American Racism, Violence, and Bandit Capitalism

Racism

“Trump finally said the words “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period” after falsely blaming Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign for starting the rumor, an accusation that the Washington Post’s fact-checker called `ridiculous.’” Guardian, Friday, September 17, 2016.

Violence

“The Republican nominee went off-script to call for his opponent’s bodyguards to “disarm immediately” – adding, “Let’s see what happens to her.” Guardian, Friday, September 17, 2016.

Bandit Capitalism

Newsweek says, “The Trump family rakes in untold millions of dollars from the Trump Organization every year. Much of that comes from deals with international financiers and developers, many of whom have been tied to controversial and even illegal activities.”

The Last Polemic

Who but Donald Trump could turn Hilary Clinton, the totalitarian representative of Wall St. elites and arrogant social engineers, into a hospitable and friendly alternative to the rising arc of fascism?

Trump, the ghostly product of the Nixon and Reagan Southern strategy, haunts the Republican Party as the seeds sown flower in the form of white supremacy. America’s original sin, slavery, has re-appeared cyclically in the political culture since the Civil War. The Black Man was routinely lynched only a few decades ago. Now he is arbitrarily and capriciously gunned down by the culmination of supremacist culture in cop shops.

Both parties passed legislation in the 90s aimed at systemically incarcerating Young Black Men. For the Black Man serves as the scapegoat in order for the one percent to divide and conquer the 99%.

Just as Senate Majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell swore to oppose President Obama at any cost, so the “Birther” brigade, led by Trump, concedes with a wink and nod that Obama is an American born, even saying that Clinton started the “Birther” rumor and implies that she should be subject to the guns wielded by NRA extremists. Meanwhile, Trump engages with worldwide kryptocrats (thieves) in today’s “Bandit Culture.”

While the networks fawn over Trump and fiddle the images, carbon poisons the earth, “Endless War” creates terrorism at home, the gap between the “1/10th of One percent” and 99.9% increases. Yet, we hear little but narcissistic comments from a sociopath and affirmative generalities from the Velvet Gloved Iron Woman.

Racism remains the bête noir of capitalism, a system in America based on slavery. Now students are fast-becoming the new indentured servants due to student debt. For the last 30 years, the transfer of wealth from the lower classes upward to the elites has become part and parcel of class warfare at home.

Still, the Native survivors of American genocide in the 19th century rally to protect land and water from Bulldozers at Standing Rock. A bunch of Bernie’s kids supported a better deal and an alternative to Clinton and Trump. The members of Black Lives Matter have called out the purveyors of racism. Black Athletes sit, kneel, and raise a fist to the failed dreams while sports fans sing the tarnished Star Spangled Banner.

Today it’s as if we are attending a memorial service for the American Dream, as if we were all at Gettysburg when Lincoln said, “We are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” Trump’s sociopathic opportunism speaks to the demons of the dark side just as Clinton’s talk of “deplorables” and Obama’s disdain for those concerned with “guns and God” summarize the arrogance of elites.

We can no more ignore the compassionate principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition than we can our neo-classical Greco-Roman roots or the heritage of human rights advocated by the Enlightenment and set forth in the Constitution. For He said, “Forgive them for they do not know” and to the devil, “Get thee behind me.” The better angels of our nature, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, urge us to rededicate ourselves to Lincoln’s invocation of the “Declaration of Independence, which served as the basis for the founding of America and the moral “proposition that all men are created equal.”

A vote for Hillary means we have hope and a chance to fight another day while saying no to Trump: “Get thee behind me.”

Other than that, How was your evening, Mrs. Lincoln?