Yes, his racist ass said it, and a bunch of people cheered when he did. I don’t know which is worse, that the President thought it would generate more votes from his base by calling himself a nationalist or the possibility that he’s right? Either way, it’s a sad state of affairs.
I don’t want to focus on Donald Trump though. My questions are about the crowds of people that cheer when he makes racist or misogynist, or homophobic, or xenophobic statements. We knew who Trump was, all you’re doing is letting us know who you are when you cheer.
I’d like to believe the Trump base is a relatively small percentage of the population, but when supplemented by the percentage of people that knew who he was and didn’t care, it was enough to elect him anyway. We saw in 2016 that the combination of people who found a reason to vote for Trump was sufficient and none of them can claim to have had no idea of who and what he is. He’s not making America great again, but is bringing back relics of a past we hoped was behind us.
There is still reason to be concerned as we approach the mid-term elections. Voting is our last, best hope to hold this ______ist President (fill in the blank with any of the appropriate terms) in check until he’s either impeached, resigns, or is voted out of office in 2020. In the next few days we’ll watch as no one in the Administration resigns in disgust, Fox News defends his use of the term, and Congressional Republicans try to normalize nationalism. Trump has stopped pretending when he called himself a nationalist. We’ll see if the nation can go on pretending not to notice?
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is dying. While the next few movies; Captain Marvel, the Avengers: Infinity War sequel and Spiderman: Far From Home will go on to be great financial hits. We are much closer to the end of the MCU than we are to the beginning. It was a great 10-year run, starting with Iron Man in 2008 with 20 films building towards the next Avengers movie where we see how the Avengers are able to defeat Thanos and restore the half of the universe he wiped out with a snap of his fingers. The problem is… where do they go from here?
The MCU has three basic problems:
Its stars are aging out of their roles. Chris Evans has already announced he’s hanging up the shield and won’t be back as Captain America. Robert Downey has been retiring as Iron Man for years now but it looks like this will be his last shot. If you look at what Tony Stark looked like in the first Iron Man and then see a recent photo. It’s hard to picture him in the role for another 20 films. Same with Mark Ruffalo when playing Bruce Banner. It was just announced that Scarlett Johansson is finally getting a Black Widow movie but the clock is ticking on her as well. Part of what made the MCU work was the credibility of the actors in their roles. Chris Hemsworth looks like he could be Thor for real, but playing an immortal requires he not visibly age. That’s gonna be hard to pull off. While an occasional role in the MCU has seen an actor replaced, Col. Rhodes (War Machine) and the Red Skull. It’s the continuity of the actors and them growing into their roles that have helped make the whole MCU work and that’s coming to an end.
Some of the best stories from the comics have been used up. Marvel Comics provided over 50 years of material to harvest and they have cherry-picked the best of those stories. Even though they generally didn’t do a great job with most of the villains (Loki and Thanos excepted). We’ve seen the majority of the best villains these heroes faced over the years and they killed several of them although, in the movies like the comics, anything is possible and they just might return. After Thanos, who makes a credible foe for the world’s greatest heroes to face? We haven’t seen Kang yet although time travel will allegedly be a feature in Avengers 4. We’ve seen Ego briefly come and go. The Skrulls and Kree will be a feature in Captain Marvel. There is still Secret Wars, but a major event like Infinity War which was the focus of attention for ten years will never be seen again. There is some hope with Disney gaining the rights to X-Men and Fantastic Four which they would have incorporated long ago if they could have. That brings the possibility or a better Dr. Doom and a Galactus that isn’t a cloud but still leaving one last problem.
The MCU has depended too much on multiple characters. With the exception of maybe the original Iron Man and the first Captain America. Marvel has put multiple heroes in almost every film. Iron Man 2 gave us the Black Widow and hinted at War Machine. The first Thor gave us Hawkeye. The films kept adding more and more characters. Captain America: Civil War might as well have been an Avengers movie. Some of the best stories ever in the comics were based on a battle of the hero alone against whatever he faced. Daredevil fighting way outside his class against Dr. Doom, Thor alone vs. The Celestials. We likely will never see that type movie in the MCU because the powers that be will insist on added star power. With the two Infinity War films, what will Marvel do next, unless they recreate from the comics the wedding of Reed and Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four and all hell breaks loose? There is a precedent in movies of adding more and more characters until eventually, they jumped the shark, which is monster movies. What started as a few Frankenstein, Mummy, Dracula and Wolfman movies begat Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman and Frankenstein Meets Dracula. They led to House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, each featuring several monsters. The death of the age of monster movies was announced when we got Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, then they met The Mummy and finally The Invisible Man. After the next segment of Infinity War, there’s a good chance we’ll be a lot closer to Abbott and Costello than a new enemy that will captivate us as we enter the next phase of Marvel films.
The end of the MCU will not be immediate. After the next Avengers film breaks all records known to man. Spiderman: Far From Home will do well. Black Panther 2 won’t recapture the magic of the first film but may still reach a $Billion which isn’t chump change. Dr. Strange 2 will do well but not equal the first movie. There is still money to be made on superhero films, but not the kind of money to pay out $15 million to actors like some of the major stars are getting and Scarlett Johansson is alleged to be receiving for her announced Black Widow film. That doesn’t even include Robert Downey money which exceeds that amount. The MCU won’t die because they can no longer make movies the public will want to see. They won’t be able to afford to make the kind of films they’ve made the last decade when the worst they could expect was to break $600 million in sales.
I grew up reading the comics on which the MCU is based. Seeing these characters realistically portrayed in movies has been a dream come true. I’m going to enjoy the run while it lasts but despite the best-laid plans of Kevin Feige, et al. The end is near.
In 2005, in the days after Hurricane Katrina, Kanye West famously said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on national television during a live fundraiser. He was speaking about the inadequate response to the devastation affecting the Gulf Coast of the United States, primarily affecting black people. The 2005 Kanye, saw black people suffering and spoke out, unconcerned for how it might affect his career. That Kanye has been replaced by a self-promoting clown who has discarded the concern for black people he once possessed.
In 2018, while Hurricane Michael is still leaving a wake of devastation in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Kanye went to the White House and met with Donald Trump. He was purportedly there to discuss the City of Chicago and gun violence. Instead, he joked with reporters during an impromptu press conference. Not outlining his plans for improving things in Chicago (not that he has any expertise to call upon), he didn’t focus on the destruction caused by Hurricane Michael and call for people to support the victims and help with reconstruction. He bragged about his “love” for the man who defended Klan members and Skinheads as “very fine people,” after the deadly incident in Charlottesville, VA. We all know who Trump is; from his advocating for the death penalty for the Central Park 5 to his open appeal to white nationalists who have found a home in his base.
Kanye recently said the 400 years of slavery for black people in America was “a choice.” He also advocated abolishing the 13th Amendment which outlawed slavery which he related somehow to full employment. In response to a huge backlash, Kanye deleted his Twitter account which he does from time to time when the public doesn’t agree with him.
Kanye West is a brilliant musician… a genius in that aspect of his life. That doesn’t give him any expertise in stopping gun violence in Chicago or evaluating this administration’s public policy. Give him props for speaking up against Stop & Frisk, but that comment was lost in his Oval Office diatribe in which he promoted himself and Trump, forgetting all about the black people he once championed. People have speculated that Kanye has been suffering from a form of PTSD since the death of his mother. Others blame the Kardashian curse. It’s clear he now finds himself in the sunken place, and instead of seeking the way out, he’s digging deeper.
I try not to come down too hard on Melania Trump, she no doubt is experiencing some kind of personal hell, wondering if her husband will barge into her separate bedroom and demand his due. He used to satisfy himself on the outside but that’s gotten a little tougher lately given the constant media presence and the lawsuits and all. She might be experiencing Stockholm Syndrome where the hostage develops an alliance with her captor. But she wasn’t taken captive, she volunteered for that shit, trading her self-esteem for riches. Lending her support to perhaps the biggest bully in the world.
She was right there adding her voice to the birthers. Even when claiming to support #MeToo she made sure she also said you can’t just go around believing the women. She stood by her man after Charlottesville, she stood by him as he supported Roy Moore. She stayed silent while Donald mocked a sexual abuse victim, a disabled reporter, wives of other politicians. By standing mute at his side, Melania cosigned onto everything Trump did and now complains about what people say about her.
In her interview with Tom Llamas of ABC NEws, she did allow that maybe she was just “one of the most bullied” after first saying she was the most. Understandably, she spends as little time with her husband as possible. First refusing to move from New York to Washington for several months after Donald was elected. She then started playing “Where’s Melania,” being in Florida when he was in Washington and taking an extended tour of Africa, knowing Donald wouldn’t follow her to “shithole countries.” The only problem is that we the public are spending millions for her to try to escape her husband. People try to give her credit for slapping away Donald’s attempts to hold her hand and for silently suffering public humiliation as the details of her husband’s dalliances with porn stars and Playmate’s occupy the news on a regular basis.
Melania may feel bullied and picked on, but if she wants to be appreciated by the public. She needs to do something the public respects. That might include leaving his ass, making public statements denouncing his bullying, and disowning his misogyny, racism, and xenophobia for starters. Whatever the difference is between your current allowance and whatever your prenuptial agreement allows can’t be worth it. Don’t whine about being bullied… leave!
In 2005, in the days after Hurricane Katrina, Kanye West famously said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on national television during a live fundraiser. He was speaking about the inadequate response to the devastation affecting the Gulf Coast of the United States, primarily affecting black people. The 2005 Kanye, saw black people suffering and spoke out, unconcerned for how it might affect his career. That Kanye has been replaced by a self-promoting clown who has discarded the concern for black people he once possessed.
In 2018, while Hurricane Michael is still leaving a wake of devastation in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Kanye went to the White House and met with Donald Trump. He was purportedly there to discuss the City of Chicago and gun violence. Instead, he joked with reporters during an impromptu press conference. Not outlining his plans for improving things in Chicago (not that he has any expertise to call upon), he didn’t focus on the destruction caused by Hurricane Michael and call for people to support the victims and help with reconstruction. He bragged about his “love” for the man who defended Klan members and Skinheads as “very fine people,” after the deadly incident in Charlottesville, VA. We all know who Trump is; from his advocating for the death penalty for the Central Park 5 to his open appeal to white nationalists who have found a home in his base.
Kanye recently said the 400 years of slavery for black people in America was “a choice.” He also advocated abolishing the 13th Amendment which outlawed slavery which he related somehow to full employment. In response to a huge backlash, Kanye deleted his Twitter account which he does from time to time when the public doesn’t agree with him.
Kanye West is a brilliant musician… a genius in that aspect of his life. That doesn’t give him any expertise in stopping gun violence in Chicago or evaluating this administration’s public policy. Give him props for speaking up against Stop & Frisk, but that comment was lost in his Oval Office diatribe in which he promoted himself and Trump, forgetting all about the black people he once championed. People have speculated that Kanye has been suffering from a form of PTSD since the death of his mother. Others blame the Kardashian curse. It’s clear he now finds himself in the sunken place, and instead of seeking the way out, he’s digging deeper.
I argue on the Internet with what I’ll lump together and call Republicans. Most of them are indeed registered Republicans although some prefer only to be called Conservative or Libertarian. As far as I know, I’m the only black regular among the group but being the Internet, you can’t say for sure.
They are that Trump base we hear about, finding themselves in agreement with everything he says and does, even if they would have considered it heinous had anyone else done it. Some of our discussions are civil, I have perhaps even found one friend in the group although our views are extreme opposites. Mostly, by the third round of exchanges, the discussion has devolved into them resorting to personal insults as they no longer have facts to support their argument. The other constant is that they say, “if only you’d get off that Democrat Plantation and see the light.” Their presumption being that I’ve volunteered for slavery to the Democrat Party and if I had any sense I’d consider the value of an alternative.
Those with a bit of historical knowledge tell me that Republicans are the “Party of Lincoln.” They were formed with the intention of ending slavery and that it was Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, that made the Emancipation Proclamation and fought the Civil War to end slavery. I give them partial credit for their initial good intentions. Lincoln himself was rather ambivalent toward slavery and while he said he wouldn’t personally own any. He’d have been just fine with slavery’s existence. He also would have sent the slaves back to Africa if given the chance. That Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free any slaves from states that didn’t secede from the Union. It was about hurting the South economically and winning the war. Any credit they had they lost in the Compromise of 1877 when they traded for the Presidency in a contested election, granting the removal of Federal Troops from the South which effectively ended Reconstruction and opened the floodgates for Jim Crow laws.
Failing to convince me of the merits of their own Party, they move right along to attacking the Democrat Party. They attempt to enlighten me by linking Democrats with the Ku Klux Klan and a racist past. Ever helpful, I readily agree, pointing out examples of massacres perpetrated by Democrats related to voting rights, one in Ocoee, FL just a few miles from where I presently reside although it isn’t taught in the history books. I also mention the numbers of Democrats that fled the Party, joining the Republicans after Democrats grudgingly passed Civil and Voting Rights legislation in the 1960’s. I mention Lee Atwater and the Southern Strategy which gave us George H.W. Bush on the back of Willie Horton. And then I bring up the single issue that will keep me from ever considering the Republican Party as long as the policy exists which is voter suppression.
They howl in denial like stuck pigs at the mention of voter suppression. They say there’s “no such thing” while simultaneously arguing about hordes of illegal voters, no instances of more than a few they can prove in a nation of hundreds of millions. They ask for examples and I provide quotes from panels of Federal Judges using words like “surgical precision” to describe Republican efforts. They ask, “what’s wrong with requiring an ID which you need for several other things?” I surprise them and don’t disagree about ID if it’s actually free and timely and doesn’t translate into an Unconstitutional poll tax. I then ask about all the other laws that always accompany a Voter ID law, ones that reduce early voting days and times, ones that don’t recognize certain State-issued ID used by students. Reduction in polling places that translate to long lines in urban (minority) districts whereas rural voters are in and out.
They point to the overwhelming percentage of minorities that vote Democrat and ask, “what do you get for that?” They point to urban areas like Detroit and Chicago with Democrat leadership yet high crime and murder rates. I separate the two as they are unique circumstances. Detroit had lost its ability to govern itself through the “Emergency Manager” law where the State (Republicans) took over the management of several Michigan cities including Detroit and Flint. The Detroit manager sold off many of the city’s assets like the Silverdome at bargain basement prices, working like Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor and benefiting the rich. In Flint, they made a decision to use river water and have been poisoning the citizens for years with no true end in sight. In Chicago, which they tout as having some of the strictest gun laws in the nation but a high shooting rate, they are surrounded by municipalities with some of the weakest laws, making access to guns no problem. My general answer though is that no city lives in a vacuum and it is often the case that urban tax revenues go to support rural and suburban causes.
They never stray from their denials about the existence of voter suppression and I never tire of proving it with court decisions and statements of politicians indicating it was precisely what they intended. Then we get to mass incarceration. Their defenses take different directions as some claim the whole concept to be a myth while others blame it wholly on the Clinton’s and the crime bill passed under Bill’s leadership. I don’t let Clinton off the hook altogether but the Republican Congress would have forced something even worse down America’s throat had he not compromised. I give them half a point but then insist we take a look at the present. Out of one side of his mouth, Trump says he, “doesn’t have an Attorney General.” Yet, Jeff Sessions when not being lambasted by the President for recusing himself from the Russia Investigation. Has single-handedly brought back mass incarceration, filling for-profit cells with minorities and immigrants which is just what Trump wanted.
I would not mind if the Republican Party presented a viable alternative. The Democrat Party is a jumble of various constituencies and it often meets the needs of one over another. They do sometimes take black voters for granted while not addressing some of our needs as a community like I’d prefer. I could recite the failings of the Democrat Party as well as many Republicans yet you offer no better alternative, in fact denying my people the right to fully participate in the process of Democracy by inhibiting our ability to vote.
Lastly, I watched you “plow through” the confirmation process of Brett Kavanaugh using that sham of an investigation as a pretext. When you claimed to respect the women and then supported Trump when he mocked one of them. You showed us nothing has changed. Black unemployment is down, following the trend already established by the Obama administration. Yet that increase in jobs is primarily low-paying and wages are stagnant. Where is the influence of black people in your Party, what voices do you listen to? Kellyanne Conway couldn’t name one black person in the administration. Ben Carson is busy taking care of his family, helping them receive no-bid contracts and picking out fancy furniture on the government’s dime. What does it say about you that the most influential black Republicans are Diamond and Silk?
I sent off my early ballot today. I had the opportunity to vote for the first black nominee of a major Party for Governor of Florida in my lifetime. Hopefully, it won’t be the last. Many of the offices I voted for were non-partisan like Judges, at least Judges used to be non-partisan but we see from Kavanaugh, that’s no longer true. When I had no clear preference in a partisan race, I did my research on the candidate’s values. There was an instance where there was still little separation, I considered voting for a Republican, and then I remembered voter suppression, mass incarceration, women’s rights, and the trade war for good measure. Call it the plantation if you like, I looked you over and couldn’t stomach what you have to offer.
“I swear by Almighty God that I will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
Brett Kavanaugh uttered those words before his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2004, 2006, and twice in 2018. He swore under penalty of perjury that he would not lie. In each instance, he lied to make himself look better, make confirmation for office more likely, and to cover up crimes.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a friendly face, asked Kavanaugh, “When did you first hear of Ms. Ramirez’s allegations against you?” Kavanaugh indicated he hadn’t heard of the charges related to exposing himself and causing unwanted contact with his penis, until after an article ran in The New Yorker magazine. NBC broke news that Kavanaugh knew weeks before about the upcoming allegations and was persuading Yale friends to coordinate their testimony and discredit Deborah Ramirez.
This is just one of the many lies Kavanaugh has told under oath, often with the protection of Republican Senators and two Republican White House administrations. In 2004 he lied about his involvement with torture programs when he worked for the White House. In 2006, he lied about receipt of, and the use of stolen materials from Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy. After his 2006 testimony, Democrat Senators sent a referral to the Justice Department regarding his false testimony but the Bush White House refused to act on it. In 2018, Republican Senators and the Trump White House tried to keep the e-mails proving Kavanaugh lied, from ever being seen by the public.
In his 2018 testimony at a 2nd hearing, after specific charges of sexual assault. Kavanaugh was called upon to answer questions about his drinking which was at the center of many of the allegations against him. He was believed to be drunk when he allegedly attempted to rape Christine Blasey Ford, he was drunk when he assaulted Deborah Ramirez. He was close friends with Mark Judge, who wrote a book about his drunken behavior at the all-male Georgetown Prep High School both attended. Judge told his girlfriend about a train of boys having sex with a drunken, incoherent girl, a claim similar to another charge against Kavanaugh by Julie Swetnick, who claimed to have seen Judge and Kavanaugh standing in line at parties, waiting to have sex with a girl.
Kavanaugh was asked to explain several entries in his 1983 yearbook which are very hard to accept as credible. In his responses, he appeared to have lied about his drinking, his throwing up which he blamed on a “sensitive stomach” and his relationship with girls including why 14 boys listed themselves as members of the “Renate Alumnius,” Renate being the first name of a girl at a nearby school. When she heard about the reference, 34 years later. She said, “I learned about these yearbook pages only a few days ago. I don’t know what ‘Renate Alumnus’ actually means. I can’t begin to comprehend what goes through the minds of 17-year-old boys who write such things, but the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way. I will have no further comment.”
That Brett Kavanaugh is an attempted rapist, guilty of sexual assault and group rape may not be provable beyond any reasonable doubt after as much as 36 years in some instances. That he is a mean drunk is backed up by a steadily growing number of witnesses and that he has committed perjury in a televised hearing which much of the nation watched is abundantly clear. What is also clear is that the vast majority of Republican Senators, capable of confirming Kavanaugh’s nomination with no Democrat support, simply don’t care. What remains to be seen is if the Republican women in the Senate and any Republican male will allow it to matter?
ENIGMA IN BLACK 