American History

It’s Complicated…

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Assuming you haven’t been living somewhere off the grid and blissfully disconnected from the world at large until this very moment, you’ve been hearing a lot of heavy-handed talk from certain sectors that anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace and endorse the Trump Administration is un-American. Those targeted with these rhetorical condemnations include Conservatives and several former Republican politicians who display what constitutes an unacceptable degree of disloyalty. It’s the mind-boggling perspective from these circles that, if someone isn’t fully on board with Donald Trump’s rather Autocratic and Authoritarian vision for America, they must hate America.

It’s readily apparent that this is in no way a condition tied to the office of President, but something exclusive to the person of Trump and those who curry his favor (only while they remain in his good graces). That much is evident in how these same people displayed open contempt toward Barack Obama and Joe Biden while they were in the White House. The same pervasive, inimical rhetoric wasn’t directed at the people who opposed Obama and Biden. The vehement opposition to those two Presidents was treated as part of the standard discourse in American politics, despite the acrimony and animosity being far more intense than anything that had previously been considered normal. This double standard indicates to me that there is a whole swath of the American population that believes that the spirit and character of America is somehow embodied within Donald Trump.

The implicit assertion, then, if taken at face value, is that these people believe opposition to Trump’s Administration is symptomatic of hating America (because Trump IS America).

I don’t believe this assertion is accurate, and not solely because it lacks nuance and reeks of little more than partisan jingoistic propaganda. Hating Donald Trump, his policies, and those who work to enact them is neither unpatriotic nor indicative of hating America. On the contrary, I would contest that it’s the people leveling these accusations who actually hate America, or at least the real America that exists outside of Donald Trump’s exceedingly narrow worldview. To defend that argument, I need to explore what it means to hate America. But first, there’s an important question to answer.

What is America?

Is America the land contained within the illusory boundaries we have in place? Is America the people residing in the United States, or (as some would surely insist) just the citizens of the nation? Is it the form of government established by the Constitution? Is it some ideal or another intangible thing beyond the scope of the Constitution, like what we refer to when talking of the American Dream? Is it all of these things, a combination of one or two, or some other thing entirely?

Additionally, we should probably establish what we mean when we say that someone hates America. Is it sufficient that they hate aspects of American culture or history? What about hating substantial portions of the American citizenry? What constitutes hate in this context? Before we can discuss whether one group or another hates America, it would be helpful to define all of our terms.

This, of course, exposes the complicated nature of the topic and further reveals the lack of nuance implicit in the accusations bandied about; that so many people hate America. Before we dig too deep, and speaking solely for myself, I have to say that, where my feelings toward America are concerned, it’s most certainly complicated. If America and I had a relationship status, that would be the simplest box to check: “It’s Complicated.”

Part of the reason for that complicated relationship in my case is that I am one of the millions of people directly descended from one of the 56 men who signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Rush was a signatory from Pennsylvania, and his descendant, Rosanna Rush Merrill (a nurse during the Civil War), was my great-great-grandmother.

I learned of this family history at a young age. I spent time studying the physician who went from being one of the Sons of Liberty to a member of the Continental Congress, before becoming one of the illustrious men who inscribed his signature on the Founding Document of this nation. Despite the inherent Imperialism and Colonialism implicit in the foundation of America, I took no small amount of pride in knowing that I was directly descended from this man. This was especially true when I was young and ill-informed enough to perceive the country through rose-colored glasses.

I’ve said in the past that, if I had to pick a Founding Father to have descended from, I very well may have selected Benjamin Rush. Of the Founding Fathers I’ve studied, he’s the one who displayed what I consider the most admirable qualities. He was, first of all, an adamant and vocal abolitionist who fully opposed the slave trade and disagreed with any assertion that Black persons were in any way morally or intellectually inferior to Whites. Beyond that, he opposed Capital Punishment, founded both Dickinson College and the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia, believed in compassionate treatment of the mentally ill, and he believed addiction wasn’t a moral failing.

Sure, he had plenty of ass-backward thoughts on bloodletting and other things (even for the times). And yet, for the times in which he was living, he was nonetheless highly progressive, and I have to say it seems like he left behind more good than bad. It’s difficult not to feel a bit of pride in knowing I had an ancestor of no small esteem, who very well may have also seen the world the same way I do, were he alive today.

Another thing that complicates my relationship with America is that I come from a military family. It’s not just that my ancestor was directly involved in the Revolutionary War or that at least one of my great-great-grandfathers fought (on the correct side) in the Civil War. Both of my grandfathers served during World War II. Two of my three uncles served with the Army in Vietnam. My father was in the Navy, and my subsequent stepfather was in the Air Force. And now my oldest son is in the Army. In fact, had I not fractured five vertebrae a month before I turned 16, I would have enlisted as well.

I’m thoroughly opposed to our out-of-control Defense Spending, our rampant invasions of foreign nations over the last three quarters of a century, the lie we tell ourselves about bringing Freedom and Democracy to foreign lands, and the premise of American Exceptionalism that fuels our ongoing Imperialist and Colonialist activities. But three of the men I admired most in my life were soldiers, two of them involved in an entirely illegal and unjustified conflict. Nevertheless, they were heroes to me, and heroic men otherwise. I can’t simply disengage from that reality, no matter how much I oppose the conditions that led to these men being in the positions they were in, to become the heroes they became.

All of that aside, I’ve never been particularly patriotic, but I am proud of these aspects of my family history. To disentangle that history from the associated American history is virtually impossible.

But if I proceed from here, I’ll be getting ahead of myself, and I prefer to avoid that if at all possible. Let’s get back to definitions.

If, by America, we mean the land that we include within the boundaries, I find it difficult to believe that anyone opposing Donald Trump’s Administration could be accused of hating the wide-ranging landscapes and environments to be experienced from Maine to Hawaii and Florida to Alaska. There are, no doubt, certain ecosystems that people dislike. I’m not a fan of places that are particularly hot and humid, for example. But it’s not the people opposing President Trump who want to develop that land, mine it, or drill for oil. That’s not loving the environment or the land, that’s loving what you can take from it. That belies a superficial and selfish motivation, not an appreciation for the land itself. It’s a short-sighted, short-term predation that leaves nothing of value behind. Clearly, it is not the land that Trump supporters are accusing Liberals, Leftists, and anyone not loyal to Trump of hating.

So, is it the people? For simplicity, in this section, I’ll focus on Republican vs. Democrat, as those are the two largest voting blocs. As America’s population became more culturally and ethnically diverse, it’s definitely true that both major parties became less homogenized as a result; however, it’s been the Democratic Party that has displayed the greater degree of diversity in Representation, something that has shown a steady increase over time. At the same time, it’s Donald Trump who has maintained the unwavering support of White Supremacist Hate Groups, in large part because of policies that are transparently focused on benefitting a homogenized culture of straight, cisgender, white, Christian males. White people do make up the majority of the American population, at almost three times the number of people as are classified as Hispanic or Latino, more than four times as many as those who are classified as Black or African American, nearly nine times as many as those who are labeled as Asian, and more than 24 times as many people as those classified in any other way (including those who identify as two or more ethnicities). In fact, White people make up more of the population than all of those ethnic groups combined. So, could one argue that the party appealing to White Supremacists is the party that loves the larger number of Americans simply by virtue of skin color? I suppose one could make that argument, but that ignores the other characteristics that appeal to those same people: straight sexual orientation, cisgender identification, Christian faith, and male-dominated hierarchy. Of course, all of that becomes moot when we acknowledge that nothing suggests that not being a White Supremacist means that one hates White people. In fact, I would venture to guess that most of the animosity one perceives as being directed toward the Right is reactionary in nature. That hate arises as a result of the contempt and dehumanization that have long been directed toward the demographic groups constituting the Left. I’ve discussed it in the past, but I feel it merits repeating that there is a substantial difference between hating a group of people for who they are versus hating them for what they do. It seems apparent to me that it’s not the American people we’re talking about when it comes to hating America.

Is it the Democratic Republic established by the U.S. Constitution that Trump’s opponents are accused of hating? While the document certainly has its flaws, I’ve witnessed nothing from President Trump’s opponents that indicates widespread disdain for the Constitution. Both major political parties have been routinely accused of violating the Constitution, but only two Presidents in my lifetime have been impeached, and only one of them was impeached twice. And, in less than nine months in office, a total of 138 Executive Actions have been partially or fully blocked, and another 94 remain pending, with only 93 that were allowed to stand. At least ten of those decisions blocking Executive Actions were made by judges who were appointed by Trump himself. While it has largely been ignored, President Trump has clearly and brazenly violated the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses, breaking with tradition and not divesting himself of his assets and placing them in a blind trust to prevent conflicts of interest. Several State, Federal, and Foreign entities have paid incalculable amounts of money to Trump properties; however, a House Oversight Committee reported that President Trump accepted more than $7.8 Million from 20 Foreign Governments during his first term. To the contrary, Barack Obama requested guidance from the Department of Justice before accepting the Nobel Peace Prize due to the financial component. Of course, no other President has invited the 220 largest investors in a cryptocurrency (that business partners launched just before they took office) to a private dinner. Anyone pretending the Trump Administration isn’t a den of graft and corruption is either lying or wilfully ignorant. It could be argued that there’s hardly a Constitutional Amendment that Donald Trump hasn’t attempted to violate or redefine to suit his desires. To me, this means that his supporters either display a similar disrespect for the Constitution or a level of such ignorance concerning it that their stated appreciation of it would be rendered moot.

Could it be the idealistic American Dream that Trump and his supporters are accusing his opposition of hating so vehemently? Rooted in the Declaration of Independence’s statement that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable Rights, including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, the American Dream has long been understood to mean that this is a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. I’ve seen no indication that people opposing President Trump are in any way opposed to the American Dream. But it can be clearly ascertained from Donald Trump’s actions that he struggles to redefine “all men” in such a way as to exclude all but those like him. He attacks immigrants (documented and undocumented alike), political opponents, the free press, women, the impoverished, the elderly, the infirm, and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to his revisionist view of the American Dream. Now that he’s openly admitted to adopting the playbook laid out in Project 2025 (though anyone who had read it previously was already aware of this), there’s a clear redefinition of core American Values at the heart of his platform. This is not the behavior of someone who loves the American Dream. These are the actions of someone who hopes to co-opt, manipulate, and convert it until it becomes a vehicle for his personal gain.

I don’t believe there’s any further need to define what is meant by hate in this discourse. It’s readily apparent that Trump and his supporters have no love, appreciation, or respect for the land beyond what they can consume from it. The people of America, unless they subscribe to a particularly rigid philosophy and meet an equally rigid set of physiological and psychological conditions, are not welcome in Trump’s vision of what America should be. The Constitution (and the Government bestowed by it) is an opportune shield when convenient and an obstacle to be shredded when not. The American Dream is perceived as something only an elite class (those who meet the previously discussed conditions) should have access to. This is flagrant disrespect for and contempt of everything we apply as a definition of what makes America, America. Who are these people to accuse anyone else of hating America?

I’ve heard it said that people who fight for equality and equity by pointing to past injustices and the ripple effects present today are guilty of hating America. Recognition of unpleasant and terrible elements within America’s past and present isn’t symptomatic of hatred for the country. Acceptance that we can and should be better is not a condemnation, but a guiding principle that was encoded within the Constitution itself. The purpose of Constitutional Amendments is to correct course where we were wrong or to adjust to changing times and conditions. Our Founding Fathers recognized that they couldn’t see the future and prepare the country for every eventuality, so they provided a method by which that lack of foresight could be accommodated. Condemning the systemic racism still present in all facets of American society isn’t hatred for White people, but a nudge and a reminder that there’s still work to do. We got started, for sure, but then (as a society) we got tired of exerting the effort because it wasn’t as easy as we hoped it would be, or because it was going to require serious structural changes that might inconvenience those of us who weren’t already being constantly inconvenienced by the existing structures. Hiding or erasing shameful truths from the past only serves to make it all that much easier to repeat the same mistakes. You can’t claim to love the country while wearing blinders and intentionally ignoring whole portions of what America is and was. We need to acknowledge the errors we’ve made and take responsibility to keep them from being repeated. We need to speak truth to the lies we’ve told ourselves regarding our place in the world and the lofty ideals we pretend to ascribe to as we impose our will on other nations, as well as the people of this one. We need to come to terms with our treatment of marginalized people of all kinds, here and abroad. That is what loving America looks like: helping her to become the nation we believed her to be when we were children, the nation our Founding Fathers believed she could become, and the nation that people from foreign lands seek to make their home. We can be better, and we should always be progressing ahead while keeping an eye on the past, so the lessons we’ve learned are never forgotten.

I don’t believe this perspective is exclusive to me. I think this outlook is perhaps more widespread, and that people are proud of certain elements of America or American History, while dissatisfied or even disgusted with others. That seems to me to be a reasonable perspective, because America is not just one thing, of course. If this is what someone defines as hating America, I’m afraid I don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

When Assessing Authoritarianism: Compare and Contrast Critically

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Altogether too few of the people opposing the steady slide to the right in the U.S. have taken the time to read Mein Kampf or Goebbels’ later extrapolation on many of its premises. This is especially disheartening because it’s clear that the other side is well-acquainted with it. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the distaste people feel at the thought of reading the manifesto that served as the template for the rise of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany. I would argue that it’s as important to read Mein Kampf as it is to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War or Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince, if only for the glimpse it provides into the thinking and worldview of someone who would commit the sort of atrocities we witnessed from Nazi Germany.

It’s doubly important as we’ve been witnessing The Big Lie on display here in the United States, combined with virtually every other element from the Nazi propaganda playbook: from establishing a mythic (almost messianic) image of Donald Trump to portraying the nation as a society in unity but for an unfortunate assortment of “others” who display “asocial” qualities, tainting the purity of America and threatening both a way of life and the lives of the people therein.

Of course, you hear similar (albeit inverted) accusations from people on the Right. It’s not uncommon to hear or read some mouthpiece of the Republican Party claiming that the Left (as if Democrats are actually a Leftist political party) is mirroring Nazi and Fascist practices and ideology. These are often the same people who, with a straight face, attempt to insist that the Nazis were an embodiment of Socialist principles, despite absolutely no presence of those principles within the stated or enacted objectives of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany was Socialist in the same way North Korea is a Democratic Republic, which is to say not in the slightest. The Nazis actively objected to every facet of Socialist ideology, from opposing Collective Ownership and dismantling Labor Unions that protected Workers’ Rights to shifting the focus from Class Consciousness and International Egalitarian objectives to Racist Nationalism. It’s all right there in the history books. This means that there are two types of people making these claims: those who weren’t paying attention in their history classes and those who are cynically capitalizing on the fact that people can be manipulated into believing ahistorical nonsense if they’re incentivized to do so.

Unfortunately, you’ll also hear plenty of people who claim to be centrist, insisting that both parties are correct in those accusations, because (according to them) both major parties are Nazi and Fascist in nature. In most instances, you’ll hear or read someone making those sorts of statements only to, in the next breath, almost exclusively parrot the talking points from the Right. I’m jaded enough to believe this is just as often a bad-faith ploy by those who internally cling to right-wing ideology as it is the result of right-wing White Supremacy simply being the long-time default within America and American Politics.

It’s simple enough to dispel these fictional distortions of the respective political platforms, but those who need to hear the truth are least likely to open themselves to it or are willing to accept that they could be wrong. I understand that last part, because it’s hard to admit we’re wrong about something, especially something that has become a core component of who we perceive ourselves as being. I think most of us can understand how challenging it is to uproot long-standing beliefs that are thoroughly entrenched in both our identities and the worldviews we hold. There should be some sympathy and empathy available for the people who are terrified to acknowledge just how wrong they have been and the far-reaching implications associated with acting under false premises for however many years they’ve been propping up these fictions.

In reality, it’s the same sort of cognitive dissonance that goes hand-in-hand with getting people to face the deeply unpleasant realities of American History and the degree to which White Supremacy has been the substrate underlying all of it. It’s not uncommon for people to experience feelings of unwanted (and, to them, unjustified) guilt and shame when forced to evaluate history (and their own lives) through a lens that lays bare the cruelty and lies that have been necessary to maintain that corrupt foundation. Occasionally, people lash out in reaction to what they perceive as persecution or judgment over the role their ancestors might have played in laying or maintaining the bedrock of White Supremacy upon which America has been built. Unfortunately, there are some people (admittedly, a small minority) who take delight in that sense of guilt and shame; however, the vast majority of people simply want acknowledgment of past injustices and a sincere effort to do better and be better. And, the fact is that we can be better. We can (and should) work to dig out that stratum of sickness upon which our society is built, because it’s not as solid as it seems. We can replace it with a medium consisting of education, empathy, and equity, but that requires effort that we need to be willing to invest.

One of the first steps is to analyze our modern political landscape with intellectual honesty. To do that, we need to work on evaluating how we define things and how definitions are being distorted to manipulate people into working against their own self-interests. Liberals (and Democrats by extension) are not a Leftist Political Party. Leftist ideology is rooted in principles more closely associated with Communism, which is mutually exclusive from Capitalism. Liberals are Capitalists, albeit perhaps less overtly predatory in their Capitalist sensibilities than Conservatives (Republicans) happen to be. Even the most progressive Liberals are still Capitalists, even though they may endorse some aspects of Socialism (not Communism): Social Safety Nets, Universal Healthcare, Government Regulation and Oversight, robust Public Education, Trade and Labor Unions, and Public Ownership of Utilities and Infrastructure. This is how most civilized nations operate, in what is classified as a Mixed Economy. European nations embody this Mixed Economy model through Social Democracy or Market Socialism, while China and other nations utilize a model more akin to Socialist Market Economy. In the modern world, Communism is virtually untenable, and the closest example to a pure Communist state is North Korea, which requires isolationism to survive. There are those on the Left who are deeply pro-Communist and invested in the belief that it is the ideal form of human Socioeconomics (and maybe it is). But in practical application, and in today’s global society, it’s either a fantasy or so far down the line as to be indistinguishable from fantasy.

Now that we’ve established accurate definitions, we can proceed. I am writing this as a U.S. citizen and for an audience largely consisting of other U.S. citizens, so I will often be using the terms Democrat, Liberal, and the Left interchangeably. As far as American Politics go, when looking at the two major parties that dominate the political landscape, Democrats are the Left.

We’ll begin by addressing the facile claims that Democrats are the true inheritors of Nazi and Fascist ideologies in American Politics.

No one in either Liberal or Leftist circles has the privileged status of being beyond reproach in the same way that Donald Trump has taken on a sort of mythic status for Conservatives. Those on the Right have a hard time comprehending this, which is why they’ll gleefully toss the name of Bill Clinton into the discourse surrounding the Epstein Files. However, while they will trip over their own feet attempting to dance around as they proactively excuse Trump if he happens to be implicated in monstrous actions (beyond those of which he’s already been implicated). The reaction from both Leftists and Liberals, when this bad-faith argument is proposed, is to say that Clinton should absolutely end up in prison if he’s guilty of the same sort of things. The same would be true for any name they tossed into the discussion. Liberals have a far better track record when it comes to holding their own accountable, in part because they’re operating from a different playbook than the one utilized by present-day Conservatives. “They go low, we go high,” however, only functions as a strategy when the opposition is capable of honest self-reflection and shame.

As a brief aside, the Republican Party has clearly displayed that it will still endorse and vote for accused (and even convicted) pedophiles and people found guilty of sexual assault. Over the last 20 years, all but one of the Lawmakers in D.C. who have been investigated or charged for similar crimes have been Republicans: Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, Dennis Hastert, Jim Gibbons, and Mark Foley. Notably, no one backed the sole Democrat in the list, Anthony Weiner, when the evidence of his actions came to light, and I doubt anyone either knows or cares where he is today. He became a joke to Liberals and Conservatives alike, and no one on the political spectrum supported him or excused his awful behavior. In direct contrast, Donald Trump (and many of his supporters) openly and repeatedly endorsed Roy Moore in his bid to become a U.S. Senator.

I left out accusations of Sexual Harassment because that claim is admittedly a bit more nebulous and harder to define (or to prove). In that arena, Republicans and Democrats are about evenly distributed. I also left out investigations by Ethics Committees over extramarital affairs and incidents of Lawmakers being outed for same-sex affairs (I don’t think there’s anything wrong with homosexuality) because they’re at least consensual. Though I will take this moment to say it is damning just how many members of the party that proclaims itself to be the arbiter of Christian morality are the ones most unwilling to uphold the same morals they believe they can force upon others. The hypocrisy within Conservative politics is substantially more egregious solely because of how vocal the adherents are in condemning homosexuality, sexual immorality, and sexuality as a whole. These are people (and not exclusively the political figures) who promote repression and oppression, abstinence, conversion therapy, and a plethora of other harmful practices when it comes to everyone but themselves.

Returning to the topic at hand, since no one in the Left or Liberal political realm is considered sacrosanct, there’s no comparison to the Cult of Personality that’s been assembled around Donald Trump by the Right.

Where there is additionally no comparison is that there is no point within my lifetime that Democrats have cultivated a doctrine of othering people based on immutable characteristics such as Ethnicity, Nationality, Sexual Orientation, Gender, or Gender Identity. It’s simply not consistent with the Party Platform.

There are sure to be those who will take this moment to exercise a knee-jerk response and express the historically illiterate argument regarding Democrats and Republicans in their respective roles from the 19th Century, but that can be disregarded just as the individuals making those specious arguments are disregarding reality. Besides, I’ve already devoted a fair amount of time to addressing those ahistorical myths here.

This is not to say that much of the Democratic support for marginalized groups hasn’t been superficial, conditional, and performative. But that’s to be expected in a sociopolitical environment wherein cisgender, straight, white, Christian males are deemed to be the standard by which all others are measured. When that exclusive assortment of traits is treated as the baseline normal, it’s difficult not to fail in attempts to foster true equality and equity. Until that insidious, often unconscious, bias is dismantled, we can’t be surprised by the shortcomings of even the most well-meaning politicians.

Nevertheless, the point remains that there are neither stated nor unwritten components within any Democratic Platform wherein people from other nations or cultures, with different ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, or sexual orientations, are to be persecuted for these inherent and unchangeable aspects of who they are. Similarly, there is nothing in any Democratic Platform that overtly or subtly denigrates people of different faiths, economic statuses, or levels of education.

The Democratic Party (far more than its political opposition) embraces the principle of Diversity and Tolerance that is supposed to be the underlying ethos of America. While flawed in its own ways, the Democratic Party is far closer to embodying the ideals of pluralism and unity than the Republican Party. Hell, one need look no further than the demographic makeup of the respective parties in Congress to see this on clear display.

While one party dedicates massive amounts of resources to the process of not only othering people but also actively persecuting them, the other party strives to provide for all people (including their political opponents). Of course, Democrats often fall into old routines of paternalizing and patronizing marginalized people, infantilizing them, and acting out some antiquated “White Savior” roleplay that does as much harm as good. In that, I suppose we have to allow some leeway for “good intentions” despite the harm it causes. They may be trying in all the wrong ways, but at least they’re trying.

The supposed evils perpetrated by the Democrats seem to center around topics like Abortion Rights, Gender-Affirming Care, Inclusivity, and Multiculturalism. It’s challenging for me to even conceive of a worldview in which those things are evidence of an evil or destructive philosophy.

Regarding Abortion, no Democrat has expressed any desire to impose abortion on those who oppose the practice, instead believing it’s a matter best left to be discussed and decided by the parent(s), their physician, and their spiritual guides (if applicable).

As far as Gender-Affirming Care is concerned, that is similarly something Democrats believe should be left to the individual, their family and loved ones, and the psychiatric and medical professionals who are involved in the decisions.

On the topics of Inclusivity and Multiculturalism, there’s no denying that the Founding Fathers were deeply Eurocentric, embodying White Supremacy that may make some people uncomfortable. When it was born, America was meant to be a Melting Pot, wherein Immigrant Cultures could blend into, and become indistinguishable from the burgeoning nation’s culture of customs, laws, and language. There was a great deal of non-inclusive thinking in early American ideology that extended to several white European nationalities as well as non-whites. Over time, even some of those Founding Fathers (like Washington and Franklin) started to embrace the contributions of cultures that had initially been feared or denigrated. Much of this misgiving was rooted in misapprehension and misunderstanding associated with the relatively recent (and entirely inaccurate) concept of “Race,” which I discuss at length here. Time passed, and by the late 19th Century, perspectives had shifted even further regarding the status of America as a Melting Pot (more accurately, I think, a salad bowl.) Diverse Cultures were increasingly seen as things that added texture and flavor to American Culture. This nation was seen as an example, a place where different cultures could come together and celebrate their differences while assembling a shared national identity that is non-homogenized.

With Capitalism being the ever-present elephant in the room, it would be a mistake if I didn’t include the perception many on the Right seem to have, regarding Democrats being fiscally irresponsible. This is, after all, one of the unforgivable evils associated with Liberals, if we’re to believe the propaganda. However, if anything, it seems to me that Democrats are at least slightly more willing to uphold the Social Contract than their opponents, wherein members of the population pay their share of taxes for the government to then provide for the public good. The Republicans, on the other hand, want to perpetuate a system wherein certain privileged classes pay proportionately less into the government, and the government, in turn, provides less toward the public good (to the benefit of fewer members of the public).

It’s perhaps unfair to place that solely in the laps of Republicans, because there are several Democrats who espouse centrist, middle-of-the-road ideals who are altogether too happy to see the wealthiest fraction of a percentage of Americans skirt their responsibilities as they simultaneously skim off subsidies and take full advantage of the infrastructure and systems funded by tax dollars. However, if we look back through voting records, it’s almost exclusively been the Democrats who most consistently pushed for both Campaign Finance Reform and Financial Transparency within the government. This seems to belie much of the propaganda associated with the financial irresponsibility of Liberals.

Republicans (as far back as I can recall) have proclaimed themselves to be the champions of Freedom and Liberty, while they systematically intrude deeper into people’s lives. Political opposition, questioning authority, deviations from the above-mentioned “baseline normal,” demands for equity, and so on are treated as “asocial” or even criminal behaviors in the rhetoric expressed by the Right. Freedom and Liberty, according to the actions of the Republican Party, are contingent upon meeting certain biological, psychological, sociological, religious, and political purity standards of homogeneity. If one is unfamiliar, that was also the basis of Nazi ideology.

If one can step back and assess all of this without inserting some preexisting partisan bias, it’s fairly obvious that there is no validity in the claims that both parties are the same and that they are equally evil. It’s also obvious to anyone with a modicum of historical literacy that only one of the major political parties in America bears any resemblance to the Nazi Party.

None of this is to say that the Democrats aren’t mired in White Supremacy and an underlying indifference when it comes to actually doing (rather than talking about) things that would improve material conditions for not only marginalized communities, but all Americans. They absolutely are. And that’s unlikely to change unless we can put an end to people and corporate entities buying votes and influencing Political Discourse to the extent that the constituents are unable to achieve. This is precisely why Leftists (not Liberals) oppose Capitalism (or at least the unchecked Capitalism we have in America), because it allows money to be the arbiter of what becomes policy and what is left by the wayside. What absolutely will not improve these conditions is support for those who embody Nazi ideology and foster increased segregation and separation within the American population while catering to the predatory and self-serving desires of Corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

I’m reminded of a scene from Network, in which Ned Beatty’s character, Arthur Jensen, launches into an almost evangelical Capitalist tirade which includes the following, “There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars!” Unless we are willing to dismantle that very “Dominion of Dollars,” we won’t get any closer to Liberty and Freedom than what the Democratic Party offers. And while what the Democrats offer is far from ideal, at least they’re offering something other than the Authoritarianism and Tyranny we’ve already seen play out in Nazi Germany.

If you’re interested in seeing other unsettling parallels between modern Conservatives and Nazis, you can read a detailed breakdown here.

Political Violence and the Selective Acknowledgment of It

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

Political Violence comes in more shapes and sizes than Pokémon. And yet, it’s only ever a specific variety that most people seem willing to acknowledge, and then only when it suits the narrative they prefer to frame. When someone is killed in an act of direct Political Violence, hand-wringing, condemnation of physical violence, and proclamations that we are better than this inevitably follow closely behind. This is true, even (or especially) when the violence in question was a direct response to less overt forms of violence. You see, those more subtle forms of violent action are insidious in that people can easily dismiss them if they’re so inclined, but are often (if not always) more harmful.

Willhelm Frick, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Julius Streicher, and several others who were sentenced to death following the Nuremberg Trials had never killed anyone, and had (to the best of anyone’s knowledge) committed no acts of direct violence. In fact, Hermann Göring, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Martin Bormann were among the minority, in that they had committed acts of direct violence and murder during their tenure within the Nazi Party. But, in 1946, we recognized that Political Violence comes in many forms, and the guilt of the 12 men who were sentenced to execution was not open to debate. Adolf Hitler, himself, has never been connected with evidence that he personally murdered anyone aside from possibly Eva Braun, before taking his own life. The same can be said for Joseph Goebbels, though he and his wife killed their six children and then themselves. These men, and many others, had been complicit and had knowingly issued propaganda and orders that led to the deaths of countless others.

Would anyone like to present the defense that these men were killed (or killed themselves to avoid being killed) because of their political opinions? Is that the extent of cultural relativism that we should be applying to the architects of the Holocaust? That’s what I keep hearing lately: that people shouldn’t be threatened, persecuted, or harmed over a difference of opinion. All I can assume is that many people need to better acquaint themselves with the definition of “opinion” before they start concerning themselves with differences between them.

Opinions are just assumptions or judgments that an individual develops regarding any particular topic. They can be informed or uninformed, but they’re little more than a subjective viewpoint with greater or lesser value depending on the expertise and the degree of authority invested in the individual sharing said opinions. Critiques of policy and ideology are political opinions. Whether they’re right or wrong, they’re opinions, and people are entitled to their own. Hate Speech, however, is not an expression of an opinion. Hate Speech is an attack, using dehumanizing and demeaning language to target an individual or a group of people based on features of their identity: Ethnicity, Nationality, Skin Color, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and so on. Hate Speech targets (often immutable) characteristics of the individual or group, for the purpose of expressing bigoted, biased, and prejudiced perspectives. Thus, we have the difference between those who condemn the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Government, compared to those who condemn Jewish people or the people of Israel as a whole. One is a criticism of policy and the actions taken by a group, and the other is a condemnation of a group of people based on either Ethnicity or Nationality, depending on whether we’re talking about Jewish people or Israeli people. There is a massive difference between the two things, and yet we see colleges and universities losing funding because certain people want to conflate these two things with false equivalence.

Hate Speech is, in reality, a form of Political Violence that gets shrugged off as nothing more than a difference of opinion, typically by those who are not impacted by that violence. Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric paved the way for the Holocaust, along with the more recent Genocides in Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Sheltering Hate Speech under an umbrella by treating it as if it’s nothing more than another legitimate opinion that one is entitled to share is just part of the weaponization of public discourse. It promotes discrimination and violence, especially when it’s combined with disinformation/misinformation campaigns designed to reinforce the bigotry involved.

Still, one might, of course, look at those guilty men I referenced above and argue that they were guilty of War Crimes. Therefore, the sentences were both just and appropriate. But, by the same standard, our current Administration should also face a tribunal.

Despite no evidence supporting the claims and the US Intelligence Apparatus contradicting them, the Trump Administration confidently states that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is linked to Tren de Aragua, and that a U.S. strike on a foreign boat in international waters was justified because that boat was carrying cocaine to our border (sans evidence). By any standards, the killing of foreign civilians in international waters is (by definition) a War Crime. The Trump Administration is hardly alone in this. Every President in my lifetime has been guilty of actions that should constitute War Crimes. Why are we not holding ourselves to a higher standard than we held the Nazis in 1946?

But, of course, it’s not just War Crimes that we’re dealing with today. The current Administration repeatedly flaunts International and American Law, violates the Constitution, and works to erode the mechanisms of Democracy within America. Men like the late Charlie Kirk have been instrumental in both endorsing and encouraging those actions, as well as being directly involved in helping to place Donald Trump in the position of authority he presently holds.

Charlie Kirk fostered an environment of White Christian Nationalism throughout his time in the public eye. It takes little effort to find several instances of outright Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Xenophobia, and myriad other forms of Bigotry in his Podcasts, Social Media posts, and Public Appearances.

He repeatedly expressed a baseless and racist endorsement of the Great Replacement conspiracy, wherein non-whites were coming to America (and other Western Nations) to replace whites. Just last month, he claimed, “The Great Replacement of white people is far more sinister than any redistricting project.” The Great Replacement theory is directly linked to several acts of Political Violence, targeting non-whites. More importantly, the Great Replacement is virtually identical to the White Genocide conspiracies that have been core aspects of neoNazi ideologies for a long time now.

Charlie Kirk accused Transgender people of being predators and actively encouraged his listeners/viewers to bully and harass them. Transgender people, while making up a tiny fraction of the population, are somehow substantially more likely to be victims of violence than cisgender people are.

He couldn’t even manage to consistently maintain his performative support for Israel and condemnation of antisemitism, despite knowing that he needed to tow that line because it might be a bridge too far for some of his audience. Nevertheless, he still managed to spout off tired old antisemitic talking points about Jewish people controlling everything from higher education to Hollywood, pointing the finger at Jewish financiers of “Cultural Marxism,” and acting aghast at Jewish people promoting anti-white hatred despite wanting white people to do away with that same kind of hatred against them.

To pretend that isn’t often Political Violence is tantamount to saying that violence perpetrated against Jewish people by German citizens in 1940s Europe was not Political Violence. When the apparatus of government endorses, however tacitly, the dehumanization of a group of people, it requires extensive mental gymnastics to pretend that the acts of violence perpetrated against that group of people are not acts of Political Violence. It also requires an impressive gymnastics routine to pretend that the propagandists who spread the dehumanizing message aren’t complicit in the outcomes.

Was it not Political Violence when Omar Mateen murdered 49 people and injured more than 50 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL? He may have claimed to support the Islamic State, but his motivations (even according to his father) were based on the same anti-LBGTQ+ sentiment we hear expressed by White Nationalists regularly. Since LGBTQ+ rights (and the existence of LGBTQ+ people) are treated like a political football, that would make any violence arising from homophobia and anti-Trans perspectives Political Violence. And this is State-Sanctioned violence, because Republicans certainly dedicate a lot of bandwidth to demonizing LGBTQ+ people, while Democrats often turn a blind eye to the violence perpetrated against them. And, whether Liberals want to accept it or not, neglect and dismissal are forms of Political Violence as well. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Men like Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes, and even Donald Trump have a particular skill, even if they lack any others. They can extrapolate from their own insecurities, fears, and failures to develop a form of demagoguery that plays on those same weaknesses in an audience. This only works when the demagogue is in the majority, because for some people, there’s always an undercurrent of resentment and fear associated with imagining the loss of the power that comes with being the majority. Some of that, I’m sure, arises from the assumption that (if the roles are reversed) they will be treated as poorly as they have treated the minority group(s) within society.

Men like Kirk taste fear and weakness in their audience the way a shark tastes blood in the water, and they’re just as predatory about it. They stoke that fear with misinformation and cruelty, dehumanizing anyone who isn’t part of that majority group, and assuring the audience that they can rest assured of their superiority. They make them feel threatened by the outsiders, regardless of the fiction required to do so, because they know these people won’t risk eroding the false confidence they’ve built up by digging too deep or tugging at threads that could unravel everything.

And, as that manipulation leads to the inevitable results, they hide behind the shield of Free Speech, insisting that they’re just asking questions, voicing their opinions, or engaging in healthy debate. We’ve seen this happen several times in the past, with January 6th, 2021, as one of the most vivid examples. The architects of the direct Political Violence are smugly distancing themselves and feigning a sense of horror at what’s happening, as they assume no one will recall how openly they encouraged all of it.

One way or another, there needs to be consequences for the Political Violence perpetrated by those who conveniently, like cowards, hide behind a misapprehension of what “Opinion” means. And, just as important, people need to learn that calling for violence against one’s oppressors and those who have wished or encouraged violence against them is not at all the same thing as wishing harm on people just because they have a different opinion. Malcolm X wasn’t the same as the white racists who fought to maintain segregation and oppose the Civil Rights Act, because he called for reactionary violence. He was already the victim of Political Violence, and was only speaking the same language as those who perpetrated that violence. If you threaten someone or encourage others to act violently toward them by dehumanizing them and manipulating others into thinking they are a threat, you are not expressing an opinion. That isn’t merely a matter of differing political viewpoints.

Regarding the present situation, and the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s apparent assassination, we don’t even know if it was an act of Political Violence. It stands to reason that it probably is, but it’s just as likely to be someone who agreed with him on most accounts as it is to be someone who was politically opposed to his ideology, stripped of the Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric. After all, the same people storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, were the same people most vocally supportive of “Back the Blue” perspectives, yet they assaulted police officers without any compunction. When one promotes an atmosphere of hate and fear, in which violence is encouraged, we’re just as likely to see that violence turned upon people in the same group, the moment fractures appear. It’s worth keeping that in mind.

Persecution and Exploitation, the Tools of the Weak and Afraid

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As near as I can place it, the greatest problem we have as a society here in America (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the Western World) is that there are whole cultural groups who perceive any and all interactions with others through a lens of persecution and exploitation. They can’t conceive of anything else. To them, it’s an alien concept that those interactions could be cooperative or mutually beneficial. It’s a shortcoming, and a necessary byproduct of patriarchy, the corrupting influence of certain religious ideologies, and Capitalism.

These groups, when told that they’re no longer allowed to persecute or exploit others, can only imagine that they must be on the receiving end of persecution and exploitation. That’s the only thing they know, and they lack the necessary imagination to comprehend that a loss of privilege is not the same thing as persecution. After so long, always being in control, they can’t accept the loss of it or recognize that the loss is nothing more than that of the shackles that they forced on those upon whom they preyed.

It doesn’t matter if it makes no sense. It will never make sense to anyone not wrapped up in delusions of exceptionalism and their own sense of being what is “normal” and what is “right.” If you’re not them, you’re something less. If they’re not allowed to treat you as being beneath them, they believe it’s because you think yourself to be above them. And, if we’re being honest, not being like them (confined by such petty, binary terms) most certainly does place you above them.

To them, it’s one or the other. If they aren’t persecuting you, then they must be persecuted by you. That’s why you’ll routinely hear them tossing out ridiculous claims of how they’re being harmed or ostracized, even though nothing has changed. In their fevered imaginations, they sincerely believe there’s a “War on Christmas,” a “White Genocide,” or a “Male Loneliness Epidemic.” Again, nothing has changed, beyond the fact that they’re being told to grow the fuck up and behave as if they’re part of a civilized society. No one asked them to change anything about themselves, beyond opening their eyes to the reality that they are not alone, and they are not exclusively in control or entitled to it.

For some, without dominance, there is nothing.

I can’t help but feel that one of the greatest missteps we’ve made as a species is the shift to a perspective in which we have dominance over all other life on the planet, be it plant or animal. Some would claim that to be the natural order of things, but it wasn’t always that way, and in many circles it still is not. That way of thinking originated from somewhere specific and spread like a disease, much like the cultures from which it was spawned.

You see, once a culture begins to perceive anything as being beneath it, it’s a simple thing to perceive ANYTHING as being beneath it. Dominion over the plants and animals quickly becomes dominion over those who see the world differently. It translates easily into dominance over those who look different, or speak a different language, or pray to a different pantheon of gods. The world turns on its axis for centuries, and that thinking persists today.

Unfortunately, that way of thinking began with Genesis and the early Judaic people who shared that story and built upon it, so assured that they were special and destined for more. That philosophy wasn’t present in the pre-Judaic religious traditions of the Sumerians, Canaanites, Assyrians, and others. It’s also notably absent in essentially all other religious thinking around the world. That philosophy of human dominion is all but exclusive to the myths of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim people.

Other cultures saw divinity in the natural world, not as something separate and standing above it, but as an aspect of it. All of existence was a reflection of the divine and the bearer of divinity. Humans were a part of that natural world, and part of that divine manifestation along with everything else. But these new cultures, that spread from the Middle East, saw only themselves as a reflection of the divine in our world. They chose to perceive the natural world as something corrupt and needing to be overcome and subdued, from which to escape.

Some would dismiss all of these pantheistic or semi-pantheistic belief systems as primitive. But I feel like there’s a lot more of the “primitive” in cultures that feel conflict, war, and dominion over others are the natural order.

I think it says something that several great thinkers of the Enlightenment Era (men like Spinoza) embraced various forms of pantheism, as did some who influenced the birth of that age. But they also saw the danger in straying from the “dominant” faith in their corner of the world, and what happened to those who promoted a less “transcendent” interpretation of God, when men like Giordano Bruno were burned at the stake as heretics by the Catholic Church. Those faiths holding to their belief in dominion over all things are insidiously successful in devouring any opposition, and guarding their positions with jealousy that rivals what their god is capable of displaying.

Of course, there’s an exceptionally good chance that the original meaning of what they interpreted as “dominion” was intended more as what we think of as “stewardship,” caring for the plants and animals of the world. In which case, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers have been disappointing the god they pray to for centuries or even millennia.

That seems far more likely to me than them being correct.

It may be time to reevaluate our relationship with the world we live upon and in. It’s the only one we’re guaranteed to have. Everything else is a fantasy (and one that can never be proven), only accepted on faith. And if that’s what someone chooses to believe, good for them, but they need to stop depending (and insisting) on the rest of the world going along with their delusions. We have a responsibility to maintain and care for the world upon which we depend for our survival.

Naturally, all of this appealed a great deal to the patriarchal, as strength and brutality lend themselves nicely to domination and forced compliance. It complements Capitalism well, a worldview and economic system that requires a minority of owners and a majority of subservient workers to feed their productivity upward as they receive the bare minimum to keep them placated. White Supremacy, of course, latched onto this way of thinking as well, looking down on cultures and ethnic groups unlike their own, as if theirs was the only one that should be.

And today, as always before, they project what they perceive as strength, but anyone with open eyes sees it for the transparent weakness of fear and contempt that it’s always been.

We only need to give them a mirror.

How the American Political Parties Shifted Platforms

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

It amazes me that so many people still love to trot out the old–and I believed, sufficiently dismantled–argument that Democrats started the KKK, so they are truly the party of Racists and Segregationists…while Republicans are the party of Lincoln, and therefore must be the good guys who believe in Equality and Liberty.

I never can tell whether these people are making intentionally bad faith arguments based on disingenuous, and manipulative cherry-picked snapshots of party standards from a century and a half earlier…or if they’re sincerely so historically illiterate that they just accept this argument at face value from other people who presented the bad faith argument for them. It’s sad either way, because they either aren’t capable of thinking for themselves or they aren’t capable of intellectual honesty…and neither of those traits should be praised or rewarded.

I want to get one big fucking fact out of the way before I address the falsehood there. This one is going to be hard for some people to hear, especially some of us White People…but it’s something that needs to be dealt with before I even begin digging into the process by which the Democratic and Republican Platforms became what they are today.

First of all, America as a nation is absolutely built on a foundation of White Supremacy, and that corrupt substrate still exists at the core of our society (regardless of party affiliation). It’s like a poison in the bedrock that finds its way into our spiritual and cultural soil and groundwater, tainting everything we do…and until we actively work together to leech that shit out of there, we’ll never be clean of it. The fact of the matter is that neither major party (nor the vast majority of smaller political parties) has been particularly interested in putting in that work, because the bulk of American politicians still benefit too much from their (conscious or unconscious) privileged status. That is a truth we need to remain aware of and vigilant to acknowledge and address whenever and wherever we see it manifesting.

Now, onto the claims made by people who insist on tossing 19th-Century Party Affiliations around as if they’re relevant to the platforms we see today. Those people are fixating on the titles while intentionally ignoring the most salient detail, which is to address which group was “Liberal” and which was “Conservative” at the time of Lincoln.

Just answering that single question turns the argument on its head. But I don’t mind going further into how the party demographics transitioned from what they were in the mid-to-late 19th Century to what they have been during my whole lifetime, and I’m currently 46 years old.

It started to take hold way back in the 1890s, in large part thanks to a Nebraska politician, William Jennings Bryan, who became the Democratic National Committee’s nominee for President, in response to backlash against President Grover Cleveland and the Conservative Democrats that dominated the party at the time. Unfortunately for Bryan, he lost to McKinley…twice.

After taking a brief hiatus from Presidential Campaigns, Bryan lost the Presidential Election for a third time, this time to Taft. But his influence didn’t fade, and he became Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson (until he ultimately resigned from the position).

During his life, Bryan made huge tectonic shifts in the Democratic Party. He drew in people from the political left (progressives) while fighting against American Imperialism, the influence of men like J. P. Morgan and other members of the privileged class who sought to manipulate American Politics for their gain through Crony Capitalism, and many traditionally Conservative ideals. All of this, while also supporting Women’s Suffrage and the League of Nations, and being the first Presidential Candidate to receive endorsement of the American Federation of Labor for his unflinching support of Labor Unions.

He did oppose American involvement in WWI, supported Prohibition, and actively fought against the teaching of Evolution and Darwinism in the Scopes Trial. So, on several matters, he and I would not have been in agreement. He also refused to attack the KKK directly, though not because he supported it, but because he expected it to fall apart on its own. He had more faith in the spirit of the American People than he perhaps should have, in that regard…but that was who he was to the core. He was a man of faith, which largely influenced his decision to take on the role he played in the Scopes Trial.

He was far from perfect, but he was emblematic of what the Democratic Party was gradually becoming.

William Jennings Bryan was arguably the figure one can most easily point to as the origin of the shift in party alignments. But he was only the first set of symbolic supports in creating the bridge that spanned that gulf.

While the transition may have started a few decades earlier, it wasn’t until FDR and the “New Deal” era that we started to really see Liberals as the Democrats we see today and Conservatives as the Republicans we recognize. FDR was, in many ways, the apex of that shift in party dynamics and platform. I would love to see a single Republican today adopt a platform as progressive as FDR’s. Unlike William Jennings Bryan, we all know at least a little bit about FDR and the “New Deal.”

It started as mostly a series of Economic Reforms: offering relief for the poor and unemployed, reforming the financial systems to avoid future economic collapse, and building the economy back up from the dismal lows following the crash of 1929. Major changes to the Federal Reserve, combined with the establishment of the FDIC and the Securities Exchange Commission, along with other Financial Regulatory Bodies, were engineered under FDR’s guidance to restore consumer confidence and bring the U.S. back from the brink of full financial failure. And it worked.

Though ostensibly a response to the Great Depression, there was much of FDR’s “New Deal” that cemented the new bedrock for the Democratic Party, outside of the purely economic considerations.

While modern Libertarians like to pretend that Corporations should be free to act outside of Regulatory Space and that the Free Market will force them to behave ethically, there is no historical precedent for that being the case. It was, in fact, Federal Regulations (and the emergence of Regulatory Agencies) under FDR that brought an end to some of the most egregious examples of Corporate predation. The National Labor Relations, Social Security, and Fair Labor Standards Acts protected workers, ensured protection for the elderly, disabled, and unemployed, fought against Child Labor, supported the development of Labor Unions, provided the 40-Hour Work Week, established a Federal Minimum Wage, and otherwise made it safer and less oppressive to be a worker in the U.S.

It was Conservative control of Congress (including the presence of many Conservative Democrats) that kept FDR from going even further with his “New Deal” Policies. But, during that era, the Democratic Party was reshaped further into being the Party of workers, racial and ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and others who had previously been traditionally aligned with the Republican Party.

Then we come to the Civil Rights Era, where the party transition reaches the Third Act, and the Southern Strategy (that only those invested in a fictional version of history will claim is a lie).

While men like Bryan and FDR reshaped much of the Democratic Party, there was, unfortunately, still a great deal of the previous century’s delineation present in the American South. The Civil Rights Era brought this to a head, as was always going to happen. The Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, the Republican Party suffered from a sort of Identity Crisis, wherein members of the respective parties were closer in alignment with their opposition depending on where they happened to be located geographically.

Unlike the previous two Acts of the Three-Act transition of party platforms and demographics, the Southern Strategy was the work of Republicans. It was their effort to obtain support from White Southerners who were still Democrats (though they had little in common with Democrats outside of the dozen or so states involved).

There’s a strange symmetry involved in seeing this from a remove, decades afterward. Where Bryan started the process of pushing the Democratic Party to the Left, it was the Southern Strategy implemented by Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater that shifted the Republican Party to the Right.

One could argue (and I think, accurately so) that this started with the Republican Party taking on the banner of “States’ Rights,” which was previously a Democratic stance dating back to the time before the Civil War. This was in direct opposition to the platform of Abraham Lincoln, whom Republicans still want to claim, while defying virtually every aspect of Lincoln’s stated beliefs. This was part of Barry Goldwater’s “Southern Strategy” which focused on courting Southern Whites and dismissing further efforts to appeal to Black Voters, which included open opposition to the Civil Rights Movement as well as to Kennedy’s platform promoting expanded Unemployment Benefits, increased Social Security and Minimum Wage, sending aid to Economically Distressed regions of the country (including cities with larger minority populations), increasing Housing Availability, and so on. But it was the opposition to Kennedy’s Civil Rights policies that was most important here.

Kennedy fought for Voter Education and the removal of the Poll Tax (in addition to further increasing access to Voting Rights for Blacks). He used Executive Orders to promote Equal Opportunity and Anti-Discrimination for Employment, Housing, and Federal Contracts…becoming a champion of Affirmative Action within the Federal Workforce and beyond. Kennedy also struck a massive blow against Jim Crow by making it illegal, as it concerned Interstate Commerce.

These were all policies that Barry Goldwater and Conservative Republicans opposed. One need look no further than the conflict between Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater leading up to the 1964 Presidential Election to see the massive fissure growing in the Republican Party under Goldwater’s influence.

It’s no wonder he lost to Lyndon B. Johnson, with his Regressive, Pro-Segregationist, and Anti-Civil Rights stances even revolting significant portions of the Republican Party at the time (the remaining Liberal and Progressive elements at least).

It was around that time when Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and joined the GOP, where he helped to manage Nixon’s campaign in the South. He was far from the last to do so, followed by notable figures like Jesse Helms and countless numbers of formerly Democratic voters. Many Republicans remained with their Party, believing they could rehabilitate it or that this shift toward Racist and Conservative Values would be temporary…but it was no longer recognizable as the Party of Lincoln by that point.

I’d like to make note of one funny aside. As counterintuitive as it may seem, George Wallace famously refused to leave the Democratic Party like many of his like-minded peers (despite repeatedly being repudiated at the national level by the majority). He did gradually soften his perspectives regarding Segregation and White Supremacy. Whether that was sincere or a performative shift to better continue surviving as he had up to that point is anyone’s guess.

Richard Nixon took Goldwater’s playbook and ran with it far more successfully, and I don’t mean that solely in that he actually won a Presidential Election. He focused his platform on the Coded Language of “States’ Rights” and “Law and Order,” which might sound familiar to voters who have been paying attention since 2015 or so.

The Third Act really doesn’t conclude until Reagan’s campaign in 1980 (and the subsequent eight years he led the Nation down the toilet), where Lee Atwater’s assistance helped to shift the overt Racism to more Dogwhistle-Coded language, focused on Economic Policies that would transparently benefit Whites more than any other group.

And it’s not difficult to discern how I feel about Ronald Reagan and the absolute disaster he was for America and the U.S. Economy, creating devastation from which we’re still picking through the rubble today.

So yes, the Southern Strategy is a real thing, and one that was discussed openly by the Candidates and Political Advisers involved in both its development and implementation. It’s on record, and trying to pretend it’s some Conspiracy Theory is ludicrous, at best, and entirely reliant on people never fact-checking what they want to believe is true. This isn’t like PizzaGate or any of the subsequent QAnon nonsense paraded around by the least credible people on the Political Right in America. There’s actually clear, concise data and historical records that don’t need to be twisted and distorted into the most bizarre shapes, explaining the Southern Strategy and how it was done.

Finally, to the people who want to make these bad faith arguments, all I can say is that you should read a book or two, and take some time to learn about American History…because even our High School Textbooks would have provided sufficient evidence to counter most of these ignorant claims. It leads me to believe that you didn’t retain much during your education, and that’s all the proof we need that the Department of Education should be more involved (rather than less) in establishing nationwide standards that aren’t associated with Standardized Tests, but on different methods of teaching and diverse styles of learning, to ensure that our Natural Born Citizens know at least as much as Naturalized Citizens have to.

I know I could pass a Citizenship Exam, do you? When taking that test, there is no Participation Trophy (and no points awarded) for waving a flag and displaying performative (though ultimately false) patriotism based on revisionist understandings that you didn’t even come up with for yourself.

Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham, Narrated by Jonathan Edward Durham

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Winnie-the-Pooh and The Wind In The Willows collide with The Most Dangerous Game and Animal Farm in Durham’s Winterset Hollow. Exciting, surreal, and defying all expectations, the author has crafted something both somber and thought-provoking.
John Eamon Buckley and his two closest friends join a group of fellow fans of Winterset Hollow to embark on a pilgrimage to the isolated island home of the children’s poem’s author, E. B. Addington. The crowd of friends and strangers couldn’t have prepared for–and never imagined–how intimate their glimpse into Addington’s life would be.
What follows is a dizzying upheaval of everything they thought they knew and understood about the world around them. Awaiting the fans is a dark and scathing denunciation of the history they assumed to be true and a personal journey for Eamon as he discovers his connection to the beloved childhood story is deeper and more horrible than he’d suspected.
The poem at the heart of Winterset Hollow is something I could imagine published on its own, and I could understand how the fictional characters might have cherished its captivating story.
It’s the larger narrative, beautifully written and complete with its damning subtext of the evils associated with colonization and Westward expansion in early America that I adore, though. It’s so well-written and ingenious in its acknowledgment that Manifest Destiny and the American Dream were constructed on a substrate of nightmares levied against all those unfortunate enough to be in the path.
The audiobook narrated by Jonathan Edward Durham himself was a spectacular way to experience this story, and he managed to capture both the tarnished innocence of Eamon and the bitterness combined with the sadness of the residents of Addington Isle.