|
THE
DON JONES INDEX… |
GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED |
|
2/12/19… 16,242.03
2/5/19… 16,236.16 6/27/13… 15,000.00 |
|
|
(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 2/12/19…
25.053.11; 2/5/19… 25,411.52; 6/27/13… 15,000.00) |
LESSON for February 12, 2019 – HYPER-LINK’N!
Today is that day Don Jones remembers and honors Abraham Lincoln (even
if the actual holiday is kicked ahead a week and packaged with George Washington’s birthday).
Who breathes there who does not love Honest Abe Lincoln? Savior of the Republic, martyr to
emancipation, Rushmore face, big memorial statue, icon of the five dollar bill…
what’s not to like (even if the stingy bureaucrats of present day DC as
manipulate the public access to his monuments keep squeezin’
money out’n the public turnip and may well do so
again come Friday midnight)?
A lot of people… not all of them from below the Mason-Dixon line… back
in the day did not like Lincoln
including them, of course as had him assassinated, because the Emancipation
Proclamation cost some people money.
Serious money. Whole lotta fives, five hundreds, five thousands, too, in those
days when money was real money. In fact,
there are them as argue that the Civil War was not only a scheme to free the
slaves but, as well, a clear case of one of those revolutions Tom Jefferson
wrote about as are supposed to happen every generation or so to refresh and
revivify the American greatness. The
Yankee victory wasn’t just a repudiation of slavery, it was also a clear case of
urban industrial development snatching the reins of progress from the rural
agrarian idyll as had succored the dreams, reality, and realty… all three… of
Dixie (mostly to the benefit of its idle rich).
And the greatest screwjob of the turning
occurred among the white have-nots of the region as had fought and died for a
great patriotic dream, not for the cold, hard cash that human chattel
represented.
As Don Jones mostly sees it, now, this second American revolution… the rise of the smokestacks and assembly lines
and internal combustion engine… lasted until 1929 when its financial
underpinnings were swept away by the great depression. Like the Civil War, boats were sunk along up
and down the economic river. And now, he
might well say that we are on our way to… or already mired within… the Fourth
American Revolution (as Jack Parnell mentioned in one of his syndicated columns) wherein the
routine tasks of century-old machines were supplanted by new technologies as
vastly enriched a handful of Americans, but kicked others back into poverty.
The laid off, displaced and disrespected American industrial workers
(predominantly white, holding a status of at least the lower middle-class and
possessors of stuff like a house, a car, a TV set and, sometimes, money for the
education of their children), and particularly those in the so-called “rust
belt”, did not rise up and revolt in the manner of European Socialists, they
vented their anger downwards upon the
nwords
and elected a billionaire real estate developer to lead them onward to…
To what?
We are all caught up and tangled in history’s woven net, now, and some
of its strands being the mass media… the 2nd AR books, magazines and
newspapers, the 3rd AR radio and television and the 4th
AR electronic and social forums as narrowcast the spectra of news and
commentary into what is real and what is fake depending on the prejudices of
the consumer… we have elevated a tier of so-called experts as make their
livings explaining to us the real meanings
of the things that we do rather like the gypsy ladies used to dole out
predictions in their little tents on the carnival midway.
The worst of all proclivities are awash in symbolic conflicts which
inflame the races but do little or nothing to address the problems which… yes…
persist today.
Persons of whiteness out of the past must be exhumed, repudiated, erased
from the fabric of history as 13th century BC Egyptians destroyed all
memorabilia of their rogue Pharaoh Akhenaten as Iraqis desecrated statues of Saddam
and Russians pulled down likenesses of Lenin (only to see some of these
restored again as their current leadership replays that old Commie’s worst proclivities). And hereabouts, heroes of the Confederacy are
coming due for public or private reckonings…
Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Stone Mountain or the generic statuary of
legions of the Confederate dead, some named, some nameless.
Including… Lincoln?
Apparently…
in, of all places, the state of his nativity.
Various media
outlets in Chicago reported that Abraham
Lincoln has joined George Washington on the list of those targeted by
Chicagoans in a national debate over Civil War-era monuments.
Alderman
Raymond Lopez took to Facebook Wednesday night to decry the defacing of a
statue representing the nation’s 16th president in the Englewood neighborhood.
The giant bust appears to have been damaged after someone in the 15th Ward
sprayed and ignited a flammable liquid.
“What
an absolute disgraceful act of vandalism. This bust of Abraham Lincoln, erected
by Phil Bloomquist on August 31, 1926, was damaged
& burned,” Mr. Lopez wrote, a local NBC affiliate reported. “If anyone has
any information regarding this act, please contact the police or my office
immediately.”
“F-
Abe Lincoln,” responded Quintin Mitchell, whose comment was “liked” or deemed
“funny” by 160 others.
The
official’s finding came just one day after President Trump stated opposition to
tearing down memorials related to America’s past with slavery.
“I
wonder is it George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week
after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” Mr.
Trump asked reporters on Tuesday while addressing violence in Virginia.
Which brings us to events and occurrences since the 2016 elections; the
2018 midterms, the rise of political correctness… or squeamishness, as Rep.
Parnell prefers to call it… and what these events augur for the 2020 contest.
When Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union last week after a delay caused
by what now appears to be Shutdown One (the Senate,
today, forwarded to him a cave-in bill allowing only Chuck n’ Nancy’s second,
lowball offer of a 1.3 billion wall), the reaction of those Donald Joneses
neither employed by nor engaged with the media/hi-tech complex and living in
places other than New York or Hollywood or the D.C. government zone was more or
less positive – a fundamental appreciation of the patriotic platitudes, fear of
the conjured-up Mexican assassins lurking in the weeds,
and, mostly, relief that the effects of the shutdown as were only beginning to
affect them as gave the President’s popularity a
boost.
A temporary boost. Then Don Jones went back to work (as did the zookeepers
and tax collectors and air traffic controllers) and reality reasserted
itself. Mister Trump went back to being
unpopular. And, as for 2020, ABC wheeled
out its political correspondent, Matthew Dowd from the great state of Texas,
and what he said on Sunday morning regarding matters perky and political (the
Presidential posturing having, apparantly, washed
out), was this…
“They (the President, most Republicans and more than a few Democrats)
are gonna head for the wedge issues.”
Meaning hate.
Meaning race.
Click it or picket, but keep your guns cleaned because 2020 is going to
be intense and in-your-facc.
Whereas much of the appeal of the most extreme partisans of liberalism
was class war, a few of these… now…
have come round the circle to join hard right-wing Social Darwinist Warriors in
prompting and promoting race war –
albeit with differing partisanal sentiments. (Although, to be intersectional, there are
going to be a few other identity-based pogroms flitting about the edges of the
black hole… isn’t that racist?... gender, immigration status, age, ability or
disability, sexual orientation and, despite the paucity of widespread and
easily identifiable self-selections like that of hair length on males promoting
this or that political preference… maybe tattoos?... cultural
proclivities. After all, so high has the
haughtiness of some liberals risen than more than a few Trumpistas
profess pride in their
stupidity.)
But, mostly, it’s race.
Back in the Obama days – an event that the Pew
Research Center credited with engendering “a sense of optimism among many
Americans about the future of race relations” (as well as a sense of paranoia
among the white working and wish-they-were-working classes) – a series of “flashpoints”
had already exposed deep racial divides and reignited a national conversation
about race.
A
2015 nationwide poll conducted by CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation (see
Attachment One – A), found that roughly half of Americans -- 49% -- said racism
is "a big problem" in society today.
“The
figure marks a significant shift from four years ago, when over a quarter
described racism that way. The percentage is also higher now than it was two
decades ago. In 1995, on the heels of the O.J. Simpson trial and just a few
years after the Rodney King case surged into the spotlight, 41% of Americans
described racism as "a big problem."
It's
gotten worse, not better, since the 2008 election of President Barack Obama,
Ellis Onic told the CNN pollsters. The 56-year-old
African=American engineer in Balch Springs, Texas pointed to the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin and 2015’s Charleston church massacre as examples. Time and time
again, Onic says, the justice system has failed.
"The
white man has had his way for so long, they don't think of it as racism. They
think that's just the way it is. ... We have a long way to go, because the
justice system is not right. Justice is corrupt," he says. "That's
why she has the blindfold over her eyes and the scale slightly tilted, so you
know that it can go either way."
Is
racism on the rise in the United States asked the pollsters? Has our awareness
changed? Or was it a problem that's been blown out of proportion?
“There's
not a one-size-fits-all explanation for the shift. The survey of 1,951 Americans across
the country painted a complicated portrait, highlighting some
similarities across racial lines and also exposing gaps that seem to be
growing.
But
this much is clear: Across the board, in every demographic group surveyed,
there are increasing percentages of people who said racism is a big problem --
and majorities said that racial tensions are on the rise.”
A Pew survey taken a year later during June of 2016
(Attachment One – B) in the midst of that contentious election found profound
differences between black and white adults in their views on racial
discrimination, barriers to black progress and the prospects for change.
An overwhelming
majority of blacks (88%) said the country needs to continue making changes for
blacks to have equal rights with whites, but 43% are skeptical that such
changes will ever occur. An additional 42% of blacks believe that the country
will eventually make the changes needed for blacks to have equal rights with
whites, and just 8% said the country has already made the necessary changes.
A much lower share
of whites (53%) said the country still has work to do for blacks to achieve
equal rights with whites, and only 11% express doubt that these changes will
come. Four-in-ten whites believe the country will eventually make the changes
needed for blacks to have equal rights, and about the same share (38%) said
enough changes have already been made.
Two years later, with President Trump ensconced in
office, the Gallup people (Attachment One – C) measured racial attitudes and
came away with a significant deterioration since the 2016 election.
Americans’ personal
worry about race relations were already on the increase during the election
year of 2016 with 35% stating that they had a “great deal” of concern; that
percentage leaped to 42% after Donald Trump took office. Those somewhat or very dissatisfied with the
state of race relations increased from 64 to 72% after the election. And those somewhat or very dissatisfied with
the position of blacks and other racial minorities in the nation rose from 45
to 52%. (Satisfaction or its opposite
leveled off in 2018, perhaps because both black and white Americans were
growing used to… if not comfortable with… That Man in the White House.
A near-perfect manifestation of the wedge (howsoever weird) is now open
for public viewing in Virginia, this week, where the top three political
officials in the state (four of the top six) all violated the PC canon in one
way or another and are being pressured to resign their posts before an enraged
and righteous citizenry rises up to remove them by other means.
Horrorshow Number One: The Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, under conventional oppositional
fire for supporting abortions-on-demand, was outed (maybe) as evil incarnate by
a diligent right wing blog, Big League Politics for having donned either enough
shoe polish to approximate the countenance of an old blackface minstrel or the
white robes of a Klansman (or Halloween ghost).
Said evidence consisted of a photograph of the two abominations – side
by side – in a photograph placed next to that of Northam, with a properly Kavanaughist admonition… “There are more old drunks than
old doctors in this world, so I think I’ll have another beer.”
The evidence… young Master Northam’s advice to posterity being posted to
the side of his own mug and beneath the boo-hiss racists… seemed clear; Ralphie’s priorities at the time of the publication, 1984,
were lynching and beer. (Or the both, as
sometimes go together.)
Northam acknowledged the portrait and issued a boilerplate apology
calling the costume “clearly racist and offensive” and asserting: “This
behavior is not in keeping with who I am today and the values I have fought for
throughout my career…”
Within hours, however, "two people familiar with the events of that
evening" said that Northam "decided to take the blame" for the
photo due to the pressure on him to issue a statement, even though at the time,
Northam was still “confused” about the photo's origins, according to The Washington Post, thus offering up the second most
pitiful defense against being held responsible for his actions… “I don’t
remember.”
On Saturday, February 2nd, the innocent man dug himself an
even deeper grave when, “(i)n a bizarre moment during
Gov. Ralph Northam’s (D-VA) Saturday afternoon press conference on a racist
yearbook photo, the embattled lawmaker’s wife ordered him not to perform the
moonwalk after revealing he once wore blackface for a dance contest.” (Breitbart)
Northam (D-VA) tried to explain away the tempest by saying that he
darkened his face for a Michael Jackson costume in 1984 — the same year in
which he acknowledged Friday evening to have appeared in a photo with another
individual wearing blackface and a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
“My belief that I did not wear that costume or attend that party stems,
in part, by my clear memory of other mistakes I made in the same period of my
life,” Northam said. “That same year, I did participate in a dance contest in
San Antonio in which I darkened my face as part of a Michael Jackson costume.”
CBS News also reported that another picture from Northam’s 1981 yearbook
page shows that he was given the nickname "Coonman"
- a possible racial slur. He was also known as “Goose.” Northam proclaimed that he “had a lot of
African-American friends” and trotted out an excuse for why his nicknames back
in college had been “goose” and “coonman.”
“My main nickname was Goose, because when my voice would change, it
would change an octave,” he said. “There were two individuals, as best I
recollect. They were a year ahead of me, they called me [coonman].
I don’t know their motives or intent. I know who they are. That was the extent
of it. This ended up in the yearbook and I regret that.”
“Virginia needs someone that can
heal,” he pontificated on “Face the Nation”.
“There’s no better person to do that than a doctor,” Northam said.
“Virginia also needs someone who is strong, who has empathy, who has courage
and who has a moral compass. And that’s why I’m not going anywhere.”
And, over the weekend, he stepped in it again. Deriding the Gov’s
“apology tour”, USA Today referenced his appearance on "CBS This
Morning" in an interview that aired Monday wherein Northam referred to
"the first indentured servants from Africa" who arrived in
Virginia. Predictably, he garnered no
sympathy, but plenty of
backlash from critics accusing him of minimizing historic horrors
with a euphemism for slavery.
But now, after all that confessing and apologizing, he has walked back
his admission of guilt and maintains that, as a proper teens or almost twenties
multiculturalist, he could not possibly have been one of those sordid
stereotypes… moonwalk or not and dredged up the topmost melodramatic
twist. He was… The Innocent Man! Grist for a John Grisham or Scott Turow novel or for one of those lawyerly TV shows like
“Bull” (which has problems of its own) or the new outing with Frasier Crane as
a villainous prosecutor whose trailers are in heavy rotation on Fox. And although even most Democrats are
clamoring for his head, Virginia voters seem about evenly split as to his
guilt, with black voters taking Northam’s side by a nearly two-thirds
margin. More on this shortly.
Should Ralphie resign, or be impeached, or
commit suicide, the Virginia
Constitution (Article V., Section 16) orders…
“In the case of the removal of the Governor from office
or in the case of his disqualification, death, or resignation, the Lieutenant Governor shall
become Governor.
“If a vacancy exists in the office of Lieutenant Governor
when the Lieutenant Governor is to succeed to the office of Governor or to
serve as Acting Governor, the Attorney General, if he is eligible to serve as Governor, shall
succeed to the office of Governor for the unexpired term or serve as Acting
Governor. If the Attorney General is ineligible to serve as Governor, the Speaker of the House of
Delegates, if he is eligible to serve as Governor, shall succeed to the
office of Governor for the unexpired term or serve as Acting Governor. If a
vacancy exists in the office of the Speaker of the House of Delegates or if the
Speaker of the House of Delegates is ineligible to serve as Governor, the House
of Delegates shall convene and fill the vacancy.
“In the event of an emergency or enemy attack upon the
soil of Virginia and a resulting inability of the House of Delegates to convene
to fill the vacancy, the Speaker of the House, the person designated to act in
his stead as prescribed in the Rules of the House of Delegates, the President
pro tempore of the Senate, or the majority leader of the Senate, in that designated order,
shall serve as Acting Governor until such time as the House of Delegates
convenes to elect a Governor.”
… which brings us
to…
Horrorshow Number Two: Said Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is a young man – congenial and…
what a coincidence!... wholly black and without the
aid of shoe polish. A win-win situation
for the Democratic Party and its multicultural base, right? Except…
Two women, both African-American, have come forward in the wake of the Kavanaugh troubles and stated that they were “sexually
abused” (raped, to the unsqueamish) by Fairfax… one
of them at the 2004 Democratic Convention.
Fairfax has denied any wrongdoing, stating that any sexual intercourse
was consensual, but the consensus of the commentating class is that the women
have an even better believability quotient than the martyred Blasey-Ford.
Horrorshow Number Three: With Northam and Fairfax removed, the Governorship… and, of most
importance to all, the power to reconfigure legislative seats after the next
census, gerrymandering the districts so as to pack all Republicans into a
handful of deep, deep red inkblots and rig the remainder of the state so that
the Democrat candidate will be elected unless, to use the old adage, he or she
is found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.
Third in line in this game of thrones is the Attorney General, one Mark
Herring, who also confessed to donning blackface in the last century – this time
in order to impersonate Kurtis Blow. He
may well have blown his chance to ascend to the Governorship.
Horrorshow Number Four: The New York Times reported that
the political tumult in Virginia had “widened” Thursday as the State Senate’s
top Republican faced an onslaught of questions about racist photographs and
slurs in a college yearbook that he helped oversee, transforming the Capitol’s
nearly week-old crisis into a bipartisan reckoning over personal conduct.
That Senator, Thomas K. Norment Jr., who is
the majority leader, was the managing editor of the 1968 Virginia Military
Institute yearbook, which included slurs and images of students in blackface.
But the reason why this is an all-Democratic horrorshow
is because Norment is not fourth, but only sixth in the line of succession. Fourth place goes to his fellow Republican
Speaker of the House, Kirk Cox, a Bible-quoting, gun-waving darling of the
alt-right who has never… as of today… been accused or convicted of rape, of
wearing blackface or aiding and abetting such merry minstrels. Breitbart News’ Michael Patrick Leahy noted
that as Northam’s scandal continues to erupt, many Republicans see an
opportunity for the GOP to take back control of the state. Virginia’s changing
demographics have shifted towards Democrats over the past couple of decades.
Virginia elected its last Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, in 2009; the last
Republican elected to the U.S. Senate was in 2002. Not surprisingly, Cox has trained most of his
fire on Herring, declaring that he should resign while remaining coy on Northam
and Fairfax. (See Vox
on Cox… Attachment Three)
Herring, of course, is the sturdiest obstacle standing in the path to
power for the Speaker. On Wednesday, Herring
admitted to wearing blackface during a college party in the 1980s to look like
rapper Kurtis Blow. In the wake of the revelation, Herring resigned as co-chair
of the Democratic Attorney Generals Association. Herring called on Gov. Ralph
Northam to resign after a medical school yearbook photo showed two men– one of
them in blackface and the other in Ku Klux Klan attire. Northam also admitted
to wearing blackface.
What’s good for the goose… uh oh, another racist dog whistle?
In a statement on Wednesday, Cox called on Herring to adhere to the same
standard he applied to Gov. Northam and said he should resign; the pietistic
politician proclaiming…
“The last seven days have been tumultuous for
our Commonwealth. The revelations against and admissions by the leaders of the
executive branch are disturbing. The allegations of sexual assault against Lt.
Governor Fairfax are extremely serious. The Lt. Governor, the alleged victim,
and Virginians all deserve a full airing of the facts.The
belated admission from Attorney General Herring is shocking. He should adhere
to the standard he has set for others or he loses credibility.”
These current controversies will be resolved
in due course. In the meantime, we will continue our work on the budget and the
hundreds of bills remaining before us. The General Assembly will steadily
continue with the business of governing on behalf of Virginia’s 8.4 million
citizens. The people should be confident that our work continues unimpeded and
that the Commonwealth’s 100,000 state employees also continue to serve without
disruption. Our diverse Commonwealth has been deeply shaken by these
developments, but nonetheless remains economically vibrant, fiscally sound,
safe and secure.
Cox added, “We have weathered the storms of
four centuries and will weather this one as well. We continue to pray for
Virginia during this difficult time.”
Amen! Gotcha!
Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) Chairman Jack Wilson also called on
Herring to resign on Wednesday:
“The Republican Party of Virginia calls on
Mark Herring to resign his post as Attorney General. Like we have had to say
too many times this week, racism has no place in Virginia and dressing up in
blackface is wholly unacceptable.
“As we renew our call for Governor Northam’s
resignation, we must regretfully add Mark Herring’s name to the list of
Democratic elected officials that have lost the trust of the people of Virginia
and have lost the moral authority to govern,” Wilson added.
So far, none of the three little piggies have
tendered their resignations yet – evoking choleric comments from other
Democrats who fear being dragged down into the swamp more than they fear
passing up the opportunity to draw honest legislative lines as will decide
Virginia politics for the next decade. A
popular exchange (with apologies to the State of Georgia) is making the rounds
of the statehouse, and it goes like this…
“How are you doin’?”
“I’m peachy!”
African-Americans, however, are now themselves endangered by others
crowding their way into the big tent of the communities of victimhood. The travails of Spanish-speaking persons…
Hispanics to the right, Latinos to the left… remain percolating so long as
Mister Trump’s wall remains unfunded and that little telenovela is likely to
gain higher ratings this week inasmuch as the Senate Republicans have
apparently caved in passing a pitiful 1.3 billion wall erection budget and
sending it on to the President to be signed or vetoed by Friday.
As Djonald Unchained himself is fond of
replying when he seems not to understand the implications of those rabid bats
of policy flitting through his skull: “We shall see…”
Despite being shut out of the Oscar nominations, Asians seem not to have
a dog in this fight worth the mentioning.
The American and NoKo potentates have agreed
to meet in Vietnam… of all places!... at the end of the month for what seems
likely to be another round of photo opportunities resulting in little of
consequence in securing the security of the peninsula. China is a dozing tiger, Japan is ginning up for
the abdication of Emperor Akihoto at the end of
April. This marks the end of the Heisei
period, and will precipitate numerous festivities leading up to the accession
of his successor, Crown Prince Naruhito. The enthronement ceremony will likely
happen on 22 October 2019 and will likely see much sushi, sake and sukiyaki as
well as plenty of fireworks. SoKo is riding a wave of adulation and admiration as its
K-pop supergroup “Black Pink” takes to high-profile
stages all across Gotham and, soon, America.
Which leaves the Indians (to the right) or Native Americans (to leftists
and persons of the subcontinent tired of the mislabeling) to petition for their
share of outrage this week.
Over the weekend, Massachusetts Senator and
arch-liberal Elizabeth Warren bravely threw her feathery headdress and wampum
into the ring, declaring that she (along with 1,492 other Democrats) would be
running for President in… can it be?... just twenty-one more months. Sen. Warren launched her 2020 Democratic presidential bid during
a late-morning campaign event in Lawrence – a stirring stump speech served up
straight to you from 1931 or even 1812 (See Attachment Two) crafted to disguise
the fact that her campaign forest has been chopped down to acres of stumps. Until MassLive and
other forums took the time to transcribe the discourse, all that Don Jones had
to ponder was an automatically generated transcript
from ABC News, which was more likely the work of a Trump troll and went sort of
like this…
“We are here to
take on a flight. Doubt will shape our airlines our children's lives and our
grandchildren's. Lives jobs as surely. As the fight that began in these streets
more than a century ago. Or does the man in the White House is not the cause of
what is broken. He is just the latest and most extreme symptom. Of what's gone
wrong in America. A product. And rings since done. Props up the rich and
powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else. So once they've gone. We can't
pretend that none of this ever happen. It won't be enough just undo the
terrible acts of this administration. We can't afford just to tinker around the
edges a tax credit hero regulation there. Our fight is thorn big instruction.
Changed. Yeah it is good fight and our lions. The fight to build an America
where dreams are possible. An America that works for every wine. A and banners flying I stand here today. To declare that I
am a candidate for president yeah.”
This transcript
has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
You
think?
Warren would have seemed to be the perfect foil to President Trump – she
hates crooked bankers and spending American tax dollars on useless walls and
loves Medicare-for-all and tax increases for the rich (although not to the
extent of New York’s stentorian Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A Socialist lite… left of Hillary, right of
Bernie… Warren seemed ably positioned to capture the nomination of the donkey
boys (donkey girls, now) should Uncle Joe Biden stumble or wake up one morning
realizing that he’d be 78 if taking office in January 2021, 86 if surviving two
terms. Sort of like Russia after
Brezhnev.
And despite Trump’s tweets and the outrage among a few tribal elders,
the Native American ancestry controversy seemed to be benefitting the
candidate… after scoffers scoffed and the President offered a million dollars
if she could prove her membership in the Cherokee peoples, Warren solicited a
genealogist who deduced that she had a Native American ancestor somewhere back
between the 7th and 10th generations… situating such act
of miscegenation back to somewhere around the Revolutionary War. A smidgen, to be sure, but a legitimate
smidgen as silenced most of the naysayers except for the President, of course,
who continued to refer to her as “Pocahontas” and made up excuses not to pay
out the million.
And then, one of those sharp-eyed young persons as might be termed the
Sons of (Roger) Stone went digging through her past, failing to discover the candidate
in buffalo robes and wielding a tomahawk, but something that was, is, and will
be far worse.
In her application for admittance to the Texas Bar (legal, not alcoholic
– as the ABC transcript might indicate), Warren visioned
into being a ploy that would give her a boost over the hundreds of other
ordinary applicants… knowing full well that affirmative action was now the
flavor of the week in professional and academic admissions (even in Texas), she
filled out the application forms and in the little box reserved for race, wrote
in Native American. Technically, this
assertion was true if, as some persons of hate content, one drop of nonwhite
blood casts you out of the tribe, but… really… Warren being anywhere from 1/500th
to 1/2000th Native American and using this to gain an edge in her
application to the Texas bar might well be considered…
Fraud?
“The date
coincided with her first listing as a “minority” by the Association of American
Law Schools,” reveals another snoop doggy dogged right wing blog, Legal
Insurrection. “Warren reported herself
as minority in the directory every year starting in 1986 — when AALS first
included a list of minority law professors — to 1995, when her name dropped off
the list.
*Funny* how
she never volunteered this information. As with everything, she denies denies denies, until more
information is dug out by others. Then she only admits what people already have
uncovered.
Funny* how
she never volunteered this information. As with everything, she denies denies denies, until more
information is dug out by others. Then she only admits what people already have
uncovered.
“Democrats
are worried Warren’s Native American controversy will be like Hillary’s emails
— completely dominating the narrative of her campaign. Warren has not been
forthcoming with information, Democrats should be very worried. What else is
out there? What other shoes will drop if Democrats nominate her?
The reaction
has been swift and, if the question of perjury were left up to the LI peanut
gallery, the only Warren groundswell rising up from her burrow would be the
cry: “Lock her up! Lock her up!”
M.O. kicked
the lockup can down the hill
with the casual inquiry: “Too bad there’s not something on the
card that says she makes that declaration under penalty of perjury.”
Which
brought this from V.A…
“It’s in the fine print..Note
on the bottom of form under signature: (See Reverse side if Necessary)
You really don’t know that by signing the form card she was NOT averring to a
statement of being truthful and to acknowledge she read a separate statement of
rules and policy that may very well would be grounds to have membership and/or
being disbarred for perjury. It’s hard to believe that such a detail would be
missing from entry to a State American Bar Assn.”
And this,
from K.U…
This isn’t the Republicans’ doing.
It’s the Washington Post that apparently made the records
request and the ran the story.
They are undermining Warren’s chances early because she’s
clearly not nearly leftist enough and way too centrist for the Post.
They’re all gaga over Kamalalalala.
And the
inevitable dose of frat-boy racism from A.R.
“Too bad for Warren that she didn’t write it down in smoke
signals.”
Not to
mention a gratuitous, gloating tweets from the Trumps… Donald Senior…
“Will
she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided
that after 32 years, this is not playing so well? See you on the campaign
TRAIL, Liz!”
and Junior…
“Savage!!! Love my President!”
The DN’s lexicologically creative Brian Niemietz
found oodles of significance in the twittery afterTrump Jr. posted a sanitized version of his praises
for his father on Twitter, where he wrote: “Amazing. Love my president!!!”
“Pejorative references to Native Americans as “savages” is a long-held argument for justifying the manner
in which they were frequently treated,” Niemietz
scolds. “And the President’s choice to
capitalize the word TRAIL was seen by many to be a reference to Native American
history. As reported by ABC News, social media quickly exploded with speculation the
President was referencing the 20-year “Trail of Tears” massacre that saw more
than 10,000 Native Americans murdered when they were moved off their land
following the Indian Removal Act of 1830.”
Actor Rob Lowe, who played a presidential adviser on the TV
series “The West Wing,” also jumped into and out of hot water on Saturday. According
to The Hill, Lowe tweeted that Warren’s announcement would give
new meaning to “Commander in ‘Chief.’” He deleted that tweet and… like any good
Hollywood leftist terrified that any show of dissension from the party line
might lead to a bleak future of Japanese game shows, cravenly apologized.
Criminal or not, Warren’s decision speaks volumes about her character…
she lies, fudges the facts to fit her ambitions and, as far as running for or
being President goes, Donald Trump can get away with the “alternate facts” he spoonfeeds his base, but Warren cannot. Despite the hoopla, her campaign is toast –
her goose… sorry, again, dog-whistleblowers!... is
cooked.
Speaking of craven apologies, Warren exuded some “can’t we get along”
platitudes that didn’t save Rodney King from a beatdown
and won’t save her campaign from humiliation and disembowelment by both the intersectionalists and Republicans who are already secretly
hoping that she is the candidate,
fated to fall into the same pit of oblivion as awaits all amateur hypocrites.
Too bad – on most issues, she was the best that Don Jones could hope for
with a capacity both for getting elected and effecting positive changes. But her meltdown – worse than LBJ’s in ’68 or
Edmund Muskie’s in ’72 or Gary Hart’s in ’84 (all of which led to catastrophic
losses in November) – has to (secretly) inspire all of those other female
candidates seeking the crown… or, at least, a run for the Vice with Uncle Joe.
Warren doesn’t have to jump off a cliff like the heroine of “Running
Bear” – she will continue to be a viable prospect for any number of positions
in Biden’s administration - sinecures as
Treasury Secretary, Labor Secretary, Trade and Tariff queen – even Chairwoman
of the Fed (should Democrats recapture the Senate with enough warm bodies to
confirm her nomination). Probably not
Bureau of Indian (that’s racist!) Affairs!
But as a Presidential candidate… fuggedaboudit!
Race war theatrics are at their ugliest, most corpulent in the realm of
politics, but race-related violent crime and punishment has its protocols
too. Consider the case of the Irish
actor Liam Neeson, whose current movie “Cold Pursuit”
tanked after he stated, that there was a time, 40 years ago, that he used to
“roam the streets” looking for black people to kill after his girlfriend was
raped.
Neeson said he
carried a “cosh”, a sort of stick like a policeman’s billy club and told USA Today that he was not a
racist. (That he might be an idiot for
bringing a club to a potential gunfight went unmentioned, as did any sympathy
for the rape victim… in the Trump years, race apparently trumps gender).
“What used to be at the fringe is becoming mainstream, and it is
creating new norms,” a Berkeley professor added to the USA Today article. But George Yancy, a
philosopher and author of “Backlash…” said “a deeper examination of the
undercurrents of privilege and race in our society is unlikely to follow.”
That racial hostility has increased since the Trump election is no
wonder. But, as the polls cited prove,
America has been headed to an all-out race war for several years before that…
years in which, as Ta-Nehisi Coates averred, “We Were
Eight Years in Power” and perhaps presciently subtitled “An American Tragedy”,
What had happened? Nazis were
still holed up in their compounds, Mexicans and others either succeeded or
failed to cross the border – some of those who succeeded went to work for
Donald Trump.
(This from the President of the United States as Congress caved in to Chuck
n’Nancy, holding another campaign/wall rally in the
dirt roads of El Paso despite opposition by the Republican Mayor: “I don’t care
if the Mayor is a Republican or a Democrat – he’s full of crap.” Trump then said that nothing would solve the
immigration problem like a dog… “a good ol’ German shepherd”.)
There were, of course, the incidents of police and vigilante shootings
of unarmed blacks by whites, but these were rare – perhaps rarer than at any
time in the past when out-and-out lynchings
occurred.
Was the transformation of class war into race war a consequence of the
media… especially the new forms and forums of social media… having an
insatiable appetite for blood and conflict?
Of William Burroughs’ “nova techniques” of the for-profit media "always
creating as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate(ing) existing conflicts?"
Or did Don Jones surrender the distant dream of… if not perfect
equality… at least a rough sort of justice where people who worked hard and
took pride in the virtues of education and morality (not necessarily the
stilted and cruel self-righteousness of religious conservatives and, more
recently, wealthy liberals, but a commitment to doing an honest day’s work for
an honest day’s pay)? Did the banking
and hi-tech scandals of the new century cause most to give up hope of even
remaining in place and venting their rage upon “them”… whomever the overclass decided was “them”?
Or are Americans as evil as some of the shrillest multicuturists
assert? Weren’t Washington and Jefferson
and that gang slaveholders; Andrew Jackson an Indian (or Native American)
killer?
Even Lincoln! Was the Civil War
fought to free the slaves or to assert the dominance of the industrial North
over the pastoral South?
People of high regard for their own good intent might well look to the
past and ask: “What would Lincoln do?”
They might be unpleasantly surprised.
Some of the Great Emancipator’s biographers hold that Honest Abe had
some honest views on what would be the future of the freed slaves – and they
weren’t politically correct.
“On the afternoon of August 14, 1862, an American president did
something that no one could remember: He welcomed to the White House a
committee of five black leaders,” begins an analysis of Lincoln by Ronald White
(pgs. 510-11). A good thing, right?
Maybe not. “The group did not
include national figures such as Frederick Douglass, Lincoln told them that money “had been
appropriated by Congress, and placed at his disposition” for the purpose of
colonization.” And what was
colonization? The removal of the
still-enslaved race to Central America (others mention Haiti or Nigeria, even
Florida). And why?
“This physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think
your race suffer very greatly. Many of them by living among us, while ours
suffer from your presence.”
Other Lincoln loggers confirm the meeting. “Lincoln assumed the unfortunate tone of a
condescending father scolding ignorant children...” stated Michael
Vorenberg.
Lerone Bennett’s Forced Into
Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, depicts Lincoln as a white supremacist,
unworthy of the title “Great Emancipator”; his “Address on Colonization to a
Committee of Colored Men” advocates for separation of the races and the removal
of freedmen to Africa or Central America.
Politifact, asking “Did Abraham Lincoln plan to send
ex-slaves to Central America after the Civil War?” concluded that the
deportations would be voluntary and were, at any rate, rendered moot by the
Emancipation Proclamation and mooter by
assassination.
The New
American’s review of a recent book on the subject, “Colonization After
Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement”, authored by
George Mason University researchers Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page
cites Magness and Page’s exploration of Lincoln’s connections with the African
Colonization Society and other African resettlement societies, but also examine
sources highlighting “Lincoln’s elaborate and profoundly immoral plan to
relocate freed slaves to a Central American colony where they would function as
indentured servants for syndicates providing various commodities to the U.S.
armed forces in a mercantilist relationship” – a statement all the more exotic
given that the magazine is a satellite of the (yes, still alive) John Birch
Society and B.H. of its Peanut Gallery has this summation of the times, then
and now.
“Lincoln was an unusually wise man and realized that blacks and whites
would never get along. As recent news events indicate, he was correct.”
So this has been a long, strange and unpleasant lesson and there is
every chance it is going to grow even longer and more unpleasant until something,
somewhere, explodes. So let’s close… as
the televised news programmes do… with a little happy
talk, bittersweet to be sure, but of the nostalgic stuff that Don Jones laps up
like rum raisin ice cream.
Former Michigan Congressman John Dingell (See Attachment Four) died last
week at 92, and his passing brought tributes from both black and white
Americans (perhaps not a minute percentage of the former and somewhat larger
corps of the latterish MAGA-zines and bigots). Unique for his years, Dingell grew bolder and
more generous as he aged, and when he retired after 59
years in the House, he became the anti-Trump of Twitter… "The best way to
stop an unstable 70-year-old with an itchy Twitter finger,” he texted, “is the
world’s greatest 90-year-old Twitter user.”
The government
shutdown is over (at least until Saturday morning) and the Congressional
approval of a budget was a relief to most Joneses save the angriest dittoheads of Trump’s base (and perhaps a few of the lazier
government workers who enjoyed a month’s vacation with pay… someday… and could
be betting on a repeat). The deal… a
total and unequivocal cave on the part of Mitch McConnell and the Republicans
who held their nose, assessed the risks of consent in November, 2020 (grim) or
those of primary challenges beforehand (grimmer) and then voted accordingly –
sending the budget on to Trump by a 93-7 vote.
The DJI was slightly
positive (despite a drop in the Dow) because increasingly thrifty Americans
bought less foreign stuff than usual, therefore lifting the trade deficit to
under fifty billion. (The national
deficit, on the other hand, surged to nearly 22 trillion. And all of those inclined enjoyed the
Grammies and, now that football season is over, are looking forward to the
Oscars, and to March Madness… hopefully basket or “batsket”ball
(see below) and not another month of bad weather and untrained air traffic
controllers directing planes into one another.
|
THE DON
JONES INDEX CHART of
CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000 (REFLECTING… approximately…
DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013) See a further
explanation of categories here… ECONOMIC
INDICES (60%) DON JONES’ PERSONAL ECONOMIC INDEX (45% of TOTAL
INDEX POINTS)
LIFESTYLE
and JUSTICE INDEX (15%)
The Don Jones
Index for the week of February 12th through 18th, 2019 was UP 5.87 points. The Don Jones Index
is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and
Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator/Editor. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations
that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former
Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references
to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are
fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” –
and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this
and/or other such slanders. Comments,
complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com |
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See further indicators at Economist - https://www.economist.com/economic-and-financial-indicators/2019/02/02/economic-data-commodities-and-markets
ATTACHMENT ONE (A) – Three
Uneasy Pieces from CNN (2015)
Race & Reality in America
Debora Aust sees it in
videos of recent police shootings.
Alex Sproul reads about it in his Facebook feed.
Sheryl Sims senses it when she walks down the street.
They are three Americans from three different
demographic groups living in three different states. And they believe the same
thing: Racism is a big problem.
The new threat: 'Racism without racists'
Their voices are just a few in a country of more than
322 million people. But they are far from alone.
In a new nationwide poll conducted by CNN and the
Kaiser Family Foundation, roughly half of Americans -- 49% -- say racism is
"a big problem" in society today.
The figure marks a significant shift from four years
ago, when over a quarter described racism that way. The percentage is also
higher now than it was two decades ago. In 1995, on the heels of the O.J.
Simpson trial and just a few years after the Rodney King case surged into the
spotlight, 41% of Americans described racism as "a big problem."
Is racism on the rise in the United States? Has our
awareness changed? Or is it a problem that's been blown out of proportion?
Go ahead, admit you're a racist
There's not a one-size-fits-all explanation for the
shift. The survey of 1,951 Americans across the country paints a complicated
portrait, highlighting some similarities across racial lines and also exposing
gaps that seem to be growing.
But this much is clear: Across the board, in every
demographic group surveyed, there are increasing percentages of people who say
racism is a big problem -- and majorities say that racial tensions are on the
rise.
'A different story'
It caught Debora Aust by
surprise.
The 48-year-old white woman from Sterling Heights,
Michigan, says she didn't expect racism to get worse.
"It always seemed like it was getting better,
like our generation was going to be better than previous generations,"
says Aust, who participated in the CNN/KFF poll.
"But the TV started telling us a different story, with all of these
shootings by cops."
For Aust, whose father and
uncle both work in law enforcement, the news stories she's seen about unarmed
African-American men being shot by police have hit home. The officers should be
held accountable, she says.
How Ferguson could be America's future
"What's not helping is the police are getting off
with a slap on the wrist. ... If it was me, and I was black, and this was
happening in my community, I would be furious," she says.
The case of Walter Scott, who was shot in April by an
officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, sticks out in her mind. The trial
hasn't started yet. The officer's attorney says he plans to plead not guilty,
and that race has nothing to do with the case. But Aust
has already made up her mind.
"I mean, give me a break, he wouldn't have done
that if the man was white, and that's the problem," she says.
It's gotten worse, not better, since the 2008 election
of President Barack Obama, says Ellis Onic. The
56-year-old engineer in Balch Springs, Texas, who's African-American, points to
the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin and this year's Charleston church
massacre as examples. Time and time again, Onic says,
the justice system has failed.
"The white man has had his way for so long, they
don't think of it as racism. They think that's just the way it is. ... We have
a long way to go, because the justice system is not right. Justice is
corrupt," he says. "That's why she has the blindfold over her eyes
and the scale slightly tilted, so you know that it can go either way."
Race & Reality in America
• Poll:
49% say racism a 'big problem'
• 4 ways
we can show hidden biases
• How
Americans feel about racism
• 'I still
believe in the American dream'
• Why
blacks believe more than whites
• What
discrimination looks like today
Jim Bruemmer sees things
differently.
The white, 83-year-old retired advertising executive
in St. Louis, who participated in the CNN/KFF poll, says media coverage
alleging racism -- particularly when it comes to law enforcement officers --
has been overblown.
"I am troubled by the bias I see in the media,
that seems to spend all its time talking about the bad policemen and the bad
white people and ignoring the crime and the disastrous conditions that are
occurring in large segments of the black youth," he says.
Bruemmer says he's had to look no further than a suburb of St.
Louis to see that firsthand.
"The belief is so universally held among the
people I know, that the whole Ferguson thing was a farce," he says,
"that 'hands up, don't shoot' was baloney, that the police officer behaved
in a very proper manner and saved his own life, possibly."
Gauging changes in racial attitudes is complicated,
says Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a professor of sociology at Duke University.
Bonilla-Silva has a phrase he uses to describe the situation he sees today:
"new racism."
The fallacy of colorblind post-raciality
"After the 1960s and early 1970s, somehow we
developed the mythology that systemic racism disappeared," he says.
Racism remained, according to Bonilla-Silva, but
became more covert.
"The main problem nowadays is not the folks with
the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits," he says.
"New racism," he says, has been decades in
the making. But something has changed in recent years -- access to cell phones
and social media.
Accusations that police use excessive force,
particularly against African-Americans, for example, now can get far more
attention -- far more quickly -- than ever.
Communities of color across the country can more
easily connect, according to Bonilla-Silva, and people are picking up on
patterns that scholars have long discussed.
Racism without racists?
"People
are doing Sociology 101. They can connect Walter Scott, the assassinations of
black folks in a church, the slamming of a girl in a school," he says.
"And then it's across the nation. People are then connecting the dots and
saying, 'No more.'"
Growing
awareness?
While
the trend of a growing percentage of people viewing racism as a big problem in
recent years was true across racial lines in the CNN/KFF poll, the share who
see it as a problem is notably higher among blacks and Hispanics.
About
two-thirds of blacks (66%) and Hispanics (64%) said racism is a big problem,
while just over four in 10 (43%) whites said the same. Hispanics are much more
likely now to say racism is a big problem than they were in 1995, when less
than half responded that way. Among blacks, the share who said racism was a big
problem dropped from 68% in 1995 to 50% in 2011, and now has climbed back to
66%.
Majorities
across races said tensions between racial and ethnic groups in the United
States have increased in the past 10 years. Roughly a quarter said tensions
have stayed the same.
Sometimes
the way people view racism can play out like a referee's call in a baseball
game, says Glenn Adams, a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas
who has studied perceptions of racism.
"Is the guy out or safe? Well, it depends
who you're rooting for," he says. "Sometimes it's clear in either
direction, but we tend to see it how we want to see it."
It's
likely the level of racism in the United States is more or less the same, Adams
says.
"What's
changed," he says, "is that more people are aware of it."
Knowledge
of history, having friends who've experienced racism and personal background
are all factors that can contribute to a greater awareness of racism, he says.
And now, he says, there's likely another factor at play.
Black
or white: Kids on race
"People
are more aware of it because of the videos of police violence and the media
attention. Now, the media report on it," Adams says. "Black folks
tended to know about this before. Now white folks are starting to know about it
more. ... Now, with this kind of evidence, people have to re-evaluate their
sense of what is true and what is not true, so it becomes a little bit harder
for people to deny."
The
same goes for repeated incidents of racism on college campuses, Bonilla-Silva
says, like the chant that shuttered a fraternity at the University of Oklahoma
and the noose found hanging at Duke this year.
It's
impossible to dismiss cases as isolated events, he says, when similar situations
at schools and other institutions keep happening again and again.
"The
fact that it keeps happening tells you that the problem is not a problem of bad
apples," he says, "but perhaps the problem is the apple tree."
'We're
all kind of in the same boat'
Because
of his complexion, sometimes people think Rick Gonzales is Italian. Sometimes
they think he's Mexican or Middle Eastern. The experience, he says, has made
him question the meaning of race.
"It's
obviously a label. Something tells me that we're all kind of in the same boat,
yet we're separated somehow. We're given different names," says Gonzales,
a 49-year-old truck driver from San Antonio, who participated in the CNN/KFF
poll.
Gonzales'
mother is from Mexico and his father is from the United States. He says he
feels that for people in power -- most of whom are white -- it's advantageous
to pit groups against each other. And to him, it seems like no matter what,
darker-skinned people are at a disadvantage. That, he says, is why race -- and
racism -- remain big problems.
"The
ones that are usually getting the short end of the stick are the so-called
minority ... but we're the majority, because we're always the ones who are
struggling," he says.
Sheryl
Sims, an African-American, 59-year-old retired teacher in Atlanta who
participated in the CNN/KFF poll, says that for her, racism is something she
senses when she walks down the street in her neighborhood.
"It's
just the way people will shun you," she says, "or turn their head
when you walk by."
Things
were worse 50 or 60 years ago, Alex Sproul says. But now, the 24-year-old, who
lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and participated in the CNN/KFF poll, says
he sees racism lurking under the surface.
From
wage inequality to accessibility to jobs, Sproul says he feels minorities are
still at a disadvantage.
Sproul
describes himself as mixed race -- Mexican-American and white. He says several
events in recent years have made him feel racial tensions are on the rise.
One
of them, he says, was the 2009 shooting death of Oscar Grant, an unarmed
African-American man who was fatally shot by a police officer on a Bay Area
Rapid Transit platform. Sproul says he first learned about the case when he was
scanning his Facebook feed and saw posts from friends.
"You
kind of see more of these situations, or extremes," he says. "I don't
know if maybe it was going on before and there was no coverage, or if it's
happening with greater frequency."
Too
much hype?
Bruemmer, the retired advertising executive in St.
Louis, says he sees racism as a big problem -- but not for the reason you might
think.
Too
often, he says, leaders play the race card rather than addressing what he sees
as the real issue behind many of the problems popping up in society today:
broken families, particularly in the black community.
"The
massive problem that I see is that our leaders at the highest level ... do not
even want to recognize or even acknowledge that this problem exists, and
therefore they spend huge amounts of time demonizing the police force, throwing
gasoline and making the problems much worse," he says.
Racism
is inevitable in any society, he says. But now, he fears that because of bad
leadership, tensions are on the rise among some groups in the United States.
"I
think the racism and the hatred of the white race has grown to the point where
it's worse than in the other direction. ... I think the anger and the racism is
much worse from black to white than white to black," he says.
Searching
for common ground
It's
hard to draw a clear conclusion when the reasons behind respondents' answers to
a survey question can vary so widely, says Mark Naison,
a professor of history and African-American studies at Fordham University.
"People
may agree that racism is worse," he says, "and disagree profoundly on
who the targets and victims are."
"Simmering
rage," he says, has been fueled by backlash after Obama's election, the
economic struggles of lower- and middle-income whites and demographic shifts
across the country.
"Latent
racism is becoming more open, because a lot of people are feeling
threatened," he says.
But
Naison says he's also noticed a significant change in
his classes.
"People
are able to empathize, communicate and talk honestly across racial lines much
better than they did five years ago, and certainly 10 years ago and 20 years
ago," he says.
Why?
Naison says the changing world students are living
in, full of far more multiracial families and friendships, has played a big
role. A video of a police beating, he says, resonates for people now because
they're not looking at those involved as strangers.
"It's
not just that guy over there," he says. "You could be beating my
cousin or my boyfriend."
The
mix of "simmering rage" and growing empathy is a complicated
equation, he says, that adds up to more people talking about race -- and
racism.
And
it's a conversation, according to Naison, that isn't
going away any time soon. If people from different backgrounds can open up
about their concerns and find common ground, it could be a good thing, Naison says, like a therapy session on a national scale.
"That
conversation is difficult," he says. "But our history is difficult.
Our present is difficult. We need to talk about it."
The
CNN/Kaiser Family Foundation poll was conducted August 25-October 3, 2015,
among a random national sample of 1,951 adults, including 501 Black and 500
Hispanic respondents. Results for all groups have been adjusted to reflect
their actual national distribution. Interviews were conducted on conventional
telephones and cellphones, in English and Spanish, by SSRS of Media, Pa. This
poll was jointly developed and analyzed by CNN and staff of the Kaiser Family
Foundation (KFF). Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error
of plus or minus 3 percentage points; for results based on African Americans or
Hispanics it is plus or minus 6 percentage points.
(CNN)A group of women
were chatting and laughing together like old friends when the subject turned to
race.
One of them said she
was amazed that Donald Trump, while running for president, could get away with
describing Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and "killers."
"If you kick
every Latino out of this country," another chimed in, "then who is
going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?"
Someone gasped and
there was an awkward pause. One of the group was of Puerto Rican descent and
two others were African-American. They were all panelists on the ABC show,
"The View," and their conversation before a studio audience was being
broadcast live.
The woman whose
comment derailed the perky talk-show banter was reality TV star Kelly Osbourne,
who is white. She later took to Twitter to "take
responsibility for my poor choice of words," but added, "I will not
apologize for being a racist as I am NOT."
No one is ever a
racist, judging by the parade of apologies from celebrities, politicians and
even police officers caught acting in apparently racially offensive ways. But
here's a thought: What if a white person called out for such behavior instead
said, "What I did was racist, and there's no other excuse. I was
wrong."
Is the American public
ready for that? Has any public figure ever successfully made such an admission?
"I'd be relieved
if anyone would admit that, but I'm not holding my breath," says Brit
Bennett, an African-American journalist and author who writes about race.
"People get more upset at being called a racist than the injustice of
racism."
A year after racial
protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, Americans are talking about racism in
more sophisticated ways. More people now use terms like "racial bias"
and "systemic racism." Yet the way many people use the word "racist"
has not evolved. It is still stuck in a bygone era when the only racists were
people burning crosses, say some civil rights activists, commentators and
historians.
Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter"
Chapman's reality show was briefly suspended in 2007 after his son recorded a
profanity-laced conversation in which Chapman repeatedly used the N-word.
Chapman issued an apology, saying, "I am deeply disappointed in myself for
speaking out of anger to my son and using such a hateful term. ... I should
have never used that term."
WWE
recently fired former wrestler Hulk Hogan after he was caught on tape using the
N-word and complaining about the prospect of his daughter being intimate with a
black man.
The
Food Network fired celebrity chef Paula Deen in 2013
after court documents revealed she used the N-word and made anti-Semitic jokes.
Both
Hogan and Deen apologized. During a tearful interview
on NBC's "Today" show, Deen said she was
not a racist. And Hogan apologized, saying the racial epithets he used were
"inconsistent with my own beliefs" and "is not who I am."
At
times, such claims of racial innocence anger people as much as the offensive
words themselves, some African-Americans say.
"The
constant denials are insulting," says Saptosa
Foster, a black woman who is managing partner at the 135th Street Agency, a
public relations firm that represents Hollywood clients.
"I'm
disappointed when I hear someone say that [they're not racist] when they are
caught on tape or a recording blatantly spewing racist beliefs," Foster
says. "Either they don't realize they're racist and don't understand what
racism means, or they're unwilling to confront the issue head-on."
So
what would happen if a white person decided to admit he's been a racist? Would
there be a way to do it and not court widespread contempt? How would racial
minorities react to such honesty?
American
history doesn't offer many answers to those questions. Former Alabama Gov.
George Wallace came close to such an admission in 1982 when he said he had been
"wrong" about race.
In
the 1960s, Wallace had been a sneering opponent of the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. and an enemy of the civil rights movement. He was confined to a wheelchair
after surviving an assassination attempt in 1972. Later in life, while running
for a fourth term as governor, he publicly apologized for his segregationist
views and asked civil rights leaders for forgiveness. Yet some people wondered
whether his actions were sincere, or if he just needed the support of black
voters for political survival.
Republican strategist Lee Atwater had a
similar moment while dying of a brain tumor. In 1988, Atwater had helped create
the infamous Willie Horton television ad that some say played on racial fears
while helping elect George H.W. Bush as president.
Horton
was a black Massachusetts prisoner who, while on prison furlough, raped a white
woman and stabbed her husband. Atwater deployed a menacing portrait of Horton
during Bush's campaign and vowed he would make Horton the "running
mate" of Bush's Democratic opponent, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael
Dukakis.
In
1991, Atwater apologized to Dukasis for the
"naked cruelty" of his statement, saying "it makes me sound
racist." But, like with many apologies since, Atwater added: "I am
not."
Some
private individuals, though, have taken a path that public figures declined to
take. They are white pioneers, pushing our national conversation on race in new
directions. Some call themselves "anti-racists."
Jennifer
Louden, a self-help author and blogger, recently wrote a painfully honest essay
entitled "Yes, I Am a Racist."
In
it, she describes unwittingly absorbing racist attitudes from her mother. Even
today she says she sometimes feels discomfort around people of color because
she says she is "routinely, consistently, profoundly biased."
"Yes,
we all have unconscious biases, but white people's biases support a racist
system," she writes.
Naison,
the civil rights activist, says he took a similar step years ago when he
confessed his racism to his then-girlfriend.
He
says he was in a relationship with the woman, who was black, in the mid-1960s
when he came across an essay she had written for a college course. He was
shocked as he read it -- because it was so well-written.
Here
was a white man who thought he was beyond racism because of his relationship
and his civil rights activism. But his shock turned to shame when he realized
why he was so surprised -- he had somehow assumed his girlfriend was
intellectually inferior.
"I
thought, 'Holy s**t, this s**t is in me, too,'" Naison
says. "I not only have to struggle with this on the outside world but
struggle with what's inside of me."
He
says he confessed his racism to his girlfriend and they went on to have a
six-year relationship. Today, he makes that practice of ruthless
self-interrogation a habit. He asks his black friends and colleagues to
confront him if they hear or see him acting in a racist way.
And
sometimes they do, which he says actually builds trust.
"People
trust me to be honest," he says. "They don't always trust me to be
right. They trust me to be open to criticism. When it's time for struggle, they
can count on me. Even if I say stupid s**t, they know I'll be in the trenches
with them."
He
says he hasn't been shunned by a single black person when he's been open about
his internalized racial biases.
"People
are shocked that a white person is honest and trusts them enough to put that
s**t on the table," he says. "I've never had a black person pull away
from that."
The
dangers of 'racist rehab'
Foster,
the black publicist, says she wouldn't shun a public figure who admitted being
a racist after getting caught in the act.
"It
would be so remarkable and probably be an example for not just other public
figures," she says, "but for the general population to start to look
at racism as almost a sickness and as a series of beliefs that can be
unlearned."
She
says black people have a deep capacity to forgive. She cited the reaction of
black churchgoers who publicly forgave the white racist who recently killed
nine worshippers, including the pastor, at a black church in Charleston, South
Carolina.
"Black
people would understand," she says.
Putting
on a public relations hat, Foster says most human beings would understand,
because people like it when others are upfront about their mistakes.
Individuals
purging their souls and admitting their racism -- worth very little.
Corporations and our government admitting their racism -- priceless. -- Doreen
E. Loury, director of Pan African Studies at Arcadia
College in Pennsylvania
"When
people come out and say I'm a sex or drug addict and lay it out there, people
tend to gravitate toward them for owning up," she says. "It can start
a turnaround."
Bennett,
the black journalist, once wrote in an essay entitled, "I Don't Know What
to Do with Good White People," in which she quoted her mother saying
something that some black people only admit privately: It's easier for them to
deal with an avowed racist than someone who denies it.
"'It
was a lot simpler in the rural South,' my mother tells me. 'White
people let you know right away where you stood,'" Bennett wrote.
A
little more racial honesty could heal, not just hurt, she says.
"If
we could think of interpersonal racism as something that people do -- rather
than something that they are -- it would actually be a lot easier to
correct," she says. "You could challenge someone's racist speech, for
example, without condemning them as a person but in hopes of encouraging them
to think more carefully about their language and its implications."
Perhaps
people could treat someone who admits to being a racist like someone who admits
to having a drinking problem, says Podair, the
American studies professor.
"In
Alcoholics Anonymous, you're supposed to stand up and say, 'I'm an alcoholic'
-- it's a catharsis,'' Podair says.
"People don't turn their back on you. They say we're here to accept
you. Let's work through this. It's nonjudgmental and nonconfrontational."
Others,
though, warn that taking a therapeutic approach to racism threatens to reduce
racism to what one person feels about another.
In
its most destructive form, racism is a system of advantage based on race where
institutions -- prisons, banks, corporations - wreak more havoc than bigoted
individuals, says Doreen E. Loury, director of Pan
African Studies at Arcadia College in Pennsylvania.
"Individuals
purging their souls and admitting their racism -- worth very little," Loury says. "Corporations and our government admitting
their racism -- priceless."
Loury
says treating racism like an addiction could lead to a situation where people
rationalize their racism instead of trying to change it, she says.
The
self-confessed racist would be like the crying sinner who never changes, she
says.
"The
so-called sinner who drinks all week, beats and cheats on his wife and gambles
all his money away and says, 'Lord forgive me' on Sunday lasts until Wednesday
and then starts with the same behavior all over again, knowing he can ask the
Lord for forgiveness on Sunday because he's only human and born into sin,"
she says.
Looking
for a step forward on the issue
Podair,
the historian, concedes that giving people permission to publicly admit to
their racism is risky. South Africa created a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in 1995 to help reconcile victims and perpetrators of apartheid, but
nothing like that exists in the United States.
"It
has a genie-in-a-bottle quality about it where we don't even know where it
goes," Podair says. "If you give whites
free rein to say, 'I am a racist,' God knows where that could lead."
He
says racial minorities will ultimately be the "gatekeepers" who
decide if and when public and private figures can admit they're a racist.
Whites will take their cues from them.
"It
would be a step forward to create an atmosphere where a Hulk Hogan could say,
'Yes, I have racist thoughts, racist ideas, but that's not all of me and not
everything I think about race,' " Podair says.
"We
need to find that language, something that allows you to do that," he says.
We
don't seem to have it now. That was obvious in the panicked expressions that
spread across the faces of the panelists on "The View" after Kelly
Osbourne tried to explain her Trump statement. One of the co-hosts quickly
changed the subject to fashion, and then the show went to a commercial.
One
day, however, someone may rewrite that script. She's not going to say, "I
don't see color," hire an army of publicists or tell everyone she has
biracial grandchildren. She's going to say, "Whoa, I'm a racist."
"One
brave person, if they were to step forward, that would be a banner step,"
says Foster, the publicist. "I'm not saying it's going to solve our
problem, but it would be such a huge step forward in addressing race relations
in this country."
At
the least, it'll make for great television. And who knows -- it might make for
a better conversation on race.
ATTACHMENT ONE (B) - From
the Pew Research Center (June 2016)
Perceptions of how blacks are treated in the U.S. vary
widely by race
These findings are based on a national survey by Pew Research
Center conducted Feb. 29-May 8, 2016, among 3,769 adults (including 1,799
whites, 1,004 blacks and 654 Hispanics).2 The survey – and the analysis of the
survey findings – is centered primarily around the divide between blacks and
whites and on the treatment of black people in the U.S. today. In recent years,
this centuries-old divide has garnered renewed attention following the deaths
of unarmed black Americans during encounters with the police, as well as a
racially motivated shooting that killed nine black parishioners at a church in
Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
The survey finds that black and white adults have
widely different perceptions about what life is like for blacks in the U.S. For
example, by large margins, blacks are more likely than whites to say black
people are treated less fairly in the workplace (a difference of 42 percentage
points), when applying for a loan or mortgage (41 points), in dealing with the
police (34 points), in the courts (32 points), in stores or restaurants (28
points), and when voting in elections (23 points). By a margin of at least 20
percentage points, blacks are also more likely than whites to say racial
discrimination (70% vs. 36%), lower quality schools (75% vs. 53%) and lack of
jobs (66% vs. 45%) are major reasons that blacks may have a harder time getting
ahead than whites.
More broadly, blacks and whites offer different
perspectives of the current state of race relations in the U.S. White Americans
are evenly divided, with 46% saying race relations are generally good and 45%
saying they are generally bad. In contrast, by a nearly two-to-one margin,
blacks are more likely to say race relations are bad (61%) rather than good
(34%). Blacks are also about twice as likely as whites to say too little attention
is paid to race and racial issues in the U.S. these days (58% vs. 27%). About
four-in-ten whites (41%) – compared with 22% of blacks – say there is too much
focus on race and racial issues.
Blacks and whites also differ in their opinions about
the best approach for improving race relations: Among whites, more than twice
as many say that in order to improve race relations, it’s more important to
focus on what different racial and ethnic groups have in common (57%) as say
the focus should be on what makes each group unique (26%). Among blacks,
similar shares say the focus should be on commonalities (45%) as say it should
be on differences (44%).
About a third of white Americans say Obama has made
race relations worse
When asked specifically about the impact President
Barack Obama has had on race relations in the U.S., a majority of Americans
give the president credit for at least trying to make things better, but a
quarter say he has made race relations worse. Blacks and whites differ
significantly in their assessments. Some 51% of blacks say Obama has made
progress toward improving race relations, and an additional 34% say he has
tried but failed to make progress. Relatively few blacks (5%) say Obama has
made race relations worse, while 9% say he hasn’t addressed the issue at all.
Among whites, 28% say Obama has made progress toward
improving race relations and 24% say he has tried but failed to make progress.
But a substantial share of whites (32%) say Obama has made race relations
worse. This is driven largely by the views of white Republicans, 63% of whom
say Obama has made race relations worse (compared with just 5% of white
Democrats).
When asked about their views of Black Lives Matter,
the activist movement that first came to national prominence following the 2014
shooting death of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white police officer in
Ferguson, Missouri, roughly two-thirds (65%) of blacks express support,
including 41% who strongly support it. Among whites, four-in-ten say they
support the Black Lives Movement at least somewhat, and this is particularly
the case among white Democrats and those younger than 30.
Roughly six-in-ten white Republicans say too much
attention is paid to race these days
Across the survey’s findings, there are significant fault
lines within the white population – perhaps none more consistent than the
partisan divide. For example, among whites, Democrats and Republicans differ
dramatically on the very salience of race issues in this country. About
six-in-ten (59%) white Republicans say too much attention is paid to race and
racial issues these days, while only 21% of Democrats agree. For their part, a 49% plurality of white
Democrats say too little attention is paid to race these days, compared with
only 11% of Republicans.
And while about eight-in-ten (78%) white Democrats say
the country needs to continue making changes to achieve racial equality between
whites and blacks, just 36% of white Republicans agree; 54% of white
Republicans believe the country has already made the changes necessary for
blacks to have equal rights with whites.
A majority of blacks (71%) say that they have
experienced discrimination or been treated unfairly because of their race or
ethnicity. Roughly one-in-ten (11%) say this happens to them on a regular
basis, while 60% say they have experienced this rarely or from time to time.
Among blacks, men and women are equally likely to
report having personally experienced racial discrimination, and there are no
large gaps by age. There is an educational divide, however: Blacks with at
least some college experience (81%) are much more likely than blacks who never
attended college (59%) to say they have been discriminated against because of
their race.
Experiences with racial discrimination are far less
common among whites, but a sizable minority (30%) of white adults report that
they have been discriminated against or treated unfairly because of their race
or ethnicity. Only 2% say this happens to them regularly and 28% say it occurs
less frequently. Whites who say they have a lot of contact with blacks are more
likely to say they’ve been discriminated against because of their race than are
whites who have less contact with blacks.
Among whites, young adults, college graduates and
Democrats more likely to say their race has been an advantage
While some whites report being treated unfairly at
times because of their race, the overall impact is relatively minor. Only 5% of
whites say their race or ethnicity has made it harder for them to succeed in
life. A majority of whites (62%) say their race hasn’t made much of difference
in their ability to succeed, and 31% say their race has made things easier for
them.
College-educated whites are especially likely to see
their race as an advantage: 47% say being white has made it easier for them to
succeed. By comparison, 31% of whites
with some college education and 17% of those with a high school diploma or less
say their race has made things easier for them. White Democrats (49%) are also
among the most likely to say that their race or ethnicity has made it easier
for them to get ahead in life.
For many blacks, the cumulative impact of
discrimination has had a markedly negative impact on their lives. Four-in-ten
blacks say their race has made it harder for them to succeed in life. Roughly
half (51%) say their race hasn’t made a difference in their overall success,
and just 8% say being black has made things easier.
There is a sharp educational divide among blacks on
the overall impact their race has had on their ability to succeed. Fully 55% of
blacks with a four-year college degree say their race has made it harder for
them to succeed in life. Some 45% of blacks who attended college but did not
receive a bachelor’s degree say the same. Among blacks with a high school education
or less, a far lower share (29%) say their race has made it harder for them to
succeed. A majority of this group (60%) say their race hasn’t made a
difference.
About half of blacks say people have acted like they
were suspicious of them
About half of blacks say they’ve been treated like
they were suspicious or not smart
Unfair
treatment can come in different forms. Roughly half of blacks (47%) say that in
the past 12 months someone has acted as if they were suspicious of them because
of their race or ethnicity. Many blacks also report feeling like others have
questioned their intelligence. Some 45% say that in the past 12 months people
have treated them as if they were not smart because of their race or ethnicity.
Roughly one-in-five blacks (21%) say they have been
treated unfairly by an employer in the past year because of their race or
ethnicity, and a similar share (18%) report having been unfairly stopped by the
police during this period.
Black men are more likely than black women to say that
people have treated them with suspicion (52% vs. 44%). And they are more likely
to say they have been unfairly stopped by the police (22% vs. 15%).
Being treated with suspicion and being treated as if
they are not intelligent are more common experiences for black adults who
attended college than for those who did not. For example, 52% of those with at
least some college education say that, in the past 12 months, someone has
treated them as if they thought they weren’t smart because of their race or
ethnicity, compared with 37% of those with a high school diploma or less.
Other
key findings:
About half (48%)
of whites say they are very satisfied with the quality of life in their
community, compared with about a third (34%) of blacks. This gap persists after
controlling for income. For example, 57% of whites with an annual family income
of $75,000 or more report that they are very satisfied with the quality of life
in their community; just 38% of blacks in the same income group say the same.
Blacks are far
more likely than whites to say they have experienced financial hardship in the
past 12 months. About four-in-ten (41%) blacks say they have had trouble paying
their bills, and about a quarter (23%) say they have gotten food from a food
bank or food pantry during this period. Among whites, 25% say they have
struggled to pay their bills, and 8% report having sought out food from a food
bank in the past 12 months.
Black men are far
more likely than white men to say their gender has made it harder for them to
get ahead in life (20% vs. 5%, respectively). Among women, similar shares of
blacks (28%) and whites (27%) say their gender has set them back.
About eight-in-ten
(81%) blacks say they feel at least somewhat connected to a broader black
community in the U.S., including 36% who feel very connected. Blacks who feel a
strong sense of connection to a broader black community are more likely than
those who don’t to say that in the past 12 months they have made a financial
contribution to, attended an event sponsored by, or volunteered their time to a
group or organization working specifically to improve the lives of black
Americans.
Majorities of
blacks say the NAACP (77%), the National Urban League (66%) and the
Congressional Black Caucus (63%) have been at least somewhat effective in
helping blacks achieve equality in this country. Only about three-in-ten or
fewer say each of these groups has been very effective, likely reflecting, at
least in part, the widespread view among blacks that the country has work to do
for blacks to achieve equal rights with whites.
ATTACHMENT ONE (A) – From
Gallup (2018)
Next, I'm going to read a list of problems facing the
country. For each one, please tell me if you personally worry about this problem
a great deal, a fair amount, only a little or not at all? How much do you
personally worry about race relations?
|
Great deal |
Fair amount |
Only a little |
Not at all |
No opinion |
|
|
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
|
|
2018 Mar 1-8 |
37 |
27 |
18 |
17 |
1 |
|
2017 Mar 1-5 |
42 |
27 |
17 |
12 |
1 |
|
2016 Mar 2-6 |
35 |
27 |
20 |
17 |
* |
|
2015 Mar 5-8 |
28 |
27 |
24 |
20 |
1 |
|
2014 Mar 6-9 ^ |
17 |
26 |
29 |
27 |
1 |
|
2013 Mar 7-10 |
18 |
26 |
30 |
23 |
2 |
|
2012 Mar 8-11 |
17 |
27 |
30 |
25 |
1 |
|
2011 Mar 3-6 |
16 |
28 |
29 |
25 |
1 |
|
2010 Mar 4-7 |
13 |
28 |
33 |
26 |
1 |
|
2008 Mar 6-9 |
18 |
27 |
31 |
23 |
1 |
|
2007 Mar 11-14 |
19 |
32 |
30 |
18 |
1 |
|
2006 Mar 13-16 |
22 |
36 |
23 |
19 |
* |
|
2005 Mar 7-10 |
16 |
21 |
36 |
26 |
1 |
|
2004 Mar 8-11 |
19 |
23 |
34 |
23 |
1 |
|
2003 Mar 24-25 |
22 |
31 |
26 |
21 |
* |
|
2002 Mar 4-7 |
23 |
25 |
30 |
21 |
1 |
|
2001 Mar 5-7 |
28 |
34 |
23 |
15 |
* |
|
^ Asked of a half sample; * Less than 0.5% |
|||||
|
|
|||||
Next, we'd like to know how you feel about the state of
the nation in each of the following areas. For each one, please say whether you
are -- very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or very
dissatisfied. If you don't have enough information about a particular subject
to rate it, just say so. How about -- the state of race relations?
|
Very satisfied |
Somewhat satisfied |
Somewhat dissatisfied |
Very dissatisfied |
No opinion |
|
|
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
|
|
2018 |
6 |
23 |
28 |
36 |
7 |
|
2017 |
5 |
17 |
31 |
41 |
6 |
|
2016 |
3 |
24 |
30 |
34 |
9 |
|
2015 |
6 |
24 |
32 |
30 |
8 |
|
2014 |
10 |
45 |
24 |
11 |
10 |
|
2013 |
11 |
39 |
27 |
14 |
9 |
|
2012 |
10 |
41 |
26 |
14 |
9 |
|
2008 |
8 |
43 |
28 |
12 |
9 |
|
2007 |
10 |
40 |
29 |
13 |
8 |
|
2006 |
10 |
42 |
27 |
13 |
7 |
|
2005 |
9 |
44 |
24 |
13 |
10 |
|
2004 |
9 |
45 |
30 |
10 |
6 |
|
2003 |
8 |
41 |
30 |
14 |
7 |
|
2002 |
8 |
45 |
28 |
13 |
6 |
|
2001 |
5 |
39 |
34 |
14 |
8 |
|
|
|||||
Next, we'd like to know how you feel about the state of
the nation in each of the following areas. For each one, please say whether you
are -- very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or very
dissatisfied. If you don't have enough information about a particular subject
to rate it, just say so. How about -- the position of blacks and other racial
minorities in the nation?
|
Very satisfied |
Somewhat satisfied |
Somewhat dissatisfied |
Very dissatisfied |
No opinion |
|
|
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
|
|
2018 |
11 |
28 |
24 |
29 |
8 |
|
2017 |
9 |
28 |
28 |
24 |
10 |
|
2016 |
8 |
35 |
27 |
18 |
12 |
|
2008 |
14 |
44 |
24 |
10 |
9 |
|
2007 |
13 |
42 |
25 |
12 |
8 |
|
2006 |
13 |
40 |
22 |
13 |
11 |
|
2005 |
15 |
42 |
23 |
12 |
8 |
|
2004 |
12 |
45 |
25 |
11 |
7 |
|
2003 |
11 |
45 |
25 |
11 |
8 |
|
2002 |
12 |
46 |
24 |
12 |
6 |
|
2001 |
10 |
43 |
27 |
13 |
7 |
ATTACHMENT TWO – From
MassLive
"I want to tell you a story.
A little over 100 years ago, textile
mills in Lawrence like the ones behind us today employed tens of thousands of
people, and immigrants flocked here from more than 50 countries for a chance to
work at the looms.
Lawrence was one of the centers of
American industry.
Business was booming. The guys at
the top were doing great, but workers made so little money that families were
forced to crowd together in dangerous tenements and live on beans and scraps of
bread.
Inside the mills, working conditions
were horrible.
Children were forced to operate
dangerous equipment.
Workers lost hands, arms and legs in
the gears of machines.
One out of every three adult mill
workers died by the time they were 25.
Then, on January 11, 1912, a group
of women who worked right here at the Everett Mill discovered that the bosses
had cut their pay.
And that was it — the women said “enough is enough.”
They shut down their looms and walked out.
Soon workers walked out at another
mill in town.
Then another. Then another — until 20,000 textile workers across
Lawrence were on strike. These workers — led by women– didn’t have much. Not
even a common language.
Nevertheless… they persisted!
They organized. They embraced common
goals. They translated the minutes of their meetings into 25 different
languages, so that the English and Irish workers who had been here for years
and the Slavic and Syrian workers new to America could stand together.
They hammered out their demands:
Big business at the time called
those demands a threat to the very survival of America — and the bosses tried to shut it
down.
They spread rumors and fear about
the strikers.
One factory owner even paid a guy to
plant sticks of dynamite around town so he could frame the workers as a violent
mob.
The mill owners also owned city
government, which declared martial law and called in the militia. Some strikers
died in violent clashes with the police.
It was a hard fight. Families that
were already going to bed hungry had to make do with even less.
They were cold.
They were under attack. But they
stuck together — and they won!
Higher wages. Overtime. Everybody
back at work.
And those workers did more than
improve their own lives. They changed America.
Within weeks, more than a quarter of
a million textile workers throughout New England got raises.
Within months, Massachusetts became
the first state in the nation to pass a minimum wage law.
And today, there are no children
working in factories. We have a national minimum wage. And worker safety laws.
Workers get paid overtime and we
have a forty-hour work week. That’s right, because of workers here in Lawrence — and all across the country — we have weekends!
The story of Lawrence is a story
about how real change happens in America.
It’s a story about power — our power — when we fight together.
Today, millions and millions and
millions of American families are also struggling to survive in a system that
has been rigged by the wealthy and the well-connected.
Hard working people are up against a
small group that holds far too much power, not just in our economy, but also in
our democracy.
Like the women of Lawrence, we are
here to say enough is enough!
We are here to take on a fight that
will shape our lives, our children’s lives and our grandchildren’s lives, just
as surely as the fight that began in these streets more than a century ago.
Because the man in the White House
is not the cause of what’s broken, he’s just the latest — and most extreme — symptom of what’s gone wrong in
America.
A product of a rigged system that
props up the rich and the powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else.
And so, once he’s gone, we can’t
pretend that all of this never happened.
It won’t be enough to just undo the
terrible acts of this administration.
We can’t afford to just tinker
around the edges — a tax credit here, a regulation there.
Our fight is for big, structural
change.
This is the fight of our lives. The
fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for
everyone.
I am in that fight all the way.
And that is why I stand here today:
to declare that I am a candidate for President of the United States of America.
The truth is, I’ve been in this
fight for a long time.
I grew up in Oklahoma, on the ragged
edge of the middle class.
When my daddy had a heart attack, my
family nearly tumbled over the financial cliff.
But we didn’t. My mother, who was 50
years old and had never worked outside the home, walked to Sears and got a
minimum-wage job answering phones.
That job saved our house, and saved
our family.
I ended up at a commuter college
that cost $50 a semester. And that is how the daughter of a janitor managed to
become a public school teacher, a law professor, and a United States Senator.
I believe in an America of
opportunity!
I’ve spent most of my life studying
what happens to families like mine, families caught in the squeeze, families
that go broke.
And what I found was that year after
year, the path to economic security had gotten tougher and rockier for working
families, and even tougher and even rockier for people of color.
I also found that this wasn’t an
accident. It wasn’t inevitable. No.
Over the years, America’s middle
class had been deliberately hollowed out.
And families of color had been
systematically discriminated against and denied their chance to build some
security.
It started very quietly. The richest
and most powerful people in America were rich, really rich, but they wanted to
be even richer — regardless of who got hurt.
So, every year, bit by bit, they
lobbied Washington and paid off politicians to tilt the system just a little
more in their direction.
And year by year, bit by bit, more
of the wealth and opportunity went to the people at the very top.
That’s how, today, in the richest
country in the history of the world, tens of millions of people are struggling
just to get by.
Since the early 1970s — adjusted for inflation — wages in America have barely budged.
But the cost of housing has shot up nearly two-thirds.
The cost of college has more
than tripled.
And 40% of Americans can’t find $400
to cover an emergency.
That’s millions of hard-working people
in this country whose lives would be turned upside down if the transmission
fell out of the car or if somebody got sick and missed a week at work.
The middle-class squeeze is real,
and millions of families can barely breathe.
It’s not right.
This disaster has touched every
community in America.
And for communities of color that
have stared down structural racism for generations, the disaster has hit even
harder.
Take home-ownership — the number-one way middle class
families build wealth in our country.
Back in 1960, it was legal to
discriminate against families of color, and the gap between white homeownership
rates and black homeownership rates was 27 percentage points. That’s a lot.
Over time we finally changed the law
to prohibit that kind of discrimination, and the gap began to close.
But today the home-ownership gap
between black and white families is 30 percentage points — bigger than it was back in 1960 when
housing discrimination was actually
legal.
Race matters — and we need to say so.
And we can’t be blind to the fact
that the rules in our country have been rigged against other people for a long
time — women, LGBTQ Americans, Latinos,
Native Americans, immigrants, people with disabilities — and we need to call it out.
But over the course of a generation,
the rules of our economy have gotten rigged so far in favor of the rich and
powerful that everyone else is at risk of being left behind.
In 1940, 90% of kids were destined
to do better than their parents did. By the 1980s, the odds had slipped to 50/50.
And now we could be the first
generation in American history where more kids do worse than their parents.
Meanwhile, the rich and powerful
seem to break the rules and pay no price.
No matter what they do, they grow
richer and more powerful.
Bailouts for the bankers that cheat.
Tax cuts for the companies that scam. Subsidies for the corporations that
pollute.
That’s what a rigged system looks
like: too little accountability for the rich, and too little opportunity for
everyone else.
When I talk about this, some rich
guys scream “class warfare!”
Well, let me tell you something,
these same rich guys have been waging class warfare against hard-working people
for decades — I say it’s time to fight back!
To protect their economic
advantages, the rich and powerful have rigged our political system as
well.
They’ve bought off or bullied
politicians in both parties to make sure Washington is always on their side.
Some of them have even tried to buy
their way into public office.
So today, our government works just
great for oil companies and defense contractors, great for private prisons,
great for Wall Street banks and hedge funds, it’s just not working for anyone
else.
When it comes to climate change, our
very existence is at stake. But Washington refuses to lift a finger without
permission from the fossil fuel companies.
That’s dangerous and it’s wrong.
And it isn’t just climate change.
Look at any other major issue in America. Gun violence. Student loan debt. The
crushing cost of healthcare. Mistreatment of our veterans. A broken criminal
justice system.
An immigration system that lacks
common sense, and under this administration — lacks a conscience.
Overwhelming majorities of Americans
want action.
Huge crowds march on Washington
demanding change. Letters. Phone calls. Protests.
But nothing happens. Nothing. Why?
Because if you don’t have money and you don’t have connections, Washington
doesn’t want to hear from you.
When government works only for the
wealthy and well-connected, that is corruption — plain and simple. It’s time to fight
back.
Corruption is a cancer on our
democracy. And we will get rid of it only with strong medicine — with real, structural reform.
Our fight is to change the rules
so that our government, our economy, and our democracy work for everyone.
And I want to be crystal-clear about
exactly what I mean when I say that.
First: We need to change the rules
to clean up Washington. End the corruption.
We all know the Trump Administration
is the most corrupt in living memory.
But even after Trump is gone, it
won’t be enough to do a better job of running a broken system.
We need to take power in Washington
away from the wealthy and well-connected and put it back in the hands of the
people where it belongs!
That’s why I’ve proposed the
strongest and most comprehensive anti-corruption law since Watergate.
Some examples:
Shut down the revolving door between
Wall Street and Washington.
End lobbying as we know it.
And while we’re at it, ban foreign
governments from hiring lobbyists in Washington.
Make justices of the United States
Supreme Court follow a basic Code of Ethics.
Ban Members of Congress from trading
stocks– how is that not already illegal?
And, one more, make every single
candidate for federal office put their taxes online; I’ve done it, everyone
should do it.
That’s One — root out corruption in Washington.
Now, two — change the rules to put more
economic power in the hands of the American people — workers and small businesses.
Middle-class families and people of
color who have been shut out of their chance to build wealth for generations.
Again, that requires real, structural
change.
Right now, giant corporations in
America have too much power — and they roll right over everyone else.
We need to put power back in the hands
of workers.
Make it quick and easy to join a
union. Unions built America’s middle class, and unions will rebuild America’s
middle class.
Make American companies accountable
for their actions and raise wages by putting workers in those corporate
boardrooms where the real decisions are made.
Break up monopolies when they choke
off competition.
Take on Wall Street so that the big
banks can never again threaten the security of our economy.
And when giant corporations — and their leaders — cheat their customers, stomp out their competitors, or
rob their workers, let’s prosecute them.
And one more thing. I’m tired of
hearing that we can’t afford to make real investments in child care, college,
and Medicare for All.
Can’t afford things that help create
economic opportunity for families.
I’m tired of hearing that we can’t
afford to make investments in things like housing and opioid treatment.
Can’t afford things that address rural
neglect or the legacy of racial discrimination.
I’m tired of hearing what we can’t
afford because it is just not true.
We are the wealthiest nation in the
history of the world — of course we can afford these investments.
But we need a government that makes
different choices, choices that reflect our values.
Stop handing out enormous tax
giveaways to rich people and giant corporations.
Stop refusing to invest in our
children.
Stop stalling on spending money — real money — on infrastructure and
clean energy and a Green New Deal.
And start asking the people who have
gained the most from our country to pay their fair share.
That includes real tax reform in this
country — reforms that close loopholes and giveaways to the people
at the top, and an Ultra-Millionaire Tax to make sure rich people start doing
their part for the country that helped make them rich.
So, that’s one — clean up Washington. That’s two — change the rules in
our economy.
Now, three: change the rules to
strengthen our democracy.
That starts with a constitutional
amendment to protect the right of every American citizen to vote and to have that
vote counted.
And that’s just the beginning.
Overturn every single voter
suppression rule that racist politicians use to steal votes from people of
color.
Outlaw partisan gerrymandering — by Democrats and
Republicans.
And overturn Citizens United. Our
democracy is not for sale.
By the way, if we truly believe that,
then we also need to end the unwritten rule of politics that says anyone who
wants to run for office has to start by sucking up to rich donors on Wall
Street and powerful insiders in Washington.
I’m opting out of that rule. I’m not
taking a dime of PAC money in this campaign. I’m not taking a single check from
a federal lobbyist.
I’m not taking applications from
billionaires who want to run a Super PAC on my behalf.
And I challenge every other candidate
who asks for your vote in this primary to say exactly the same thing
It’s not just our elections. Real
democracy requires equal justice under law.
It’s not equal justice when a kid with
an ounce of pot can get thrown in jail while a bank executive who launders
money for a drug cartel can get a bonus. We need real reform!
It’s not equal justice when, for the exact same crimes, African Americans are
more likely than whites to be arrested, more likely to be charged, more likely
to be convicted, and more likely to be sentenced.
Yes, we need criminal justice reform
and we need it now!
And one more thing we must do to
strengthen our democracy: We must not allow those with power to weaponize hatred and bigotry to divide us.
More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. went to Montgomery and warned us about the danger of division.
He talked about how bigotry and
race-baiting are used to keep black Americans divided from white Americans so
that rich Americans can keep picking all their pockets.
That playbook has been around forever.
Whether it’s white people against
black people, straight people against gay people, middle-class families against
new immigrant families — the story is the same. The rich and powerful use fear to
divide us.
We’re done with that. Bigotry has no
place in the Oval Office.
This is who we are.
We come from different backgrounds.
Different religions. Different languages. Different experiences. We have
different dreams.
We are passionate about different
issues and we feel the urgency of this moment in different ways.
But, today, we come together — ready to raise our voices together until this fight is
won.
Our movement won’t be divided by our
differences. It will be united by the values we share.
We all want a country where everyone — not just the wealthy — everyone can take
care of their families.
We all want a country where every
American — not just the ones who hire armies of lobbyists and
lawyers — everyone can participate in democracy.
Where every child can dream big and
reach for opportunity.
And we’re all in the fight to build an
America that works for everyone.
This won’t be easy. There are a lot of
people out there with money and power and armies of lobbyists and lawyers.
People who are prepared to spend more
money than you and I could ever dream of, trying to stop us from making any of
these solutions a reality.
People who will say it’s
“extreme” or “radical” to demand an America where every family has some
economic security and every kid has a real opportunity to succeed.
I say to them, “Get ready, because
change is coming faster than you think.”
Yeah, this kind of fundamental change
will be hard. A lot of people — even some of our friends — will tell us it isn’t even worth trying. But we will not
give up.
Let me tell you one last story.
When I was home with my first baby, I
got this notion that I would go to law school.
It was a crazy idea, but I persisted.
Eventually, I figured out the
admissions tests and applications, worked out how to pay my tuition, and mapped
out the 45-minute commute to campus.
Weeks out, I had one last thing on my
checklist: child care. My daughter Amelia was nearly two years old, and I
looked everywhere. I struck out over and over.
We were down to the weekend before law
school was supposed to start, when I finally found a small place with a
cheerful teacher, nice little play area, no funny smells, in my price range.
But the place would only take children
who were “hmm dependably potty trained.”
I looked over at Amelia. She was
happily pulling toys off the shelf, her diaper barely covered by her pink
stretchy pants. Hmmm. Dependably potty trained.
I now had five days to potty-train an
almost two-year-old.
All I can say is, I stand before you
today courtesy of three bags of M&Ms and a cooperative toddler.
Since that day, I’ve never let anyone
tell me that anything is “too hard.”
But oh how they’ve tried.
People said it would be “too hard” to
build an agency that would stop big banks from cheating Americans on mortgages
and credit cards.
But we got organized, we fought back, we persisted, and now that consumer
agency has forced these banks to refund nearly $12 billion directly to people
they cheated.
When Republicans tried to sabotage the
agency, I came back to Massachusetts and then ran against one of them. No woman
had ever won a Senate seat in Massachusetts, and people said it would be “too
hard” for me to get elected.
But we got organized, we fought back,
we persisted, and now I am the seniorSenator
from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
So, no, I am not afraid of a fight.
Not even a hard fight.
When the women of Everett Mill walked
away from their machines and out into the cold January air all those years ago,
they knew it wouldn’t be easy.
But they also knew what was at stake
for themselves and their families. And they weren’t going to let anyone tell
them it was “too hard.”
Doubters told the abolitionists “it’s
too hard.” Skeptics told the suffragettes “it’s too hard.” Cynics told the
trust-busters “it’s too hard.”
Naysayers told the foot soldiers of
the civil rights movement “it’s just too hard.” But they all kept right on
going and they changed the history of America.
Sure, there will be plenty of doubters
and cowards and armchair critics this time around.
But we learned a
long time ago that you don’t get what you don’t fight for. We are in this fight
for our lives, for our children, for our planet, for our futures — and we will not turn back.
My daddy ended up as a janitor, but
his little girl got the chance to be a public school teacher, a college
professor, a United States Senator — and a candidate for President of the
United States.
I am grateful, all the way to my
bones. Grateful — and determined.
So here is the promise I make to you
today: I will fight my heart out so that every kid in America can have the same
opportunity I had — a fighting chance to build something real.
I will never give up on you and your
future. I will never give up on your children and their future. I am in this
fight all the way.
It’s a long way to election day. But our fight starts here. And it starts with
you.
It starts with your decision to get
involved, right now. Join us on Elizabeth Warren.com. Help us organize. Volunteer.
Pitch in five bucks. We need everyone in this fight.
The textile workers here in Lawrence
more than 100 years ago won their fight because they refused to be divided.
Today, we gather on those same
streets, ready to stand united again.
This is our moment in history, the
moment we are called to.
This is our moment to dream big,
fight hard, and WIN!"
ATTACHMENT THREE – From
Vox
Two top officials admitted
to wearing blackface, and a third is accused of sexual assault. The fourth in
line for the governorship won his seat in a lottery.
Virginia politics is a dumpster fire.
In the span of five days, Virginia Gov. Ralph
Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring admitted to wearing blackface in
college, and a college professor made a credible allegation of sexual assault
against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax.
If all three Democrats resign — which looks
unlikely at this point, but isn’t out of the realm of possibility — the
governorship would be passed to Republican Virginia House of Delegates Speaker
Kirk Cox, whose district, a court determined, was drawn in a way that discriminated against African-American voters.
To top it all off, Cox got his speakership
only after the state settled a tied election — that determined which party
would control the chamber — by drawing a name out of a bowl.
It’s all a mess — and one that keeps growing.
All
the scandals, explained in brief
This all began with a racist photo in
Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook showing two people, one in blackface and another in Ku
Klux Klan garb. Northam first apologized for the photo, only to say it wasn’t
him a day later. Then, Northam chose to highlight a separate incident in which
he did dress up in blackface for a Michael Jackson costume.
The calls on Northam to resign were immediate. At first it seemed like there was a clear successor in
Fairfax. Who better to unite Virginia after a racism scandal than a young
(Fairfax is 39) African-American rising star?
Then an allegation of sexual assault
surfaced. Vanessa Tyson, a Scripps College politics professor alleges Fairfax
forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004 at the Democratic National
Convention in Boston. Tyson told her story to the Washington Post in 2017, when
Fairfax was running for office, but the Post couldn’t corroborate it. She has since gone public, and her colleagues say she told them of the incident in the past. Fairfax said the encounter with Tyson was
consensual. He denied it was an assault.
Meanwhile, the third-ranking Democratic
leader, Herring, a 57-year-old white former state senator who is running for
governor in 2021 (Virginia has a one-term limit on governorships) had an
admission of his own: He and his friends “dressed like rappers” in blackface
for a college party in the 1980s.
Herring’s apology has raised the stakes for
Democrats. If not him, Fairfax, or Northam, then the governor’s mansion gets
handed over to Republicans, who only control the state’s House of Delegates
because state law settled a tied race for the 94th District seat in 2017 by
random draw.
Not to mention that Cox himself sits in a
district that is slated to be redrawn more
favorably to Democrats in the 2019 elections, where the
party has the chance to flip both the state senate and House of Delegates.
Virginia has been a bright star for Democrats
in recent elections. But these scandals have put all those gains at risk. Polls
show Virginians are divided
on Ralph Northam. The jury’s still out on Justin Fairfax.
ATTACHMENT FOUR – From the Detroit News 2/7
Dingell amassed more than
258,000 followers on Twitter with wit and, when riled, cutting attacks,
especially about President Donald Trump.
His social media
prowess moved Jason Sattler, a columnist for the National Memo, to opine
in February 2017 that the Democrats should create an official Twitter
account to respond to the president's tweets, and Dingell was best qualified to
write the official rebuttals.
"The best way to stop an
unstable 70-year-old with an itchy Twitter finger is the world’s greatest
90-year-old Twitter user — @JohnDingell, a former
Democratic representative of Michigan," Sattler wrote.
Dingell had received accolades
for his mastery of Twitter while in office. When the Atlantic magazine held an
October 2014 town hall in Detroit on America's energy future, moderator Molly
Ball praised his social media wizardry when introducing Dingell.
The political blog Eclectablog crowned him the "dean of
Twitter" during a fundraising party in 2015 after he retired. The
Dearborn Democrat obliged by reading his best tweets.
Dingell himself refused the
title.
"No, I’m not the dean of
Twitter," Dingell said in a December interview. "I do have fun with
Twitter because with Twitter, I can laugh at myself or laugh at my neighbors or
my brother or sister or me, or what is happening to say this is stupid."
Dingell also distinguished his
use of Twitter from Trump's.
"This president twitters to
accomplish his end and to tell his story. I don’t. I believe that twitters are
like the American wits and humorists like those who criticize the presidents
and spread the stories about the presidents," Dingell said.
"They talk about how Lincoln
would have been a great Twitterer. Saul would have
been a great Twitterer.
"Like the other great
humorists did their humor, not so much by making nastiness but by simply
holding things up to let them be looked and seen, to then be critical of the
foolish things that were done and people would look at them and say, my God is
that really so? And say, yes, that’s really what they’re doing and what they’re
standing for. For Mark Twain and others, that’s what they did."
Dingell was a Twitter pioneer
among politicians, said Libby Hemphill, an associate professor in the
University of Michigan's School of Information and a social media expert.
"One of the first things he
did was live tweet the State of the Union in 2010. Nine years ago, he was live
tweeting," Hemphill said. "That may seem normal now but certainly
wasn't, at least for politicians, then."
Dingell's large following
"is probably an artifact of his long service and early adoption, but he's
also very good at tweeting like a regular user," she said.
The
former congressman's personality also likely played a role, said Erica Shifflet-Chila, a coordinator of instructional technology
at Michigan State University's School of Social Work.
"Folks who are engaging and
charismatic in person tend to come across the same on social media," Shifflet-Chila said.
Twitter is a new way to get in
touch with public figures whether they are celebrities or politicians, and
Dingell was never afraid to press send, said Erin Meyers, an associate
professor of communications and journalism at Oakland University.
“He connected with young people
who didn’t know who he was through his Twitter,” said Meyers, who teaches
social media.
“He has a huge following for
someone who isn’t Kim Kardashian, and it’s because he’s an expert.”
One of her favorites by Dingell
involved the news coverage of Starbucks chairman emeritus Howard Schultz, a
Democrat who told CBS' "60 Minutes" he was seriously exploring a
run for president as an independent
“Someone told me that the man
behind everyone's favorite cup of coffee might run for President and I just
want to wish @TimHortons the very best," Dingell
slyly tweeted, referring to the Canadian coffee and doughnut chain that's
omnipresent in Michigan. "You have my support.”
The former congressman "knew
how to play politics through Twitter," but he also made "jokes for
other people’s amusement,” Meyers said.
“In a way, Twitter lets us behind
the curtain, and he did it in an authentic and enjoyable way. You didn’t feel
like he was grandstanding or putting on an act like others. He had a
Michigan-ness about his Tweets. He kept it real."
Looking back, here are some of
his most memorable tweets throughout the years:
1. When he expressed his dislike
of the 45th President of the United States
Crooks like Trump will steal a
hot stove and come back for the smoke. There’s no bar too low.
https://t.co/6BjnNwbZp7
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) January 25, 2019
2. And remained resigned to
roasting Trump throughout his term
43 years ago today. Concise and
to the point.
You could even fit it in a tweet,
@realDonaldTrump. pic.twitter.com/1rtKdCUwM4
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) August 9, 2017
3. When he didn't need a Twitter
lesson from new Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Ironically enough, I missed the
meeting because I’ve been up on my roof practicing my dance moves. Thanks for
covering, @AOC. https://t.co/RoI2OKlSqO
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) January 17, 2019
4. When he threw shade at Neil deGrasse Tyson
Lighten up, nerd.
https://t.co/SZxWbB2iTm
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) April 13, 2018
5. And took a shot at Eminem, too
Yeah that happens here. Welcome.
https://t.co/XxMu56tDYt
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) April 17, 2018
6. When Trump couldn't go
anywhere without a running commentary
Texas is now bracing for a second
natural disaster. https://t.co/kh5jECPDVP
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) August 29, 2017
I'm hearing no major concerns
about Trump leaving for his first foreign trip next week, but I am hearing some
objections to his return.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) May 13, 2017
7. When he didn't pull his
punches on Trump's policies
What effect does gravity have on
bone spurs? Asking for a friend. https://t.co/427d4RALlB
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) March 13, 2018
I fully support @realDonaldTrump’s interest in space travel to Mars, and I
wish him the absolute best in his travels.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) December 11, 2017
8. When he made this pointed
insult
Sit on it, you imbecile.
https://t.co/R4jOyjxsqv
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) December 21, 2018
9. Even Trump's sons weren't safe
from his biting wit
I’ll take “Colluders” for $1000,
Alex. https://t.co/ashzhYvhOw
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) March 29, 2018
10. He also took shots at other
politicians, too, like Attorney General (at the time)
Jeff Sessions
I'm damn near 100 years old and
it appears I have a better memory than our Attorney General. That ain't right. https://t.co/zaq3JgRqOD
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) June 14, 2017
11. And Mitt Romney wasn't safe
either
Can’t wait to see Sports Fan Mitt
Romney wearing a damn Traverse City Beach Bums jersey when he moves here in
2025 to run for Auditor General or something.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) April 24, 2018
12. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders got
some guff
I just groaned so hard my Life
Alert button pressed itself. https://t.co/gq1IPjixTQ
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) April 7, 2016
13. He did, however, manage to
find common ground occasionally
The only thing I agree with Trump
on so far is the fact that we both think chocolate cake is beautiful.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) April 12, 2017
14. And he kept up on what was
trending
Staff has now informed me of what
a Kardashian is.
I'm only left with more
questions.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) July 22, 2014
I feel like that internet giraffe
has been pregnant for years now.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) March 9, 2017
15. Ever the consummate sports
fan, Dingell took out his frustrations on Twitter
A great way to test out a new
pacemaker is to watch the Michigan-Michigan State game.
Go Blue.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) October 17, 2015
16. Especially when he didn't
have time to mess around
I'm 89. I don't even buy green
bananas these days, so finding a channel in the 800s is not exactly atop my
list of things I wish to do.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) November 26, 2015
17. Most of all, Dingell wasn't
afraid to poke fun at himself
Feeling old because you remember
when Pluto was a planet back when you were younger?
I was born before they even
discovered the darn thing.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) July 15, 2015
18. And he never shied away from
change
If you told me in 08 that I'd be
defending McCain from Trump on Twitter, I'd call you crazy. I'd also ask what
Twitter was. But here we are.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) July 18, 2015
19. For him, age was never an
impediment to humor
I always enjoy a museum visit
that doesn't end with them trying to keep me there.
Great #InviteCongress
visit, @yankeeairmuseum & @AAMers!
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) August 13, 2014
20. More than anything, Dingell
knew how to play the game
99% of you people don’t even
deserve 140 characters.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) November 7, 2017
21. He was tweeting no matter the
circumstances until the end
The Lovely Deborah is insisting I
rest and stay off here, but after long negotiations we've worked out a deal
where she'll keep up with Twitter for me as I dictate the messages. I want to
thank you all for your incredibly kind words and prayers. You're not done with
me just yet.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) February 6, 2019