As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.
Is the Republican Party a hate group? Leonard Pitts, Jr., has our answer, which we've excerpted at length:
Here’s how The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group.
It is, they say, “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” [snip]
Granted, in its “official statements or principles,” the party doesn’t meet the SPLC standard. Its activities and the statements of its leaders are, however, another matter. [snip]
For half a century, then, the GOP has taught white voters racial resentment, taught them to prioritize concerns about white prerogative over concerns about shuttered factories, dirty water, lack of healthcare, foreclosed futures. It did this in code — “Willie Horton,” “tax cuts,” “welfare queen” — which, while obvious to all but the most gullible, still allowed respectable white men and women to maintain fig leaves of deniability. [snip]
Donald Trump is the payoff of that devil’s bargain. His “innovation” has been to shred subtlety and abandon code. With blunt, brutish clarity, he tells four black and brown women to “go back” where they came from, and if you don’t see racism there, you’ll never see it anywhere.
Yet bad as that is, the monstrous part is that his audience, trained by 50 years of appeals to their basest selves, cheers him on. They no longer need fig leaves. That should tell you something. As should the fact that the GOP seems to have abandoned policy altogether.
What do they stand for? Do they still care about the national debt? Do they have a strategy to combat global warming? What will they do about Russia and Iran? Who knows?
Because all they are now is the party of “Send her back!” — of outrage over Colin Kaepernick kneeling and April Ryan asking questions. That’s what passes for ideas in today’s GOP. And if that’s what Trump has made them, it’s not like they fought him tooth and nail.
So is the GOP a hate group? It’s sobering that the question can even be asked. But the inevitable answer is downright chilling. Because the SPLC offers a fair and cogent definition of that term.
And the GOP fits it with room to spare.
No matter how they try to distract and deflect*, racism is part of their DNA, and they have their leader who has given them permission to hate and to act on that hate.
Virginia Heffernan tells us not to buy into the media narrative of Trump's juggernaut base:
Back in the arena at East Carolina University, the bellowing helped the modest-sized rally make up in volatility what it lacked in numbers. Trump lied again. He said there were no empty seats. There were empty seats. Trump’s aide Brad Parscale took on the Spicer role, crowing on Twitter that 20,000 people were in the venue. Accurate counts put attendance at about 8,000. (For comparison, an average of 18,000 people attend every single men’s basketball game at the University of North Carolina.) [snip]
Trump’s support is clearly not all phony. Polls show Republicans approve of the job he’s doing in high numbers, which raises the question of how big that polling pool really is. Trump’s critics, in any event, do their cause a grave disservice by following his lead and exaggerating his support, which gets people buzzing and may generate a bandwagon effect: real support following simulated support.
Or something even more sinister could happen. Anti-Trumpers might become cowed and discouraged enough to stay away from the polls because they are convinced the specter of a massive GOP base can’t be beat.
Don’t listen to Trump’s lies, skip the alarmism, and turn down the “send her back” volume. Above all, remind yourself that Trump’s Gallup approval rating has fluctuated between terrible (36.8%) and bad (42.7%). He isn’t our all-time favorite. Period.Skip the alarmism, stay focused and work like hell. That's how we excise the tumor in the White (Supremacist) House.
Greg Sargent explains why the "send her back" chant at Trump's North Carolina rally was a breaking point:
What changed? Well, the Times also reports that Trump advisers privately warned against letting these sentiments get out of control at his rally.
So I submit to you that the key difference is twofold: Trump’s naked hatred and cruelty was captured on live television, and along with it, so was the seething anger of the hard-core Trump base.
Sargent has much more about the Republican panic that has set in around their heretofore muted racism being exposed in such raw form. And, of course, the "send her back" chant was led by Trump's rally leaders.The whole nation saw in dramatic fashion that Trump voters understood his meaning perfectly well, and watched them not just agree with it but also amplify it with as ugly and hate-curdled a chant as one could imagine.
*Distraction/ deflection watch: Lest we forget (we won't), there's the testimony Wednesday of Robert Mueller that has Putin's puppet in a state of agitation, and the connections between sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein with fellow predator Trump, something that's also never far from Trump's "mind."
As always, Infidel 753 has been laboring to bring us an impressive array of links to interesting items around the internet and beyond. Go see what we mean!
