A Saudi doing pilot training in Florida ends up killing people.

Where have I seen this movie before...

Roughly 40 percent of this country would rather burn down the world than allow liberals a "win."

They’d rather burn their own houses down than live next door to black and brown people.

I don’t understand that mentality. I understand on an intellectual level just how deep racism is embedded in this country - what was colonization of North America, Native genocide, and the kidnapping and enslavement of African peoples but racism at its most brutal and systematic? - and how slaves and poor, marginalized and persecuted immigrants built (literally) this country, while rich white men benefited for centuries, but it’s one thing to understand the long history of this racism and colonialism. It’s quite another to WITNESS the associated fears and hatreds that cynical, opportunistic politicians and right-wing media figures are using in the here and now, or all of the Trump administration’s fascistic racist policies, notably on immigration, refugees, asylum-seekers, and so many other already marginalized social groups.

The emotional gut punch, trauma, and damage that this administration and its party - the Republican Party - has caused is likely permanent, regardless of whether Trump is defeated in the 2020 election or is impeached and removed from office. Nevertheless, we have to keep going, no matter how scarred or how scared we are, or our worst fears WILL come to pass.

Who here thinks both Trump AND Pence should be impeached and removed?

So, a majority of Republicans think Trump is a better President than Lincoln.

"There were many fine people on both sides of the Civil War...it was a big misunderstanding, Lincoln couldn't get a deal with the South, couldn't get it done. I would have done it, OK? I would have gotten a tremendous deal, oh God I'm so good at making deals. Obama couldn't get it done, Crooked Hillary blew it, people were saying it, no one said we could win. Biggest Electoral College victory ever. The polls were wrong, the media lied. Lying, dishonest people, the worst kinds of people I tell ya. Terrible. Disgusting and sick. Fake News. I have the greatest economy ever, we've created more jobs than anyone - more than Obama. Worst President ever, I turned it around, believe me. I turned it around. We're doing better than ever. Fake News won't tell ya that, but we're doing better than ever. Trump makes the best deals. I have the best people. Best ever in the history of this country. People are saying that. The best."

George W. Bush had 80-90 percent approval ratings after 9/11. Trump has barely half that...

...and Republicans are every bit as lined up behind Trump as they were under Bush in that period, if not more so.

What does that tell you?

They cut taxes , increase military spending, and deregulate everything while in office.

Then, when the economy inevitably goes into a recession, and if a Democrat is elected POTUS- particularly if that Democrat is, say, a black man, just as an entirely hypothetical example - they rally the racist troops to sabotage that Democratic President and distract people from their own (Republican) crimes and corruption.

Yes, George Wallace was a VERY important antecedent, as was another, even more racist George...

George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder and leader of the American Nazi Party, who was one of the pioneers of showing up at college campuses, civil rights demonstrations (especially those led by Martin Luther King, Jr.; Rockwell gained some notoriety for trying to sabotage MLK's Chicago protests), and other places where he could - to coin a phrase -"trigger the libs."

Republican voters like their leaders willfully ignorant and mean-spirited.

Republican donors like it too, but only because having a media attention-sucking figurehead provides them cover for their quiet nefariousness - enacting policies that screw the masses on behalf of the super-rich.

Good ole-fashioned All-American racism is the Trojan Horse for right-wing economic policies.

And time and time again, it’s worked.

As obvious as the overt white supremacy/fascist politics of the Trump admin is, let's not forget...

....that another tired old celebrity turned right-wing demagogue was elected President while explicitly pandering to - no, outright promoting - racist “states rights” narratives and tropes about “South Side of Chicago welfare queens” - along with outrageous and vicious claims that the US military would have won the Vietnam War if it hadn’t been for the “defeatists” at home, in Congress, in the “liberal media”, and the leftists and dirty hippies and other anti-war protestors at home. You know, if the military hadn’t been STABBED IN THE BACK.



During his Presidency, Ronald Reagan openly supported apartheid South Africa, devastated black America via slashing anti-poverty programs and the War on Drugs, destabilized much of Central America via support for the “Freedom Fighters” (right-wing death squads), all while presiding over an increase in far-right/white supremacist activity and violence (The Order, for example). The careers of people like David Duke and the more “respectable” Pat Buchanan - Reagan’s Communications Director - also took off during this period.

And lest we forget, Donald Trump first became a household name in Ronald Reagan’s 1980s. “Greed is Good.”


The more things change....