Why Trumps Racism will Fail

America never was white...never.

The first obvious point is Native Americans were here first.  And there was millions more than most think.  And they were people of color.

White supremacy might have been here from the beginning, but only white people....NOT!

The immigration was heavy in African Americans; not voluntary to be sure, but heavy in people of color.

And up to  and including  Thomas Jefferson, intermingling of the races occurred early and often.  Several of “our founding fathers” sired children of mixed race...

White European women did not colonize early America.  Men at first were the only ones to survive.  In fact, early settlements were virtually all men.  

And it took months if not years to sail from Europe to the colonies.    And the natural happened with Native American Women because there simply no European women.  

I am part Cherokee.   My family tree shows a great great grandmother who looks more white than Native American.  Why?  Because the Cherokee inter married (it was not outlawed until much later) with white male settlers early and often.  Many Cherokees are as white (looking) as anyone...but have Cherokee DNA.  I have seen photos of Cherokee in 1900...they are all white!  But DNA shows otherwise!

Then there are the African Americans.  Thomas Jefferson again is a good example.  His wife passed away and he maintained a little disguised inter-racial marriage for years, with several offspring. 

This happened everywhere.  Sometimes it was tragic, white slave owners having their way with African women, but sometimes it was mutual; mixed race marriages were not uncommon; publicized yes rare, but existing nonetheless!

White supremacy and racism developed AFTER the influx of slaves and encounters with Native Americans.  By this time (the early 1800s) America already was a nation of immigrants and mixed race human beings.  The Civil War of 1860 was also a reconciliation of mixed race couples, some slaves were actually more white than colored because of the mixing of the “races”.  

Trump does not have a chance to make American Great (White) again...not a prayer.  America never was white!

DNA tests of any American citizen, who “thinks I am pure white” often is a real surprise, because interracial backgrounds often show up.  Racist white supremacists will go get a DNA test to prove their purity; and suddenly shut up because they aren’t white!

I have several friends who talk about the surprise they had when African American showed up in their DNA, or Asian, or Native American.  And in the West, Mexican Americans are almost universally mixed race; the Spanish intermarried in the Americas for the same reason their fellow Europeans did in the north, no availability of European women.

And what have we done as a result?  The leading economy in the world.  The strongest nation on earth.  And still, even though Trump is trying to destroy it, the longest running democratic government on the planet.

And sure enough, it is accelerating again.   The white middle and upper class long ago adopted a two children maximum in a marriage rule; assisted by contraception.  Immigrants and people of color not so much.  So more families of “color” are having more mixed race children than the whiter middle class (that isn’t all white anyway); leaving us with us.....

In California this has meant a minority of “white people” already and in the United States that will happen in 2030.  It actually already has happened, since many “white people” are actually mixed race and don’t even know it.

The fact is America is a melting pot.  Every few years a demagogue like Trump happens along and tries make political points by stirring the racist anti-immigrant pot.

And that is hypocrisy of the highest order since most of us are mixed race already!

The Art of Negotiations

Negotiations must assume a relative equality of the parties around the table.  This is critical to finding solutions that are being sought.  

I sat on many negotiation teams with CTA and later on management’s side of the table.  And nothing killed negotiations more than one side or the other dominating.

This particularly was the case early in the history of the Rodda  Act, in the 1970s, that mandated collective bargaining of educational workers in California.

Superintendents had almost unlimited power before that.  Most of the old guard, were used to having the veto power of any bargained agreement under the old laws of “meet and confer” which really meant meet and take what management gave you.

So an entire generation of Superintendents had to retire, being unable to understand negotiations.  Authoritarianism no longer was a successful model.  It never is.  

Even today, especially when Charter Schools get collective bargaining, people have to be trained in negotiating, reaching consensus; etc.  And the last school I was associate with was nearly destroyed because they refused to negotiate in “good faith”, costing thousands in legal fee and cut the school in half; a true train wreck.  

I offered to help negotiate the new contract with CTA, having the background.  A member of the board was so angry with me he even accused me of letting CTA in (I had nothing to do with it) and misunderstood what negotiations are.  He was an authoritarian and didn’t have a clue.  He saw negotiations as weakness, when actually it is a strength.  

It is a skill.  It does not imply weakness in fact, in our national system of checks and balances it is the ONLY way of getting anything done.  Politics is an art and it takes years to figure it out.  And to sit down with people you fundamentally disagree with but still come up with a functional law or policy is a skill.  It is NOT weakness...it is not capitulation...it is called governing. 

We are seeing that right now on the federal level.  Donald Trump, who was elected on the fabrication that he was a negotiating “genius” (The Art of the Deal), in fact has no negotiating skills whatsoever.  

He uses the outmaneuver techniques, in cornering the opposition and forcing them to capitulate.  This Art of the Deal to him is lying, cornering, and bull dozing the opposition.  

That may work for awhile, but not long.  Because it fosters the art of the pay back, which means the negotiations deteriorate into chaos, since neither side can trust the other.  In short, power politics does not negotiate well, it does not govern well.  

We see that now with the DACA issue.  Trump at first showed flexibility, but must adhere to his minority base, since that is the ONLY support he has left (his popularity is at record lows).  So he quickly backed away from a deal, and now is trying to blackmail the other side.  

He has threatened to go to the Supreme Court to invalidate DACA, after a lower court issued an injunction forbidding him to stop DACA.  He reasons (?) that if he can kill DACA that the other side will be forced to accept his terms to resurrect DACA (if he even wants to do that).

But, the other side is needed to keep the government open..which opens the payback is a bitch card for the opposition.  

What may happen is the “other side” will decide to not cooperate at all, and shut down the government.  This is damaging to BOTH sides and could be catastrophic to the country and is a direct result of Trumps inability to even know how to begin to negotiate.

In short, the authoritarian model is being followed to disaster  since that is the model of negotiations that Trump has followed his entire life.  It is not negotiations, it is bullying and it doesn’t work!

It has a pattern of destroying trust and building momentum in the opposition to pay back the arrogance.  So sooner or later, when Trump weakens, the payback will be swift and sure, and lethal politically.

But the damage done to the body politic to get there  will be huge. 

The nation hangs currently on having the government shut down because of this dynamic.  We have a President who is an authoritarian who does not know how to negotiate.  This may work for a shot time, he can bully his way as he did with the tax cut, but victories will be short lived because the social compact  (Trump has no idea what that is) will be ruptured.  

The losers in this are the American People, because governmental chaos will be the result; that kills markets and will ruin the economy...

Governing is a skill of statesmanship...Trump doesn’t have a clue.

The Dream is Still Alive

Does the Democratic Party ignore African Americans?  

History suggests not.  Most Americans do not even realize the fairly recent history of the two major parties in the United States.  In short, the party of Lincoln, thanks to Nixon’s Southern Strategy, has become the Party of white supremacy.  The Dixiecrats, that plagued the Democratic Party of a hundred years plus (including the Civil War) migrated in mass to the Republican Party after the Civil Rights and Voter Rights Acts were passed.  All of the work and sacrifice of Robert Kennedy and more so Martin Luther King, was discarded by the Republican Party, who cynically adopted lifelong white segregationists hiding as states right advocates; this lie was also used to justify the civil war by the way.

And the Democratic Party adopted the racial minorities of the nation; including the immigrants.

Look at its leadership.  Women and people of color are everywhere.

Now we get, “you haven’t done enough”, when the you is we.  California is a good example.  California’s Democratic Party is the most diverse on the planet.  Yet, it isn’t doing enough for people of color.  It isn’t, because the job is huge and will take time until conservatives are eradicated from the voting public.  

Why?  Look at the DACA fight right now.  The Republicans hold all three branches of federal government, so white supremacy is in power yet again; every bit as bad as Woodrow Wilson (a Dixiecrat Democrat) in 1918 (one hundred years ago.  And the Republicans, who everyday betray the legacy of Lincoln, refuse to do the right thing; opposing immigration, opposing human rights, renewing the war on drugs and African Americans; etc.

In short, they are attempting to roll history back to 1972.  

Voting rights have taken a hit, human rights have taken a hit, and recently a totally unfair and bigoted income tax cut was passed that attacks people of color.

And some, not many but some, people of color get sucked into this vortex of hate and actually vote Republican.

It is not hard to be hypnotized by the allure of Republicans with their free market mantra.  The problem is the economic system presently is set up to discriminate against people of color.  There are decades old systems in place to under educate millions of young people and doom them to a lifetime of poverty.  And if they commit a crime, the criminal justice system is set up to overly punish and incarcerate in a Jim Crowe system.

So where does that leave Martin Luther King’s legacy?  

The enemy is stronger now than ever.  That is because the Republican Party still is the bastion of big money, corporate power, that is controlled by white people who don’t want to share.  The Democratic Party is outspent constantly by the Republicans who have benefited by a conservative judiciary who fixed the system, leaving the Republicans to dominate in fund raising.

And gerrymandering and voter identification efforts have turned former progressive states like Wisconsin into seas of red where white supremacy reigns.

So what do we do?  How do we fight this?  

The answer is in the diversity that lies in California.  The slow but steady mixing of races (yes that term) that literally marries white supremacy away.  

It is very difficult to hate your grand daughter.  It is really difficult to discriminate against the family that sits right next to you in church.  

Martin Luther King envisioned this.  He didn’t talk about it much because the mixing of races was very bad thing in 1968.  In fact, interracial marriage was not approved by the Supreme Court until 1947!

But it is coming. California is now a Caucasian (whatever that is) minority state.  People of color dominate demographically.  

And the Democratic Party has responded, opened its doors and embraced this diversity.  

But many are still left behind.  And that is not the Democratic Party’s fault anymore.  The corporate class, that is still hard right Republican, work tirelessly to preserve white supremacy; fighting through election spending to create a huge red mass in the the rural states and regions of America.  In states like Pennsylvania for example, Republicans have convicted poor whites that the reason they are poor is not because corporations have sent their jobs overseas or to robots, but because of the Democrats who allow immigrants into the country.

There is not a drop of evidence that this is true, in fact the country right now has a shortage of skilled labor that is about to drag down the economy.  It isn’t the immigrants.

But Donald Trump got elected with America First in areas of high unemployment because white uneducated middle class people are taught by the Republicans that the party of the New Deal has abandoned them.

In some ways that is true, racially the Democratic Party has abandoned them, by becoming the most diverse party on earth.  But economically not so; the differences between big money support of the Republicans and the small donor base of the Democrats is stark.

But Donald Trump is President and both houses of Congress have white supremacist majorities.  So the devil is still alive and well in America.

What to do:  persevere, never quit, keep voting, keep organizing and finally if you have a white friend who is a bigot (or a person of color for that matter) unfriend them.  That’s right, stop being around them.  They are sick with a illness of white supremacy and fascism that frankly is terminal.  They simply have to die off, which they are by the way.  Sadly many of them are/were my friends.  But as they age, they get harder in their racism; so we have to wait for them to die.

Sound harsh?  It is.  But for the young, the millennial generation, its up to you to get political, to vote, to register Democratic and work within the Party to get the things done you deem necessary to kill white supremacy forever.

Dr. King truly believed you can change people’s hearts.  To some degree, with people who are capable of it, this is possible; but for most, they are sick forever.

The only way to beat them is like we have done in California, bury them in votes.

Terms of Nativism

Not to lessen the impact and the wrongness, moral bankruptcy racist pig that Trump is, but he was elected remember?  Somebody voted for him.  What has happened is NOT a surprise and is the rule rather than the exception.  

This means he got more votes according to a racist system (electoral college) that was established to keep the slave south in the union.  He is a minority elected President, he did not get the majority of the vote.  

But I digress.  Trump is not alone; never think that.  He reflects a long tradition of nativism and bigotry toward immigrants.

Your ancestors and mine were called these things over the years as they sought to assimilate.  And on my Dad’s side, those who were already here got names flung at them, as well as bullets, in the carnage that is sometimes America.

Germans:  Huns, Krauts, Mofs, Boches, Nazis....

Italians:  Wops, Dagos, Greaseballs, Guineas, Goomba

Jews (you can add nationalities if you like):  Kike, (Polish Kike) , Yids; etc

Irish:  Micks, Maddy, Prod, Taig

English:  Brits, Limeys...

White southerners:  Rednecks, Hillbilly, White Trash, Trailer Trash, Cracker, Hick, Bumbkin, Peckerwood.  

Africans:  The N word in every way possible, Mother F...era...Blue, Homey, Home Boy, Boy...etc

Vietnamese:  Gooks, Kinks, Slopeheads....

Native Americans:  Redskins, Diggers, Savages

Japanese:  Slant eyes, Yellow, Japs

Vile wrong and makes your stomach churn....But 30% of Americans believe in the President who just went there, who was elected with the promise to “put them in their place”, who promises to build a wall, to discriminate, to “Make America Great Again”.

But the fact is all of you reading this know the words above very well...many of you have even used the terms, or for sure have heard them used.  Some think they are colorful.  For some, you use these terms and a fight is coming.  For others, a bullet.  

Will he...will it work?  Do we need a purge?  Did we in the past?  

Nativism rears its ugly head in America every generation, sometimes worse than others.  There are dozens of reasons for it, in spite of the absolute fact, that we are a nation of immigrants.

The exception of course are Native Americans who have been attacked with straight up genocide and cultural destruction.

The history of America is one of violence and racism.  We all are racists to some degree, you can’t live here and not be racist.  It is an illness that veers us closer to fascism all the time; it is a doorway to fascism....ask Germany and Italy.  We make tribes of people, we stereotype, we use hatred to win, to divide, get elected.

Every once in awhile a person will come along and take advantage of this hatred and racism politically.  That has happened again with Trump.  He was elected with a racist vote.  

He won an upset because of the racism he espouses.  He worked for years on the “birther” non-issue, coupled with overt immigration racism, to win the Republican nomination and later the Presidency.  He used the white supremacists’ backlash to gain just enough votes to win the electoral college (a system of electing a President that was originally made to support slavery).

This is not an accident.  America knew what he  was doing when Trump was elected....he plotted the whole thing out....but as before, once the genie is out of the bottle, the consequences could be dire; including war. 

Now it up to America to right the ship...to do what we have done before, rally the country to put down Trump’s nativism and racism.  We can do it peacefully or with war.  

Be ready for both.  

The Fascists Amongt Us

It hurts to say this and my wife is urging me to stop saying it...but I persist.  

What I am saying to some of my friends is that their political behavior and arguments have lapsed over into fascism.

I won’t go into an academic analysis of fascism, read “Anatomy of Fascism”; its about the best criteria based analysis I know of about modern fascism and its attributes.

The sorry state of political behavior in the United States now includes fascism.  And it is growing.

It is not Nazism on all levels, although white supremacists have no compulsion about self identifying themselves as Nazi (National Socialists; I bet they wouldn’t  identify themselves as Nazis if they know what the real definition is).

The fascism in the United States so far is more like Mussolini’s Italy in about 1922.  It is tied to evangelical Christianity, not the Catholic Church as in Italy.  

But the Christian connection is critical...because it pivots off the need to oppose the Jews; ;and immigrants and sees religion as exclusion not inclusion in nature.  

That is critical to understand fascism and Christianity.....it takes Jesus’ teaching and EXCLUDES fellow Christians and targets Jews.  

It is authoritarian and it uses frustration ginned up by Fox and other right wing media, to drive mostly men/women into a frenzy that gets more radical all the time.   Fascism elected Donald Trump.  It is the core of his 30% or so followers.

It is rural, as it was in Italy, Spain and Germany and uses nativism to feed it.  It must have enemies to thrive and liberal “socialists” are its natural enemy.

Just today I tangled with one, a former friend, who posted anti-immigration posts and was rooted on by a post that said “California sucks”.  Now this was from a long time California Native who  no doubt wants  the “State of Jefferson”; another fascist movement.

And I take nothing but abuse for using the term...and after recommending “Anatomy of Fascism” a hundred times NOBODY HAS READ IT.

Typical of Fascists they refuse to get uncomfortable with their beliefs...it must remain “pure” and authoritarian.  Purity of thought again and again....they can't look at an issue from both sides anymore.  

Trump appeals to them because he is “tough”...although ignorant of diplomacy.  Diplomacy is seen as weak, military force is the favorite theme.  And this has grown as military service has dropped in frequency.  It makes me sick to see a fascist call for attacks when they never served a second in the military. They are hypocrites.  

And illegal immigration is a favorite whipping boy; even though the level of this has dropped to practically nothing in the last twenty years.  In short, false threats are the favorite fear monger  of the fascist propaganda machine...just watch Trump as he builds a climate of fear constantly...that is fascist behavior.

We  need a "Wall" ; we need to crack down; we need to make America Great Again.  And we see complex economic problems reduced to a tax cut that builds the fascist plutocracy in the country.  

And this is supported by a dwindling middle class who vote flat against their self interests (What is Really the Matter with Kansas...hint...FASCISM!)

This is fascist political/economic behavior.  It follows the build up that Hitler used in the 1930s, stimulating the economy with militarism, attacking political opponents in illegal and legal ways; etc.  Mussolini did the same thing in Italy.  Militarism and mobilization for war is an easy way to stimulate the economy...coupled with a tax cut and you have a reason to use the military....unfortunately this is on the road to ruin...see 2006-2007 Recession.  

It is fascism...it is not Republicanism...it threatens our freedom more than 1939 because it is amongst us.  It is right in our face...

And sadly, the only way to stop it is to kill it....

Study debunks myths of families of color

“The study found that, at best, media outlets promoted racially biased portrayals and myths that attack  black families and idealize white families with respect to poverty and crime. At worst, media outlets amplified those inaccurate depictions for political and financial gain. Such reporting reinforces debunked narratives, helping to justify actions from police brutality to economic policies that will hurt not just black families but all families for generations.”

White supremacy is insidious.  It is amazing how Fox and other fascist media outlets coupled with the Republican con of “family values” has been a successful attack on people of color; when most of us know better!

They deal in myths, insidious myths created to cripple whole races of people.  

For years the African American family has been under attack.  During slavery the black family was the first thing slavers attacked, because family attachments affected productivity.  In short, a African American male slave, who was worried about his family,  did not work as hard.  So they were not allowed to have families.  Or if they did, the family was used as a weapon to drive up productivity by threatening to, or actually breaking up families if the slaves did not work hard enough.  Nothing motivates a father more than threatening to take away his family!

And in Native American families it was worse, declining  into a genocide of   the family, killing the adults and farming the children out to work camps, or sexual slavery (that is what was done in California....the “Golden State”.

Then, after a couple hundred years, a political party, the Republican Party, declared themselves the party of “family values” and continues to attack families of color with discrimination and outright lies that the core problems of unemployment, homelessness; etc., are families of color that are immoral, indecent, criminal or worse.

The facts are that families of color are dwarfed in dysfunction by Caucasian families.  The truth is the modern American family is no more, in fact less, dysfunctional than in the past.  

The destruction of the family by the Civil War was huge.  The destruction of the family of the western migration was huge.  The destruction of the family during the Great Depression and WWII was huge.  

The studies don’t lie.  Who does lie are white supremacists who use the same old attacks against families of color to pass repressive laws that throw people of color in jail at high rates, that purposefully destroy families to keep people of color subjugated.   

The problem is NOT families of color the problem is white supremacy....until we finally kill that we will be a country perpetually in trouble.

Every problem we face today socially and even economically is caused by white supremacy......every single one!