racism – frustratedboomers

This Week in Racism!

by Roxanne Tellier

When I was a kid, growing up in Alberta, I encountered precisely two black families. One family, that ran a boarding house near my school, had a little girl about my age. When I went to L’Academie Assomption, which was a private girl’s school, the daughters of football player Rollie Miles were the only students of colour.

When we moved to Montreal, I became friends with a girl whose family was from Grenada; her mother played the organ at church every Sunday, and I loved to sing the grandiose high mass in Latin, so the relationship was mutually beneficial.

While there was a dearth of people of colour in my youthly travels, I can assure you that there were a lot of other groups of people that were abused and/or ridiculed in Edmonton and Montreal in the 60s and 70s. Whether you called it ‘prejudice’ or ‘racism,’ I never thought that the people other people bullied and censured had to be of a certain colour; it just always seemed to me to be about ‘us vs them,’ with the ‘us’ being the people in the majority.

There were lots and lots of immigrants, at that time, many of whom had come to Canada after WWII and the Korean conflict. There were people that ate food that smelled strange to my white nose, and there were people that practiced religions that were very different to the Catholic religion that was the norm in Edmonton and Montreal. And, in Edmonton, which back then, was still the land of ‘Cowboys and Indians,’ there were many indigenous people, whose mere presence would often inflame an old settler.

In Montreal, as I later discovered was also true of Toronto, many of the immigrants were Jewish. It has often seemed to me that both cities had a love/hate relationship with these new Canadians. On the one hand, many Canadians had fought to bring freedom to these survivors, many of whom still bore the tattoos of their imprisonment. On the other hand, there was a tendency, then as now, for many to shun people that held different beliefs.

And ALL of the racist tropes would come into play, if a Canadian born, non-Jewish, person felt that their own rights were being overridden by these newcomers.

My experiences were not unusual for a white Catholic in those days.

Whoopi Goldberg, on the other hand, is a 66-year-old Black, American woman, born in Manhattan, who was raised Catholic. She was born Caryn Elaine Johnson, but took on the stage names of Whoopi and Goldberg when she got into comedy as a young woman.

It is safe to say that her upbringing was very much unlike my own, if only by dint of her being born a Black American. That alone would have guaranteed that her experiences with prejudice and racism would be nothing like what I encountered as a White Canadian.

Whoopi’s been a host and a driving force on the television show “The View” since 2007. While it’s not a ‘hard news’ program, over the years it’s become an influential political talk show, according to a New York Times featured article in 2019.

Whoopi’s take on issues have often been controversial. She defended Michael Vick’s participation in dogfighting as part of his ‘cultural upbringing,’ famously championed Mel Gibson in 2006 after he was caught drunkenly spouting antisemitic rhetoric, saying “I don’t like what he did here, but I know Mel and I know he’s not a racist,” and initially was a defender of Bill Cosby in 2015, when he was accused of multiple rapes. (Later she changed her stance, stating that “all of the information that’s out there kinda points to ‘guilt’.

This week, however, Goldberg got into some seriously hot water when she stated her opinion that the Holocaust was not based on race, but on ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’ She added, “This is white people doing it to white people, so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves.”

Although she apologized on Twitter later that day, she then went on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that night, and reiterated that the Nazi issue was with ethnicity, and not race.

“In the United States, physical distinctions between most Black and most white people have misled some into thinking that the American conception of race is somehow more “real” than the racial fictions on which the Nazis based their campaign of extermination. Applying the American color line to Europe, the Holocaust appears merely to be a form of sectarian violence, “white people” attacking “white people,” which seems nonsensical. But those persecuting Jews in Europe saw Jews as beastly subhumans, an “alien race” whom they were justified in destroying in order to defend German “racial purity.” The “racial” distinctions between master and slave may be more familiar to Americans, but they were and are no more real than those between Gentile and Jew.”
Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, February, 2022.

On air the next day, Goldberg again apologized for the comment. But hours later, Kim Godwin, president of ABC News, suspended her from the show for two weeks, calling Whoopi’s remarks “wrong and hurtful. While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments.”

Forgive me if I found Godwin’s prissy little pearl-clutching pretty racist in itself. Toddlers in day care get time-outs. To hand a two-week, onerous, over-reaching time out to a 66-year-old Black woman DURING BLACK HISTORY MONTH…

I have no words. Or rather, I do. But few are printable.

(65-70% of football players are black. Only 1 in 32 football coaches is black.)

But the whole episode, which nearly overshadowed the very real racism of pro American football teams who have been neatly avoiding culpability for their dearth of black pro coaches for decades, did indeed get me thinking about the concept of race.

The very idea of ‘race’ is a relatively modern concept, and it all had to do with the distinction of ‘otherness,’ an attempt to divide people into groups in which one group enjoyed more wealth and/or power than another. It’s believed that the first stirrings of this type of divisioning followed the Moorish conquest of Andalusia in the eighth century, when the Iberian Peninsula became the site of the greatest ever intermingling between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers. At that time, colour was not the main concern.

“The concept of race has historically signified the division of humanity into a small number of groups based upon five criteria: (1) Races reflect some type of biological foundation, be it Aristotelian essences or modern genes; (2) This biological foundation generates discrete racial groupings, such that all and only all members of one race share a set of biological characteristics that are not shared by members of other races; (3) This biological foundation is inherited from generation to generation, allowing observers to identify an individual’s race through her ancestry or genealogy; (4) Genealogical investigation should identify each race’s geographic origin, typically in Africa, Europe, Asia, or North and South America; and (5) This inherited racial biological foundation manifests itself primarily in physical phenotypes, such as skin color, eye shape, hair texture, and bone structure, and perhaps also behavioral phenotypes, such as intelligence or delinquency.”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Fast forward to last century, when Hitler and his followers believed that Aryans were a ‘master race.’ Hitler actually issued his first written comment on the “Jewish Question” in 1919, when he defined the Jews as a race, and not a religious community. He characterized the effect of a Jewish presence as a “race-tuberculosis of the peoples,” and identified the initial goal of a German government to be discriminatory legislation against Jews, saying that the “ultimate goal must definitely be the removal of the Jews altogether.” (From the files of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia)

The Nazis defined those of the Jewish faith, whether they were practicing their religion or not, as a race, which was inherited from generation to generation.

In Canada, a regional white racism became controversial after a front-page Globe and Mail article, written by Jan Wong, argued that the term “pure laine” revealed a uniquely Quebecois brand of racism. In her article entitled, “Get under the desk,” written just three days after a mass shooting at Montreal’s Dawson College, she drew a link between all three school shootings in Quebec history, and the nature of Quebec society under its protective language laws.

Wong suggested that the three perpetrators, who were not “old stock French Quebecers,” were alienated from a Quebec society concerned with “racial purity.”

“Québecois has conventionally been used to signify the descendants of Québec settlers from France, the majority habitants of the province, who are otherwise referred to as pure laine (pure wool) or Québecois de souche (of the base of the tree, or root). However, the changing face of Québec’s increasingly diverse population challenges the privileged place of those French descendants and calls for a more inclusive notion of what it means to be Québecois or a Quebecer.“
Wikipedia

Wong was accused of “Quebec bashing, “with the column creating a public outcry in Quebec, and political condemnation from Quebec Premier Jean Charest, as well as from then PM Stephen Harper. The House of Commons of Canada unanimously passed a motion on September 5,2006 requesting an apology for the column.

“Pure laine.” “Old Stock French Québécois.” “Racial purity.” These terms, although decried, were still frequently used in both English and French media. In 2007, the Taylor-Bouchard Commission included the recommendation that the use of the expression “Québécois de souche” be ended and replaced with the term “Quebecers of French-Canadian origin.” (Wikipedia)

At this point in world history, as we struggle with real and increasing assaults against democracy, have a looming threat of war in some of the very areas once devastated during World War II’s Holocaust, and continue to try to end a global pandemic, while juggling the spectres of climate change and rising inequality, the very idea of suspending a grown woman for her personal opinion on race seems ridiculous.

As someone with a platform, ABC had an option beyond the humiliating of Whoopi Goldberg. They could have left her on the air, where she would have continued to apologize, and the show could have had some interesting guests and sane discussions about racism, antisemitism, and the homegrown, white nationalist, terror groups who are gleefully jumping on this moment in time to further separate us all, regardless of our colours or creeds.

Instead we watched a television network head fingerwag at a mature, famed, black woman whom she deemed needed two weeks in the 28 day period of Black History Month to reflect upon her words.

In the 1980’s, sociologist Neil Postman said that television would eventually and inevitably impose limitations on the sophistication and variety of ideas that could be expressed on the medium. It would appear that he was correct to be worried.

It’s ironic, and yet so timely, that the cohosts of The View’s attempt to discuss the implications of a Tennessean school board’s decision not to require 9^th graders to read the graphic novel Maus began with the possibility of the development of a rational argument before devolving into the very kind of cultural provocation that exists solely to sell ad time.

Society’s Child

by Roxanne Tellier

Kids really know how to push their parent’s buttons. As a smart-ass teenager in the sixties, I pushed quite a few myself. At one family dinner, while I silently pondered the lyrics to Janis Ian’s song, Society’s Child, I suddenly announced to the table, “I’d marry a black man, if I was in love with him.”

BOOM!

It was 1965. Only a few years had passed since the United States had begun desegregating schools, and we were still three years away from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Although talk of civil rights was rife, it was far off and far away. Still, you’d think I’d have known that bringing up interracial integration wasn’t really going to enhance our dinner conversation, especially when one of the people at the table was a redneck from Alberta. But it was the sixties, and everything was changing. Or at least, we believed that was the case.

To be fair, it must be noted that my exposure to people of colour had been minimal to that point. There’d been a little girl about my age whom I’d met one summer, and there were one or two girls at Academie Assomption, but since I’d moved to Montreal, the only non-whites I’d met were the Raeburn family from Grenada, who were active in the church my family attended. In truth, I’d never lived anywhere where there were many non-whites. In Alberta, the prejudices were thick on the ground, but mostly directed at immigrants who didn’t conform to established conservative ways.

And of course, the real prejudice of the West was against indigenous people, but we didn’t talk about that, because it was just the way it was. That’s Canada’s shame, just as slavery is America’s shame. And those were the days when kids played Cowboys and Indians, wearing their Davy Crockett coonskin caps, and shouting “Hi Ho SILVER!”

None of which excuses how we treated people who were unlike our own white selves. The term ‘privilege’ was about five decades away from being coined, but it certainly described the smug, complacent attitude of many Albertan first families, as it did the people still clinging to the idea of a glorious Confederacy.

With perspective, I can look back to the middle of the twentieth century and see how even the most progressive nations and leaders were struggling with their own prejudices and biases, while attempting to bring their countries and citizens forward into the twenty first century. If we could send a man to the moon, the thought went, surely, we could accept a person of colour sitting beside us at the lunch counter.

But in truth, many of those leaders, despite good intentions, struggled to get past their own innate beliefs that minorities simply weren’t equal to those that controlled the political, financial, and religious foundations of society.

And so, a lot of promises were made, that really amounted to telling people of colour that their time would come… and white people would be the judge of when that time would be.

People are funny; we tend to be accepting of most of what comes to us, until someone gives us a plausible reason why we should not. I was raised without prejudices, I would have argued, taught to feel empathy and kindness to everyone. When I looked at other kids, I measured them against my own sliding scale of kids that were bigger or smaller, smarter or more talented, and either nice or mean in temperament. Nothing else really mattered, and why should it?

When I ignited my dad’s rage by suggesting that I might be amenable to a racial intermarriage, I was too young and new to the world to understand that my dad had deep seated prejudices, based on his own life experiences. I thought that racism was just something that the American South had to worry about.

In truth, the roots of prejudice are deep in the hearts and souls of all countries, including our own.

Over the last few years, I have come to many conclusions about life. Fr’instance, until two years ago, I’d never realized that the “r” in Tellier was silent. It just didn’t occur to me. In the same way, it never occurred to me that I have often had to defend my defense of the victims of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and a host of other very ugly ideas, by claiming an alliance of some kind. Kind of like when you realize that the misogyny that propelled action and the #MeToo movement really did impact a lot of your generation. Sometimes it takes a while for truth to percolate.

I had intuited that my belief in the equality and humanity of someone who was not white (or male) had to have a twist in the tail, some kinship that I could claim, in order to be deemed viable. On some level, I understood that my good intentions alone were not enough of an acceptable criterion to those whose personal identity required that there be someone else whom we all agreed was ‘less than’ themselves.

But subconsciously, I knew. There was a subtle bullying in the schools, in the work place, and in many parts of the entertainment world. You were welcome to hold your belief of equality, but only if you realized that bucking the trend would cost, in some way. It might be that the people you worked with would close ranks against you, or, if the prejudicial treatment came down from upper management, you could find your career grossly sidelined, without the slightest recourse.

Some of us chose to be silent when we heard cruel comments aimed against women or minorities, as a way to ‘go along to get along.’ If you’re desperate to keep your job, you can be easily persuaded that towing the party line is the best way forward. Even if a part of your conscience considers those remarks insulting to not just the despised but to all of humanity, bucking the tide can have consequences.

I’d speak out, but I’d tie my words to words that were feminine enough to stump the bullies. I defended women because I was a woman. Because I have family and friends who were indigenous or people of colour, I could stand by them without recourse.

I was finding workarounds to avoid the bullies. I was making excuses for why I honestly cared about others being mistreated. And it took me nearly a lifetime to finally see that the real villains were those who shamed those of us who just simply cared about the well-being of others. I should never have felt that I had to claim kinship to justify my alliance, but I was always aware that there were far too many people in power who – subtly, or outrightly – will shoot first and ask questions later. We are bullied into silence, while the racism goes on all around us.

I spoke my truth, but I spoke softly, afraid to bring down the same mistreatment upon myself for seeking that we all be treated fairly, as equals.

People don’t generally divide neatly into good or evil categories, but there are many who have wonderfully good intentions who never get around to being the helpers of the world. Some can’t bring themselves to speak up, when others traffic in racism, bigotry, and misogyny. Some stay in power by denying true equality to others, in order to keep other racists and bigots happy.

Chris Rock Bad Apple Metaphor

That’s why this battle for equality has gone on for far too long. People tell me that things are going to be different after this protest, that there’ll be real change. They tell me that the little ones growing up now are different, and that those kids will insist on everyone being treated as equals. And I hope they are right. I hope those kids grow up to become the adults who do good things, and that there is hope for an inclusive future for all.

But a part of me is still that kid that thought we were on the right track way back in ’65. And in the 70s, and in the 90s, after the Rodney King riots. I’ve lived through all of the horrible mass shootings, including Sandy Hook, and I remember how we said things were gonna change. I remember a president weeping over those tiny bodies. And when I look around, I see that there have been 2,482 mass shootings since Sandy Hook. In 2015 alone, American police killed more than 100 unarmed black people.

So many dead. So many people of colour beaten, or raped, or murdered. It’s almost like all of those ‘thoughts and prayers’ didn’t matter at all.

I want to believe we can change. But to do so, we need leaders who insist on stoking our better angels, and who will accept nothing but our best. We deserved better. And our children deserve better.

We Cannot Stay Silent About George Floyd | Patriot Act

Revenge of the Creature Redux

by Roxanne Tellier

America was never ‘perfect,’ despite the first settler’s early claims that ‘manifest destiny’ made anything Americans wanted to do, in the name of ‘a more perfect union,’ perfectly fine and utterly legit.

But while they might have contended that the special virtues of the American people and their institutions made colonialism, slavery, and the unchecked and wholesale, uncontested, swallowing up of the country ‘god’s will’ for the benefit of the powerful, these presumably lofty ideals, and ‘an irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty’ never held much water to the people whose lands were seized in the name of ‘the divine.’

**Manifest Destiny** was the idea that white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America. The ideology of **Manifest Destiny** inspired a variety of measures designed to remove or destroy the native population.

Fast forward to February 2020, when the Republican party, lead by an immoral, craven Senate leader, and under the sway of a blatantly avaricious, sadistic, narcissist POTUS, took the whole idea of manifest destiny one step further, and crowned their leader Lord and King of America.

Although trump was charged with both abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the Republican party, in a show of cowardice and cultism unparalleled in modern American history, chose to acquit, thereby finally allowing trump to claim what he always believed to be his due – to be completely above the law, and to ascend to the monarchy.

Analyzing exactly HOW this moment came about would drive a saint mad, but there’s no question that the combination of a virulent social media, combined with a mainstream media desperate for ratings, provided a lack of context and nuance that greased the wheels of weaponizing the words of not just the powerful, but the common man. Trump’s own abuse of Twitter, which he uses in lieu of press conferences or a state media, allows him to avoid actual interaction with those who might have, in better days, used their intelligence and knowledge of history to point out obvious fallacies and wrong thinking.

It boggles the mind, to think that anyone … ANYONE … thought that granting this limitless amount of power – to be above the law, incapable of committing a crime, entitled to scoff at Congressional oversight – should be given to the most corrupt, incapable, malevolent, sadistic, and possibly senile creature ever to soil the carpets of the White House. I am truly left speechless at that calumny.

I honestly can’t even think of any other president in America’s history who would either want or even ACCEPT that power; it is the power of kings, or of a god.

And sure enough, the morning after the acquittal, while attending the annual National Prayer Breakfast, trump did, indeed, take the time to let speaker Arthur Brooks and the other attendees know that, no, trump did not subscribe to the words of the New Testament or Jesus Christ. In fact, he did not believe that Christians should forgive their enemies. Instead, he would demand unholy retribution.

And as to the very concept of prayer –

“he targeted Speaker Pelosi, who has said she prays for Mr. Trump, saying, “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that’s not so.”

“Explicitly rejecting the message of tolerance offered at the National Prayer Breakfast just moments before he took the lectern, Mr. Trump — without naming them — singled out Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was sitting just a few feet away at the head table, and Senator Mitt Romney, the Republican from Utah who voted to convict him, accusing them of hypocrisy for citing their faith while supporting his impeachment.

“As everybody knows, my family, our great country and your president have been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people,” Mr. Trump said.“ (The New York Times, Feb 7, 2020)

Meanwhile, back at the ‘ranch’ – there’s no one left to speak up against whatever the all powerful POTUS chooses to say or do. Furthermore, since the acquittal, and his subsequent retribution upon those who spoke up against him, it’s unlikely that anyone ever will again.

Based on our knowledge of who remains to give trump ideas and direction on how best to abuse this godlike power – McConnell, and Stephen Miller amongst the main proponents – AND the historic lack of original thought evidenced by the GOP in the past, I think we can count on what is to come in the next few months to resemble a medley of the greatest hits of Joseph McCarthy, Torquemada, Adolf Hitler, and the tenets of Putin’s beloved KGB, with nods to George Orwell’s 1984.

Trump Jr’s tweet on Friday sent a real chill down my spine. This stank of Big Brother, cruelty and an abuse of power by proxy.

The guardrails of U.S. democracy are definitely falling off.

Trump has begun his reign of terror; Friday was the ‘night of the long knives 2020,’ as Lt Col Alex Vindman AND his twin brother (who had nothing to do with the Lt Col’s testimony) were both frogmarched out of the White House like common criminals.

Within hours, Gordon Sondland, the loyalist whose ambassadorial position cost him a cool million-dollar donation, was also summarily dismissed.

Most of those who testified, called by subpoenas they did not ignore, have had to leave their posts, whether voluntarily or not. What was first bullying and intimidation has now become outright vengeance and retribution.

Yes, these actions violate a federal law. It is indeed illegal to retaliate against a witness, victim or an informant. But since trump is now above all laws, he can feel free to act with impunity. I’m gonna guess he’s just getting started.

We’ve seen how executive pique has punished the trump enemies – ask Puerto Rico what it’s like to try and survive natural disasters after incurring his wrath. Add the states of New York and California to the list – both are learning that there are a million ways to be hobbled when the Attorney General of the United States lives in the POTUS’ pocket.

While trump cannot fire elected officials, he can continue to make life hell for top Democrats, like Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and more, and in the process force them to spend hundreds of thousands on lawyers to clear their names.

On the Sunday political news shows, loyalist Lindsay Graham seemed to be calling for a ‘thorough’ investigation of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, which will, of course, be costly, exhausting, and ultimately cause just enough suspicion – even amongst the leftiest left leaners – to reconsider a vote for Biden.

Is it possible there have already been investigations started on the other candidates? Do Warren, Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Buttigieg, Yang, and Steyer need to worry? Because, this summer, once a candidate has been selected to run as the Democratic lead, you can bet your bottom dollar that Barr’s Department of (in)Justice will be on them like … you get the picture.

All blatantly political. All filled with malice, and an ego that can never be sated. All very third world, banana republic, where those who dissent are imprisoned. And all with the zeal of a convert who simply can’t stop flagellating those who might have different beliefs.

And, according to Alan Dershowitz, none of his actions will be illegal, now or forever, if he’s leading from his ‘heart,’ in believing that the use of government services and tax payer money to smear his opponents, is in the nation’s best interest.

Neither the DOJ nor the corrupt Republicans of the Senate will expect or coerce trump to obey any of America’s laws. His illegal retaliation against those who testified of his illegal actions will be ignored. It remains to be seen if Defense Secretary Mark Esper, or the Department of Defense, who swore to Vindman that they would see that he did not suffer retaliation or reprisals, will keep those promises. Even the DOD may find itself powerless against a fascist dictator, unhinged, and unchained from any form of accountability.

What you see every day becomes normalized, no matter how awful, no matter how evil. With trump, the evil is baked into the cake, as it has been since his childhood. A certain type of American citizen has not only accepted trump’s version of reality, they have revelled in it, delighted in the racism, bullying, and xenophobia.

Can those who are disgusted and angry with politics in America find a savior to vote for, to lead them out of this wilderness, in November? I don’t know. I hope so. But meanwhile, as these white nationalists with the group “Patriot Front” marched through Washington DC yesterday, it’s hard not to be mindful of the quote from Orwell’s 1984

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

Protesting in the Era of Trump

by Roxanne Tellier

A reaction to America’s president telling four Congresswoman of colour to “go back to where they came from?”

No, these are the words Woody Guthrie wrote in 1954, about the discriminatory rental policies of the POTUS’s dad, Fred. Fred did not want to rent to black people, and made sure that his rental agents were diligent in keeping people of colour from the cluster of sixteen residential buildings he owned in Gravesend, Brooklyn.

Guthrie had moved into an apartment at Beach Haven, near Coney Island, in 1950. It would be nearly twenty years later, in the 1970s, before Trump Elder was accused and charged with creating a “substantial impediment to the full enjoyment of equal opportunity” at Beach Haven, under the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. (The case was eventually settled.)

Several handwritten drafts of the lyrics—sometimes titled “Beach Haven Race Hate,” “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home,” and “Old Man Trump”—are presently on display at the Woody Guthrie Center, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In 2016, Beach Haven Apartments Associates, now owned by Fred’s son Donald, was hit with the largest fine that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has ever levied against an apartment building for the mishandling of human waste, in this case, two hundred thousand gallons of untreated sewage being dumped into Coney Island Creek each day.

Later that year, Trump would become President of the United States of America. There’s a symmetry there.

So it would seem that Trump comes by his racism and bigotry honestly… he learned it at his father’s knee. I wonder if that drives a lot of his cruelty; is he sad that his father cannot see how successful the son has been in turning the hands of the clock back to the days before the rights of women, and people of colour in America, were legally protected? Is that anger at the Environmental Conservation Department one of the reasons he is hell-bent on tearing away all protections from America’s lands and waters?

Lately I’ve heard idle talk about the lack of protest songs for this frightening era of government supported violence, xenophobia and racism. There ARE songs out there, but it’s not like the sixties, where the transistors and family radios kept songs like Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth, or Barry McGuire‘s Eve of Destruction front and center thru the long hot summer days and nights.

Where are the songs that not only skewer the wrong doings of the government, but become the ear worm of a time? Where’s the Ohio, that warned that the tin soldiers and Nixon were coming to kill your college kids? Where’s the Black Day in July, written by Gordon Lightfoot, that cautioned that race wars like those in Detroit could take down cities and governments?

Maybe the closest we’ve come to a real response to Trump’s overt racism occurred way back, in April 2016, when YG and Nipsey Hussle released ‘FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)’ a song so angry that YG says the Secret Service contacted Def Jam records to see what was in the rest of his album.

YG and Nipsey shout out to Trump’s “racist ass”, includes calling him a “cancer”, declaring “I like white people but I don’t like you”, and admitting, “He got me appreciating Obama way more.”

But these are interesting times, my friend. In the beginning of Trump’s campaign, and the early months of his presidency, most artists chose to mock his hands, or his words captured on the infamous Access Hollywood clip.

will.i.am ft Apl.de.ap and Liane V – GRAB’m by the PU$$Y

“When I’m president I won’t be like be Obama
If anyone talks sh** about me, I’ll bomb em
I’m grabbin’ that (hey) like there’s no tomorrow
And if we have problems with Russia I’ll bomb em”

Franz Ferdinand – Demagogue

“It feels so good to be dumb,” From the Wall/Straight to La Cuenta, those pussy-grabbing fingers won’t let go of me now.”

Rocky Mountain Mike‘s Hey Mr Tangerine Man is more silly than salient. But that’s okay. In a democracy, you’re allowed to make fun of the most powerful man in the world. Well – it used to be okay. We may be moving closer to a time when it’s punishable by death.

“Hey, Mr. Tangerine man, build a wall for me
I’m not that bright and don’t know that you’re not going to
Hey, Mr. Tangerine man, keep Muslims away from me
With my jingoistic world view, I’ll come following you

Fake me out with this, I’ll be your newest apprentice
My sister thinks you’re a trip All my friends say “Get a grip”
And my skull’s too numb to think
Waiting only for the bullshit you’ve been pedaling”

Gorillaz featuring Benjamin Clementine – Hallelujah Money

Band member Murdoc wrote on his Facebook page ‘In these dark times, we all need someone to look up to. Me, that’s why I’m giving you this new Gorillaz song, a lightning bolt of truth in the black night’. Gorillaz leader, Damon Albarn, is known for not backing away from a political fight, and this track, with it’s references to walls and the political narrative of politics in 2016/2017 takes aim squarely at Donald Trump.

Politically inclined musicians have always channeled their outrage into song. Once the Trump reign of errors had fully come into play, many stars, past and present, began to serve up a piece of their mind.

Billy Bragg completely nailed the racism arc to come in his rewrite of Bob Dylan‘s protest classic, “The Times They Are A-Changing.” In The Times They Are A-Changing Back, Bragg skewers Trump’s policies, and warns vulnerable Americans not to get too comfortable.

“Come Mexicans, Muslims, LGBT, and Jews
Keep your eyes wide open for what’s on the news.
For President Trump is expressing his views,
And I fear the mob he’s inciting
Will soon break your windows and burn down your schools
Cuz the times, they are a changin’… back.”

Not all of the protest songs come from conventional musicians. This clip, from Late Night with Seth Meyers, features Amber Ruffin and the Go Back to Your Country Girls, performing their song about people telling them to go back to their country.

So, where we at now? In June, Madonna dropped this political bomb on gun control, with the song, God Control, and an entreaty that we take her pleas seriously. “This is your wake up call. Gun violence disproportionately affects children, teenagers and the marginalized in our communities. Honor the victims and demand GUN CONTROL. NOW. Volunteer, stand up, donate, reach out. Wake up and insist on common-sense gun safety legislation. Innocent lives depend on it.”

For my money, the reluctance of the Democrats currently holding the House to move for Trump’s impeachment is a huge mistake. That’s something with which most of the protest songwriters out there would seem to agree to be the case.

Parody Project – Impeachment?

The Parody Project, founded in August, 2017, has a slew of political song parodies online. It’s originator, film-maker/composer Don Caron, creates these parodies as a means of “surviving the current political and social mire by laughing and helping others to do the same.”

I always get a kick out of his videos. Took me ages before I realized that no matter how many ‘performers’ he had on a song, it was always just Don in a different Hawaiian shirt and a bad wig. Mr Caron is a one of a kind politically savvy, musical caricaturist for our times.

Randy Rainbow – Just Impeach Him

Randy Rainbow is the most commercial of the parodists and satirists out there, with a huge fan following both on Youtube, and on tour – I’m still bummed I missed his show last March at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. I’m waiting with baited breath for his next release, but it seems he’s on an endless tour of the United States these days. Lucky you if he’s coming to a theatre near you!

Meanwhile, Randy and I are on the same page about POTUS …. Just Impeach Him.

What I realized as I searched for new protest songs is that, in truth, there are songs out there. They are just not rising to the top of the social media consciousness.

I also think that many with a yen for current events are beginning to feel that nothing that can be said or sung can stop Trump’s rush to an abolishment of democracy, and a rush to convert America to White Sovereignty. It really does seem like Trump is able to grab every flaming arrow aimed at his corrupt government and turn it back on the person that sent it.

Despite daily revelations of his corruption, lack of morals or ethics, and even as he lights the fuse of a race war, no one can lay a finger on him.

No matter how we try, we never do get him. He wriggles away, aided and abetted by equally corrupt courtiers. He doubles and triples down on disgustingly un-American rhetoric, and despite credible accusations that would have had any other president impeached and imprisoned a dozen times over, he stands proudly on the White House lawn, spewing yet more lies and bile.

Elizabeth Warren, who Trump taunted with the name ‘Pocahontas’ for years, may be the poster child for Trump’s puzzling ability.. When she finally released the findings of a DNA test proving her native ancestry, her rebuttal was turned back on her and used as evidence that she is a flakey, insecure female, and likely unfit for public office. Still – she persisted, and is now a plausible candidate to replace the Moron in Chief.

How did that happen? It’s a kind of black magic that anyone who’s gone up against Trump has felt – the president feels no need to show empathy, openness to the opinions of others, or any sense of a presidential demeanour. He just wants to hit back harder and more viciously at those defending their own existence in his world. His appetite for revenge is voracious, and he never forgets a slur.

He is a bully with awesome presidential powers, and a taste for the abuse of those powers.

Only look to the cowed and cowardly Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham, who rush to carry the president’s water, despite being the targets for some of his cruelest and crudest slurs.

Trump’s a world class bully, in a world where he holds all the instruments necessary for the carrying out of his own perverted justice.

As we edge toward the next election, and the possibility that it may only be the beginnings of a long reign comprising multiple terms in office, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that we will ever be able to vote the narcissist in chief out of office – or that we’ll even be able to oust him from the White House, should he not be re-elected next November – no matter how well-written or relevant our protest songs may be.

and.. last minute.. new Randy Rainbow! 😉

Let’s Kill Hitler

For baby boomers, on whom the shadow of World War II fell the darkest , the post war years teemed with possibility. Our future lay before us like a shimmering landscape, designed by the brilliant minds now free to bring us sci fi and fantasy tales of a world filled with scientific and technical advances beyond our wildest dreams.

Flying cars anyone?

But, if we looked to our families, who were now coping with war’s aftermath, or when we saw the shadow of a tattoo on someone’s wrist, we felt the pain of the millions who’d perished for a tyrant’s narcissistic wet dream, and, even the youngest of us wondered .. why didn’t anyone stop Hitler when he first started killing people?

During Hitler’s years in power, there were 42 failed assassination attempts on his life, that we know of. Surrounded by bodyguards and security forces, it’s pretty hard to kill a dictator.

But if you were a writer possessed of a fantastical mind, you might have asked yourself; what if you could go back in time, and kill a younger version of Hitler, before his rise to power?

It is perhaps unsurprising that this particular trope appealed to hundreds, if not thousands, of scribes, and that the attempt to find a time travel exemption to changing the past, continues to be tested. As recently as August 2011, my fave sci fi series, Doctor Who, took their own stab at the genre, in an episode called, “Let’s Kill Hitler.” (Spoiler alert; they failed to kill him.)

Actually, the very first story to do so was published in Weird Tales, in July 1941, and was called, “I Killed Hitler.”

In James Gleick’s book, Time Travel, he posits that “humans invented time travel to counter the regret that we only have one life to live. “ The question isn’t really, “Should you kill Baby Hitler?” But rather, “How do we best come to terms with a world where evil exists?””

But why do I bring this up, you ask? We’re all aware that Godwin’s Law says that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” So it’s moot, right?

Well, here’s the thing… by June 24, 2018, even Mike Godwin had to admit that “The question of evil, understood historically, is bigger than party politics.”

“The seeds of future horrors are sometimes visible in the first steps a government takes toward institutionalizing cruelty. In his 1957 book “Language of the Third Reich,” Victor Klemperer recounted how, at the beginning of the Nazi regime, he “was still so used to living in a state governed by the rule of law” that he couldn’t imagine the horrors yet to come. “Regardless of how much worse it was going to get,” he added, “everything which was later to emerge in terms of National Socialist attitudes, actions and language was already apparent in embryonic form in these first months.

So I don’t think Godwin’s Law needs to be updated or amended. It still serves us as a tool to recognize specious comparisons to Nazism — but also, by contrast, to recognize comparisons that aren’t. And sometimes the comparisons can spot the earliest symptoms of horrific “attitudes, actions and language” well before our society falls prey to the full-blown disease.”

So, why am I bringing up this comparison? The answer lies in a portion of a new digital exhibit, the 1938Projekt, that catalogues the final days of European Jewry.

” As was the case with French Jews who threw lavish parties in the months leading up to their deportation, or the Poles who helped manufacture the very weapons that would be used against them a year later, for my family the impending loss of their property, their homes, and even their lives seemed so surreal as to be almost impossible. They don’t actually mean it. They’ll make a show of it but we’ll be fine. There’s no chance we’ll really be gone tomorrow. The tragedy is that we don’t recognize how intractable these political climates are with a sudden timely realization, but rather as a slow burn—imperceptible until only after the damage is done.”

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“You’d have to have been crazy to have predicted such a thing as the Holocaust. Most of them simply didn’t believe that there was any credible reason why things would suddenly surpass normal levels of anti-Semitism and go from bad to catastrophic.

It is the story of how easy it is to become inured to the progression of a deteriorating situation. Through its lens, we see the time more clearly for what it was: not just another brief chapter in the thousands-of-years-old story called anti-Semitism, but a tinderbox heating up with the passage of each day. It’s easy to look now and see a series of warnings plastered onto the walls of the past, plain and clear for all Jews to see, only for fools to ignore.

But if someone were to tell you about a shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and swastikas graffitied on the Upper West Side and Nazi marches and Jewish cemeteries being defaced and a president who calls himself a nationalist and ordinances that dissolve the rights of immigrants and of the queer community and a caravan of refugees, and told you to leave behind your family business and your belongings and your home and move across the world to a place where you didn’t know a soul and didn’t know the language, would you? You’d have to be crazy.” (https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/274646/what-it-was-like-to-be-a-german-jew-in-1938)

You see, I think that, like those long ago writers of science fiction who yearned to turn back the clock to a time before Hitler took power, we’re now living in a time when there is a chance to change what seems to be inevitable.

And I think that, if a change doesn’t happen, we’ll see future writers scribbling about wanting to time travel back and kill a baby Trump, before the real horrors began in America.

Unlike a lot of people who still cling to the idea that checks and balances, and the application of the Constitution, will prevent anything too destructive from happening in America, I see that we are once again following a historic arc that has always moved in a horrific direction, and that swing is accelerating.

The assaults on the justice system and law itself are compounding daily. Where is the outrage over Khashoggi‘s murder? Why have those who swore to stand by AG Sessions, or to defend Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation, suddenly disavowed their previous words?

What did you think it meant when President Trump suggested he could pull press credentials from any reporters who didn’t show him “respect.” Can you not see that Trump has essentially revoked the First Amendment without even having to use an ‘executive order’ to do so? Like all dictators, first they must take out the press, in any way possible, because the press are they that would show you the misdeeds the administration would rather conceal.

The POTUS, on his bully pulpit, cannot repeatedly tear down American institutions verbally, without risking their actual destruction. When every speech at his rallies sounds like the words of an authoritarian, the supposition of an authoritarian regime can’t be avoided.

Post midterms, and post some of the most despicable attempts to thwart a legitimate election in recent history, many Republicans are publicly calling the attempt to count every ballot cast, voter fraud, and an attempt to ‘steal’ an election. But this is not theft or a fraud … you may not recognize it, GOP, but this is democracy.

When I hear Americans cry, “...but this isn’t America. This isn’t who we are!” I have to beg to differ.

There’s an historic pattern of racism and xenophobia that has a long through line, from America’s very beginnings, right through to the US Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to gut a key element of the 1965 voting rights act, based on the election of a man of colour to the presidency. That law demanded that areas with a history of racial discrimination at the polls get prior authorisation before changing their election or voting laws. As we’ve just seen in the 2018 midterms – we really needed that provision. We all watched the disastrous Republican-run elections that slashed the rights and ability of people of colour and indigenous people, to cast their votes, in the name of non-existent voter fraud. What you saw was voter suppression.. they never got a chance to vote, so there was never a chance of fraudulence, except on the part of those making up these rules to benefit their own party.

“That problem is solved,” Justice Roberts intoned, dismissing centuries of racism and exclusion.

“This isn’t who we are!” you say?

Do you remember the poem that begins, “first they came?” America’s version begins with calling Mexicans rapists and claiming that they bring drugs and crime, then moves on to the torment of American Muslims, before dancing on to the Dreamers, the Trans community, the LGBTQ, Puerto Ricans, Hondurans… and eventually, it comes to the Jews, as it ever has.

The massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue came at the hands of a white, middle aged, right wing, Trump supporter, who thinks Trump isn’t hard enough on the Jewish citizens of America, and so he murdered 11 people in Trump’s name.

Ironically, and In spite of his overtly racist leanings, Trump enjoys solid support from the Jewish community. One of his most fervent supporters, Miriam Adelson, the wife of Sheldon Adelson, will soon receive a Medal of Freedom, that is essentially her reward for her part in her husband’s donation of $113 million to Trump’s election and midterm support.

Like those in Germany, Poland and France that went to the movies, or threw parties, mere days before they were marched to camps, supporters like the Adelsons think his racism will stop with Mexican immigrants and African-Americans.

The pattern is too consistent. History shows horrible acts of racism, over and over and over again, against the most vulnerable of citizens. The United States, like 1984’s Oceania, has always been at war .. with itself.

This IS who you are, America.

Bill Maher has been calling this flaunting of law by the Trump administration a ‘slow moving coup‘ for the last year. With the illegal appointment of Whitaker to the position of Acting United States Attorney General, that coup picked up speed.

“In third world dictatorships, the chief law enforcement officer‘s main qualification is – he doesn’t enforce the law. Officials of independent mind are hounded out, or shoved aside.”

As Maher said, “In mid 2017, I first read you my dictator checklist, but since this week is the week we first added, “install your personal protector as head of the justice department, ” after adding in September, “install your personal protector on the highest Court,” let’s review the dictator list one more time.

You’re a narcissist who likes to see his name and face on buildings.
You appoint family members to position of power
You hold rallies, even when you are not running, and they are scary.
You talk about jailing the press, and political opponents.
You want to hold military parades, and muse openly about being president for life.
You use your office for personal financial gain.
You love other dictators.
You lie so frequently your supporters don’t know what the truth is anymore, and don’t’ care.

For a coup to work, it is first necessary for truth itself to be destroyed – as well as the people who try to report it. So the dictator is free to say anything, and his followers believe it.

Adding to that dictator checklist, we now have state TV in this country, an actual propaganda channel, where the ‘reporters’ openly endorse the leaders. And we have people who oversee the elections they are running in.

In August of this year, Trump’s semi-liquid mob mouthpiece, Rudy Giuliani, said “the truth isn’t the truth.”

So – truth isn’t truth, the press is the enemy of the people, there are ‘alternative facts,’ “there’s no proof of anything, ” “What you’re seeing and reading isn’t what’s happening.”

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In 1986, after 21 years of being the president (dictator) of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, and his wife, Imelda Marcos, had their reign of corruption overturned, and the family was sent into exile. It is estimated that the couple plundered between 5 and 10 $BILLION US dollars from the Philippine people during those years.

And yet, Imelda made a comeback, and somehow managed to get elected to the the Philippine House of Representatives , not once, but FOUR times, despite having been called a kleptocrat by historians, being listed by Newsweek as one of the “greediest people of all time” and having had the distinction of having committed, along with her husband, the greatest robbery of a government, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

In November 2018, Mrs. Marcos was convicted of corruption involving US$200 million, from the time between 1978 and 184, when she was governor of Metro Manila. She has been sentenced to a total term of up to 77 years of imprisonment.

I’m telling you this because of the parallels between the Marcos and Trump camp … neither can quit their love for a self-serving, selfish, corrupt, world champion thief. Nothing you say will change the opinions of his or her cult. And just as the Filipinos kept voting Imelda back in, as she siphoned over $200 million from the people to her Swiss bank account, there will still be Americans voting for Trump some ten, twenty years down the road, and probably even after his death.. maybe especially after his death.

“Godwin’s Law was never meant to block us from challenging the institutionalization of cruelty or the callousness of officials who claim to be just following the law. It definitely wasn’t meant to shield our leaders from being slammed for the current fashion of pitching falsehoods as fact. These behaviors, distressing as they are, may not yet add up to a new Reich, but please forgive me for worrying that they’re the “embryonic form” of a horror we hoped we had put behind us.” Mike Godwin
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Lest we forget …. On this, and every Remembrance Day, I remember and thank my family for their sacrifice.
WWI: Uncle Len, Uncle Cecil
WWII: Uncle John, Auntie Anne, Auntie Pat
KOREA: Uncle Leo, my dad
and Uncle Dennis, who served in peacetime.

Daylight Savings And Other Idiocies

ENOUGH already with this daylight saving nonsense. The cost to the country, and it’s citizens, has been recorded and shown to be of little to no benefit to the nation.

I wonder if Ford has considered making this a pet project for Ontario. (Opting in or out of daylight saving is within a provincial premier’s purview.) It would fit into his stated platform, save money, and kill something that the ‘elites’ determined decades ago would be beneficial to the ‘little people.’ And, when he’s finally out of office, it will be one thing he can point to as having successfully and fairly easily accomplished.

Anyone got Dougie’s ear?

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Hey, it’s Indie Week! My colleagues have written a fair bit about what that means, musically, so I won’t belabour the possible tuneful delights that your wristbands can get you into. There IS a lot of great music, I assure you, a veritable cornucopia of raw talent.

But .. I probably won’t get to many of the shows. You see, I’m more like those people that buy Playboy for the articles.. I like the conferences. I like to learn from people with experience and stories to tell.

So, on Wednesday, you’ll likely find me checking out a forum on anxiety, depression and mental health, or taking notes at Martin Atkins’ discourse on “How to Make an Extra $100K in the Next Year.”

On Friday, there’s a seminar on Women Influencers, and another on “New Rules in the Music Industry.”

And those are the things that interest moi … but that’s moi. Why don’t YOU check out what’s available this week, and see what turns your crank? I’ll see you there!
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We’re now literally days away from the American midterm elections, when those who will exercise their right to vote will determine the arc of America’s future. It really is a critical moment in time. Voting Democrat will enable the guardrails to keep Trump and his madness in check. Voting Republican will tell Trump that his madness and rush to a fascist dictatorship is A-OK with the citizens of the United States

VOTING IS HOW YOU SEIZE POWER. And that’s why old people, rich people and people who are terrified of change… are ALWAYS voting, every chance they get. That is why there are old, rich, white men in power in the U.S., who’ve been voted back in every time those old, rich, white, scared people get a chance to enter the voting booth. That is why there is a lying, perjuring, accused sexual assailant on the Supreme Court.

Does your vote count? Damned straight it does! And mouthing off that it ‘won’t change anything anyway’ is not a ‘too cool for the pool,’ detached cynicism, it’s a naive, and entitled sentiment that betrays an ignorance of how democracy works.

Are you enjoying Trump’s America? Because, despite how many people tell me that I am incorrect about America sliding into fascism… it’s looking pretty textbook fascist-y right about now.

” Fascism is a form of government which is a type of one-party dictatorship. Fascists are against democracy. They work for a totalitarian one-party state. This aim is to prepare the nation for armed conflict, and to respond to economic difficulties. Fascism puts nation and often race above the individual. It stands for a centralized government headed by a dictator. Historically, fascist governments tend to be militaristic, and racist. In the Third Reich German society was pictured as a racially unified hierarchy, the Volksgemeinschaft..” (wikipedia)

The country has been steamrollered under the armoured treads of an administration that has control of the House, the Senate, the Presidency, AND the Supreme Court. Except for the horrific tax cuts that sent billions of dollars to the 1 per cent, the majority of Trump accomplishments have come about through the high handed use of ‘executive orders,’ which, when used in lieu of democratic debate, compromise, and bipartisanship, are, of course, the way dictators govern.

Now, there may have been times in America’s history where one party having control of ALL aspects of government might not have been quite as frightening as it is in 2018. But the horrors that we’ve seen to date can’t hold a candle to what we’ll see in the future, if the midterms keep the power in the Republican party’s hands.

While you might have been aware that the Supreme Court newbie, Kavanaugh, has some interesting views on presidential reach and abortion, and that the other newbie, Gorsuch, has some equally interesting opinions on religious liberty and the rights of LGBTQ citizens …. did you know that the Supreme Court is about to begin debate on whether or not America will be maintaining a separation of church and state?

That’s kind of a biggie right there. What will be left of America, when it is only the furthest hard right thinkers who decide what citizens are allowed to do, in public, or in the privacy of their own homes?

Many of those who agree with the far right’s racism and xenophobia are not only falling prey to the president’s Hail Mary pass to save control of the House and/or Senate through terrorizing the people with talks of war and invasions, they’re whipping up even further paranoia by declaring that migrants have a super power that enables them to bring extinct diseases back into the American mainstream.

America needs a Zanax. Despite Trump’s assurance that the migrant caravan is an invading horde, his words, and those of the Foxy Friends who agree with him, are nothing more than a panicked attempt to continue their icy grip on America’s gonads.

Imagine the desperation that would make you gather up your family, what little you could carry, and force you to walk thousands of miles, to somewhere that you hoped .. didn’t know for sure, but hoped … would grant you sanctuary. This is an apocalyptic scenario. You’ve seen it in movies, in ‘after the end of the world‘ scripts, but this is real life for these migrants.

It is believed that there are two caravans, one traveling thru southern Mexico, and the other just now crossing Guatemala into Mexico. The second group is believed to be mostly the family members of the first caravan. The number of people in both of these caravans fluctuates daily, but is estimated to be between a thousand to five thousand people total. (And, bear in mind, neither of these groups would be converging at any one American border, all at the same time.)

Among the sympathizers to Trump’s cause and senile paranoia are the citizen militia, who, with significant armament, are hoping to join the even more heavily armed 15,000 troops, 20,000 border guards, and 10,000 Nation Guard members gathering to dispel .. with brute force and severe prejudice – the few thousand dusty, dirty, thirsty, tired refugees fleeing gang violence and government corruption in Honduras.

Sadly.. those migrants are walking right into the unwelcoming arms of America’s own home-grown violence and government corruption.

The sight of this gang of tens of thousands, shoulder to shoulder against these desperate people, should be the most humiliating spectacle that America ever hopes to see. Home of the Brave? No, it’s the land of the loose bowelled, chicken shits.

As of November 2nd, the caravans are in Matias Romero, a town in the southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca. They are at least several weeks away from reaching the United States, although the Department of Homeland Security – well known for fudging and outright lying of facts – has said they could arrive at the border somewhere in between four days and two weeks from now.

I guess if they all grow wings it’s possible. But these are families, that include women, children, and at least one newborn who made her appearance just a day or two ago.

I can draw a straight line from the ‘no room at the inn‘ prejudice and xenophobia of 2000 years ago to the cruelty and barbarism we’re seeing at the American border today. Two thousand years later, what these ‘warriors’ choose to cloak themselves in on a Sunday morning doesn’t look very much like Christianity at all.

This is Trump’s Last Stand, this desperate Mexican standoff, and he’s got all of his hopes pinned on his belief that America will believe the lies and hyperventilation that he, his administration and FOX News have poured into the far right’s ears like so much aural poison. I am hoping that Americans are smarter, and better human beings, than that.

I want to believe that justice will prevail in America. I want to believe that there will be a fair election, and that America and the world will be able to believe that the results of the voting are just and true, and show the real will of the people.

That’s what I want to believe, America. That’s what I need to believe. All you have to do, America, is listen to your better angels. Listen to them now, while they still live.

Watching The Dream Die

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
— Lyndon Johnson, 36th President of the United States of America

Martin Luther King Jr had a dream. And he died for it, along with the many others, of all colours, who fought to bring the civil rights movement to America.

It took many years, and many lives, but the leaders of the civil rights movement persevered with the goal of securing legal rights for African Americans, rights that other Americans had already held. The movement resulted in large legislative impacts, including the installment of the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice. Mountains were moved to accomplish their goals of ending legal racial segregation and discrimination. Using non-violent campaigns, they achieved new recognitions in the legal, federal protection of ALL Americans.

“Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was a U.S. Supreme Court justice and civil rights advocate. Marshall earned an important place in American history on the basis of two accomplishments. First, as legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he guided the litigation that destroyed the legal underpinnings of Jim Crow segregation. Second, as an associate justice of the Supreme Court–the nation’s first black justice–he crafted a distinctive jurisprudence marked by uncompromising liberalism, unusual attentiveness to practical considerations beyond the formalities of law, and an indefatigable willingness to dissent.”

Donald Trump is the nightmare that people of colour have wrestled with all of their lives, the creature that haunts their dreams and makes them hold their babies closer. And his minions, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and most especially that evil gnome Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, have waited patiently for decades for just this moment in time to arrive, and vindicate their most malevolent, bigoted thoughts. At first, he was just the fool who egged on racists throughout Barack Obama‘s presidency with his ridiculous birtherism theory, but now Trump’s tweets and rants have galvanized fear and ignorance, like a lit match dropped into the gasoline of repressed racism. To his base’s clear delight, they are relaxing into an overt racism in which they can lawfully and openly show their hatred of people of colour, supported by their horrific master.

Trump’s tweeting is beyond a dog whistle to his racist supporters – it’s even beyond a bull horn. It’s an IV of disgusting, depraved poison, that is constant and inescapable and that excites the part of his follower’s brain that delights in cruelty and chaos.

By contrast, consider the struggle for civil rights in America. I’m old enough to remember how violently so many struggled to prevent integration. There were threats, there were beatings, there were murders. We in Canada watched from afar as the country battled it’s way to a new view on human rights and human dignity.

Everything that Trump does and says is another giant step towards obliterating that essential moment in American history.

Now, even if you are someone that believes that free speech, even hate speech, is your right, what has to be remembered is that this division of the population is not just unsettling – it’s fundamentally a national security issue. The nation is weaker when the people are fighting against each other.

This weekend is the one year anniversary of the murder of an innocent woman who had been counter-protesting racists marching on Charlottesville. A group of white supremacists, screaming racist, ethnic and misogynistic slogans and carrying tiki torches, rallied to “Unite The Right“. During that protest, one person was killed and 19 others were injured when a car sped into a group of counter-protesters.

The original reason for the 2017 march centered around, amongst other things, protesting the removal of statues of Confederate leaders. Unless you are a pigeon with no other options, the removal of a statue should not really be either cause for alarm, or a reason to hurt another person.

And here’s the most interesting thing about those statues. The Confederacy was a treasonous attack on the United States of America. It was only because of Lincoln’s decision not to ’embarrass’ the people who’d supported the Confederate Army that the leaders escaped being hung for treason.

” Northerners took a pragmatic approach to the war’s end. They realized the impracticality of trying thousands of Southerners for disloyalty in states where juries were unlikely to deliver guilty verdicts, and that continued cries of treason would interfere with the more important task of nation-building.

Ironically, the lenient approach allowed Robert E. Lee and other Confederate leaders to become heroic figures to later generations of Americans of all sections, says Blair, citing words written by Union Gen. George Thomas in 1868: “The crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand-in-hand with the defenders of the (US) Government.” (see: www.futurity.org.)

After the Charlottesville riots, Trump refused to call out the militant right marching under a Nazi banner. Instead, the President of the United States said :

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides.”

As CNN explained in an editorial in August 2017, “ Both sides don’t scream racist and anti-Semitic things at people with whom they disagree. They don’t base a belief system on the superiority of one race over others. They don’t get into fistfights with people who don’t see things their way. They don’t create chaos and leave a trail of injured behind them.

Arguing that “both sides do it” deeply misunderstands the hate and intolerance at the core of this “Unite the Right” rally. These people are bigots. They are hate-filled. This is not just a protest where things, unfortunately, got violent. Violence sits at the heart of their warped belief system.

Trying to fit these hate-mongers into the political/ideological spectrum — which appears to be what Trump is doing — speaks to his failure to grasp what’s at play here. This is not a “conservatives say this, liberals say that” sort of situation. We all should stand against this sort of violent intolerance and work to eradicate it from our society — whether Democrat, Republican, Independent or not political in the least.”

And as actor/director Spike Lee told an interviewer just this week, “The President of the United States had a chance to denounce hate. The whole world saw what happened and he didn’t do it.”

There is no “other side” to racism if you live in a democracy. There is no “right” to be racist. There is no ‘racist amendment’ that would allow racists to be tolerated in any situation. There is NO validity to their arguments of white superiority, only anti-social activity that tears apart society.

However, the climate fomented and nurtured by Trump’s administration not only encourages overt racism, it is tacitly welcomed and rarely held accountable for the pain and discomfort of those upon whom this abuse is waged.

This new fad of calling 911 on people living their life while being black will most certainly, inevitably, eventually, get someone killed. People of colour know that siccing the cops on a person of colour can and will often devolve into a life or death situation.

Just ask actor Ving Rhames, who was a target of racial profiling earlier this year. A neighbour called the LAPD after a neighbour claimed to have seen a ‘large black man breaking into a house.”

Rhames, who had been watching television in his Santa Monica home with his two English bulldogs, answered the door.

“I get up, I open the door, there’s a red dot pointed at my face from a 9 millimeter,” Rhames. “And they say, ‘Put up your hands.'”

Last year, NBA All-Star Lebron James’ Los Angeles home was vandalized with N-word graffitti, and in March of this year, Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown was seen in a video being tackled to the ground for a parking infraction.

Just being AWB – Alive While Black – has lead to a fad of white people calling 911 to report their fear of black people golfing too slowly, eating waffles, waiting for a client in a Starbucks, handing out campaign literature, napping at lunch, barbecuing at a public park, asking to use a valid coupon, eating their lunch, being a real estate agent, swimming in their public community pool, checking out of an AirBnB without acknowledging a wave, or seeing an 8 year old child selling cold bottled water on a warm day.

And in response to these frantic calls from white people, most of these innocent people had to deal with the police showing up, with flashing sirens and guns blazing. After all, the steadfast perspective of white callers seems to always be far more trustworthy than the potentially criminal actions of law-abiding, tax- paying, black citizens.

I’ve yet to hear of any accountability being demanded of the people who are wasting precious police resources by calling the police on innocent parties. Nor have I heard of any of those who’ve had their lives put into danger, successfully suing the callers or their employers. But I hope that becomes a fad, and soon.

From his first speech on the campaign trail, Trump has been overtly, aggressively, racist, condemning and dismissing people of colour. Although an elected president is supposed to be the president of all of the people, he is selective about whom he chooses to favour or flay. As if his spoken and tweeted attacks on (black) football players for their non-violent protest of taking a knee during the National Anthem, despite their repeated explanations of what the protest means, weren’t annoying enough, his continued attacks actually break two laws.

A federal law, enacted in 1943, says that no citizen can be forced to participate in rituals that are used with the flag or any other symbol of the United States.

And 18 U.S. Code 227 is a law that could be used against Trump in response to his various statements about private businesses, including the NFL. This law prohibits “the President, as well as members of Congress and other federal officials, from “wrongfully influencing a private entity’s employment decisions.” Persons convicted under this statute face up to 15 years in prison and disqualification from public office.

Trump continuously recommending, even commanding, that protesting players be fired or punished seems to fit 18 U.S. Code § 227’s basic definition.”

Racism, white supremacy, and white nationalism; when the president and his administration tell the country to turn against a huge segment of their own people, that country is ripe for exploitation by those that will use that division for their own purposes and gain. When the president demonizes certain segments of the working population as somehow being less fit, less trustworthy or less capable, the enemies of the United States have their toehold into an internal, fractured, weakness that can be used against the country.

But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for anyone in this administration to call him on either of these crimes. They are all too busy dismantling America and democracy.

And killing that beautiful dream….

Blackberries and Entitlement

There is a very nice house on the corner of my street. The back yard is surrounded by a tall fence, but as you walk by, you can peep through, and see that there is a lovely garden inside, with a deck, and a nice patio seating area. It’s all very well kept and tidy.

Plants peek out through the fence, as plants will. There are some flowers, and a few weeds, and some of those long, brambly, blackberry stalks, the sort that seem to go from manageable to ‘ow! that long branch just scratched my arm!” in a matter of seconds.

A few months ago, the blackberries appeared. Blackberries start out red and inedible. It’s not until they turn black that they become tasty. There is usually about one week in the summer when the berries all hit peak perfection simultaneously. At my old house, I had a wall of blackberry bushes. When they were ready to pick, I would go into hyper drive, trying to get as many of the berries harvested as I possibly could, so that I could make a summer jam. I’d also offer my neighbours some of the bounty. And, inevitably, the birds, squirrels and raccoons would have a messy feast as well.

The first sighting of the blackberry plants escaping the fence on the corner house gave me a little frisson of emotion, a combination of happiness at seeing the familiar fruit, and a twinge of sadness at no longer having my little Scarborough fruit and veg garden. Planting in containers just isn’t the same.

Halfway through July, the magic moment arrived, and suddenly the branches bent low with beautiful, glossy black berries. I’m sure I wasn’t the only passer-by that helped herself to a berry or two when I walked by the house. The branches were, after all, bordering the sidewalk, and just a tiny portion of the plants that lined the inside of the fence.

The day after the appearance of the berries, a small sign, written in crayon, and in a child’s handwriting, appeared on the fence. It said, “Please don’t pick the berries. Thank you.”

Now, perhaps my chagrin at seeing that sign stemmed from a desire to be inside the fence, gobbling down handfuls of the berries before harvesting a bushel or so for jam making.

But the first thought that crossed my mind was that someone had missed a wonderful opportunity to teach a child about sharing and responsibility. Since the home owner had allowed their plants to cross over into common ground, the berries were, ostensibly, now to be had by anyone who passed by the branches on their way down the street.

And if someone picked a berry and enjoyed it, that was a way of spreading the wealth, so to speak, without having to make any real effort. A way to allow others to enjoy a little treat, without that gift costing our benefactors any loss or stress. You might not know who enjoyed that pleasure, and they might never know that it was you that let them have it, but there can be a strange, inner joy that comes from simply giving away some of the surplus of what you have.

Instead, the parents of that child taught her that she needed to keep a firm grip on what she ‘owned,’ even if that ‘property’ wasn’t actually contained within its bounds. Best to assume that others will take things away from you, if you’re not stern and disciplined, and keep a firm grasp on your ‘stuff.’ And if you don’t tell them to back off, they’ll take and take and …oh!

That’s a weird and ugly paradigm that many live by now; the world of “I’ve got mine, and I’ll fight anyone that tries to get some for themselves!”

That’s the mindset of those who are threatened by anyone else enjoying even a sip of life’s cup, since it is a sip they feel to be taken from their own mouths. It’s what people earning a comfortable living feel like when they hear the minimum wage might be raised so that others with more menial jobs can actually afford to live. And it’s the way that many Canadians feel when they hear that there is a cost to ignoring the civil rights of other Canadians, and in the resentment they feel when the courts actually have to shell out millions to pay those costs to the victim.

It’s in the self-righteousness of the outwardly religious who piously mouth the Lord’s Prayer, but deny Christ’s preaching to love everyone as he loved them, and to treat others as they wish to be treated. It’s in those who would put the possible cost of healthcare for transgendered people in the military over a respect for those peoples’ basic rights, as they spend their lives in the defence of their country. It’s even in the behaviour of the driver who feels the need to be in constant touch by telephone entitles him or her to break the law and answer their cell phone while zipping down the highway at 140km an hour.

It’s a selfishness and entitlement that can be seen daily, on the streets, and in the houses of corporate and political power. The real trickle down that we’ve seen over the last few decades hasn’t been the money that the rich and powerful never did let fall on the lowly, but the examples that they’ve shown us, of how disrespect, lying, and a lack of accountability can enrich those who simply don’t care about anyone other than themselves.

We want to celebrate those who have stood on the shoulders of giants, but instead we are too often and too loudly confronted by those with feet of clay, who prefer to stand on the throats of the weak.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Isaac Newton.

Nowhere was the inevitable down slide of perverted entitlement seen more clearly than in this weekend’s parades, protests, and riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. Far-right activists descended upon the city for a Unite the Right rally against the removal of a statue of Confederate leader, Robert E. Lee.

In April, the Charlottesville City Council voted to sell the bronze statue that stands in downtown Charlottesville. The city council also unanimously voted to rename Lee Park. However, two members of the five-member city council still voted against removing the statue. In May, a judge halted that removal for six months.

For those playing along at home, Lee was the general who lead the charge of the Confederate Army, in defence of slavery, against the prevailing American forces of the time. The Confederacy lost. The statue was commissioned in 1917, 52 years after the war ended, and was finally erected in 1924, 59 years after the war ended.

The march of the alt-right was composed primarily of young, white, decently dressed young men, who seemed to feel that their lack of melanin outweighed their concurrent lack of anything remotely special about themselves. Just having been born white and American has lead them to believe that they should have everything they feel they deserve in life – even if it means taking from others less fortunate.

Some are equating this all-white/alt-right protest to the Black Lives Matter protests. I would unequivocally disagree. One is a group seeking to elevate themselves socially by denying the rights of others, while the other is a traditionally oppressed group seeking their civil rights. Violent protests are wrong no matter who participates, but the messages are in no way equivalent.

“[…] I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

A state’s leader that would qualify his objection to ‘hatred, bigotry and violence‘ by adding “on many sides” is no leader at all, but rather a fool who dog whistles to his bigoted and racist followers, egging them on to further violence, in a game of false equivalency.

“… there was strong reaction to Trump’s refusal to denounce far-right extremists who had marched through the streets carrying flaming torches, screaming racial epithets and setting upon their opponents.

The clashes started after white nationalists planned a rally around a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee that is slated to be removed, and culminated in a car being deliberately driven into a group of people peacefully protesting the far right rally, killing one person and injuring at least 19.”

Even those within his own party disapproved of Trump’s lukewarm response.

” The Republican senator Cory Gardner of Colorado tweeted: “Mr President – we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism.” This was echoed by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah who lost a brother in the second world war. “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.” ” (The Guardian)

Despite the public disavowal of those who committed these offences, there were still many on social media who defended their racism by claiming that their protests are a reaction to what they see (the removal of a statue of a Confederate general) as a ‘direct assault against white people.”

Essentially, they are saying they’ll go to civil war to protect the past in an effort to avoid moving forward. The lives of those they harm are of no consequence; their actions say that their traditions and history are more important than the lives of other human beings.

The Rebel staffer, Faith Goldy, was complaining about left-wing protesters not being inclusive, when she was interrupted by the killing of one of them, preserved on video as it happened.

The truth that must be said, that must be shouted and proclaimed, by not only the President of the United States but by all of his followers and sycophants, is that there is no equivalency between those who marched for their white rights, and those who had finally had enough of those who believe they can only be ‘equal’ if they are allowed to be superior to others through oppression. This was domestic terrorism, as deadly and frightening as any other sort of terrorism. The difference here is that this terrorism is being nurtured by other Americans.

White Americans, and especially young, white, male Americans, aren’t oppressed in the least. No one is trying to take their guns or Christmas away from them. Their churches are not being burned, and there are no burning crosses on the lawns of ‘whitey.’ No one is trying to take away their right to marry the person of their choice. They are under no worse of a travel ban than the need to remove their shoes before being allowed entry onto an airplane. No one feels so threatened by their very presence and colour that even the murder of a child walking home from school can be justified because someone ‘feared for their life.’ And there are no political groups so threatened by ‘the white demographic’ that they have to jury rig districts to ensure the right/white candidate is elected.

They don’t have grandparents and great-grandparents who lived through slavery and systemic racism that took from them even the hope of the prosperity of the average white American. Their parents weren’t imprisoned for marrying someone of a different colour, or for merely being mistaken for an actual criminal because ‘they all look alike to me.’

Racism and bigotry – that’s America’s real history and legacy. Great strides toward a more equal and civilized society have been made in the last several decades, but the actions of those who would ‘make America great again’ by ‘making America white again’ threaten to halt that progress, and tear the nation apart. It is only by accepting the ugly past, and learning from it, that a better future can be attained.

The willfully ignorant, those who are armed and dangerous to anyone who disagrees with their bigoted beliefs, who create their own echo chamber filled with half-truths and lies, are the cancer that will bring America to it’s knees.

America’s president has been very bold in denouncing global terrorism. It is apparently only domestic terrorism that keeps him silent.

Inaction and Consequences

There are risks and costs to action…But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction. John F. Kennedy – 1917-1963, 35th U.S. President

Somewhere along the line – was it in the disco 70s? The ‘Me” decade of the 80’s? The Naughty 90’s? The despair of the Noughties?

Somewhere in there, we lost our way.

In the 1950s, we were all shook up, and in the sixties, we tuned in, turned on, and changed the world. We believed in ourselves and that our actions had global impact. And we were right.

But all that action was exhausting. We couldn’t keep it up, and we were busy patting ourselves on the back for being so hip and cool and groovy. We had used our flower power to launch a civil rights movement, and to stop an unjust war! The U.S. landed a man on the moon! Now we dance!

Retribution for the changes we had wrought came swiftly. Those who hate change targeted those who encouraged change. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, Bobby Kennedy – all assassinated for daring to dream of a better world.

Racism and ignorance tore the bright and shiny dreams of peace and equality of the sixties into shreds, and now, it threatens to do so again. The way forward is not paved with bullets and brutality. The raised voice and fist of dictatorship enslaves; it does not elevate a people or a culture, it tramples them into the ground.

Our years of ‘comfortable inaction’ have birthed some of the worst, most self-indulgent, and reprehensible political representatives of all time. Around the world, and at every level of government, the choices are dismal, with little to discern one corrupt, manipulative and greedy candidate from another.

Before you point the finger – know that you did this to yourselves. Know that wanting our own well-being at any cost, opting for indulgences as we decimated the middle class, slotting anyone who didn’t look or act like us into the reject pile of life … all of these ‘inactions,’ in the name of comfort, created the monsters we now see before us.

The years of focusing on what made us happy; on choosing the cheap over the well-made (and in that group, I include the ‘heroes’ we pedestaled;) the crude and ugly brutality of racism and bigotry whipped up by leaders who chose fear of others as their platforms; the laziness of passionate if largely uninformed opinion over fact and reason; the years of “too long: didn’t read” – all of those combined – have given us the governments we deserve.

We lost belief in ourselves, and demanded less of our leaders. We lost sight of the fact that every action we take has global impact. We refused responsibility. We chose comfort for ourselves over the welfare of the planet.

The actions we could have, and should have, taken in controlling our voracious greed for wealth and power, never happened.

And now we are reaping the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

There is a Time and a Space to be Happy .. and Unhappy …

Some people think of me as a happy person, who laughs long and hard, and knows how to have a good time. And that’s a large part of who I am.

But I get really, really angry at injustice .. to anyone. Especially injustice to the vulnerable, those who suffer, but are expected to keep a stiff upper lip and their mouths shut before their ‘betters.’ And that includes not only racial minorities, it includes ALL injustice .. to anyone …

I get really, really angry … and I’m allowed to express that anger. Oh sure, I’ll get a few people who tell me to lighten up, or who’ll ignore me, or who’ll snicker about my ‘rants’ … but I’m ALLOWED to get angry. I’m allowed to yell and stamp my feet, and some will agree and some will not .. but I’m allowed to show my anger.

And it doesn’t get me beaten. Or killed. Or arrested for ‘typing while black/native/female/old/young/handicapped/imprisoned/Lefty Liberal.’

My heart breaks every time I see injustice. But I feel the most pain when I see those to whom injustice is a daily reality and a life sentence, being told and shown that they not only have to take it, they have to take it with a smile.

That’s the kind of unthinking injustice that our world tolerates. And I’ll keep getting angry and ranting about it as long as I have breath in my body.

A quote from the article below: “There is a time and a space in which to be angry. There is a time and a space to be happy and joyful. Black people are fully human and we deserve the opportunity to exist in all of our emotions and feelings all the time. NO ONE gets to regulate our humanity —— not even “childhood friends.””

White Policing of Black Emotions