Monday, August 14, 2017
Donald Trump promised he'd take America back. He didn't say where.
Promises made, promises kept!
Donald Trump was always talking about how he would "take back America"—there were bumper stickers—and now look, he's actually done it. We've been taken back to the 1960s, with protesters clashing in the street over the weekend and a civil rights demonstrator killed in the street.
Or are we back in the 1940s? It felt that way Friday, with torch-bearing Nazis marching, sieg-heiling and chanting "blood and soil." It could have been an America First rally at the old Chicago Stadium in 1940.
Although they were tiki torches. The bamboo kind costing $1.99 at Costco. That sort of ruined the effect. Give the original Nazis credit; they were sticklers for detail. Real torches are expensive and hard to find, but you're never going to seize control—assuming they haven't already, and with the Trump White House you never know—by cutting corners. Tiki torches in a fascist demonstration are like Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloons at the Nuremberg rallies.
Sorry. None of this is funny. After three deaths—the protester and two Virginia State troopers who died in a helicopter crash—the clownishly unaware street theater of men whose fondest fantasy is to be concentration camp guards slides into anguish and tragedy.
Then again, that's what happens, and there's an important lesson there. Whenever I see these idiots, I'm not filled with terror, or concern--and you think I would be, as half the time they're chanting about Jews. Rather, I get an almost avuncular concern. I want to help them, to say, "Guys, guys, gather around. You do know that the whole Nazi thing did not end well for the Germans?" History focuses on their victims, and rightly so, but by the time the would-be supermen were done manifesting their superiority they had lost four million soldiers and another two million civilians. About six million Germans dead, for you fans of irony.
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Hear, hear. That last graph about being glad these haters can "self-identify" is right on. I believe part of their vehemence/violence is a tacit acknowledgment that they ARE, in fact, being "replaced." The evolving demographics of this country now can't be stopped. They are a shrinking minority and know it, and their only shot is fascism, the only way the few can control the many, e.g. South Africa. They have a shot via Trump making them extra-dangerous now. Children who are taught to hate likely won't "age out," but I believe that you, me & our kin will undo anything they "accomplish." Historically speaking, in short order.
ReplyDeleteRacial/ethnic hatred: America's ugly wallpaper. We tolerate it until someone throws open the blinds and we're appalled by our surroundings.
ReplyDeletewell said and spot on mr. Galati. we are surrounded by people who think nothing of the white privilige they enjoy and ignore the ways in which it was gained, preserved and at who's expense. sitting comfortably in their lily white surroundings, making little effort to empower the under represented . smug and certain of their entitlement. focused on the most extreme and outsized manifestations of racism. ignoring the part we play in repressing others. 300 men with torches pale in comparison to 1 man with a pen who can enact policies that crush the lives of millions. trump is the most recent in a long line of these men at every level of government. who will speak against the institutional racism in this country supported by the majority? we are all complicit through silence, and inaction.
DeleteNPR this morning featured comments by some small-town Southerners which showed how misinformed such can be. They are deluged with so-called conservative points of view and not only don't think they are the beneficiaries of "white privilege," but feel that they are the victims of discrimination and the recipients of an unfair deal in which minorities get everything and they get nothing. They cry that Trump is calling for unity, whereas Obama did not and if he did, he really didn't mean it or something along those lines. I think it would be easier to convert the ISIS fanatics than these poor deluded people.
Deletejohn
its white liberals here and in the suburbs I'm talking about in my post. thinking the idea of not understanding white privilege is limited to people in the south is myopic.
DeleteWow! How did you know I'm myopic? Been 20/200 or so since I was 8.
Deletejohn
I think their plan, conscious or not, was to bait people into attacking them and then paint themselves as the victims. It was ruined when that murderous jerkwad plowed his car into the counter-demonstrators. I predict we'll see more such scenarios, hopefully without the outright murder, that will permit our jerkwad-in-chief to simper some more about "both sides."
ReplyDeleteBitter Scribe, I do believe you are correct. Unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteIt's a sobering thought, but what gives me some hope is the generations of white privilege are aging and will soon be dying out. At some point I believe the tables will turn -- it's happening already -- when the alt-right (whites) lose their power and control and become the minority. They see it happening before their eyes and are trying desperately to prevent it.
ReplyDeleteSandy, I like to think that you're right, and that there has been a positive change with our generation, but I do worry that the change might be tidal in nature. Even if we're vigilant in our fight against ignorance, it still could all wash back on us. Tribalism is as old as man.
ReplyDeleteIronically, I have always considered those yahoos to be genetically challenged.They just ain't right, as folks down home use to say about seemingly normal but mentally off track people.
ReplyDelete