Tag Archives: Trump

My White Privilege

“I’m not prejudiced, but by golly, a white male in this country has very few rights, and they’re getting took more every day.” —  Sevier County, Tenn. County Commissioner Warren Hurst, 2019

I could probably make a reasonable argument that I drew a short straw when it came to health. Near-sighted, slew-footed and lazy-eyed before 8th grade, I contracted diabetes before my freshman year of high school (Type I diabetes, not that fat ass wussy diabetes, Type II).  Then came the eye surgeries. Then the double-organ transplant.

But my eyes aren’t so shot that I can’t see how goddamned lucky I am. I need look no further than my own mother —  whose immune system attacked her with “birdshot retinapathy,” rendering her legally blind — to realize just how fortunate I was in the draw. Whatever you got, throw a stone; it’ll pass someone worse off before it touches ground.

That notion, though, seems to have been lost in the country’s recent swell of white nationalism. And if the allegations are true, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man in Brunswick Ga., was a lynching, straight-up — and tacitly endorsed by this administration. Even if the defense of the accused father-son team is true, it underscores the misplaced anger at displacement that rots our nation still.Georgia attorney general requests federal investigation into ...

 

Arberry was killed Feb. 23 after jogging in Brunswick.  The men arrested for his death, Gregory McMichael, left, and  son Travis McMichael, claimed that Arberry was running from their neighborhood and they suspected him of burglary. After a confrontation, the defense lawyers claim, Arberry was killed in self-defense.

Consider for a moment what the suspects are claiming. That they witnessed a crime and, instead of calling police, tooled up with a shotgun and .357 Magnum and took off in hot pursuit. And it just so happened their buddy came along for the ride and videotaped the killing to…livestream justice? County police even let the men go home after the shooting, leaving it to higher ranks to arrest the men more than two months after the slaying. THAT is white privilege.

This weekend, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reached out to Bill Barr’s Justice Dept. to weigh in on whether a hate crime was committed. It leaves the Trump administration in an interesting position: investigating a crime it incited.

To be clear: Our president has never instructed his base to go a’ hangin.’ He’s just convinced them that they’ve been left that way.

Consider the above quote, from a dim-witted Tennessee politician who was arguing for his county to become a Second Amendment “sanctuary city,” whatever the hell that is. While the designation may be murky, the motive is not. For the past three years, Trump has been a dog whistle incarnate for two of America’s least-stable geniuses: rabid Christians and Confederates. The Charlottesville protests amounted to a Trump rally with swastikas. David Duke has publicly thanked Agent Orange for bringing America back in line. A new Pew Research poll found 27% of Americans believe Trump’s presidency is part of God’s plan. Apparently, the Lord is feeling gipped, too.Unite the Right rally - Wikipedia

Jews will not replace us! is the conical hat of the New Confederacy of Dunces. Never mind that 20 million manufacturing jobs around the world could be replaced by robots by 2030, according to Oxford Economics. Robots don’t take offense. Scapegoating only works if the goat knows it’s being scaped.

And if the tiki-torchers are to be believed, jobs are being wrenched from our very hands. We white men aren’t free to speak our minds about race, gender, politics, etc. Our guns are in peril. When Barack Obama won the presidency, Fox blowhard Tucker Carlson notoriously noted: “This is not the America I remember.”Tucker Carlson warns that Beijing sees coronavirus pandemic as ...

So is this what you remember, Tucker? Or do you agree with your Tennessee supporter that the white man is seeing more took away everyday?

Because I’m not sure what you’re seeing. And as a white, American male, I get to speak about privilege. I still count plenty:

  • I don’t get suspected when a house is broken into in my neighborhood.
  • I don’t get stopped driving in a neighborhood because of my skin.
  • If I am stopped, I don’t worry about getting shot.
  • I don’t get a percentage of another person’s paycheck.
  • I’m not viewed as a threat if I’m strident.
  • I’m not forcibly restrained for talking back.

Which brings me back to health. Short straw or not, I don’t have birdshot retinapathy, either. White privilege, like health, money, education or anything else that happens to go your way, is not about what you get. It’s about what you don’t get.

 

The Great Thinning, Part II

And so it goes.

As the COVID-19 death toll tops 67,000 (a government statistic, so likely a conservative tally), we pass grim milestone after grim milestone. In less than two months, we’ve surpassed the body count in the Vietnam War. We have endured the human loss of a Sept. 11 attack every other day.

Yet, we’re divided as a nation over whether we have it.

Last week, The Washington Times blasted a front page headline: Coronavirus hype biggest political hoax in history. The conservative paper will surely point out that it used the word “hype” with hoax. But do we really believe today’s American reader will get the nuance?

Consider: Dozens of cell towers were set ablaze a few weeks ago after a conspiracy theory conjured that COVID was caused by 5G transmissions. According to the Pew Research group, nearly one in four believe the virus is a man-made contagion.Cell phone tower catches fire in Sanford, area evacuated | Paisajes

Which brings us to another scaling back in The Great Thinning: Our view of medicine.

Just look at the all-star roster of charlatans to emerge in the pandemic:

  • Dr. PhilDr. Phil (@DrPhil) | Twitter

Dr. Awshucks put his loafer in his mouth with this proclamation: “The fact of the matter is we have people dying, 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools, but we don’t shut the country down for that, but yet we’re doing it for this?”

Phil, who has no doctor’s licence, probably meant to say 3,600 pool deaths a year, which is about the national average. And you can’t catch an automobile accident.

  • Dr. Oz  False and baseless medical claims from Dr. Oz, Trump advisor ...

The perfectly-named Fox favorite said the idea of reopening schools was “an appetizing opportunity” in light of an article in a medical journal “arguing that the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3 percent in terms of total mortality.” “We need our mojo back,” he told Sean Hannity.

Someone wants to be in a new Austin Powers movie. And what do you mean “appetizing?” Is that really the verb you want to use for schoolchildren?

  • Dr. Drew    Dr Drew (@drdrew) | Twitter

The former Celebrity Rehab host called COVID “way less serious than influenza;” referred to the pandemic  as “a press-induced panic;” said “the flu virus in this country is vastly more consequential” and compared the probability of dying from the disease to being “hit by an asteroid.”

He retracted every statement.

And then there’s Dr. Bone Spur. The Pumpkin-in-Chief has been urging states to get back to work since we began keeling over, and his administration eased stay at home orders nationwide, lifting restrictions on everything from beaches to bowling alleys this weekend.Donald Trump wearing a suit and tie: US President Donald Trump

Maybe the timing is right. Maybe the summer will shoo coronavirus.

This much is clear: Darwin will take it from here. Because we’ve turned belief in him into an ideology.

Exhibits A and B: Gary Lenius and his wife Wanda. The couple ingested chloroquine phosphate, a fish tank cleaner, thinking it was the chemical Trump had championed for weeks in the virus fight.a group of people posing for the camera: Gary Lenius and his wife Wanda

Gary, a retired mechanical engineer living in Arizona, died in March and his wife was left in critical condition after ingesting the toxic chemical. Wanda told reporters that she and her husband took a teaspoon of fish tank cleaner, mixing it with soda, hoping it would protect them from contracting the coronavirus.

“We were afraid we were getting sick,” she said. “We were getting really worried. We saw his [Trump’s] press conference. It was on a lot, actually. Trump kept saying it was pretty much a cure.”

To which the HB would like to offer this public service tip: If you are considering ingesting or injecting any cleanser or cleaning chemicals into your body to fight COVID, by all means go ahead. You will do much more damage in a voting both than you will at your own aquarium. It’s a free country; you have the right to be wrong.

As do the protesters in that top photo, who stormed the Michigan Capitol to rail against…bacteria? Empty nail salons? It’s ironic that the same group that challenges the theory of evolution is now tossing around terms like “herd immunity.”

I’m not sure who they’re going to yell at when the governor lifts the state of emergency order because, at this point, who is ready wade back into those waters? Even if we do blow up the shark, we’ve left a lot of blood in the sea. You can’t yell an economy back into action.

Which is where Darwin steps in. As many of us celebrate gathering in malls or flocking to movie theaters again, the weaker of us may die off — including those who were in no rush to re-enter the currents to begin with.

So it goes. Those are the terms of use of personhood; you either work with science, or for it.

 

 

 

Both the News That’s Fit to Print

Biden VP Rumors: Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris? It 'Will Be A Woman ...

Considering the pandemic it faces to function and the disinformation coming from its taproot source, the New York Times deserves Pulitzers in multiple categories, including investigative and explanatory honors.

Editorially, however, the bible of journalism has been as spotty as, well, the bible.

Consider: During the presidential primary run, the Times endorsed Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, depending on where you stood on the progressive scale — a copout endorsement, plain and simple.Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren: The New York Times endorses ...

If you don’t define the scale, how do do you know where you fall on it? (And there was conspicuously no defining where the Times fell on it.)

Now it’s taken the same wavering stance on who Joe Biden should pick as his (promised) female running mate. In a political piece last week, the outlet named Kamela Harris, the Representative from California, as the most likely pick.Kamala Harris For The People

But in an opinion piece today, the Times said that Stacey Abrahms, the gubernatorial hopeful from Georgia, was the “obvious pick,” because of the Democrats’ need to secure the state and connect to young voters.Stacey Abrams 'absolutely' wants to run for president one day, but ...

This is no time for hemming, brethren. Donald Jemimah Trump does enough waffling for the rest of us. Besides, there are real stories to be found in Biden’s ultimate choice — starting with the historical nature of the pick itself.

Regardless of whether there’s an actual election in November (and that’s seriously in doubt), Biden’s VP of choice may be the most telegraphed in modern politics. When has a candidate ever promised to name a VP from the pool of the politically-shunned?

More importantly, the pick is going to tell us what the Democratic party envisions for its future. Does it see national political experience as a merit badge or mark of shame?

The choice matters, even if Trump remains in office until his death. Because when he goes, so too will the party anchored to him. They simply have no provision for this inescapable political reality: For the first time in U.S. history, most American 15-year-olds are non-white, according to the latest census data.

Not only will that fact never change in the U.S.; it will apply to an ever-growing demographic. Whenever we do conduct a presidential election, it will be the last between grandpa Simpsons: angry, white, male and uncertain of their place in the world.Old Man Yells at Cloud | Know Your Meme

And finally, brethren, how about some propers for Warren? She has failed to crack the circle of serious contenders among the pundits, which is simply wrong. Among all the finalists, she truly deserves to be our vice-president. She’s worked longer and harder for the executive office than any of her colleagues, male or female, in office of out of it.Elizabeth Warren has 'a plan for that' — more than 50 expensive ...

That her efforts have gone unrecognized perhaps says the most about the American political landscape and our view of women in it, regardless of how progressive we fancy ourselves.