Priorities

If anyone wants to find something good in the latest data showing 83% of Republicans approve of the way Donald Trump is handling race relations, I’m all ears. Either the POTUS is as misunderstood as his lackeys continually vomit to questions, after the knee jerk “whatabout Obama,” or more than 8 in 10 Republicans are bigots. I suppose we’ll all have to make our own decision on that one, but it’s hard to argue that the divisions in our country are not profound and deepening.

Some wonderful African-American teenage girls visited the Jersey shore the other day. For most it was their first trip to the ocean and they were naturally very excited. Hours later, a video shows what can only be described as surreal and vile. At Jenkinson Aquarium they went to a gift shop and met one of the 83%, who turned a dream into a nightmare, literally refusing to allow them to stay in the shop because they were black. To watch the video is to see something one couldn’t imagine just two years ago, and unmistakably tied to the national disgrace tallied in early November of 2016. This wasn’t Mississippi or Alabama, it was New Jersey.

At Trump rallies the resentment is, of course, palpable; and if you somehow can’t feel it, just wait for Trump to get started and he’ll throw it right in your face. On the President’s twitter feed, his dog whistles are getting less ambiguous. “Low intelligence” is specifically for Maxine Waters, LeBron James and Don Lemmon. Meanwhile, the venom sprayed at the “spoiled millionaires” uppity enough to silently take a knee during the national anthem leaves nothing to the imagination. It’s Trump’s GOP now and it is a white party, at its very best unempathetic to any gripes Black America may have, at worst unapologetically racist.

Like German Nazis in the early 30s, unable yet to fully impose their murderous will, this regime is all about distraction. Attack established norms across the entire landscape of American life and we won’t be able to keep up. One day it’s reckless tariffs, the next outrageous behavior in Brussels. Oh look, Betsy DeVos is gutting protections for disabled students, and, oh my god, did you see what Trump tweeted about Mueller today?! It is a relentless assault, forcing us to triage the damage, and prioritize where our attention should be focused. Multiple battles on many fronts.

Five or six years from now, should we lose the war, Omarosa will simply disappear, the story ignored within the Fox-Sinclair dominated news cycle. For now she’s getting her 15 minutes, but competing with a cacophony of other Trump noise.

So where does this Administration and the Party it now seems to fully control’s attitudes about race rank for our focus? One can rightly point to today’s GOP as a Party in its death throes, flailing against a flood of demographics. It will not survive as a viable political force unless it either adapts and moderates…or adopts extreme measures to reverse current trends. So the question becomes which avenue do they appear willing to take? That answer seems clear. And since the Party currently sits atop virtually our entire government apparatus, the machinery is in place. Anybody doubting how that power can be employed need only google “family separation.”

Just how grim are the numbers on race? Anyone want to bet on the proposition as to what the polling breakdown would be for, say, white cops asked if they approve how Trump is handling race relations? ICE officers? Intent and capability… that’s kind of the whole ball game. If the national legislative and executive branches are willing to provide approval to measures those with guns and authority will enthusiastically enforce at the state and local levels, where does that leave us? There are jail cells available to be filled, the absurd Trump meeting in Georgia last week on prison reform notwithstanding.

Our country has endured cataclysm before. The Civil War, Vietnam and Civil Rights, Watergate, 9/11, all provided critical challenges to our citizenry, whose response shaped whether we would survive with our freedoms in tact. The underlying assumption has always been without such liberties the whole deal ain’t worth squat. Moreover, as we’ve progressed as a going democratic concern, the pool of those fully entitled to such freedoms has expanded to…everybody! Trumpism challenges both propositions, one at a time. Bigoted GOP fools believe, just as their Johnny Reb and Jim Crow predecessors, that freedom for some and not others, or separate but equal justice, is good enough to secure the liberty required for them and theirs to prosper. That is a lie only the ignorant would buy into. Four out of five in the GOP apparently haven’t received that memo. That’s a battle worth fighting right now! BC