Moment of Truth

The Racist-in-Chief tweeted this morning that it was "sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can't change history, but you can learn from it."

Obviously he hasn't learned a goddamn thing from "history."

History teaches us that prejudice is wrong, that judging a person or a group solely on the basis of race is wrong; it teaches that prejudice leads to racism, a systematic denial of basic human rights to a group of people based on prejudice. History teaches us that racism leads to physical and mental suffering, to rape, enslavement, torture, murder, and genocide. The history of the 20th Century teaches us that racism is a virulent evil, one that must be eradicated for the good of humanity, indeed, for our very survival. The lessons of history teach us that racism left unchecked leads to war, destruction, and death.

America, for all its faults, was thought to have grown morally throughout the last century, to have reached a point where at least it was ready to outgrow racism, if not to actually begin to do so. The election of Barack Obama was hailed as “the end of racism!”  Some Americans had their doubts – I was one of them - but it seemed that the arc of history was truly bending towards justice.

Wrong.

The election of Donald Trump heralded a sharp reversal of this trend. The white nationalists, the neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan all celebrated his election, seeing it as evidence of their growing political power, and the ascension of one of their own to the White House. Neo-Nazis famously cried “Hail Trump!” after the stunning results of last November. And this past week, Trump proved that he truly was one of them.

Never before has an American President defended neo-Nazis. Never before has a President claimed that “there were good people on both sides” in describing a white race riot. Donald Trump dropped the semi-ambiguous facade he’s coyly maintained since the election, and came out foursquare for white racists and neo-Nazis. And in doing so, Trump betrayed his oath of office. By siding with the spiritual heirs of the Third Reich, with racists and anti-Semites, Trump has abandoned  his office, and spat upon the Constitution and the American people.

Donald Trump has unquestionably demonstrated his unfitness for office. His foul and unstable temperament, lack of experience, and documented racist and anti-American sentiments render him not only incapable of performing the duties of the President, but disinclined to do so! He wants to be a king; well, he can be king of the penitentiary, if the Mueller investigation bears fruit. He wants to be loved?—he should get a dog.

Trump’s now unquestionable racism should come as no surprise. Throughout his life, he has demonstrated racist thoughts and beliefs, and a pronounced tendency to lie, time and time again. From his very first appearance in the New York Times with his father, as the defendants of a housing discrimination suit brought against them by the federal government, his strident and false belief in the guilt of the  Central Park Five, his first forays into politics with his loud and continued promotion of the lie that Barack Obama was not born in America, to nearly every moment of his presidential campaign and time in office, starting with his lies about Mexicans at the beginning of his campaign, his lies about millions of imaginary unregistered voters, and continuing up to the present moment, which finds him defending neo-Nazis and racist white nationalists. Trump has now aligned himself with the most odious and hateful segment of the American populace.

This is a pivotal moment in American history. This is the time that in later years will be remembered as the moment when America at last lived up to its rhetoric, and rejected the evil in the White House, or the moment when the American Experiment finally faltered and died. It remains to be seen if we have the will to do what is right.

Liars and Deceivers From Day One

The Guardian has an exclusive report that only four days after inauguration, the Trump administration began to censor Agriculture Department staff, instructing them to avoid using the term "climate change":

Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead.

A series of emails obtained by the Guardian between staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a USDA unit that oversees farmers’ land conservation, show that the incoming Trump administration has had a stark impact on the language used by some federal employees around climate change.

This really shouldn't be a surprise, but it makes my blood boil The Secretary of State us the former CEO of Exxon/Mobil, most of the rest of the cabinet are billionaires. It's likely that the only ones who recognize the truth of climate change are the military men around t.Rump, Mattis, McMasters, and Kelly. The Defense Department isn't blinded by conservative ideology. Oh, and Ivanka, the Princess of America, and her consort Jared the Boy Wonder, are also believers in reality. But as this story shows, even while Agent Orange's hand was still burning from touching a Bible during his inauguration, he had started to warp the government to spread his lies. 

Climate change is not "an elaborate Chinese hoax," as Agent Orange has repeatedly said; it's real, its effects are all around us now, but Trumpistas would rather believe an orange huckster that what scientists, and now even their own eyes, are telling them. Why? Because "it's too hard" to understand science, because lying politicians and Bible-thumping con men in the pay of the oil companies told them not to believe experts who've spent their entire lives studying this, that they should listen to them instead and keep buying gas-guzzling cars and work in the coal mines, instead of supporting efficient public transportation, renewable energy, and intelligently-designed vehicles; they've been told that they should believe the lie that "renewable energy is a job killer" when in fact the opposite is true, that concern about the environment is "hippy nonsense." Will it be "nonsense" when Miami and New Orleans sink beneath the waves? Will the foolish conservatives on Wall Street believe it when they need to take a boat to work?

I admit that I came late to the environmental movement, I've always been more concerned about social and political justice for people of color. But, as a friend once said to me, "what justice will there be for anyone, when there's no planet to have it on?" They were right. Most of the planet now realizes this. America, alone in the world with just Syria and Nicaragua as company, is not a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement. Every other nation on Earth is. Thanks to this orange fossil in the White House, we're backing away from the future as fast as we can.

We have to remove this tange traitor, as fast as possible, by any means necessary. Him and all his minions.


 P.S. The New York Times reported (https://nyti.ms/2vdswoz) this evening that an as-yet unreleased draft report, authored by 13 government agencies, unequivocally states that climate change is real, is happening in the air, land, and seas right now, and we're suffering the effects already, and that it is without question the result of human activity. This is also the polar opposite of the pack of lies promulgated by these bastards. Let's see if they allow the report to be officially released.