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Point of View Columns

In Celebration of Black History Month 2023

 Last week I had the distinct honor of being the guest speaker at the Black History Month Celebration hosted by the employees of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

So here we go:

Please imagine if you will that we will time travel almost 53 years ago to an America that was still shuddering from the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers – John and Robert – the cause of death was always an assassin’s bullet and always there was mystery, confusion and doubt in the aftermath, some of which lingers to this very day.

It was 53 years ago that tens of thousands of American military personnel along with millions of Vietnamese military personnel and civilians died in what was then one of the most brutal and horrific wars in recent history – the Nigerian civil war certainly being deserving of dishonorable mention.

It was 53 years ago that many American cities were still smoldering ruins after the insurrections following assassinations, police brutality and the daily recognition of rights being denied to Black people, even the right to hope.

And it was 53 years ago that I was a senior at Dartmouth College – an institution that was a critical building block in the institutional bastions that had supported, justified and rationalized racism, institutionalized white supremacy and codified the basic precepts of white male supremacy in this nation that had been built on stolen land and genocide.

In my almost four years at Dartmouth I was (and remain) proud of being part of a brotherhood of young Black men who navigated a path unknown to us or our forebearers. We were following the Drinking Gourd towards some semblance of justice and something other than inequality. And with no playbook, no guide, no griot -we changed that institution called Dartmouth College for good and forever.

And while that institution is far from being perfect, due to our belief in the possibility of change there are now more Black students, Black alumni, Black faculty, Black deans and administrators and Black alumni than could ever have been imagined 53 years ago.

We were too young to believe that there was such a thing as impossible. We had to learn to believe that as we grew older.

And so, with the assent of the Dartmouth College administration my fellow Black alumni of the Class of 1970 chose me to be the first Black person to speak at a Dartmouth College commencement in its 200-year history. And before I begin today’s remarks, I wish to share for you a few closing lines from that speech – please keep in mind that the year was 1970, the speaker was a 20 year old Black man – Richard (Law and Order) Nixon (he was about 4 years away from total disgrace and infamy), and George Wallace, though paralyzed by an assassin’s bullet still remained in the national consciousness and most of all, racism, both benign and overt, was very much a clear and present part of the American character.

That was the America in which I found myself, and at the close of my remarks I said this:

We have been told to believe in America, to believe that there was something deep down inside America that was good. And what has happened?

Black brothers die daily in the Indochina madness that is just another example of the sickness of America spilling out all over the world, and still we try to believe; Nixon tells Black people that he doesn’t give a damn about us, that he would rather put a white man on the moon than put food into a Black (or white) child’s stomach, and still we try to believe; the Congressional Record of the United States details the past plans for the construction and use of concentration camps and still we are supposed to believe.

The time has now come for us to believe in ourselves. The time has come to make ourselves free. Our stars of freedom still shine and our saints of righteousness do live. You only have to look around.

The stars are in the eyes of little Black babies and children who were born destined only for freedom, the saints of righteousness are the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters who have provided the strength for Blackness to survive in the face of the forces of evil seem to be everywhere.

The time is coming, the time has got to come, when freedom will be seen in our smiles, and our Blackness will mean freedom. We have to believe this, because this is the only reality left to us.

That is what we are about, that is what today means for us. To best sum up our feelings though, I would like to quote a poem written by Brother Herschel Johnson, of this class, as this poem speaks for the souls and spirits of all of us:

For you mothers with dirt-rough hands

For you with backs aching from bending

And flushing and scrubbing

For all you women on transit

You with brown bags under your arms

Bringing home the leavings of white folks

Bringing it to your children

For all you Black mothers and fathers

Who had to live with humility

And yet have had the pride to survive

For you Black mothers and fathers who raised up

Your men are now with you.

Thank you and may a beautiful Black peace always be with you.

And at the conclusion of my remarks I received a standing ovation from an overwhelming white commencement audience. Sometimes the truth does indeed prevail.

And now, 53 years later there has been progress and regress. We can cite the progress that has been made with the appearance of Black billionaires and millionaires, the election of a Black president of the United States and a Black vice president of the United State. We have seen progress with the election of Black mayors and governors, and we have seen progress in the number of Black CEO’s heading Fortune 500 corporations. More Black men and women are going to college and medical school and business school and law school beyond numbers that Booker T. Washington couldn’t comprehend in his wildest dreams.

And yet…and yet, more Black men and women suffer the burden of the New Jim Crow, populating American prisons and jails far out of proportion to our percentage of the national population. Our young men, and increasingly our young women, are killing each other in numbers that would make the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan happy as a hog in a mudhole. We have seen our common language and shared culture degrade ourselves with violent, misogynistic self-hatred and a bizarre embrace of ignorance.

Of course, we also have to take to time to observe, assess and consider the present and the future because if we ignore the present and fail to consider the future, then we do so at our own peril.

It should be noted once more that the origins of Black History Month began with the work of the great Black historian G. Carter Woodson. The celebration began in February because the birthday of the great Frederick Douglass was in February. And I would like to share a quote by Brother Douglass:

There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their constitution.

We have seen the birth and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement and white corporate America has paid lip service to the concept – but institutional change has been elusive at best for Black America.

The end of the Trump presidency featured the first truly armed insurrection against the United States government since the Civil War. That the insurrection was led and planned by a sitting President of the United States should make us very concerned that the worst is yet to come.

Right now, Trump lies dormant like a fat rattlesnake in cool weather. But cold-blooded reptile that he is, the warmer the weather the more active he will become. He is already venomous and we would be fools to think that he will not strike again.

Meanwhile, by every indicium – family income, infant mortality, life expectancy, incarceration rates, poverty levels, education and income deficits – the narrative of this country is that no matter where we live, no matter how much money we make, no matter where we went to school – if you are a Black woman, man or child – we live in a different country than that of our white sisters and brothers.

Since the November 2016 election we have seen the deconstruction of American democracy moving from slow motion to warp speed. And even though American democracy has never been the saving grace of Black America that it should be, its demise simply cannot be a good thing. That is because the successor to American democracy could be very well be an authoritarian America that will certainly not be the friend of any Black woman, man or child.

Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 – and I realize that many of you gathered today were not even born then and therefore have enjoyed a level of franchise entitlement that never existed for Black people before that year and…. may soon evaporate before the end of this decade.

We have seen the deconstruction of the Republican Party, at one point the party of Reconstruction- seemingly a million years ago- and is now the vehicle for a proto-conservative, authoritarian, neo-fascist, jackbooted and tattooed cadre of shock troops hell-bent on a reconstruction of America that will not resemble anything that has been seen in this country’s history.

We must understand that instead of worrying about how many times Joe Rogan says “nigger” we should be worrying about how many members of Congress and the Senate will no longer consider Black Americans as a legitimate part of their constituency and that we are not truly citizens of this country. And once that becomes the case, the remaining guard rails are coming down.

The American house is on fire. Like many housefires it may not be that noticeable at first – there might be some oily rags in the garage waiting for a moment of ignition or some old and moldy magazines smoldering in the attic and then – conflagration.

In the future we should never look back and say that we had no idea that it could get this bad. We have been warned and we have a choice. As Frederick Douglass said:

Power concedes nothing without demand

The question now is what do you demand? What do we demand?

We can regroup and reorient our focus towards resistance and resilience. We have to realize that our forebears didn’t even have shoes, but they marched to freedom – spiritually and literally.

Anything that we might consider to be freedom today is in jeopardy.

And if we just hope for better times, if we just go about our daily business with the assumption that things really cannot get that much worse, if we cross our fingers and refuse to imagine a more negative scenario than that in which we live, then we dishonor and disrespect everything that Black History Month is supposed to stand for:

-We will dishonor the enslaved mothers and fathers of our people who endured unspeakable horror, somehow holding on to the hope that if not their lives, the lives of their descendants would be better

-We will disregard the historic and epic achievements of Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass on through to Fannie Lou Hamer, Harry T. Moore, Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

-and we will disrespect the rich legacy of hope and expectation that has been our inheritance

What can we do? We can invest strategically in that aspect of the political process to which we still have access and demand of our elected officials that every moment of every hour of every day should witness their working with the realization that we are at an existential point in American history and our continued existence is not a given – we don’t have time for political labels or petty partisanship or anything else that does not aim for resistance and resilience

What can we do? We can focus on education, healthcare and community development as if our lives depend on it – because they do.

What can we do? We can immediately stop acting like business as usual is going to yield useful results.

What can we do?

Everything!

We can get more serious about voter registration and, as importantly, voter education and, most importantly voter engagement – in your neighborhood and in your community.

We can learn from the opposition to play the long game – focus on the community boards, the school boards, the state legislatures – not just the bright shiny object called the presidency.

We can develop a real agenda that needs to be supported by candidates at every level – local, state and federal– healthcare, housing education, police/criminal justice reform, voting rights, abortion rights – what exactly do you want? You cannot complain that the system isn’t serving your needs if you don’t know what you want, and you don’t know what you need. And we need to know what we don’t know.

What can we do?

If we believe?

Everything!

Now!

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Point of View Columns

A Shame and a Damn Shame

Much has been written, and will be written about what happened on 1.6.21. It is truly a day of infamy in American history that will be remembered in the same category as 12.7.41 (Pearl Harbor), 11.22.63 (the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy), 4.7.68 (the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.) and 9.11.01 (the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon).

Of course, 1.6.21 is that it was a historically unique event – it was the first time since the Civil War that armed Americans attacked the American government with the intent to overthrow the existing government. It was also unique because it was inspired and led by a sitting President of the United States.

That is why the report of the January 6th Committee has revealed the shame of 1.6.21 as well as the damn shame of what has happened since that fateful day. The fact that the Committee referred four charges against Donald Trump to the United States Department of Justice for criminal prosecution is without precedent in American history.

One hundred years from now, if there is a United States, Donald J. Trump will be a name of a president that remembered with shame along with the likes of Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon. He will have a permanent place in the Presidential Rogues Gallery where his memory will always reside.

The fact that he is now reduced to selling NFT cards of himself along with renting out his faded Mar a Lago estate for Iranian weddings is only the beginning of his slipping down the slimy ladder of infamy. Even if he never is indicted or convicted of his many crimes, his name will be synonymous with shame and that is well-deserved.

We can be sure that he will be wailing and moaning about “witch hunts” and “lynch mobs” which will only energize his dwindling base, some of whom will follow him to the bitter end. And while we will probably never see him in an orange jumpsuit, we will see him diminished to the point of being a living synonym for words like “traitor”, “buffoon” and “failure”.

What is a damn shame is something far worse than Trump. What is a damn shame is the thousands upon thousands of Republicans who are following what they believe the successful Trump playbook, employing bombast and insult and total disregard for the Constitution, equal rights and the rule of law. One can make the argument that Trump is a morally diminished individual who cannot help but dive into the deep abyss of hate and immorality. But the likes of Ron DeSantis and Josh Hawley and Mike Pompeo would never drink the authoritarian and undemocratic Kool-Aid that they will gladly serve to the American public in a quest for power.

It is a damn shame that the Republicans in the House of Representatives who cowered in fear in the Capitol while the hordes unleashed by Trump warmed the building still support Trump and his message. They refuse to even censure him much less demand that justice be meted out the armed insurrectionist and quasi-fascist hordes that worship Trump to this very day.

It is a damn shame that the Republican Party will, in the wake of the Trump Tsunami, support Trump wannabe’s like Dr. Oz and Trump sock puppets like Herschel Walker, all in the name of “Making America Great Again” when in reality they really want a return to a mythical America where Christian white male supremacy was the American Way of Life.

And finally, it is a damn shame that this may be the new normal when the opportunity for progress and true equity could be so close to being real.

And that is why the aftermath of 1.6.21 is both a shame and a damn shame.

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America and Republicans are on a Slippery Slope

We have been watching the slow-motion transformation of the Republican Party from a political party to the vehicle for a crusade – led by zealots and followed by true believers over the last half century. As been noted by many observers, as late as 1960 Republicans included moderates, liberal and conservatives from all parts of the country.

As late as 1960 Richard Nixon garnered over 30% of the Black vote, a percentage never seen again. As late as 1964, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress found a way to work together on a wide range of issues.

And then along came Barry – Goldwater that is. As the presidential candidate of the party in 1964 he proclaimed that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”. He was speaking about liberty from government – things like Social Security and civil rights for Black Americans. He was speaking about the need for justice for white Americans who were feeling increasing disenfranchised as the concept of rights for all Americans began halting steps towards reality.

Goldwater lost by a landslide, but Nixon followed the Goldwater playbook and was narrowly elected in 1968 and reelected by a landslide in 1972. And since then, despite efforts to soft pedal the rhetoric of its leadership, the Republican Party has moved inexorably rightward, so much so that the ascendancy of 45 could have been foretold.

In a crasser, brash and obscene fashion, 45 gave voice to the most fundamental and fundamental core values of the Republican Party – nativism, xenophobia, racism, sexism and intolerance. And most of all, he legitimized a total disavowal of any aspect of the governmental system that did not provide infinite and boundless power to the white majority that saw minority status looming on the horizon every time a nonwhite baby was born in the United States.

And now, after 84 million Americans voted for Joe Biden for president, the Republicans and their 74 million voters want to disenfranchise the majority by making false and baseless claims of voter fraud. And now, 70% of Republicans say that they do not believe that President Biden is legitimately the president.

Clearly a democracy cannot endure for long where, in a two-party system 70% of the membership of one party refuses to acknowledge the victory of the other party. Yet somehow the Republicans believe that it is o.k. to keep promoting the Big Lie and they are therefore blind to the institutional consequences.

First, going forward the losing party of either party in any local, state or federal raise is going to raise the false flag of voter fraud. And when a significant portion of the population in a city, state or in this country starts believing lies on a regular basis the January 6th insurrection in Washington is going to look like a picnic when compared to the civil warfare that will rage across this country after every single election.

The Republicans and 45 are playing with fire and either they don’t know it, which makes them fools, or they do know it and don’t care, which makes them malignant domestic terrorists.

These are very dangerous times indeed.

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The End of an Error

End of an Error

With the end of the Trump presidency it would seem that the entire nation, indeed the entire world, breathed a sigh of relief with the hope that the Trump Pandemic would be gone. There is now no doubt that Trump was the worst president in the history of the United States vanquishing Richard Nixon, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore and Andrew Johnson in a race to the bottom. But there is also no doubt that it is at least possible that Trump has made it possible that there will be a president worse than him sooner than later.

By shattering all presidential norms, treating governmental institutions like his personal property and treating the American people as his subjects he has certainly cleared the way for another, even more malign version of himself. After all, over 74 million presumably conscious and functionally intelligent Americans voted for Trump – warts and all.

The end of the Trump presidency actually began with the inauguration of Joe Biden. President Biden delivered what was arguably one of the best inaugural speeches in presidential history. Lifting the stain of Trump from the fabric of American politics will take a long time, but President Biden spoke to this issue with the very clear statement – “Don’t tell me things can’t change”. It does remain to be seen how long it will take for things to change.

It is noteworthy that President Biden became the first president in history to declare war on white supremacy and the nihilist domestic terrorists who espouse this vile philosophy. Of course, it is also noteworthy that it was not until the year 2021 that an American president declared war on white supremacy.

And as much of the nation struggled to wrench the memories of the January 6th Insurrection from our collective memory, a true ray of hope and possible dreams made itself known. For following President Biden’s inaugural speech, and Lady Gaga had sung the national anthem and Jennifer Lopez had sung America the Beautiful, a glorious National Poet Laureate appeared. Amanda Gorman is a 22-year-old Black woman who embodies genius and spectacular vision.

She delivered a poem which was written for the moment, just as Amanda Gorman was born for this day. There would be no way to recount all of the content of that poem, but let it suffice to say that she brought tears of joy and hope and remembered pain to the face of America. It is almost a travesty to quote her poem because the entire masterpiece deserves to be quoted and remembered and memorized. The pearls that she offered to the world included:

  • Too often Just Is is not Justice
  • There’s always light if only we are brave enough to see it

And so very much more. Her words belong to all who made that day possible – indeed her word belongs to the ages already.

The celebrations of the rest of the day were amazing and uplifting and inspiring. But it remains to be seen what happens when the real work of repairing the spirit of a nation and its people begins.

And, as we witness The End of the Error, it is so important to make sure that America does not make the mistake of not taking fascist and authoritarian rhetoric and those who utter such words seriously. It is true that no one could imagine that Trump could be as bad as he turned out to be. Clearly we suffered from a failure of imagination.

America dodged a nuclear powered laser beam of tyranny and destruction……this time.

As a nation we cannot afford to ever fail this way again.

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Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes

It is a crystal clear fact that by now the question is no longer could or should Donald Trump be impeached. The only question is whether he will be impeached as the known facts give a sufficient basis for impeachment, even in this highly partisan political universe in which we live.

We have heard Trump supporters such as Senator Marco Rubio proclaim that Trump was just joking when he publicly asked the Chinese government to investigate Joe Biden and his son. And the only response that might even be remotely useful is to ask those supporters to turn back the hands of time to 2015 and to consider their response if President Barack Obama had publicly asked the Chinese government to investigate Mitt Romney and his many sons.

Not that logic has a place at the table these days, but it is simply impossible to imagine any president of the United States, from the hapless Warren G. Harding to the racist and hate-soaked Andrew Johnson to the venal Richard Nixon, who on their worst day would not have asked a foreign nation to assist them in their reelection efforts – much less to “find dirt” on them. And it is a sad but true commentary on the times in which we live that there is even a conversation as to whether Trump’s ham handed attempts at international electoral intrigue are objectionable and impeachable – of course they are.

The real question now is whether institutions established over two centuries ago will withstand the stress test of a President of the United States – and his enablers – who simply refuses to accept or respect the legitimacy of these institutions. The further test is whether norms and protocols of conduct not necessarily set forth in the Constitution will have any future meaning or value if Trump can simply wipe his considerable feet and tiny hands on them without any consequence.

It is clear that at this point in time that Trump feels that he need not treat Congress as a branch of government co-equal to that of the Executive branch. If he can ignore a valid subpoena from Congress without obtaining some kind of judicial approbation, then he is literally declaring the supremacy of the presidency over both the judicial and legislative branches of the federal government. And this, it should be pointed out, is exactly what the framers of the Constitution sought to avoid.

But we are now long past the time for debating how many so-called Founding Fathers can stand on the head of a pin. Now that Trump has defied Congress and will not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, Congress really has no way to enforce any aspect of its impeachment inquiry except by going to the Supreme Court.

If the majority of the Supreme Court – including recent Trump appointees Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – stay true to their political DNA Congress and the people who elected its members will continue to be stonewalled by the Trump White House and any subsequent impeachment action will be diminished. If the Supreme Court supports Congress the question still stands – how will the Constitution and the norms and protocols of the American government be enforced when the president simply refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Constitution and those norms and protocols?

We are literally at the precipice of an unprecedented constitutional crisis that, if not resolved soon, can end very badly for this country.

The danger is clear and present.

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The World According to Trump

It is a matter of bizarre curiosity and obvious fact that upon becoming the official presidential nominee of the Republican Party, Donald Trump is even less restrained and is now totally devoid of anything resembling self-control. While questions regarding Trump’s fitness for the office of President of the United States sprout like bewildered weeds, there are even more questions being asked about the tens of millions of American men and women who think that he should be elected?

The litany of Trump gaffes, blunders and blatant acts of indecency are taking on the stuff of legend. Indeed, if Donald Trump wanted to lose the presidential election, he would be doing exactly what he has been doing since the conclusion of the DNC Convention in Philadelphia last week.

Case in Point 1 – On the last night of the DNC Convention Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Pakistani-American parents of Humayun Khan, appeared on the podium. Humayun Khan was a posthumous recipient of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart as a result of his death protecting his fellow American soldiers in Afghanistan in 2004.

Mr. and Mrs. Khan, still bent by the unknowable grief of losing a child, were on stage to attack Donald Trump’s stated plan to ban all Muslims from entering America “until we figure out what’s going on”. Mr. Khan, a lawyer from Minnesota, eloquently expressed his family’s hopes and dreams in coming to America as well as their tear stained pride in the ultimate sacrifice made by their son.

Mr. Khan concluded by pointing out that Donald Trump ignored the Constitution with his proposed Muslim ban. He also correctly pointed out that Trump had “sacrificed nothing and no one” for this country.

True to form, Donald Trump attacked this Gold Star family, speculating that Mrs. Khan did not speak on the podium because her Muslim religion prevented her from doing so (not true). He also provided us with a quick glimpse of the World According to Trump when he actually equated Humayun Khan’s death and the sacrifice of his parents with his business accomplishments (conveniently mentioning that he received and accepted five draft deferments during the Vietnam War). The obscenity of his analogy was presented in full view of the entire nation.

Case in Point 2 – At a campaign rally a military veteran gave Trump his own Purple Heart – an award granted to members of the military who are wounded in action. Rather than graciously demurring, Trump accepted the medal, as unworthy as he is, and stated “I always wanted a Purple Heart, getting it this way is much easier”.

One wonders what the thousands of Purple Heart recipients must think. And what do the families of the wounded veterans think when they hear such words?

Case in Point 3 – Responding to President Obama’s characterization of him as being “unfit” to be president, Trump stated that Barack Obama is the worst president in the history of the United States. Aside from the fact that this country’s recovery from the Great Crash of 2008, the passage of the Dodd Frank Act, the creation of 10 million jobs and the passage of the Affordable Care Act all occurred during the Obama presidency and make Trump’s statement beyond ridiculous, he continued to put his belief in fact free rhetoric on display.

It is hard to believe that even the most acidic critics of President Obama would think that he was worst than Richard Nixon, who resigned prior to his inevitable indictment and impeachment and who, quite likely would have gone to prison but for his pardon by President Gerald Ford. And is Trump seriously suggesting that George W. Bush was a better president than Barack Obama even though Bush misled this country into two seemingly endless wars, watched thousands of Americans die and was at the helm when the American economy almost evaporated?

Of course, by now, it is clear that fact free is the way to go in the World According to Trump.

Case in Point 4 – When questioned about how he would advise his daughter, Ivanka Trump, if she were sexually harassed in the workplace, he actually said that he would advise her to go to another company or find another career. One can only wonder how any adult woman or man would support a man who would countenance sexual harassment and counsel retreat and defeat rather than standing up for basic human rights.

As Donald Trump reveals his true self one is reminded of House Committee on UnAmerican Activites counsel Joseph Welch’s comment to Joseph McCarthy in the midst of the communist witch hunt of the 1950’s – “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

When it comes to Donald Trump, the answer is quite clear.

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R.I.P. G.O.P.

There is now a great likelihood that historians will look upon May 3, 2016 as the date that the Republican Party seriously began to die. There have been disturbing signs of deterioration as the party has engaged in internecine battles as well as encounters  with Democrats and other Americans as vaguely interested bystanders. But now, with the designation of Donald Trump as the “presumptive presidential nominee” of the Republican Party, it would seem that it is only a matter of time before this very ill patient expires.

Donald Trump may be a lot of things but an ideologue is not one of them. He believes what is convenient for him to believe in order to achieve his objective. And right now it is convenient for him to believe in the current brand of angry conservatism that, if fully implemented, would result in a miserable, misinformed and raging nation that would be a danger to itself and the entire world.

One might look at the Nixon “Southern Strategy” as the beginning of the end for the Republican Party, because even then the bet that whites angry over the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 could form a sustainable base was wrong because demographics and arithmetic were working against the likelihood of an eternal white majority in this country. But the “Southern Strategy” had a good run with the election and reelection of Richard Nixon, the election and reelection of Ronald Reagan and the election of George H.W. Bush.

But anger is, by definition, a difficult force to manage. By the 1990’s revolts led, first by Pat Buchanan, and then by Newt Gingrich started to fray and tear the party, first at the edges, and then at its very core by 2010. By labeling government as the “enemy” and fomenting constant rage against “the others” – nonwhites, nonAmericans, whatever – a new and more virulent strain of adversarial political thought began to spread across this nation.

This view of America is seen through a lens that highlights class distinctions, racial divides and the complicity of the government and a nameless ruling class in the entire process. The Tea Party and its more recent descendants executed a takeover of many local and state governments along with the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. This focus on the governmental jugular vein of this country has given this movement outsized power and influence. And because its goals are relatively vague this movement has been difficult to control.

Because Trump has admitted that he will say just about anything, many devotees of this right wing movement have supported him. Because Trump has been at varying times racist, sexist, mean, misogynistic, ignorant, xenophobic and a bully, he has attracted enough support to become the Republican presidential nominee. His new status has awakened the Republican leadership to the fact that a Trump presidency might well mean the end of Republican Party as we have known it for the past 162 years.

It might very well be too late for the #NoTrump fans to stop The Donald from being the Republican presidential nominee. The train wreck of a campaign that he will wage will by turns embarrass, enrage and disgust millions of American voters and many people who currently call themselves Republican. But there will be millions of Americans, who will embrace the Trump vision of the world, and these Americans literally have no interest in what Paul Ryan or Reince Priebus think.

There should be no question about whether Donald Trump can become President of the United States. He can.

The question is whether the Republican leadership that built the philosophical laboratory that yielded the monstrosity that is the Trump candidacy can now stop the monster that they helped to create.

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A History Lesson for Supporters of Bernie Sanders

As the Democratic presidential campaign moves from a New York State of Mind towards the inevitable Finale in Philly, it is quite possible that Hillary Clinton might be experiencing a sense of déjà vu – every time she runs for President a little known but charismatic senator comes out of nowhere to challenge her for the nomination. Except this time it looks like she is going to come out as the winner and supporters of Bernie Sanders are not happy – and that is why it is time for a history lesson.

Many supporters of the Vermont senator are passionate in their belief that he is a leader who will bring about “real change” in “the system”. Indeed, Bernie Sanders himself is calling for a “revolution”. And it is pretty clear that if revolution is the goal a moderate progressive like Hillary Clinton is going to seem like weak tea after swigging Red Bull Bernie ideology.

The dismay in supporting a losing candidate is understandable and commendable in a very real sense. It is good when people believe in positive change in this country. What is not commendable, what is both pernicious and dangerous, is when some Sanders followers say that the differences between Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders are so profound that they would rather vote for Donald Trump so that the revolution that they seek will occur sooner- out of the rubble that a Trump presidency would create.

Susan Sarandon, a prominent Sandersphile, has actually articulated the Trump alternative to Sanders supporters and Susan Sarandon should know better. As a millionaire many times over, she will not suffer one bit if Trump or Rafael Cruz or John Kasich become President and follow the Teapublican playbook and begin to dismantle the governmental apparatus and infrastructure. Additionally, since she was 22 years old in 1968, Susan Sarandon is old enough to know better.

In 1968 there was a tremendous amount of passion flowing through the Democratic Party. The Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not run for reelection in large part because of the raging opposition to the war in Vietnam, much of that opposition led by Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy. Senator Robert F. Kennedy also entered the fray and brought with him the passion of a Restoration, in this case restoring the Kennedy Camelot that had been blasted to pieces in Dallas just five years earlier.

Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President was also a Democratic candidate and he was viewed by the raging McCarthy supporters and the passionate Kennedy supporters as a status quo agent of the “establishment” and absolutely unacceptable. And then this boiling political cauldron became superheated.

First, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in April of 1968. The national black community, a major cohort in the Democratic Party after the passage of the Civil Rights of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was outraged and tried to burn many of America’s cities to the ground. Then Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles in June of 1968. And with his death dreams of the Restoration of Camelot evaporated and Kennedy’s followers were despondent.

Then came the Democratic Convention in Chicago with the police sanctioned violence and storms of political protest generated when supporters of Kennedy and McCarthy clashed with the police. The ensuing catastrophe of carnage was broadcast worldwide and “Chicago” became the synonym for Democratic disaster and dysfunction.

And out of the ashes of that convention Humphrey emerged as the party’s wounded nominee. And many supporters of McCarthy and Kennedy saw him as representing the “establishment” and either opposed his candidacy outright or were lukewarm in their allegiance. The prevailing thought that there was very little difference between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey and that election of the outright conservative Nixon might hasten the revolution that was sorely needed in this country.

The outcome was that Richard Nixon was elected president. The outcome was that Richard Nixon turned out to be far worse than the most wretched predictions of the McCarthy/Kennedy followers. The outcome was that Richard Nixon brought about the wave of conservative ideology which continues to sweep across this country.

Because the supporters of Kennedy and McCarthy stayed on the sidelines Richard Nixon begat Ronald Reagan who begat George H.W. Bush who begat (literally) George W. Bush. In the process we have seen the mass incarceration of the national black community, the onset of massive income inequality, the engagement of this country in regime change misadventures at the cost of trillions of dollars and incalculable loss of life. In the process we have seen Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist sit on the Supreme Court and roll back the reproductive rights of women along the with the marginalization of affirmative action and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

So before the Sanders Supporters decide to opt out if/when they lose in Philadelphia, let’s hope they learn from history and that they remember that as bad as Richard Nixon was – Donald Trump, Rafael Cruz and John Kasich – embedded with the most conservative Congress in history – will be so much worse.

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Point of View Columns

Richard Nixon – Worse Than We Thought

Of the forty-four men who have been President of the United States, there have been many who have been outright hostile to the interests and well-being of Americans of African descent. But Richard M. Nixon, although known for his consideration of the policy of the “benign neglect” of black people, has not been considered to be one of the worst presidents on the issue of race. Now it is clear that we need to rethink our thinking.

It is, of course, all a matter of perspective. After all, we must consider Nixon in comparison to some of the other 43 presidents. After all, eight of the first ten presidents owned slaves and Rutherford B. Hayes stood by and let the Ku Klux Klan ravage black people in the South. And it should not be forgotten that Woodrow Wilson not only segregated the federal civil service but he also hosted the world premiere of the incredibly racist film, “Birth of a Nation”.

But now a voice from the grave of John Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s Domestic Policy Advisor, gives us a very clear picture of how vile and villainous the Nixon Administration was on the issue of race. In a 1994 interview with journalist Dan Baum that is now published in the current issue of Harper’s magazine, Ehrlichman is quoted as saying that black people were seen as enemies of the Nixon White House. He goes on to say:

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

In this quote, Ehrlichman sounds like an advisor to the Third Reich instead of the President of the United States. As a result of this mindset, the Nixon Administration began the so-called War on Drugs, which has been termed by many, a War on Black America. As Professor Michelle Alexander has pointed out in “The New Jim Crow”, the War on Drugs and the commitment to racially biased massed incarceration has eviscerated black communities in this country for over forty years. Trillions of dollars have been wasted and millions of lives have been ruined in the name of a policy that was born out of racial hatred and bigotry.

The sad part of this miserable story is that Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush propagated and even doubled down on this dark plot to demean and diminish black America. And when black critics of the Obama Administration get ready to hurl more epithets against the first black President of the United States, they should pause and remember that he is the first and only President of the United States to initiate the process of decriminalizing federal drug laws while seriously attempting to end the scourge of mass incarceration – a Nixonian legacy that has outlived its authors as it continues to torment black men and women and children to this day.

The takeaway of this miserable story is not simply that the War on Drugs was born of malicious racial policies. The real takeaway is that five presidents, the United States Congress, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party continued and propagated this awful “War”. And even after the casualties –  black Americans and their families and their communities-  piled up in cities across this nation the entire governmental apparatus of this country supported it.

We are now witness to fresh thinking finally beginning to take hold as the “War” threatens to bankrupt states and cities financially. But even now, it seems that we are decades away from the stench of Nixon’s War on Black America being cleansed from this country.

And is not Watergate or Cointelpro or the “Enemies Lists” that are the worst part of that stained and battered Richard Milhous Nixon legacy, it is the systematic and systemic War on Black America.

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Point of View Columns

The Birth of Trumpageddon

Historians will undoubtedly look at the 2016 presidential campaign as being unique. The looming and tantalizing presence of Trumpageddon will virtually overshadow everything, much the same way as Donald Trump himself sucks up the media oxygen every day of this very bizarre year. But the most astute historians will go back a half century earlier to discover the roots of Trumpageddon, roots that have nothing to do with Donald J. Trump and have everything to do with the intentional reinvention of the Republican Party in 1964.

Prior to 1964 the national Republican party was indisputably more progressive when it came to civil rights for black Americans. After all, the Democratic Party was deeply rooted in the South, roots that went back as far as the end of Reconstruction and the federal occupation of the formerly treasonous Confederacy in 1876.

After all, the Republican Party came into being with the abolition of slavery being a principal plank in its national political platform in 1860. Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation was a Republican. And when the seething South was liberated from federal occupation in 1876, due in large part to the tricknology of Rutherford B. Hayes who swapped the freedom, civil rights and physical safety of Southern black people in exchange for the presidency, southerners embraced the Democratic Party as their own.

The Democratic Party in the South was the party of Jim Crow and lynching. Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican president, invited the first black American to dine at the White House. Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic president, hosted the premier of “Birth of a Nation” in the White House.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democratic president, never supported anti-lynching legislation for fear of alienating his Southern party members. And it was Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president, who sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional.

Prior to his untimely death, Democratic President John F. Kennedy was nowhere near a staunch supporter of the Civil Rights Act that was passed posthumously. And in 1960, Richard Nixon, his Republican opponent in that presidential election, had virtually the same amount of support in the national black community as did Kennedy.

As late as 1964, the Democratic Party was the home of  blood-soaked and hate drenched racist villains such as Thurmond and Stennis and Faubus and Wallace and Bilbo. And in 1964 every state that had been a part of the Confederate States of America was firmly on the Democratic side of the national political register.

And then the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed with the urging of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And as if by magic, during the following decade, the Republican Party was ascendant in the South, vacuuming up all the disenchanted white Southerners, supposedly in the name of conservatism and state’s rights, but in reality the transition was fueled by the deep and abiding resentment that black Americans were afforded some measure of citizenship and recognition of their humanity by the Damned Democrats.

Should there any be any doubt regarding the linkage of race and the Republican ascendancy, it should be remembered that Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of Republican conservatism, launched his national presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, less than twenty years after three civil rights workers were lynched within miles of the podium on which he stood. And when Reagan proclaimed that “government was the enemy”, he was referring to that same federal government that was often the only source of protection for black Americans seeking asylum and vindication in their own country. That dog whistle blew loud enough for white ears in the South and throughout the nation.
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It should, therefore, be no surprise that the modern Republican Party, reborn in radical response to the advancement of racial civil rights progress would be the home of the impending Trumpageddon. It certainly should be no surprise that the political party that turned a blind eye to the clearly racist and racial efforts to delegitimize the first African American presidency would serve as the incubator for those would seek to delegitimize the entire apparatus of the federal government.

Republican leaders like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell who refused to extinguish the dark magical thinking that claimed that Barack Obama is a Muslim, or “hates America” or is not even a citizen, cannot be surprised that a master manipulator like Donald Trump could harness this malevolent harvest and turn it into a movement. And now, for good historical reason, Trumpageddon is upon us.

The Republicans are reaping what they have sown, and that harvest is being served to America.

 

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