Danny Cardwell's picture

    The Outrage Will Not Be Televised

    When six Muslims were killed in Canada Donald Trump gave us silence. Last week, when a legal immigrant from India was killed in Kansas we got the same thing. Our president and his administration seems to be more comfortable talking about the fictional terrorist attacks that occurred in Atlanta, Bowling Green, and Sweden than addressing the renaissance of white nationalism. I hope people of color and religious minorities are taking these slights seriously. This administration's silence about white supremacist attacks on racial and religious minorities, their houses of worship, and their burial sites says more about their concern for you than the lawyerly crafted statements about bigotry they've been guilted into reading days and sometimes weeks later. Don't get it twisted: you were not a key component of their electoral victory and your otherness isn't endearing to them or their conception of what it means to be an American. In other words: you are collateral damage in the fight to "Make America Great Again".

     

    President #TwitterFingers never misses an opportunity to tweet about the media, or call for boycotts against companies he doesn't like, yet he struggles to get his tweets off when it comes to attacks perpetrated by the white supremacists who've aligned themselves with his brand of nationalist populism. His silence is compounded by the silence of his supporters. I’ve been impressed by the lengths some #Trumpstans are willing to go to disconnect the actions of white supremacists from the rhetoric espoused by the president.

     

    Hate crimes committed against Muslims are up 67% in the last few years. Srinivas Kuchibhotla (a man of Indian descent) was killed because xenophobia, bigotry, and hatred have become a (re)normalized part of American life. Sikhs, Hindus and other racial minorities have been the victims of bigoted attacks by people too ignorant to understand who they were supposed to be hating. This could become the new normal. I have friends of Puerto Rican heritage who've been mocked with chants of build that wall. The Trump administration may not be directly responsible for the actions of their supporters, but they put the battery in their backs. At rallies, Trump plays to the fear and hatred of some of his supporters and when something bad happens he denies any culpability. This is a dangerous game. I would rather have a treacherous enemy than a weak-willed ally.

     

    I've read social media posts from people who live in the Blue Ridge Mountains (isolated from racial and religious diversity) that echo the calls for a soft nationalism as advocated by the Alt-right/white supremacist wing of their party. These aren’t inherently bad people; some of them are angry and others are afraid, but all are being misled for the sake of ratings. Many of them don't know the difference between a Sunni Muslim and a Sikh, but they see them both as potential members of Isis. Fox news and conservative talk radio has disseminated so much blatant xenophobia for so long that many of their supporters have tacitly accepted the fact that all brown people want to kill them. When "real" Americans or people of European descent are the victims of terrorism the presses stop and there’s wall to wall coverage, but when black and brown people are the victims of American terrorism there's a noticeable difference in the level of outrage. Here I was thinking #AllLivesMatter. Sadly, there will be more blood spilled by those who equate “Making America Great Again” to making it less colorful. There are people who are questioning what place, if any, they have in America.

      

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    Danny, when you say Trump supporters aren't inherently bad, I have to disagree. The country has seen these people before.When lynching was common, people like the Trump supporters were silent. During the Jim Crow era, and during the Montgomery bus boycott, they were silent. Trump supporters do not consider themselves racists, but they will overlook racism if they think it is beneficial to them. They are identical to those who ignored blacks in the past.

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-donald-trump-vo...

    Minorities have to realize that Trump,supporters will remain seated when we are attacked. We are under on obligation to coddle them. In order to survive, we need to name them properly. They are deplorables. 

    http://www.theroot.com/how-many-damn-defenses-of-that-basket-of-deplorab...

    The proper question is would an inherently good person vote for Donald Trump. My answer that that question is "No".

    Edit to add:

    Jefffrey Beauregard Session's DOJ is reversing course on a years long Texas lawsuit alleging that the state voter ID law was discriminatory. The rolll back of the clock has begun. Trump supporters knew this would come.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/texas-voting-id-trump-doj_us_58b454f...?


    Yeah, and there are new attacks on Jews for some reason?

    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/jewish-cemeteries-destruction/518040/

    I cannot find the link right now but some sombitch from the WH blamed these new attacks on the Muslims.

    THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT.

    At any rate, as you already know by now, expect no truth from the WH.

     

     


    Living in the Caribbean I took a couple of  US visitors to lunch. Nice restaurant but busy . Service was slow.

    ¨That's the heritage of the slave trade. The ones who couldn't move fast got captured¨ said the one from St.Louis.

     "Dave¨ I said,¨ we can´t let ourselves think like that and live here.¨

    That´s also the case with  much of the above. .

    Today's Times:

    "said Lori Barron ,the owner of Lori´s Hair A´Fairs, a beauty salon. ¨But in the case of Carlos, I think he may have done more for the people here than this place has ever given him.¨

     I´m sure Lori  voted for Trump. But if we give up on her and the  59,999,999 like her it´ll be a long time before we need to concern ourselves with what the country should do because it won´t be up to us.  The requiems have now gone on for two and a half months. And the congratulating one another because we´ did the right thing- which happens to be true but is irrelevant. If we give up on Lori because she couldn´t move fast enough or whatever, we might as well settle down for a few decades of uninterrupted irrelevance.  Just coaxing a few Bernie-ites out of their tents  ain´t gonna do it. We need to talk to Lori.

     


    It comes down to a question of what we actually mean by "Trump supporter." Is Trump supporter synonymous with Trump voter? I don't think so. There are republicans that support abortion rights. There are republicans who care about protecting the environment and accept the facts about climate change. There are republicans that are against a muslim ban, against the wall, against deporting all immigrants. On any policy question there are some republicans who do not agree with the republican position, sometimes a slim minority sometimes a significant minority. Some of them, some of the moderate republicans are gettable. We need to talk to them. Do we need to talk to Lori? I don't know, there's insufficient information, but I think not. If I were to guess on limited information Lori sounds like a person who wants to deport them all, except for Carlos. He's one of the few good ones. Like the person who thinks most blacks are lazy welfare cheats, except for his black friend Joe. Joe is one of the few good ones. I don't think we need to talk to that type of Trump supporter. I don't think they are gettable.


    Lori experienced the results of an election, and its effect. On her, and on a real person in her town. She will remember it. Perhaps she will become a better person. Talk alone won't do that for somebody, over a certain age.

    Driftglass, But in the Case of Carlos:

    And now federal immigration agents have done what no other force on Earth has been able to do: crack the heretofore impenetrable barrier of Hate Radio and white grievance behind which so much of Rustbelt America walls itself off from the real world, and inflict a little reality on the good folks of West Frankfort.
     
    And they did not like it.  No sir.  Not one little bit.
    Dave sounds like a hopeless case. You might consider relocating to the Seychelles if he comes too often...?

    Dick... Ya' got it...

     

    See my explanation to Mr. Cardwell here.

    ~OGD~

     


    Mr Cardwell... a simple explanation...

    When six Muslims were killed in Canada Donald Trump gave us silence. Last week, when a legal immigrant from India was killed in Kansas we got the same thing. Our president and his administration seems to be more comfortable talking about the fictional terrorist attacks that occurred in Atlanta, Bowling Green, and Sweden than addressing the renaissance of white nationalism.

    They have all agreed NOT to touch any of these subjects whatsoever.

    It would be like hanging dead chickens around their necks.

    They'd never get rid of the stench.

    ~OGD~


    I have always found E.M. Forster's essay on Tolerance, written for a radio broadcast after the end of WWII to be very helpful when tensions get this bad. I think it expresses the "secret" that has gotten this country this far in its experiment. Take note that it doesn't require cessation of private hatreds, something that has so far been impossible for human beings to accomplish.


    Arty... Tension? Tolerance?

    I am in no way E.M. Forster, but I could probably write my own book.

    I lived through the marches and riots of the '60s. MLKs assassination, and Bobby Kennedy's assassination. Then there was the Kent State shootings. All compressed into 5 years, Stressful, heady times. And then this photo has always captured a moment and stood out to me as a turning point in my life's history. I was all of 22 and shore-based at Coronado in San Diego serving in the US Navy.

    And the photographer? I got to know Bernie in the '80s here in LA when he worked on assignments for the Los Angles Times at various track and field meets.

    ~OGD~


    yeah, that's it.


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