and a real apology shouldn't be.

wouldn't it be great if senator mccain publicly denounced this? wouldn't it be great if he publicly denounced any of the negativity surrounding his campaign? all those "good americans" screaming "off with his head" and "kill him" and "terrorist" whenever senator obama's name was mentioned at the rallies. we could start there.

here's my favorite quote: "I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else." i think KFC and Kool Aid should sue her organization into oblivion for reproducing their logo and their images and thus damaging their brand and their reputation by connecting them to this hot mess.

she says she's not racist because she supported african american republican alan keyes during his presidential bid, and -- here's the kicker -- because she's a jew. that's right: jews aren't racist! she's actually hiding behind the star of david.

oy gevalt.

people think that california is an open, liberal place but don't let the sunshine, the fake titties, the old hippies -- and their fantastic marketing campaign -- fool you. it's more racist and bigoted and segregated and conservative than anything the south has to offer. according to the southern poverty law center, california has more hate groups than any other state -- 80 at last count. and get this: protesters with california's radical, immigrant-bashing organization called save our state have joined forces with neo-nazis. so anyone that's been paying attention shouldn't be surprised that something like this would come from the west coast.

even walt disney was a massive ginormously huge racist and bigot. and nothing epitomizes california like disneyland.

it's this kind of behavior that keeps many conservative people of color from joining the republican party. who would want to align themselves with any organization that would do something this twisted? this is domestic terrorism, plain and simple -- straight out of any KKK playbook, if they had one.

if you'd like to tell her what you think of that image and what she did, be my guest.

Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated
P.O. Box 974
Upland, CA 91785
Diane Fedele (President) diane1354@mindspring.com or diane1354@verizon.net

Phone: (909) 981-0493
Fax: (909) 982-6880
Meets the 4th Wednesday of every month at 7pm
Magic Lamp Inn, Rancho Cucamonga