White nationalism or white supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society. It's hard to believe this kind of concept could persist in the 21st century. Don't get me wrong, it has been prevalent over the years since the Civil Rights Act of 1968 also known as the Fair Housing Act. There were others before it but Lyndon Johnson thought he was putting on the final touches with his late sixties bill. Although there was some noticeable breakthrough, racism in its purest form still exists.
What we never thought possible in this country is the fact that, even though there have been racists presidents before him, no other administration has ever prided itself in stocking its staff, even its cabinet, with white nationalists. Donald Trump not only welcomes their company, he encourages their participation in the sport by regularly practicing his own. It's like who can one up the other. As Salon's headline expressed...
Donald Trump’s white nationalist “genius bar”: Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Michael “Decius” Anton and beyond
Further: "Donald Trump’s administration is built around a brain trust of white nationalists." Folks, these crackpots are all proud of a trait that normal, civilized people consider abhorrent. In addition to the above, Donald John's new Atty. General, Jeff Sessions, has been a racist most of his adult life. And according to the Washington Post, half of Trump supporters are racists, proving my earlier point that racism has been prevalent over the years, in spite of targeted legislation. We are a truly pathetic nation that allows these lowlifes not only to exist, but also to proliferate.
Said it once and here it is again, "How about concentration camps for racists?" my headline from an earlier post. May sound far-fetched but wouldn't it be fun to visit their compound and flip them the bird through the chain-link fence...with barb-wire around the top, of course.
...they know all about Donald Trump's affair with Stormy Daniels, his endorsement of alleged sexual abuser Roy Moore, his reference to “shithole” countries, his toxic tweets, recurrent racism, or general crudity, and a multitude of other things the Oval Office lunatic has said or done over the past two years. One thousand--can you believe it--evangelical ministers, supposedly of God, "plan to meet the president, both to “celebrate” his accomplishments (as one leading pastor put it) and to rally Christians for the midterm elections."
Former GWB speechwriter, Peter Wehner, revealed in a New York Times op-ed page last December, “Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evangelical Republican.” After being a part of both the evangelicals and the Republican Party all his life, it took Trump's endorsement of Roy Moore to make him reconsider. His opinion of Donald Trump's Republican Party is...
"a threat to conservatism, and I have concluded that the term evangelical—despite its rich history of proclaiming the ‘good news’ of Christ to a broken world—has been so distorted that it is now undermining the Christian witness.
I was a huge fan of Billy Graham, even though I am an agnostic, and believe he showed the epitome of living what you preach. But I agree with Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, who wrote in Politico...
“to chart the troubled recent course of American evangelicalism—its powerful rise after World War II and its surprisingly quick demise in recent years”—one need look no further than the differences between Graham and his eldest son, Franklin, who took over his empire."
Prothero talks of the fact that Billy Graham was "a powerful evangelist who turned evangelicalism into the dominant spiritual impulse in modern America.” But, "his son [Franklin] is 'a political hack' who 'is rapidly rebranding evangelicalism as a belief system marked not by faith, hope, and love but by fear of Muslims and homophobia.'” Franklin Graham clearly qualifies as a religious fanatic in the worst way. Martin Luther symbolized modern-day evangelicalism with his fierce ideas, vehement language, and combative intellectual style. Evangelicals have carried the ball from there. Read more: How Martin Luther Paved the Way for Donald Trump
Bernie says the most important thing to him in the time left leading up to the 2020 election is to see that Donald Trump is not reelected. That would be the attitude of most of the U.S. population, minus the Trump hard core supporters, which was around 18% in 2018. I have been in contact with a few of these uninformed citizens recently and can say their less than rational mentality will never change. As I mentioned in another post today, much of the Trump base is completely disenchanted with the Oval Office lunatic and are looking hard at Bernie Sanders. The gist of Bernie's statement...
"At the end of the day, what is most important to me is to see that Donald Trump is not re-elected president, and I intend to do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen."
He does want a thorough investigation by the House and would reconsider his position if anything damaging to Trump were to develop. Meanwhile, here's CNN Politics assessment of the right direction for Democrats...
1) Abandoning the Mueller report conclusions is unacceptable to the party's political base. 2) Impeachment will allow Trump to paint himself as a victim of overly partisan Democrats looking to run him out because they lost an election. 3) Senate Republicans will simply not abandon Trump en masse, ensuring that even if impeachment succeeds in the House, Trump will not be removed from office.
Bernie's position is, and I agree, that the left shouldn't fight a campaign of personalities, rather, emphasize the issues like healthcare, minimum wage, climate change, gun control and racism. A sensible public is not interested in revisiting the bizarre antics of a moron who has proven time after time that he is unfit to be president of the United States. And since impeachment is the epitome of Bernie's base, he must justify this position by convincing his people he can win in 2020. Early polls show him well out front in New Hampshire, but Joe Biden declaring tomorrow could change things.
And no less a U.S. Senator. Who would re-elect this sleazebag repeatedly? Could only be the same morons who vote for Donald Trump. Raw Story says, "Gallons of ink have been spilled about how he [Mitch McConnell] is a worse threat to democratic institutions than Trump." This pariah of politics has served as a concrete wall against anything the left has tried to accomplish, dating back to before the Obama administration.
One of my passions is reasonable gun control. In June of 2018, McConnell used his power to prevent legislation to prevent terrorists from buying guns. (It should be noted that he is one of the largest recipients of donations from the National Rifle Assn.) and as The Hill put it...
"provided cover for vulnerable Republicans who wanted to be seen as supporting the effort but did not want to cross the National Rifle Association."
It is all about power and that is what the man demands, no matter its expense to the American public and the country.
In an opinion piece for The Guardian this past April, Robert Reich wrote...
"No person has done more in living memory to undermine the functioning of the US government than the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell."
The sooner, the better
Now that's a pretty strong statement when you have Donald Trump in the White House in the process of using his corrupt administration to line his and his minions' pockets. "But McConnell is actively and willfully destroying the Senate," Reich says, resulting in the following...
"Last Wednesday he used his Republican majority to cut the time for debating Trump’s court appointees from 30 hours to two – thereby enabling Republicans to ram through even more Trump judges."
There's more from Reich...
"McConnell doesn’t give a fig about the Senate, or about democracy. He cares only about winning. On the eve of the 2010 midterm elections he famously declared that his top priority was for Barack Obama 'to be a one-term president.'”
Mitch McConnell, who was almost a single force in stonewalling anything Obama did in his two terms, is a confirmed racist who hated Barack Obama because he was black, and also since he was a Democrat. McConnell even vowed to make Obama a one-term president. He failed. Mitch McConnell is a complete fraud but as long as he gets things done for the GOP he'll stay head of the Senate. Unless...the people of Kentucky wise up and blow him away in 2020.
Here's an example of McConnell's stupidity, punctuated by racism...
Here's a headline that every Kentuckian should take into consideration before voting in 2020: "Mitch McConnell Will Not Act in Good Faith, Even When the Security of the Country Is at Stake." It refers to McConnell's blaming of Barack Obama for the Russians meddling in the 2016 election, thus prompting the Mueller Report. Although Obama may have been negligent in handling the intelligence, Mueller's Report clearly holds Donald Trump guilty of collusion.
And finally Mitch McConnell's dark side, in my estimation, the only side he has. Politico calls him, “Cocaine Mitch,” “Nuclear Mitch” or the steward of the “legislative graveyard.” Would anyone question why Congress has such a low rating with the American public with a mad man like this in control of the Senate? I think not, and according to Raw Story, the Democrats should be able to use Mitch McConnell to sweep the 2020 elections. One can only hope!
That, and there is something else to consider...testing...
The increase on Donald Trump's approval for coronavirus handling would be good, except it doesn't consider all the facts. The U.S. lags miserably behind other countries in testing, thus, the number of cases is no doubt drastically more than those recorded so far. As an example, Forbes is reporting...
"As of March 11, South Korea had conducted 4,099 tests per million of its inhabitants while the U.S. only managed 26. The most recent government data was compiled by website Our World in Data and it shows that by March 17, South Korea's number of tests per million people climbed to 5,567 while the U.S. figure increased to 125 tests per million of the population. Even though that should climb steadily over the next couple of days, it is still cause for serious concern."
In other words, T-rump is being given credit for doing a job that is much less than even half done. But, it gets worse. The favorability increased, incidentally, right after he adopted the racist approach of calling COVID-19, the "Chinese virus." His double-digit followers loved it, as did those others who make up the 55% approval rating. RawStory's explanation...
"This is the kind of crisis that opportunistic racists barely dared dream of before. Indeed, Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been all but pleading for weeks for Trump and his fellow right-wing talking heads to move away from denialism and towards racist exploitation."
The obtuse oaf explaining his racism...
[Trump] "like all racist trolls, is playing dumb when called out for it. He’s said it’s 'not racist at all, no, not at all' and that he wants 'to be accurate' and that the virus 'comes from China.'” And listen to this...
"Trump’s racist trolling is sending Carlson into bouts of near-orgasmic ecstasy. On Tuesday, he swooned that the president’s 'Chinese virus' rhetoric was an example of 'Trump at his very best.'”
Which points out the fact of just how racist Fox News is, as well as being the country's largest purveyor of misinformation. Carlson plods on with absurd conspiracy theories that aren't worth mentioning, and then Sean Hannity agrees with lowlife Rush Limbaugh "that the coronavirus crisis was a hoax." Between Fox News and Donald Trump, COVID-19 could be the "death" of the United States.
You're on Progressive Street...Where Liberals Walk...
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Saturday news catch-up...
Racism dominated the end of the New Hampshire debates last evening, initiated by a statement from presidential candidate, Tom Steyer, to the effect that no one had talked about racism. Then everyone did. Here's something to think about, from UK's Guardian, "How to fight racism using science," claiming, "prejudice that has a longstanding relationship with science." READ MORE...
And then the Guardian reports again of the "Montana Republican rebuked for saying socialists should be 'jailed or shot.'" Being a Democratic Socialist, and having personally experienced this exact kind of behavior here in Arizona from another Republican, it is easy to see how the GOP is going down the tube with its supporters with it. READ MORE...
RawStory exclaims, "Why Fox News viewers are so ignorant," because they listen to and believe the garbage spewed out by hosts like Sean Hannity. This idiot was still defending Trump after the impeachment by "accusing Democrats of supporting 'abortion after birth.'” There is no such thing as any non-conservative and sane individual knows. READ MORE...
Still feeling sorry for Rush Limbaugh and his medical problems? Here are 9 things this maniac said about women in the article, "." Rush Limbaugh’s 9 most appalling comments about women." Here's an example...
"Rush imagining that women secretly want to be sexually harassed. 'The sexual harassment crowd. They’re out there protesting what they actually wish would happen to them.'”
This gives you an idea of the mentality of the listeners this fanatical bigot appeals to. READ MORE...
I've heard numerous comments in the media, and actually following last night's debate, of how Donald Trump hopes he is up against Bernie Sanders in the November election, since he will be so easy to beat. The Bern raised $25 million in the month of January alone. With an average $18.80 contribution, that is 1.4 million loyal voters as a solid base. Once he wins the Primary, he is certain to garner most of Elizabeth Warren's voters.
Here's a grabber, "Trump’s acquittal is invalid because he was not mentally competent to stand trial," a RawStory headline prompted by a letter sent by the World Mental Health Coalition, urging Congress to "invalidate President Donald Trump’s acquittal in the Senate until his mental competency to stand trial is evaluated." I have done several posts on the Oval Office lunatic's mentality you can see here. READ MORE...
Most will agree that Young Pharaoh's language is pretty vile when it comes to Jews, considering his comments...
that Judaism is a “complete lie” and “made up for political gain,” said that Jewish people are “thieving fake Jews,” tweeted that “all the censorship & pedophilia on social media is being done by Israeli Jews,” and claimed that “all of these big tech [companies], media, & social media platforms are controlled by CCP & Israel through Jewish CEO & corrupt Democrats.”
women. Go figure. The Washington Post reported back in December of 2019, Trump signed an executive order to fight anti-Semitism on college campuses while flanked by two evangelical Christian pastors, Robert Jeffress and John Hagee.
Jeffress has literally damned Jews to hell, while Hagee has warned of an international plot led by the Rothschilds to undermine American sovereignty, described Hitler as a “hunter” sent by God to kill Jews who refused to move to Israel and described the Antichrist as a “half-Jew homosexual.”
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't support Young Pharaoh under any circumstances. And equally adamant, I have never supported Donald Trump. So, checkmate.
July 13, 2013 PROGRESSIVE STREET...Where Liberals Walk
The biggest judicial problem we have in addition to a one-sided Supreme Court are loaded courts across the country with conservatives orchestrated by the bottom feeder, Senate head Mitch McConnell. Politico reports...
"Every senator running for president has voted far less often for Trump’s judges this year compared with the previous Congress."
This has been a Republican focus that supports their legislation at local levels. It has become dangerously lopsided for the GOP.
Mitch McConnell exposed on federal judges...
Independent Rep. Justin Amash has inside info on how congressional Republicans really feel about impeaching Donald Trump. Amash told CNN...
"that high-level party officials have thanked him behind closed doors for his stance on impeachment proceedings against Trump."
There's more...
"I get people sending me text messages, people calling me, saying 'thank you for what you're doing,'" Amash told CNN's Jake Tapper in a wide-ranging interview on "State of the Union" Sunday. "They're not saying it publicly. And I think that's a problem for our country, it's a problem for the Republican Party, it's a problem for the Democratic Party when people aren't allowed to speak out."
Enough said!
Love affair between the alt-right and Donald Trump is on the rocks in areported by Raw Story, because the president’s policies and actions are not playing out in the way that the right wing extremists had hoped. Owens reports
that...report from Vice News’ Tess Owens,
"commenters on forums hosting alt-right rabble-rousing appear to have given up on Trump."
The alt-right feels its heyday of power is weakening, combined with Trump's betrayal of their march for white supremacy, tied in with the feeling that he has failed to deliver on the sweeping immigration enforcement he promised during the campaign.” There are just over 11-million whites that have beliefs consistent with the alt-right’s worldview, according to a U. of Alabama researcher. The question is, do they vote?
Is the alt-right moving up or down?...
Will Obamacare survive the appeals court? If you are one of the 20 million insured by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), your coverage as you know it could end if the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals makes its ruling. In question is the mandatory provision of the act that is accompanied by the preexisting clause. It is the fact that Obamacare is compulsory that is considered unconstitutional, but why throw out the rest of the law, especially the preexisting part?
The Republican Party darkened Colin Kapernick's skin in a political ad, then lied about it. It was Yahoo News’ White House correspondent, Hunter Walker...
"who caught the National Republican Congressional Committee pushing out a disparaging meme of Kaepernick."
Sarah Burris of Raw Story reports...
“House Republicans are running on racism, plain and simple. It’s disgusting, it’s offensive and it should be fireable, but there’s no accountability in the Republican Party,” a Democratic operative said.
It was when given the opportunity to clean up the public relations disaster that the GOP lied about it. The "original photo compared to the meme, clearly shows otherwise." The Republican Party is beyond pathetic!
There can't be any foreign nation that the U.S. has had more complex dealings with than Iran. Okay, maybe, North Korea but in that case we are dealing with a lunatic comparable to what is in the White House today. Iran, however, has really hit the mark in its appraisal of Donald Trump's ascendancy to the presidency of the U.S. with these comments from Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei...
"We are grateful to this gentleman who has come."
Remind you of something that is dear to a number of people? Pitifully, the Supreme Leader thanked trump for revealing the true face of America. According to Donald John that would be a look of racism, white nationalism, abused women, all along with an environment of hate. Don't get me wrong, the U.S. isn't looked on by the world as a perfect and benevolent nation, but we were never seen with the bleakness reflected by a Donald Trump profile. What is worse, Trump's followers, many of whom are Christians, woefully no doubt believe he is the second coming.
The question is when will this all implode and this country can return to normalcy?
August 22, 2019: PROGRESSIVE STREET NEWS BYTES...Where Liberals Walk
Horrifying examples of racism in the United States
Since early July, I have been documenting all Internet articles that deal with blatant racism. My total inventory as of today is a shocking 22. Shocking, because this country is supposed to have progressed far beyond inequality of the races, at a minimum with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I grew up in the South in the 1940s/1950s and witnessed my share of Ku Klux Klan atrocities, and it was then that I developed my devout hatred of racism. Here's what is still going on...
Family kicked out of community pool because they were black: A mere 15 minutes after arriving, a lifeguard interrupted and told her she had too many guests. “He said ‘Well, who are these guys in front of me right here?’ recalled Thomas. “I said ‘I don’t know who they are,’ mind you, they were black, but they were not with me.” Soon after, a Texas City police officer came and asked them to leave. Dateline Houston, Texas.
These are only ten of the frightening number of racist incident that occur in the United States each day. Apparently it has always been lying dormant, just beneath the surface, and with Donald Trump's racist attitude, supported by his extreme white supremacist tendencies, it is now a full-blown epidemic, with the American public joining in his bigotry. If for no other reason than this alone, it is clear that this ego maniac must be removed from office.
Did you know, 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election? That was more than voted for George W. Bush. And they did it with the urging of their leaders who heretofore have bragged about...
"superior virtue, especially in matters of sex and marriage and parenting and social propriety. They’ve blasted premarital and extramarital sex, LGBTQ people, divorce, pornography, sex work, foul language, crude behavior, and not being a Christian—as they define “Christian”—blaming these things for everything from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina."
Since all that went out the window when these uninformed pathetic souls put their Bibles behind T-rump, the public has had a laugh fest over how this group could be so stupid. And still is. But they never got tired of berating Bill Clinton for his infidelities, which, of course, indicates these people are hopeless Republicans. Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter, wrote in the Atlantic...
“The moral convictions of many evangelical leaders have become a function of their partisan identification. This is not mere gullibility; it is utter corruption.”
Gerson also believes evangelicals have done some good things and still do but can't really explain how they hit the bottom of the barrel with Donald Trump. What is even more troubling to me is the evangelical attitude toward women; they think women should unequivocally obey their husbands. "Southern Baptists insist that wives submit to their husbands and ban women speaking from the pulpit or having religious authority over men." Whew! Sell that to the feminists of today. It is ludicrous, of course, and clearly points out why evangelicals are regularly held in contempt.
Although Gerson doesn't believe most evangelicals are racist, he writes...
“But every strong Trump supporter has decided that racism is not a moral disqualification in the president of the United States. And that is something more than a political compromise. It is a revelation of moral priorities.”
Headlines have proclaimed that thousands of ads were purchased by Russians, some posing as Americans, designed to elect Donald Trump in 2016. If the idea was to force the U.S. into chaos, then they accomplished their purpose. Facebook says they were actually purchased by the Kremlin and, even when considering 1st Amendment rights, it raises the question of whether or not this is considered an act of hostility against the American government. Of course, T-rump and his pathetic supporters would say no, it is just business as usual, in the good old Republican way.
Facebook even admits the ads were meant, "to sway public sentiment," and claims to be placing safeguards in place to prevent manipulation of future elections. But the question arises, is the American public so easily swayed, basically uninformed, so downright stupid that a Facebook ad could decide their vote? If so, this country has become a massive field of what I call apathetics, those who are completely out of tune, and really don't care. The most frightening side of the ads was their bent toward racism as well as to create unrest on gay rights and gun rights.
If Facebook did elect Donald Trump, we are in more trouble than we ever realized.
Growing up in a religious and racist South did not prepare me for White Christianity Nationalism
John Blake of CNN calls White Christianity Nationalism an "imposter Christianity" and exclaims it "is threatening American democracy." I grew up in a racist Tennessee but in the late forties and fifties it was simply the way things were. After witnessing my first lynching of a black man, I determined this was not something I could live with and thereafter made it clear I was anti racism. didn't sit well with many of my friends and I would eventually move out of the South for good.
The words racist and racism weren't even a topic of conversation, at least in that part of the country, in those days; just accepted cause that's the way it had always been. And, it still is, after tons of legislation to prevent it, but as the saying goes, 'you can't legislate morality." And racism is by no means restricted to the South, as Blake points out...
"The insurrection marked the first time many Americans realized the US is facing a burgeoning White Christian nationalist movement. This movement uses Christian language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-White immigrants in its quest to create a White Christian America."
There's more...
"A report from a team of clergy, scholars and advocates — sponsored by two groups that advocate for the separation of church and state — concluded that this ideology was used to "bolster, justify and intensify" the attack on the US Capitol."
There is a picture of a group at the Jan. 6 insurrection gathered around a large
wooden cross with one man hugging it. A caption says, "Demonstrators pray outside the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021." But I say these moronic traitors are offering themselves up to their false idol, Donald Trump. You have to be Godless to do what this insurrectionist gang did at the U.S. Capitol. Now, define White Christianity Nationalism...
Paul Gorski says..."it is an ideology based on a story about America that’s developed over three centuries. It reveres the myth that the country was founded as a Christian nation by white Christians and that its laws and institutions are based on Protestant Christianity. White Christian nationalists believe that the country is divinely favored and has been given the mission to spread religion, freedom, and civilization. They see this mission and the values they cherish as under threat from the growing presence of non-whites, non-Christians, and immigrants in the United States."
He adds...
"This is one point at which white Christian nationalism overlaps with the Make America Great American narrative. It’s the view that somebody has corrupted the country or is trying to take it away. White Christian nationalists want to take it back."
This is what it means to be a 'White Christian nationalist'
These days, it seems that anything bad has a connection to Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. But speaking of Paul Gorski, he and Samuel L. Perry have a new book, The Flag and the Cross, where they closely "scrutinize" white Christian nationalists. Gorski and Perry believe that these people "share a set of common anti-democratic beliefs and principles."With T-rump as their leader, this makes complete sense while at the same time is terrifying.
Perry says there is a wide distinction between whites and people of color. I have a vivid picture of that from an experience from the state of Mississippi. My aunt and uncle had two 500-acre plantations and the caretaker was a black man named Man. In addition, he managed and was the butcher at my uncle's grocery store in the tiny town of Como, Mississippi. Man called me Mr. Jack and on several occasions we had long conversations; at the time I was only seven or eight.
When Man would come to my Uncle's house, he would always go through the side yard and come through the back door. I asked him once why he didn't just come through the front door. He answered me, 'Mr. Jack, I know it seems strange to you but that's the way it is here. It just makes it easier on everybody if I use the back door.' I didn't fully understand then but as I got older it became clear, blacks did not have the same rights as the white folk. It became repulsive and has never changed.
You won't be disappointed if you read both of these articles, unless...you are a White Christian Nationalist.
At the age of 89, one has a very different perspective on the above. It's not hopeless, it's really a contentment.
I grew up in the South and regularly experienced the purists of racism, but Donald Trump's style of racial bigotry is some of the worst I have seen. And, it would appear that he is more dedicated to it with his blatant perpetual delivery of insults to anyone...not like him. And that would include most of the world. Basketball player LeBron James just spent millions to open a school in his home town of Akron, Ohio for at-risk children. Don Lemon of CNN interviewed him. This is what Trump said of the interview...
“LeBron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made LeBron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!” (referring to Michael Jordan)
Both James and Lemon are black, as is Michael Jordan, whom Trump probably included trying to offset the backlash that his comment would receive. It didn't.
T-rump is a like a wart on the back of this country's butt that just keeps growing and won't go away. It had to take an appalling mixture of evil genes to spawn this atrocity and apparently it has been passed down at least three times. God save the universe!
There is no doubt when you mention fake news, the first thing that comes to mind is the Fox Network. Blabbermouths like Tucker Carlson who even admitted recently that he lied and spewed misinformation. But Fox isn't the only culprit and Politico proclaims One Group of Americans Who Are Most Likely to Spread Fake News is low-conscientiousness conservatives. The research of two Duke U. professors says we oversimplify blame, generally placing it all on republicans.
In this case Politico is zeroing in on this profile saying...
"it’s not conservatives in general who tend to promote false information, but rather a smaller subset of them who also share two psychological traits: low levels of conscientiousness and an appetite for chaos. Importantly, we found that several other factors we tested for — including support for former President Donald Trump — did not reliably predict an inclination to share misinformation."
If not primarily Donald Trump supporters, who? The piece says "researchers, social media platforms, politicians and members of the media to focus their efforts on low-conscientiousness conservatives (LCCs for short) in particular." On the other hand, you can't beat these conservatives over the head with the fact they are using fake news. And here's why...
"To be clear, existing research has found that conservatives have a greater tendency toward misinformation than liberals do. For example, during the 2016 election, individuals who leaned conservative were more likely to engage with and share disinformation on Twitter and Facebook. Likewise, in the early months of the pandemic, conservatives were more likely to believe Covid-19 was a hoax, and to downplay the virus’" severity.
Nearly Half Of Republicans Admit To Lying About Fake News... In other words, Republican conservatives are more gullible than liberals, which would indicate to me a higher level if intelligence in the latter. Here's the authors' definition of low-conscientiousness conservatives...
What this means to me is that this gang of anti-Americans are able to ignore their principles, that is, if they have any, and discipline themselves to complete a cause, no matter how bizarre or illegal it might be. Highly conscientious conservatives and their liberal counterparts are much less likely to succumb. So what does drive LCCs to spread misinformation? The researchers...
"asked participants to report their leanings on a range of potential influences: level of support for Trump, time spent on social media, distrust of the mainstream media, and endorsement of conservative social and economic values. To our surprise, none of these factors was a reliable predictor of LCCs’ elevated tendency to share false news stories."
Through a statistical analysis it was found that this bunch simply wanted chaos.
That sound familiar from Moscow Mitch McConnell and the fellow GOP not producing any agenda on the right, rather creating discord throughout the country to thwart anything the Democrats do? This is the tragedy of why the United States is in such great trouble with the Covid-19 pandemic, voting rights, racism, inequality and more.
You can blame it on Joe Biden all you want to but this research proves exactly where the buck has stopped.
Donald Trump evokes racism, again, to cloak coronavirus incompetence...
It cannot be said better than this...
"Trump's ignorance and hostility to science makes situation worse — so he turns to an old standby: race-baiting"
Donald Trump could care less about the American public; all he cares about is containing the coronavirus epidemic in order to prevent any damage it might cause to his reelection in November. The man is ruthless and completely without morals so the CV deaths so far in the U.S. don't even phase him. Here's the scenario...
"His utter lack of concern for the health and safety of Americans, including his own supporters, is unsurprising — after daily exposure to the man for years, we should know by now that he lacks normal human feelings such as empathy or concern for others. Indeed, the administration's response to the threat of this virus spreading in the U.S. has been focused mainly, if not solely, on propaganda — seeking to create the illusion that things are under control, instead of doing the hard work of actually trying to get things under control."
So where does he turn? To the immigration issue, where it all started before the 2016 election, when he called immigrants rapists and murderers. Meanwhile, the people of this country are dying. READ MORE...
Jamil Smith of Rolling Stone contends that 2020 will end up being a fight to determine which side of racism will win the election. Will it be the white nationalist racist bigot Donald Trump, or the candidate on the left who truly believes that people of different colors can live happily together? Smith does not think Joe Biden is the latter and that he should drop out of the race now, although Biden seems to be garnering the black vote.
That last part doesn't make sense to me and Politico's Maya King substantiates that idea, but with additional input to Bernie Sanders recent growth in black American support...
"Joe Biden has amassed a staggering lead among older African Americans, commanding nearly two-thirds support of black voters 65 and older in the most recent Morning Consult poll. Bernie Sanders is the favorite of black millennials, though his margin with that group is much smaller. Among all black voters, Biden is leading Sanders, 41 percent to 20 percent."
The RollingStone article covers what it considers a multitude of gaffes by Biden on the racial issue after it trashes former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Smith started with a question on the coddling of Biden when he was attacked by Julian Castro...
"Treating the 76-year-old front-runner so delicately is arguably more insulting than questioning his mental fitness, especially considering the incumbent whom he is preparing to run against."
Joe Biden on no responsibility for 300 years ago...
Could it come down to Joe Biden's meandering in a debate against the sheer lunacy in Donald Trump's rhetoric? In T-rump's state of deteriorating mental acuity, who knows where he'll be by the time they face each other. The Oval Office lunatic might even be in a strait jacket by then. The one thing that is clear is that Trump's racial bigotry will have to be faced head-on, and just hope that this country has not stooped so low as to fully support this ideology.
“I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather, I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.”
Another Biden racist gaffe...
Biden said that "teacher raises are the first step to undoing the legacy of slavery," then rambled on with this...
"Number two, make sure that we bring in to help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we need — we have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It’s crazy.
"The teachers are — I’m married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. We have — make sure that every single child does, in fact, have 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds go to school. School. Not daycare. School. We bring social workers into homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children.
"It’s not that they don’t want to help. They don’t — they don’t know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the — the — make sure that kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school — a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there."
Jamil Smith exclaimed with some shadowed doubt that this is the front-runner of the Democratic Party, talking as if this should be a surprise. My take is that Joe Biden has absolutely nothing for Progressives so it's on to Bernie and Warren as far as I am concerned. There's more and this article is well worth the read.
New York Times columnist, Charles M. Blow, says, "Extremism Is on the Rise … Again." And here I thought it had never abated. But Blow, being the excellent journalist he is, qualifies his headline, written before the Nov. 8 elections, citing one startling fact...
You can see the 291 deniers in the "on the ballot" link, above, with names you will recognize like Kevin McCarthy, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, Kari Lake, Herschel Walker; you get the idea. But Blow reports...
In a major speech Wednesday night, President Biden described election denial as “the path to chaos in America.” “It’s unprecedented,” he said. “It’s unlawful. And it’s un-American.” But in truth, the extremism, racism and white nationalism are neither un-American nor unfamiliar.
There are comparisons with the William Howard Taft administration in 1908, later Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned on an “America First” platform, which soon became "associated not just with isolationism, but also with the Ku Klux Klan, xenophobia and fascism." Wilson was a racist from the South and is measured against Donald Trump who Blow says...
"is one of the worst presidents — if not the worst — that this country has ever had."
More matching between Wilson and Trump...
It was Wilson who screened “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House, a film that pushed the “Lost Cause” narrative and fueled the rebirth of the Klan.
Assessing threats of political violence and rising extremism
on the far-right...
Trump hosted a screening of “2,000 Mules” — a fact-checker-debunked documentary that purported to show widespread voter fraud carried out by “mules” who stuffed ballot boxes with harvested ballots during the last presidential election — at Mar-a-Lago, which Trump has called the Southern White House. That film has helped boost his followers’ belief in his lie about the 2020 election.
Civil war has been talked up by Republicans and now they are targeting their own with in-fighting over the upcoming Dec. 6, runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker. This is a must win for the GOP and it all boiled over recently between Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott of Florida...
"A long-simmering, mostly private tension between the two men and their allies came to a head this week as their respective political consultants resorted to publicly insulting each other, particularly over how each was approaching the upcoming Georgia election."
Democrats would welcome Republicans keeping their extremism internally as long
as there is no spillover to the rest of the country. Annihilating each other could be the answer to saving our democracy. Neither Trump nor Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has offered Walker help, and some say the GOP big guns are not so enthusiastic about Herschel Walker because his win will not give them control of the Senate. And finally, more talk of civil war, this time between Republicans...
"Marjorie Taylor Greene says she is ready [to] unleash a civil war in the Republican Party after its poor showing in the midterms.
"The Georgia congresswoman also indicated she would throw her support behind House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in an interview with Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast."
Have you heard the talk recently from a past GOP congressman who said Kevin McCarthy will be Speaker of the House in name only? He said Marjorie Taylor Greene will be the actual Speaker.
The U.S. doesn't have an exclusive on racism; it is worldwide, says the site Global Issues. It also suggests an interesting concept that racism is a "misunderstanding of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution." It goes on...
"Some took Darwin’s theories to imply that since some races were more civilized, there must be a biological basis for the difference. At the same time they appealed to biological theories of moral and intellectual traits to justify racial oppression. There is a great deal of controversy about race and intelligence, in part because the concepts of both race and IQ are themselves controversial."
I do not believe the xenophobic red necks who hate anyone who is different than them are smart enough to figure out the above, thus, it is most likely attributed to their double-digit IQs. In other words, they can't rationalize the difference between a white and a black person so the black must be bad. And then there are those with a slightly higher IQ like the University of Georgia fraternity Tau Kappa Epsilon.
I am originally from the South and experienced the worst kind of racial hatred, including KKK lynchings. And then along came the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and many of us believed we had solved the problem. Not so, and my gut tells me that today it is worse than those earlier times and for much of this we can thank Donald Trump.
After growing up in the South I left because I couldn't tolerate the segregation beliefs and policies. What was more perplexing than the act of unabated racism was the fact that these people were sure that they were right. And many of them still are, not just in the South, but all over this country. The state of Arizona has taken a different path in the last few years, their racism directed toward Hispanics. Former disgraced Arizona Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, tried his best to harass all of the Latino's out of the state but failed and now will hopefully go to jail for it.
They say the art of racism is not inherited, it is learned. It is not taught at any school in lower or higher education, as far as I know, but I have to qualify that. Not outwardly but inwardly, not the direct approach but the more covert approach. It is, however, definitely there, as far as the masses and as far as the education. To illustrate, here is a comment from one of my recent blogs, "Lowlife Donald Trump supporter replies to my blog:"
What a joke,the market is breaking records every day since we elected a real President, your buckwheat nigger "president" was and is the biggest failure of all time
This is just one result from the action of more lowlife like the out-going Governor of North Carolina, Pat MCrory, who brought his Republican caucus together to pass bills that severely restrict what the incoming Governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, can do. One thing is the "elevation of a distinguished African American jurist, Mike Morgan, to the state's Supreme Court." CNN says it is to, "reconfigure the state's court system to fend off challenges to legislators' power." In effect, take most of the control away from the executive branch before Cooper comes in.
Morgan's appointment would give the court a Democratic majority but this is all icing on the cake. This state government is exploding in a continued effort to deny the vote to African Americans. A "...federal court overturned the legislature's "racial gerrymander" in 28 districts, requiring new district lines and a special election in 2017; the US Supreme Court is reviewing that case now." There's more...
"This past July, the US Court of Appeals for the 4th District ruled in North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory that the extremists in the General Assembly had "targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision," and overturned the state's 2013 voter suppression bill."
Still think my earlier proposal should be considered: Put all racists in a concentration camp.
