The GOP’s pathetic crybaby agenda: Trump, Scalia and the whiny, paranoid new face of the right
Republicans have no agenda. America won't fall for culture/religion wars anymore. Petulance is all they have left
BILL CURRY
We are numbed by Charleston; by its irrefutable proof of our still virulent racism and violent, gun-crazed culture, by being made to stare once again into the face of evil. Yet when the families of the slain stood up in court to voice forgiveness of Dylann Roof, we were startled and suddenly it was harder to divide us. Our politics is small to begin with; next to such staggering grief, it seems smaller still.
Like everyone on Facebook, Roof told us his life story in pictures. Absent the shots of him sporting the insignia of the Confederacy, apartheid and Nazi Germany, it’s hard to conceive of the Confederate flag being banished from Wal-Mart, let alone the ground of his state Capitol. Some may fly it out of mere nostalgia, but its core messages, now as always, are racism and sedition. It’s the flag of those who loved slavery more than their country; who sent hundreds of thousands to die rather than let one slave go free. A hundred and fifty years after Appomattox it is at last coming down. Long indeed is the arc of the moral universe.
The victory is more than symbolic. Fifty years ago as part of their post-Civil Rights Act national membership drive, Republicans began beaming coded racial messages to white voters. That code just got easier to crack. Fifteen years ago they began to amp up voter suppression under cover of absurdly inflated claims of voter fraud. If challenged on their motives or their facts they hurl furious denials. They can hurl all they want now. Debate has shifted. We’ve seen the pictures.
The slaughter of the Emanuel innocents was the most savage in a line of white-on-black slayings that pricked the nation’s conscience. The list of martyrs is long: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and countless others, known and unknown. Their deaths, though tragic, were not in vain. America is at last sifting through the evidence. A decade ago, most whites rejected every claim of racial disparity in our law enforcement and criminal justice systems. Now sentencing reform and cameras on cops are popular policies amongst all voters. We’ve a long ways to go, but there’s less doubt about where we’re headed.
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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/05/the_gops_pathetic_crybaby_agenda_trump_scalia_and_the_whiny_paranoid_new_face_of_the_right/
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Brilliant article!
