Monthly Archives: June 2015

Point of View Columns

Take Down the Damn Flag

In the aftermath of the Charleston Massacre Governor Nikki Haley has proposed that the Confederate flag will no longer fly over the State House. The governors of Mississippi, Virginia and Tennessee are proposing similar measures and too many Republicans and Democrats are breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for this amazing “progress”.

But the question stands, why has it taken so long for political leadership of this country to understand how deeply and tragically offensive the Confederate flag is for black Americans and for all people of good will? And there is also this question – why is any American comfortable flying or wearing the Confederate flag? After all, we see very few Germans wearing swastika bikinis and baseball caps and we see absolutely no Russians parading through Moscow with hammer and sickle banners.

All this talk about “heritage” and honoring sainted and valorous Southern “heroes” must be seen within the context of real and undisputed history. First and foremost, we should be clear that the driving force of the Confederate States of America was the preservation and continuation of white supremacy and slavery – that is, the sale, ownership and uncontrolled and unlimited physical abuse and degradation of black American men, women and children.

This really is not a subject of debate. Here are the words of Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the CSA speaking about the CSA:

“Its foundations are laid; its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”

This is the “heritage” that the Confederate flag. This is the “noble cause” that the so-called sainted and valorous Southern “heroes” fought and died for. Even a cursory overview of warfare would reveal that there will always be instances of bravery and heroism, no matter how evil and odious the cause. There can be no doubt that there were noble and brave Nazi soldiers during World War II, but Germans honor the war dead in a somber fashion and not in the raucous, outrageous and tone deaf fashion in which the Confederacy is celebrated in this country.

It is simply a damn shame that nine more black people had to die at the hands of yet another white racist before some people finally realized that the Confederate flag is not simply inappropriate, it is obscene. Flying and wearing the stars and bars insults the memory of every black person who suffered through slavery and every black person who has been oppressed and terrorized and killed with that same damned flag flying.

Look at the photographs of the spit-stained white mobs howling and protesting the integration of a high school in Little Rock, or the University of Mississippi or the University of Alabama and you will see the Confederate flag. Look in the archives and you will see the Confederate flag flying at Ku Klux Klan rallies and at the hundreds of lynching parties that always ended with black bodies hanging from trees like the strange fruit about which Billie Holiday wrote and sung.

There is nothing noble about the Confederacy. There is nothing honorable about the cause for which the Confederate soldiers fought and died. They fought a traitorous and treasonous war in order to perpetuate white supremacy and the enslavement of black Americans. There should be no flags flying, there should be no monuments, there should be no streets and universities and boulevards named after the leaders of this hideous cause.

Germans do not fly the swastika over government buildings. Germans do not name their streets and universities after Nazi leaders like Hitler and Goering and Himmler. Why should Americans countenance flying the Confederate flag or any other honoring or commemoration of the so-called heroes of the so-called noble and treasonous cause?

Take Down the Damn Flag.

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Point of View Columns

The Eternal Terror

Perhaps the Confederate flag in South Carolina will fly at half mast now that a damaged excuse for a human being named Dylann Roof killed nine black people in a South Carolina Church. All reports indicate that Roof sought to kill black people so this was not a random act of murder – this was an act of terrorism. And this latter day Neanderthal monster reminds us that American terrorism directed against black people is a horrific and very real part of the history and present tense of this country.

Consider the irony in the fact that the site of the murders, Emanuel AME Church, was founded by Denmark Vesey who had plotted an extensive slave revolt which failed in 1822. After Denmark Vesey as executed, white South Carolinians burned the Emanuel AME Church to the ground and actually banned all black churches in the state in 1834. The history of Emanuel AME Church is soaked in blood and scarred by the fires of hatred and bigotry.

And the history of Emanuel AME Church is an important reminder as we consider the current atrocity at that church. Terror against black people has been a constant theme in this country starting with the Barbadian Slave Codes which were then exported to the American colonies, beginning with South Carolina.

The Slave Codes were created to impose absolute white domination over black slaves, and to protect against slave revolts and as well as safeguarding the significant financial investment that slaves represented. Under the Slave Codes there were literally no limits to the violence and savagery that could be suffered by black Americans. Indeed, it can be argued that Slave Codes injected the virus of white racist violence and terrorism that still runs through the veins of America.

There should be no doubt that the Slave Codes begat Jim Crow which begat wholesale lynching which begat legally sanctioned terrorism to confront the civil rights movement. Lest one think that this virus is confined to the former Confederate States of America it should be clear that New York City and Boston police worked closely with slave catchers and the state of Indiana had the largest Ku Klux Klan membership of any state in the history of this country.

Dylann Roof is a direct descendant of the mobs that confronted the Little Rock Nine in Arkansas and James Meredith at the University of Mississippi as well as Louise Day Hicks who encouraged the attacks on school buses carrying black children in Boston. Dylann Roof is a direct descendant of the Klansmen and the “ordinary citizens” who organized and participated in the lynching of thousands of black men and women in the 19th and 20th centuries. Dylann Roof is a blood relative of the terrorists who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and he belongs to the same family as the scores of police officers who have shot and killed black men, women and children without cause, simply because they were black men, black women and black children.

We should all be saddened by the carnage in Charleston. But we should not be shocked. Terrorism directed against black Americans is part of American history.

And we should certainly not be shocked by Dylann Roof’s actions – after all, he is a white American. And there can be no cure for the disease of white racial terrorism in this country that still afflicts so many white Americans until we are willing to accept that the illness exists.

It is the first step to recovery.

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Point of View Columns

The Plague Called Trump

No history of humanity is complete without the history of plagues and epidemics. The Black Plague in Europe killed almost a third of the population. The Flu Epidemic at the end of World War I killed millions worldwide. The AIDS epidemic continues to afflict millions around the world. And then there is the Plague called Trump for which there is no known cure.

Donald Trump, aka “The Donald” and aka “the defendant”, has announced that he will announce on June 16th whether or not he is going to run for President. Clearly, humility, self-assessment and common sense do not exist on the Planet Trump. The fact that the news media from all over the world will flock to what most certainly will be a non-announcement, is a testimony to his undeniable powers for self-promotion as well as the critical damage that the Plague called Trump has visited upon society.

There is no doubt that the presidential election of 2016 will be as important as the 2012 election due to the ever deepening political divide regarding the role of government in the lives of Americans. Given the high stakes that are involved next year, one would hope that there would be a higher level of thought and intelligent insight from anyone who would presume to present themselves as a candidate for President of the United States.

There is no dictionary in which you will see a photograph of Donald Trump next to the word “thought” or the word “insight”. However, in some dictionary there is an entire chapter devoted to Donald Trump along with the the words “braggart”, “birther” and “shameless”.

Donald Trump’s dog whistle racist leadership of the totally bogus “birther” movement should have disqualified him from the public stage for eternity. But of course, that is where the word “shameless” comes in. Along with his fallacious claims that nobody ever saw Barack Obama as a student at Columbia University or at Harvard Law School, Trump has hurled mud packed lies at President Obama – all without consequence.

He continues to sell the Trump “brand” to developers of resorts and condominium projects that, as often as not, become the subject of law suits by disenchanted investors. There are trainloads of bondholders and busloads of contractors associated with his various hotel and casino projects that will see their next nickel from Trump the day after the day after Hell freezes over.

And then there is Trump University. Trump University is to a university like cotton candy is to cotton. You wouldn’t make a pair of pants out of cotton candy and you certainly don’t want to use what you “learn” at Trump University to earn a living. Yet thousands of otherwise rational men and women have paid thousands of dollars to find out Donald Trump’s secret to wealth and success – and they are still waiting to find out.

Americans have been plagued by Donald Trump for over three decades. And if it is true that the good die young, then we will be seeing Donald Trump for at least another three decades. And even though he doesn’t even have the decency to wear a gossamer fig leaf of respect for the truth to cover the nakedness of his lies and bombast, we are supposed to believe that Donald Trump actually has something of importance or value to say on June 16th.

You can be assured that the Point of View column will henceforth be a No Trump Zone and we can only hope that the rest of America will join in cleansing the national stage of the Plague called Trump.

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Point of View Columns

The Turtle on the Fence Post

Country sayings are interesting and, in many instances true. For example, if you see a turtle on a fence post, you can be pretty sure that it did not get there on its own. Similarly, when we see voting restrictions being imposed all over the country, we can be sure that it is neither a matter of coincidence nor serendipity.

Almost immediately upon the election of President Obama in 2009, Teapublicans began a monomaniacal jihad with the sole goal of preventing him from being reelected. This group of supposed patriots hit upon the idea of restricting voting rights and the ethnic cleansing of voter rolls as a way of diminishing the support for Barack Obama in the 2012 election. Historians will view this as strategy that is soaked in brutal irony – the patriotic right wing that claims to revere the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence has sought to deny the right to vote to certain Americans.

It took some time for the Teapublicans to get their act together, but after the Roberts-Alito-Thomas-Scalia Supreme Court cabal eviscerated the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013, the path to constitutional villainy became an open highway. Indeed over fifteen states and numerous towns, counties and municipalities have instituted laws, rules and regulations which have as their goal the restriction of voting rights.

Claims that these laws, rules and regulations are intended to prevent voter fraud are simply lies. There are no statistical reports which indicate anything but a miniscule number of voter fraud cases over the past two decades. The fact that the voting rights restrictions have nothing to do with concerns about voter fraud brings us back to the story of the turtle on the fence post.

The effect of the voting rights restrictions has been to reduce the opportunity of blacks, Latinos, the elderly, the very young and the very poor from exercising their franchise as citizens of this country. The individuals in these demographic sectors are not known to be traditional supporters of Teapublican candidates or the Teapublican agenda.

Is this result simply a coincidence? Are voting limitations on the constituencies that elected and reelected Barack Obama just an unintended consequence of the Teapublican initiatives, however fortunate it might be for the right wing of the right wing? Just think about that turtle on the fence post.

The reality is that many of the current riders in the Teapublican Presidential Clown Bus have supported these voter suppression strategies – Chris Christie in New Jersey, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in Florida, Rick Perry and Ted Cruz in Texas are up to their eyeballs in denying constitutional rights to American citizens who don’t figure to support them. They will deny this, of course, but remember that turtle on the fence post.

The Teapublican voter suppression strategy began after Barack Obama was elected. This strategy has never had anything to do with voter fraud. This strategy has always been about reducing the turnout of voters likely to support Barack Obama and Democrats in general. And any Teapublican who is thinking about running for President of the United States will want to stack the deck in their favor by diminishing the turnout of the Obama/Democratic base.

So, as the denials will spew from the likes of Christie/Walker/Bush/Rubio/Perry/Cruz………….just remember that turtle on the fence post.

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