320 Years of History
Gold Member
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr, "I Have a Dream"
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr, "I Have a Dream"
Events of Recent Past:
The words of the quote above were delivered in August 1963. Just over a half-century later, the former leader of the KKK along with other white supremacist groups endorsed Donald Trump's candidacy for President of the United States.
- The Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site, endorsed Trump on June 28. “Trump is willing to say what most Americans think: it’s time to deport these people,” the site said in its endorsement. It then urged white men to “vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.”
- Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which promotes the “heritage, identity, and future of European people,” said that Trump was “refreshing.” “Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America,” Spencer said. “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” Spencer added, but noted that Trump embodies “an unconscious vision that white people have — that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon. I think he is the one person who can tap into it.” Spencer, Osnos notes, is not the stereotype of a prejudiced yokel: At 36, he is clean-cut, and boasts degrees from elite universities. The Southern Poverty Law Center, Osnos says, calls Spencer “a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old.”
- Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine, said: “I’m sure he would repudiate any association with people like me, but his support comes from people who are more like me than he might like to admit.” Taylor later told Osnos: “Why are whites supposed to be happy about being reduced to a minority? It’s clear why Hispanics celebrate diversity: ‘More of us! More Spanish! More cucaracha!’”
- Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group, said Trump was “good” for the white racist cause. “I love to see somebody like Donald Trump come along,” Hill said. “Not that I believe anything that he says. But he is stirring up chaos in the GOP, and for us that is good.” Osnos attended a speech Hill gave to a crowd of cheering followers in which he railed against the “cultural genocide” of white Americans, which he said was “merely a prelude to physical genocide.”
- Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace, has written that his esteem for Trump is “soaring,” and has lauded the candidate for his “hostile takeover of the Republican Party.”
We all know that in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Trump "disavowed" Mr. Duke's endorsement. Last month, I discussed his disavowal in detail. Trump also appeared on Face the Nation (FTN) and "rejected" the support of racist and hate-fueled groups.
But here's the thing...He will not and cannot, regardless of what he said in that FTN interview, reject those people's support, and he can't reject their votes. How can he? Just look at what "reject" means.
- a : to refuse to accept, consider, submit to, take for some purpose, or use <rejected the suggestion> <reject a manuscript>
b : to refuse to hear, receive, or admit : rebuff, repel <parents who reject their children>
- obsolete : to cast off
- throw back, repulse
Looking at the Present:
Over the past few days, we've heard Trump repeatedly assail Judge Curiel. Most recently in the Wall Street Journal, his lips, "dripping with the words of interposition and nullification," in a textbook illustration of transference (HRC's daedally subtle allusion to recurring behavior pattern of Trump's appeared in her 2-Jun-16 speech, "I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants"), Trump asserted that Judge Curiel could not impartially hear his "Trump U" case solely because the man is of Mexican ancestry, claiming the man has an "absolute conflict" of interest.
I swear, I got a ton of laughs yesterday watching Trump surrogates shaking their heads and changing the topic; not one of them, not even the most ardent among them, could find a way to defend Trump's remark, and to their credit, they made no effort to try as well as stating it's indefensibility. Trump's remarks are so clearly bigoted that even his surrogates wouldn't venture to defend them. Yesterday marked the first time I've ever seen Kayleigh McEnany flat out admit Trump's line of argument just doesn't hold water.
So, now one can see what David Duke and the other white supremacists saw months ago.: be he "card carrying" overt bigot or not isn't relevant because Trump's themes and proposals are fully in line with and supportive of the aims and aspirations of folks who are. David Duke, his cronies, cohorts and confederates all know what The Bard told us long ago "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream"
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream"
