Wednesday, July 11, 2018

GOP is constructing means to extend minority white rule

There are many countries around the world where an ethnic minority has ruled over an ethnic majority for many, many years. Consider: South Africa, Syria, Liberia, Iraq, etc. Any place in the colonial era. There's a while Wikipedia article on the topic of a "Dominant minority". Republicans, fronted by the current President, are well on their way to instituting the means to do the same in the U.S.:
The move to denaturalize some citizens is just the latest in a larger drive by Republicans—led by key figures in the Trump White House—to preserve a white majority in American politics. At the state level, Republican lawmakers take steps to protect GOP districts, dampen voter turnout, and otherwise hinder participation, which raises the chances of Republican victories for Congress and the White House. In turn, Republicans in Washington nominate and confirm judges who give voter suppression the cover of law, giving incentive to new efforts at restriction and disenfranchisement. What Donald Trump brings is an explicit effort to write nonwhite immigrants out of the body politic, removing as many as possible and presenting the rest as a suspect class. 

Slate.

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Republicans are Trump

An aspect of the ongoing Trump radioactive dumpster fire: as is the fashion for useful idiots, he draws attention away from the Republican party in general.

This seems slightly odd. If the world were just, Republicans would be tarred and feathered with his excrement on a daily basis. By rights, they should be smeared in perpetuity with his foulness. GOP voters and leadership don't resist, push back, stop, leverage, complain, or disavow his actions. The ongoing filthy, rude, foul-mouthed, sexist, racist, violence-toned, child-ripping, ally-offending, trade-war-starting, nuclear-saber-rattling, fear-mongering, corrupt insanity is something they should rightly own. We should never again hear any conservative GOP voter complain about anyone's morals or family values (we will, but their credibility has been atomized).

Moreover: Arguably the horrible policies that are coming out of the Executive branch are actually more emblematic of the Republican party than Trump himself. All evidence is that Trump is effectively senile/narcissistic/mentally incompetent, can only remember the last single thing anyone said to him, and probably had no essential principles before that (he was, of course, previously registered as a Democrat and held many positions opposite to what he asserts now). But the policies being implemented -- such as appointing young and extreme right-wing judges, cutting health care assistance, zero-tolerance policy of jailing asylum seekers, huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, etc. -- are all core Republican policies, and have the scent of Trump being "handled" by far more cunning operators.

Trump's actions shouldn't even be called that. Everything he does should have "Republican" in the headline, because that's a truer representation of what's happening. And by rights that stink should never, ever wash off the party or its voters or supporters.