Let's Not Get It Twisted - Conservatives Have Always Been This Nation's Bigots
Every since the Donald Sterling scandal erupted, conservative Republicans have been all over the airways and social media declaring that Donald Sterling was a Democrat, and that proves their ongoing contention that it is the Democrats who had the racist past, and it is the Democrats who are the racists today. Then these conservative Republicans go on to wrap themselves around President Abraham Lincoln, and declare themselves to be "the party of Lincoln."
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Nothing could be further from the truth and more blatantly manipulative of the American people. While it is true that Democrats, or "Dixiecrats," were virulent racist, since that time the Democratic and Republican Parties have completely changed polarities. The Democratic Party was made up of conservatives then. So in order to keep things in perspective, instead of thinking in terms of the Democratic and Republican parties, we need to think in terms of liberals and conservatives, and conservatives have ALWAYS been this nation's bigots, from day one, and regardless to what party they were in.
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So the mere fact that conservative Republicans continue to bring up this issue, and continue to try to obscure their historic genesis, makes it abundantly clear that one of two things are at work here - either they know that they’ve always been this nation’s bigots and they’re trying bamboozle the American people with a technicality, are they’re dumb, and they’re completely unaware of their own history. But considering the ideological confluence within the GOP, both issues are at work here. The leadership of the GOP, the fiscal (corporate) conservatives, know they’re being disingenuous, while their troops, the social conservative bigots, only know what they’ve been told, and what lends comfort to their bigotry.
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So is the modern Republican Party really “the party of Lincoln,” and responsible for freeing the slaves? I don’t think so. But the GOP regularly, routinely, and with a straight face makes that claim. One Republican recently confronted me and stated the following:
. "It was Republicans who beat Democrats in the Civil War, thus freeing the slaves. It was Democrats who started the KKK as its military wing to intimidate the (largely black) Republican party who were running the south after the war. Can a leopard change its spots?? Are the Democrats now the party FOR the black people after being against them for so long? So many of you are duped by the Devil's trickery. a few table scraps from massa's table and you run right back to his side. The Democrat is the racist."
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The above assertion is a prime example of how many Republicans can take a kernel of truth and create a banquet of lies. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and so was Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King. But since the Civil War the Republican and Democratic parties have completely changed their relative political positions, so relative to their political philosophy, the modern Republican party bears absolutely no relationship to its predecessor.
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Prior to the Civil War the Republican Party was made up of big business interests and Northern aristocrats, and the Democratic Party was made up of Dixiecratcs and Southern agrarian interests - farmers and slave owners. Thus, the Republicans were progressive liberals and the Democrats (or Dixiecrats) were Southern conservative slave owners.
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But that began to change during the Great Depression when Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came out against the corporations and to the aid of the poor with his "New Deal for the American People." With the “New Deal,” Democrats ushered in workers’ rights. They created Social Security so the elderly wouldn't have to go to the "Poor House" or become a burden on their children when they became too old to work.
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The Democrats also created unemployment insurance so people would have something to fall back on if they lost their jobs, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set rules of conduct for corporations that allowed workers to work with some semblance of dignity. The new law set a minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor standards, and many other regulations protecting workers.
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Prior to the FLSA corporations could work employees for as many hours as they liked, and they often set wages so low that families had to send their children to work just to survive - and many of those children were maimed or killed because they had to work under the most horrific conditions, such as in coal mines and the like.
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But after President Roosevelt brought relief to the people with these “big government, socialist programs,” the Democratic Party began to become associated with the common man, and the Republican party embarked upon a single-minded mission to reverse these "bleeding heart liberal" policies and return America to what had previously been the status quo.
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Then during the fifties the Democratic Party came out in support of the Civil Rights Movement. As a result, during the fifties and sixties the Southern Dixiecrats became disenchanted with the Democrats and migrated to the Republican Party. At the same time, many Southern Blacks began leaving the Republican Party to become Democrats.
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Thus, the Republican Party is now a coalition of three separate constituencies with confluent interests. The first group is made up of traditional conservatives. These are highly patriotic Americans who believe in limited government, the primacy of the people over government, and fiscal responsibility. But the other two groups that have coalesced within the GOP are much more malevolent - international business interests, and social bigots.
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It is the former of these two, international business, that controls the GOP. It's made up of wealthy and highly educated individuals with huge amounts of monetary resources, and thus, political influence - and they use every bit of that leverage to manipulate what has become their citizen army - the social bigots. These are the people who hate any and everybody who doesn’t look, think, and act like themselves.
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The social bigots are the people we see armed to the teeth at presidential speeches, disrupting town hall meetings, and fighting against their own interests. In short, these are the “Joe the Plumbers” of the world who are being deluded by corporatist propaganda. Also among their ranks are the diehard racists who are still fighting to promote a segregationist agenda.
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But the social bigots are merely the soldiers of the party. The corporatists, who control the GOP, have never lost sight of their seventy-year-old mission to undo the New Deal. But they've found that the safety-net that President Roosevelt provided for the people is much too popular to attack head on, so they had to devise a plan to chip away at it.
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Then came 9/11, so they decided to used the war in Iraq to ravage the national treasury. They then gave themselves a $4 trillion taxcut to further deplete the treasury, and now they're telling the poor and middle class, "Sorry, but we no longer have the revenue to fund the programs that you've come to depend on for the past seventy years. And in the meantime, Gov. Scott Walker is hard at work in Wisconsin trying to dismantle the Fair Labor Standards Act.
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So, can a leopard change its spots? Yes it can - and with regard to the Democratic and Republican parties, the leopard has changed in a very big way. But the modern GOP has never been prone to allowing the facts to distort a well-crafted lie. That's why they have such a fierce aversion to a well-educated electorate.
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Thus, the facts dictate that the modern GOP’s claim to have any connection with President Lincoln whatsoever - other than the enemy of everything he stood for - is not only a gross misrepresentation of history, but a blatant lie. The fact is, if the Civil War was being fought today, the GOP would be the Confederacy.
Conservatives always yell about Blacks playing the race card. They focus on keeping Blacks from voting and entering into higher education. The best and brightest White guys got us into the wrong War in the Middle East. Colin Powell was the only one with the sense to suspect a debacle Yet Blacks are considered mentally inferior. The best and the brightest White guys tried to destroy the global economy, yet Blacks are unqualified to enter the same ivory towers that produced a bunch of arrogant nitwits.
Race matters in terms of getting loans, housing, car purchases. Education and employment. Conservative gutted the Voting Rights Act and they refuse to acknowledge race as a part of entry into colleges and universities.
We all known that a Black rancher who refused to pay grazing fees would have had his/her cattle taken much earlier than the 20 years in the Cliven Bundy case. Conservatives only see a problem when other Conservative Whites have a problem
RM, I have a feeling that the internet is going to have unintended consequences. Most people just assume that everybody has common sense. The internet has been a shocking revelation to me. I see now that for many years I've been sipping on the Kool-Aid. If even the politicians who are able to bamboozle the people are ignorant, what does that say for the rest of the population? I'm sure that when others begin to see that, it's going to change this country dramatically.
When Al Sharpton ran for President, he could not get the majority Black vote in NYC. Black voters knew that Al wasn't serious, so he was rejected. Al has done things like Jena and Stop and Frisk to make himself appear more serious. Now Sharpton gets calls from Trayvon Martin's parents when they needed help.
West and Smiley aren't serious and they are being rejected. If Smiley actually does something besides talk, he may gain respectability,, but I doubt he can change We are in serious times so that sideshows are dismissed. Elizabeth Warren is serious. Code Pink is a sideshow. People pay attention to serious people.. She gets support when she holds Obama's feet to the fire because she has a plan. Smiley and West have rhetoric.
"Colin Powell was the only one with the sense to suspect a debacle" - wow, really? Them black folk be really smart; all dem white folk be dumb as a bag o' marbles. Guess I'll go make some popcorn and re-watch that UN speech now. Small question - perhaps if he was the only one who suspected a debacle, he could have told us the truth, rather than supporting & inflating Bush's false grounds for war?
The intra-Palestinian meeting in Moscow has precedent
Russia's hosted such meetings in the past, most recently Feb 2019
Russia has long lamented the US' "monopolization" of the peace process & tried to carve out a niche for itself: mediating among the disunited Palestinians/2
Events: Heavy gunfire is occuring around the area of the U.S. Embassy and residential compounds adjacent to the Trutier area of Tabarre. All Embassy personnel have been instructed to remain indoors and shelter-in-place until further notice. All others should avoid the area.
Actions to take:
Avoid the area;
Avoid demonstrations and any large gatherings of people;
Do not attempt to drive through roadblocks; and
If you encounter a roadblock, turn around and get to a safe area.
All eyes on #Chad right now
Chad has two internet trunks coming into the country: One from the Red Sea via Sudan; the other from Cameroon. Not possible for the totality of the country's internet network to be shut unless done centrally. A lot of rumors swirling; few facts. https://t.co/N6bDJZ2ixO
BREAKING: Three loss prevention employees in Macy’s across the street from Philadelphia City Hall stabbed, one of them has died from stab wounds, @PhillyPolice sources tell me. Police converged on the store as the three workers were rushed to Jefferson Hospital. pic.twitter.com/4U1eKycL4W
You don’t get it.
It’s not about an UNRWA teacher who held an Israeli kid hostage in his house.
It’s all about how for 75 years you have destroyed the future of generations of Palestinians, including my family.
My cousins in Arab countries are still not citizens - not even the… https://t.co/nv6anubGhc
It's wild that Venezuela is now holding a vote on whether 2/3 of Guyana actually belongs to them! Analysts suggest that Modoru may want military action to pump up his sinking popularity.
The lack of a cohesive delegation has allowed attention-seeking lawmakers to act on their own.
McCarthy: “You have [Rep. Matt] Gaetz, who belongs in jail…”
Gaetz: “Tough words from a guy who sucker punches people in the back. The only assault I committed was against Kevin’s fragile ego.”https://t.co/LctPuz6Pcf
"Both the AU and the intl community place more weight on whether elections are held than whether they are free and fair. Sanctions/expulsions occur when there is a coup but not necessarily when elections are rigged or if an “institutional coup” occurs." https://t.co/m9dNimJP0D
Comments
Conservatives always yell about Blacks playing the race card. They focus on keeping Blacks from voting and entering into higher education. The best and brightest White guys got us into the wrong War in the Middle East. Colin Powell was the only one with the sense to suspect a debacle Yet Blacks are considered mentally inferior. The best and the brightest White guys tried to destroy the global economy, yet Blacks are unqualified to enter the same ivory towers that produced a bunch of arrogant nitwits.
Race matters in terms of getting loans, housing, car purchases. Education and employment. Conservative gutted the Voting Rights Act and they refuse to acknowledge race as a part of entry into colleges and universities.
We all known that a Black rancher who refused to pay grazing fees would have had his/her cattle taken much earlier than the 20 years in the Cliven Bundy case. Conservatives only see a problem when other Conservative Whites have a problem
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 05/04/2014 - 2:35pm
Thank you, RM.
by Wattree on Mon, 05/05/2014 - 3:08am
RM, I have a feeling that the internet is going to have unintended consequences. Most people just assume that everybody has common sense. The internet has been a shocking revelation to me. I see now that for many years I've been sipping on the Kool-Aid. If even the politicians who are able to bamboozle the people are ignorant, what does that say for the rest of the population? I'm sure that when others begin to see that, it's going to change this country dramatically.
by Wattree on Thu, 05/08/2014 - 7:08pm
When Al Sharpton ran for President, he could not get the majority Black vote in NYC. Black voters knew that Al wasn't serious, so he was rejected. Al has done things like Jena and Stop and Frisk to make himself appear more serious. Now Sharpton gets calls from Trayvon Martin's parents when they needed help.
West and Smiley aren't serious and they are being rejected. If Smiley actually does something besides talk, he may gain respectability,, but I doubt he can change We are in serious times so that sideshows are dismissed. Elizabeth Warren is serious. Code Pink is a sideshow. People pay attention to serious people.. She gets support when she holds Obama's feet to the fire because she has a plan. Smiley and West have rhetoric.
Here's to serious people.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/08/2014 - 7:49pm
"Colin Powell was the only one with the sense to suspect a debacle" - wow, really? Them black folk be really smart; all dem white folk be dumb as a bag o' marbles. Guess I'll go make some popcorn and re-watch that UN speech now. Small question - perhaps if he was the only one who suspected a debacle, he could have told us the truth, rather than supporting & inflating Bush's false grounds for war?
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/09/2014 - 2:33am