(21-minute read)
No kidding. Twenty-one minutes that you’ll never get back if you read this. I share some life stories and deal in depth with some of the issues presented in the Whitaker letter that I’ve already posted about.
Big headed smart.
MAGA has become a message in and of itself as in “I’m ultra MAGA!” I’ve been pondering the message of “Make America Great Again” since I first heard it.
“Better dead than red” is the first political slogan that I remember hearing.[1] I was a fan of Barry Goldwater at the time.[2] It loosely meant that we should fight against communism to the death. (How many of you thought that I was talking about red states?) Great hyperbole. Effective messaging even though Barry lost. It really wasn’t his slogan. His slogan was: "In Your Heart, You Know He's Right." Regardless, we didn’t end up …
Dead or red.
But first a story.
When I was young, I remember watching a man on television talking about the inferiority of “Negroes” according to the “science” of Craniology.[3] He had some charts and pictures. This would have been in the mid to late 50s. The reason that his presentation made an impact on me is that the presenter was an older gentleman of color. Obviously, he had an appeal to white racists by virtue of his race.
Craniology was/is supposed race science where skull measurements were used to show the inferiority of other races to whites due to cranial capacity and skull structures. It was popular with slave owners and surprisingly some abolitionists. Nazis liked it as well. There’s a surprise. BTW race “science” still exists.[4] It still has adherents. It still isn’t science.
It never was.
MAGAVERSE
Bryan Cranston was interviewed by Chris Wallace. During the interview he said that the Make America Great Again slogan could be considered racist by some people.[5] (I’m paraphrasing but not by a lot.) Some (qualifier) conservatives had meltdowns. Jason Whitlock, who is a person of color (POC), wrote a rebuttal to Cranston’s remarks via a Letter to the Editor of The Blaze.[6] His rebuttal is getting promoted by conservatives a LOT on social media. Not unexpectedly, I have some thoughts on this matter.
But wait!
Bona fides
This probably isn’t the best time to bring up that I have a bulbous head but in the interest of full disclosure I want to get that out of the way. Of lesser importance I also have a college degree. That sounds pretty good until I confess that it’s a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and that I majored in Printmaking. I have minors in religion and political science if that helps any.
So, before I get too deep into the whole MAGA slogan and racism in our nation I’m going to provide a little personal background and use some inappropriate language.
When my folks moved from a small town in Missouri to Wichita, Kansas they rented a duplex in a mixed-race neighborhood. I didn’t think anything of it when my mom would be having morning coffee at our kitchen table with the colored neighbor lady. It was a perfectly normal and natural part of my day. My friends/playmates were both white and black.
Dad did well enough at his job and parttime job for us to move to the suburbs in the mid-fifties. This is pre-civil rights legislation time. The area that we moved to eventually became a small city. What caught my attention though is that there weren’t any people of color there. That was odd to me. It was a lot of years before a person of color moved there.
I’ll jump forward to going into the Army mid-60s. There was a lot of racial tension in the armed services then as well as the nation. When I was a barracks sergeant in Korea there were a couple barracks fights over race. I got called in to see our battery commander for putting a ranking Korean Augmentation to The United States Army (KATUSA) sergeant of the Korean Army in charge of GIs working in our tactical power generating crew.[7] The GIs I had just weren’t up to the task. According to our Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Korean government ranks of the Korean services were to be treated and considered the same as our troops. They weren’t. Usually.[8] Surprisingly, the Captain let the decision stand. We also had a black lieutenant that was treated like crap by white officers as well as enlisted men. He was a good friend and officer.
It was more of the same when I got to Germany. I was called a nigger lover by whites and an Uncle Tom nigger lover by blacks. My roommates were black. They had to put up with tagging as well. “Oreo cookies” was popular. We were housed in an old German barracks and had rooms. Four men to a room. I was also their crew chief along with being their barber. We went through some interesting and intense times.
I ran into more racism when I did a tour of the deep south after I got out of the Army. Racism never went anywhere.
It just kept a lower profile.
Perspective
The Disney film “Song of the South” is generally accepted as being a racist movie.[9] The movie was generating controversy even before it was made. There were a couple of notable People of Color (POC), James Baskett and Hattie McDaniel, in the animated/live action movie. Both of them supported the movie. James Baskin won an Academy Award for his role as Uncle Remus.[10] I saw the movie when I was a kid and loved it. Ah, if I had only known then what I know now. There were people of all colors that enjoyed the movie.
Times have changed.
The times they are a changin’ now.
In referring to the Make America Great Again slogan Bryan Cranston said, “Do you accept that could possibly be construed as a racist remark?” Aaaaaaaannnd we’re off.
There’s an almost immediate response required from conservatives to find a way to dimmish a statement like that. When people of color came out with “Black Lives Matter” there was an immediate response from the right that “all lives matter” and “blue lives matter” because we as a nation couldn’t have people of color going around saying that they were being treated differently by the police! The nerve! Because if police aren’t in fact treating everyone the same then we have serious problems to fix as a nation.
~~~
Another life story.
Back when I was a teenager, I was a passenger in car where the driver got busted for drag racing. All of us got hauled downtown where the two drivers were processed. It seems that they suspected beer was involved. While they didn’t find beer on any of us or in the vehicles they did find quite a bit of beer in some bushes that were within throwing distance of the cars. It was a mystery to us.
While we were at the station two young white cops beat up a wino person of color.[11] He was an older gentleman. They beat him bad. We’d hear the smack and then, “Is that the best you got motherfucker.” Smack. “My mother hits harder than that.” Smack. After a while he stopped talking. The two guys being processed were in close proximity to the beating that was being administered to the man.
His hands were cuffed behind his back.
Sarcasm
I just love the below quote.
~~~
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread. ~ Jacques Anatole François Thibault
~~~
Isn’t that great? This is another favorite quote.
~~~
Let them eat cake. ~ Anonymous.
~~~
Now supposedly the above was said by Marie Antoinette when she was told that her subjects were starving and didn’t have any bread to eat. Bread being a staple food of the masses. I said supposedly because it doesn’t appear that she actually made the comment.[12]
Let’s get back to that Make America Great Again (MAGA) slogan.
It’s all the rage of fascists.
Nouns as verbs.
For quite some time I have been trying out various names for what used to be called the Republican Party. Let’s face it the Republican Party of today is NOT the Grand Old Party (GOP) that it was. There are what I will call old school Republicans remaining but they don’t share in the vision or fascist agenda of true ultra MAGAs. A word that stands for a slogan that has become a name. It’s just a matter of time before it becomes a verb. It may be already.
It seemed to me that the sobriquet Republican Fascists though nicely pejorative and accurate didn’t really apply to all Republicans that will remain and vote along whatever party lines are decided by the MAGA base and new leadership. So adding the prefix Neo deals with what has become the party in regards to change and adding Fascists as a final descriptor is what better describes their agenda. What constitutes fascism is rather broad and the Neo-Republicans aren’t really bringing anything new to the fascist table. So, I decided upon Neo-Republican Fascists (NRFs for short.) Or just call them MAGAs. As in …
That’s Mr. MAGA to you bruh.
Why racist Google?[13]
Finally, we get to the heart of the matter. Campaign slogans.[14] For those interested about campaign slogans Trump takes credit for coming up with the slogan Make America Great Again (MAGA).[15]
Okay, let’s get back to Cranston’s question concerning the Make America Great Again slogan.
Cranston asked Chris Wallace in his interview: “Do you accept that could possibly be construed as a racist remark?”
Jason Whitlock, in his rebuttal, answered no. (I’ll delve further into his response later because some of his comments were ironically funny while others were just typical NRF Christian Nationalist talking points.)
My answer is yes.
Before and after.
I was studying Trump before he ran for President. Back in the day in Kansas I was a part of a group that was opposed to the expansion of gambling in Kansas. At that time if you studied gambling Trump’s name would come up. He already had a reputation in some gambling circles as a racist. He was also a liar and a cheat in addition to being a failure at a monumental level. His reputation was in dealing with vendors, banks, workers, etc. was unsavory at best. He has been sued a lot and lost for good reason.[16] But that really wasn’t enough for me to taint the movement that he was putting together. People aren’t always a reflection of their leadership even if they won’t denounce white supremacists.[17]
What next caught my attention is that the white supremacists/racists et all signed on and joined the MAGA movement early on.[18] We’re talking from the very beginning.[19] He courted their support with his statements and actions. He got their support. He courted their support after leaving office.
He still has it.[20]
Oh boy!
Whitlock did answer when the burning question of when America was last great. In case you were wondering, it was a decade ago.[21] That would have been 2012. I think. Not sure what happened then. I may be missing something.
~~~
America stopped being great a decade ago.
~~~
Okay, I know that Pope Benedict XVI resigned that year and we got a new pope but I don’t remember anything in regard to race relations other than the same o, same o.
Just kidding. Obama was elected to his second term in 2012 and took office in 2013. Ultra MAGAs really don’t like President Obama, our first black president. Whitlock wrote an open letter to Cranston to The Blaze, a hard right media source of questionable veracity that occasionally promotes conspiracy theories according to Media Bias Fact Check.[22]
But then we have Whitlock saying this.
~~~
America is and has been the safest, most prosperous, most opportunity-rich land for black people for the last 60 years.
~~~
Um, I thought that ten years ago was the cutoff date for when America was last great. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Unless that means that it wasn’t so great for white people but nah that would mean that we were only kinda’ great so that can’t be right. Some mixed messaging going on here. Here’s that paragraph from the first quote in its entirety.
~~~
America stopped being great a decade ago. Social media accelerated American culture’s descent into wokeness and secularism. America turned demonstrably hostile to a biblical worldview and patriarchal leadership. It prioritized victimhood over victory. It stopped pursuing equality of opportunity in favor of equality of outcome.
Equity is the gateway drug to mass corruption. Equity fuels entitlement. It sends people on a search to discover what makes them worthy of special consideration. Equity is at the root of identity politics, gender dysphoria, and racial division. Equity is Utopia’s bible.
~~~
That is a lot of word salad that doesn’t really make any sense. Whitlock said America is opportunity rich. I’m not sure he understands what the word equity means.[23] (A good synonym for equity is “fairness”.)
He did flat cover some territory though.
We lost our biblical world view?! Did that happen when the Pope retired? We got another one and he seems nice. This is a major trope of Christian Nationalists. Our country went south when we turned our backs on their Rambo Jesus. They had that ‘we’ve fallen from grace shit’ going when the twin towers were attacked in 2001 and the 2 evangelical shit-for-brains nitwits Robertson and Falwell said that we had it coming to us.[24] You can watch the video here. These two evangelical morons certainly didn’t think we were great.
I could have appreciated Whitlock’s response more if he hadn’t used so many NRF talking points and lied so much. Here’s an ironically funny comment that he made about President Clinton.
~~~
“He’s a stereotypical politician, a man unafraid to distort reality for his own benefit.”
~~~
Now this comment of Whitlock’s is another oddity.
~~~
“Utopia is the left’s favorite nonsensical conspiracy theory. They’re determined to create it around the world.”
~~~
Hm, utopia is defined as “a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions.”[25] Kina’ sounds like heaven doesn’t it? Is it a practically achievable goal? Nope. Probably not. But isn’t it a great goal to strive for? Why is that a bad thing? Why is it wrong to want everyone in the world to have a better place? He might have meant to say socialist utopia. I wrote about this in 2020.[26] It would still be utopia.
Well, it does get in the way of white supremacy, racism, bigotry, the persecution of minorities and the need for abortions. Wait? What was that last one? The need for abortions. In a perfect society there wouldn’t be unwanted or unexpected pregnancies. NRFs wouldn’t be able to exercise control over bedrooms, women’s bodies or persecute them for being pregnant.
If you talk about Trump evidently you have to find a way to talk about the Clintons. At least he didn’t bring up Hillary’s email. But OMG in regard to distorting reality does Whitlock know about Trump claiming that he won the election in 2020?
Here’s another one.
~~~
Bryan, you and Bill Clinton are both actors. You feign concern for black people while seducing us with lies. Your statements to Chris Wallace come off as condescending and racist.
~~~
Again, with Clinton. I never cared for President Clinton but just for the record Trump was actually an actor in not one but 3 soft porn videos and had a reality TV series.[27] But the NRFs immediate fallback position when the topic of racism comes up is to turn around and call their adversaries racist. Same thing applies when they get called fascists.
Hm, Whitlock is saying in this next quote that the founding fathers designed a constitution that was designed to fail.
~~~
Bryan, you don’t believe black people can compete in the system George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin designed. You babbled at the beginning of your rant as if America’s Founding Fathers invented slavery. They inherited the planet-long institution and wrote a constitution that made its demise inevitable.
~~~
In these remarks Whitlock serves as an apologist for the slavers. Let me see if I’ve got this right. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom were slave owners (having inherited this “planet-long institution”), then designed a constitution that would make them lose their slaves but they didn’t.[28][29] So they knew that they would get to keep their slaves but something something would inevitably happen that would make it go away. Like a Civil War where over a half million people would die![30] Oh, and Thomas Jefferson was raping at least one of his slaves. I don’t think that there’s any record of Washington raping slaves. Old Ben seems to have been outvoted.
BUT wait! It’s the greatest Constitution ever written! So says Whitlock.
~~~
They want what I experienced in the 1970s, '80s, '90s, and 2000s: freedom and opportunity derived from the greatest constitution ever written.
~~~
In the next excerpt that I pulled Whitlock follows a ridiculous assertion about the trans issue by giving thanks to Christianity for creating a Christian nation. More Christian Nationalism.
~~~
They have no interest in debating whether men have periods or can get pregnant. They want to compete on the most level playing field in the world.
They may not be Christians, but they want what Christianity created.
~~~
Christianity didn’t write the constitution. The founding fathers could have created a religious constitution but they made a conscious, well-thought-out decision not to. Thomas Jefferson, the main architect of the constitution went to great pains not to do that very thing. He fervently believed in the separation of church and state.[31] Large segments of the then population had been victims of religious persecution and escaped. They wanted freedom from religious persecution. They had not only seen the evil of state-sponsored religion; they had lived it. They wouldn’t want to bring it back.
The Constitution was written by a group of white men to protect their privileged interests. It’s a document that codified slavery along with indentured servitude. Women were second class citizens that didn’t have the right to vote. Child labor was endemic. And genocide was being committed against the native population. Estimates of the number of natives that were slaughtered in the conquest of what has become the United States of America vary widely. What is known is that by the end of the 19th century there were around 238,000 natives remaining.[32] The last battle took place December 29, 1890.[33] It was the “Wounded Knee” massacre.
Was this when America was great?
Jason Whitlock’s bona fides
This piece is lengthy in case you haven’t noticed. I did pull out lots of Whitlock’s remarks in their entirety. I provided a source to his entire comments in the end notes and will provide the link again here and another end note reference.[34]
Here are some of his bona fides.
~~~
“My childhood was great. We lived in the ghetto. Hope and joy filled the tiny apartment I shared with my brother and mother after my parents divorced.
High school was even better. I captained a nationally ranked, undefeated football team. My senior year, I shared a one-bedroom, 400-square-foot apartment with my dad.
I earned a football scholarship to Ball State University. The five years spent on campus comprise many of my fondest memories. I would do those five years over and over again until eternity.
The two decades I spent as a newspaper journalist in Bloomington, Indiana; Rock Hill, South Carolina; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Kansas City, Missouri, were tremendous. I started at the bottom, working part-time for $5 an hour, and became one of the most successful sports writers of my era.
America was great for me from 1967 until about 2012.
I’m black. Both my parents are black. Their parents were black, too. I’m 55 years old. When I hear former President Donald Trump and his supporters say, “make America great again,” I don’t interpret that nostalgia as subtle or overt racism. I hear it as a call for a return to sanity, a return to a time when America at least pretended to judge man by the content of his character.”
~~~
Cool. He worked hard and got ahead so everybody can. So, if you’re one of the 40 million poor people in this country and think that you’re working hard but not getting ahead you should just know that you aren’t working hard enough. It’s your fault. Got it?
I did get a kick out of him saying that he’s one of the most successful sports writers of his era. Now, that takes some sports balls. Whew. Wish I knew something about sports. I tried doing some Google searching and didn’t have any luck finding that he was/is the most successful writer of his era. I tell you what though, I’m willing to take his word for it on this one.
Just kidding. It does make me think though that I should perhaps say that I am the best writer for this genre. This genre being my blog.
I do think that he made an important point when he talked about returning to a time where we pretended to do something as being better than, you know, actually doing it.
Like George Santos.
Wrapping it up
OMG! I’m up to 3,400 words and I’m just now wrapping it up. Well, my editor hasn’t struck yet.
The Civil Rights Act wasn’t passed until 1964.[35] People can argue that we were great before that if they want. I don’t think so. I do believe that as a nation we have accomplished some great things and can accomplish greater things yet for all of our society but things get a little dicey when talking in absolute terms like Make America Great Again. It is a nice slogan but let’s face it slogans aren’t designed for universal accuracy. They can help establish the basis for a dialogue. Like this one.
We also need to acknowledge that racism is a huge dividing force in this country and that hate crimes have been on the rise since Trump came on the scene and racists signed onto his agenda.[36] Crosses are still being burned in America.[37][38][39][40]
When I first saw Whitlock’s piece, I thought it was probably fake. I did some quick checks and discovered that it was real and that it is being widely shared in MAGA land. They eat this ridiculous stuff up. It’s like when I watch MAGA NRFs talk about Trump still being President and that we have 2 militaries with Trump being in charge of the good army and Biden the bad one.[41]
I am going to pull out one last quote from the finish of his post.
~~~
Many people want that America back, a country that allows two parents with nothing more than a good work ethic to lift their children to a better life. Life doesn’t get any better than that.
Instead, manufacturing jobs have left this country and America caters to global corporations that favor China and a Marxist worldview. America cares far more about what’s best for elite celebrities than for working-class families.
That frustration is at the root of the MAGA movement. It’s willful ignorance to pretend otherwise.
~~~
Getting close to the end he did manage to work in that America is going Commie and Marxist (Socialist) so he managed to a lot of the NRF tropes except for Hillary’s emails. I’m kind of disappointed in that. He also said that America cares more about elite celebrities than working class people. He kinda’ does a little drift towards socialism and class warfare there but I have to agree with him in terms of who Republicans stand up for since they refuse to increase taxes on the rich and oppose minimum wage increases and better health care for working people. Elite celebrities would fall into the wealthy class but they aren’t near as rich as billionaire Trump claims to be who, along with his family, receive most favored person status in their business dealings with China. Oops. I forgot about Oprah. She’s a billionaire.
I do agree with him that frustration is at the heart of the MAGA movement along with willful ignorance.
Just read his post.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_red_than_dead
[2] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1886/goldwater-rule
[3]
https://www.penn.museum/sites/morton/craniology.php
[4] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/disturbing-resilience-scientific-racism-180972243/
[5] BC CNN video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DpjrG4rLdQ
[7] https://8tharmy.korea.army.mil/site/about/katusa-soldier-program.asp
[8] https://www.usfk.mil/Portals/105/Documents/SOFA/I_20160425_The_SOFA_and_You.pdf
[9] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/19/song-of-the-south-the-difficult-legacy-of-disneys-most-shocking-movie
[10] https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/song-of-the-south-disney-you-must-remember-this/song-of-the-south-brer-bear-left-brer-rabbit-front-hand-in-hand-from-left-luana-patten-ja/
[11] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wino
[12] https://www.britannica.com/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake
[13] https://www.vox.com/2018/4/3/17168256/google-racism-algorithms-technology
[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._presidential_campaign_slogans
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again
[16] https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/attorney-and-author-on-his-portrait-of-donald-trump-through-more-than-3500-lawsuits
[17] https://www.msn.com/en-US/news/politics/full-list-of--republicans-who-refused-to-denounce-white-supremacy/ar-AA18mCP3
[18] https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-history-of-support-from-white-supremacist-far-right-groups-2020-9?op=1
[19] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/925385389/is-trump-really-that-racist
[20] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-hosts-kanye-west-nick-fuentes-mar-lago/story?id=93965361
[21] http://www.eventshistory.com/date/2013/
[23] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equity
[24] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/19/september11.usa9
[25] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/utopia
[26] https://yadayadayadablahblah.blogspot.com/2020/08/socialist-utopia.html
[27] https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/07/politics/rudy-giuliani-trump-credibility-porn-videos/index.html
[28] https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/ten-facts-about-washington-slavery/
[29] https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/jefferson-s-attitudes-toward-slavery/
[30] https://www.history.com/news/american-civil-war-deaths
[31] https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/thomas-jefferson-and-religious-freedom/
[32] https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-genocide-united-states
[33] https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/american-indian-wars-timeline
[34] https://www.theblaze.com/fearless/oped/whitlock-my-letter-to-breaking-bad-star-bryan-cranston
[35] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act
[36] https://www.statista.com/chart/16100/total-number-of-hate-crime-incidents-recorded-by-the-fbi/
[37] https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1125167550/mississippi-man-federal-hate-crime-cross-burning
[38] https://www.enidnews.com/news/local_news/fbi-questions-recent-cross-burning-incident-in-woodward-county/article_b0c805b3-19d7-5362-97a4-639072d24987.html
[39] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9688767/america-white-supremacists-el-paso-shooting/
[40] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nooses-hangings-and-cross-burnings-imagery-of-americas-dark-racial-history-sparks-fear-nationwide/2020/06/24/7134b238-b5a5-11ea-8c69-7da719d02278_story.html
[41] Two militaries (1min, 40 sec): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pib7VldW-e4
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please avoid name calling, personal and/or abusive language. In other words be civil. We need a lot more of that these days. Try and confine your comments to the topic of the post.