If only. Or, as the Jewish saying goes, "from your lips to God's ears".
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Driscoll
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2017 4:13 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Inauguration of White Supremacy
All:
In my opinion white supremacy is stone, cold dead! It is time to stop
beating the horse.
Richard
On 1/21/2017 1:58 PM, M Vieni wrote:
Truthdighierarchy.
The Inauguration of White Supremacy
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_inauguration_of_white_supremac
y_2017
0120/
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Posted on Jan 20, 2017
By Juan Cole (http://www.truthdig.com/staff/juan_cole) / Informed
Comment
(http://www.juancole.com/2017/01/inauguration-white-supremacy.html)
Donald Trump's cabinet has no Latinos, the first time that minority,
which comprises 18 percent of Americans, is absent for twenty-five
years. Trump famously accused Mexican-Americans of being the worst
people, including in their ranks rapists and drug dealers and having
been deliberately sent across the border by the Mexican government in
what he apparently, bizarrely, views as a mammoth conspiracy.
Trump and his Neofascist counselors are wounded white men, who see
Latinos and their immigration to the United States as a challenge to
white dominance that must be stopped and reversed. Never mind that
whiteness is a construct, and that Benjamin Franklin
(http://www.juancole.com/2016/11/coulter-franklin-either.html) even
excluded Germans like Trump from the category. And never mind that
Latino immigration saved the US from aging and losing population
(these are real problems besetting e.g. Japan), and kept it an
economic powerhouse through their labor.
In this way of looking at things, Trump sees Muslim-Americans as
Latinos on steroids and so even more threatening to his project of racial
of 'traditionally American'
Then yesterday Tom Barrack
(http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-kanye-west-trump
-inaug
uration-20170119-story.html) , in charge of the presidential inaugural
committee explained why Kanye West was not asked to perform: "We
haven't asked him . . . He's been great. He considers himself a friend
of the president-elect, but it's not the venue. The venue we have for
entertainment is filled out. It's perfect. It's going to be typically
and traditionally American." Kanye seems to have been particularly
objectionable because of his hip hop culture. Barrack's and Trump's idea
is obviously an ideal of whiteness, which, of course, is a fantasy.(http://www.juancole.com/2017/01/images-refute-trumps.html) .
Some 5 percent of self-described white southerners have a recent
African genetic heritage. Trump and his circle associate Blackness
with crime and inner cities burning, accounting for Trump's bizarre
tweets at Civil Rights legend John Lewis
Establishment as to be unthreatening.
Trump is bringing Steve Bannon, the CEO of the neo-Nazi trash "Breitbart,"
into the White House. There is a reason for which white supremacists
rejoiced
(https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/11/14/white-nationalists-rej
oice-t
rumps-appointment-breitbarts-stephen-bannon) at that appointment.
He is also trying to make Jeff Sessions
(http://www.pfaw.org/press-releases/100-african-american-faith-leaders
-call-
on-senate-to-reject-jeff-sessions-for-attorney-general/) attorney
general, who is alleged to have branded the NAACP, an advocacy group
for African-Americans, "un-American."
Aren't we beginning to see a pattern here? The Trump cabinet and
hangers-on think people of northern European descent are the real
Americans (though mind you, in the early twentieth century European
groups like the Irish, Poles, and even Greeks
(http://www.juancole.com/2013/12/photo-nicholas-white.html) were not
seen as "white.") In his high appointments, Trump has not completely
excluded minorities. though these appointees are either clearly
unqualified for the job (thus making the case for white supremacy in
an ironic way) or tied so closely in with the white Washington
class.
Trump also famously has contempt for women across the board, white or not.
His white nationalism and that of his Rasputin, Bannon, is in part
about male supremacy. White males are the alpha cohort, who can at
will grope strange women.
But as strong as the blatant racism and sexism of the Trump circle is,
we should not forget social class. Class helps form or tell against
"whiteness." The Irish and Poles were not considered white when they
first in part because came they did menial labor or were solidly working
Whiteness was about middle and upper middle class privilege.either.
Trump's cabinet is a cabinet of multi-millionaires and billionaires
who think the poor and the working class are not rich because they are
lazy, rather than seeing their economic struggles as deriving from not
being employed enough or not being paid enough. Andrew Puzder, Trump's
pick for secretary of labor, doesn't believe workers
(http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/12/our-new-labor-overlord
-think
s-workers-shouldnt-get-breaks) should get breaks and opposed all
minimum wage hikes.
Trump and many of his close advisers and appointees stand for white
privilege, for the rights of corporations manned by filthy rich
self-described "whites" to rule us without let or hindrance, without
regulation or consequence. On the surface, white nationalism attempts
to make it look as though only minorities are targeted as freeloaders.
But ultimately what they mean by "white" is people like themselves,
multi-millionaires and billionaires. All the rest of us are in some
sense "untraditional" or "unusual." The surprise awaiting the working
class Reagan Democrats is that Trump doesn't think they are really white,
What Happens After the Women's March?
'Informed Rant': Trump's Cabinet, Chelsea Manning's Commutation and
Poverty
Edward Snowden: 'Faith in Elected Leaders' Is a Mistake Americans
Keep Making
Women's March Live Blog: Mobilization of Activists Aims to Spread
Message of Resistance
Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
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