The flailings and failings of the Republicans' attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act are not simply a measure of their own incompetence-- and incompetent they are, incompetence and entitlement going hand in glove, foot in mouth, head in ass--but also the measure of the motivation behind the opposition; the relations behind the ideology, and that is, always has been, always will be about race, as in color, as in how dare that Barack Obama do, initiate, attempt something, anything, that indicates a person of color:
a) is more competent than they are
b) is concerned with something other than how many people can be screwed over in the shortest period of time, even if that concern of that literally half-African-half-American natural-born US citizen was minimal, less than momentary
c) doesn't know his place; never knew his place; can't really be American, because he's African and doesn't know his place
d) brought, along with his own considerable intelligence, and beauty, that considerable intelligence, and beauty of his African-American wife, and the considerable intelligence, and beauty of their African-American daughters
e) has the gall to sing lyrics from Al Green's "Love and Happiness."
"The horror, the horror," proclaimed the three Kurtzes-- Kurtz McConnell, Kurtz Ryan, and the philosopher-in-residence at Redemptionist University, Kurtz Gingrich-- the horror being not, of course what the US had done throughout history to African-Americans, but that the US hadn't done enough to prevent African-American being not the game for them, or in the game for them, but knowing, playing, the game better than them.
The resentment that brought Trump the election was nurtured over 240 years of retreats, denials, deconstructions, conditions, qualifications, disavowals of "all men are created equal;" 230 years of the same disavowals, qualifications on the prohibitions of slavery, as in the Northwest Territories Ordinance of 1787, (grandfathered into the union in 1789)
Art. 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid ;150 years of flight, attack, obstruction of the 13th, 14th, 15th amendments of the US Constitution; of reneging not just on the promise of Radical Reconstruction, but the necessity of Radical Reconstruction to prevent the resurgence of the slaveholders' power in another garb, and in any other name; 40 years of panic and flight from civil rights, voting rights, of integrated schools.
All that stuff about "neglected" white workers; about the passed-over, left-behind, frozen-out white workers-- that was all.....uhh....bullshit. All those references to Macomb county without investigation into the history of Macomb County, the actual condition of the supposedly aggrieved white workers in Macomb County-- that was all bullshit.
All that stuff about walls and anti-Nafta and "let's mine some coal," and... that was all bullshit.
It was all, and always, about color. All those Tea Party financed "anti-Obamacare" rallies? That was all bullshit. "We don't like the black guy" was the real force being tapped into for commercial purposes.
All that "Don't let Obama take away our constitutionally guaranteed right to assault rifles with large magazines"? That was all bullshit. "We want to be able to shoot the black guy and all other black guys" was the sentiment being mobilized for......commercial reasons.
All that nonsense about "Crooked Hillary"? That was bullshit. "We can't get the black guy, so let's get the bitch" was the emotion being stoked for.......commercial reasons.
So.. now that the African-American is no longer president, and the white woman has been turned away, the three Kurtzes can't quite get the job done; have lost their mojo; their déraison d'etre.
Meanwhile, the other half of the co-dependent couple, the Democrats, want to deflect from their real failures and onto-- Russia. As if the disgrace of the 2016 election was the influence of the Russians; as if the Russians acted on behalf of the Trump-ets for their own reasons and that made the difference. As if the disgrace of the 2016 election was not the previous 16 years of voter suppression, voter ID legislation, mass removal of qualified voters from the voting registrations-- something the Democrats did absolutely nothing to attack, much less reverse.
As if the Russian hacks of email had more to do with the 2016 election than the decision of the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Roberts to invalidate Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act.
Roberts of course had been hard at work for some thirty years, seeking to demolish the enforcement provisions of the act, having studied at the knee of William ("I think Plessy v Ferguson was right") Rehnquist, for whom he clerked in 1980; having pursued demolition of Section 2 of the VRA while employed as Special Assistant to Reagan's AG, William French Smith.
After the Roberts court finally demolished Section 4, did Obama and the Democrats immediately introduce new legislation to repair the hole in the voting protections? Did Obama and the Democrats have legislation ready even prior to the decision, knowing, as they all did, who and what Roberts is all about? Of course not. The Democrats did "the Democrat"-- know to others as the big roll-over.
So..
It was all about color. It was never about class.
So...that's where we are today.....nowhere; with clowns fighting over a seltzer bottle, while the ringmasters spray gasoline on the confused audience.
We have the longest way to go before class actually outweighs color in this capitalism.
S. Artesian
July 18, 2017
