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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCharles M. Blow: The Other Inconvenient Truth
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/republicans-white-supremacy-charlottesville.htmlThe Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist
The Other Inconvenient Truth
Charles M. Blow AUG. 17, 2017
Donald Trump chose Trump Tower, the place where he began his presidential campaign, as the place to plunge a dagger into his presidency.
Trumps jaw-dropping defense of white supremacists, white nationalists and Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., exposed once more what many of us have been howling into the wind since he emerged as a viable candidate: That he is a bigot, a buffoon and a bully.
He has done nothing since his election to disabuse us of this notion and everything to confirm it. Anyone expressing surprise is luxuriating in a self-crafted shell of ignorance.
And yet, it seems too simplistic, too convenient, to castigate only Trump for elevating these vile racists. To do so would be historical fallacy. Yes, Trumps comments give them a boost, grant them permission, provide them validation, but it is also the Republican Party through which Trump burst that has been courting, coddling and accommodating these people for decades. Trump is an articulation of the racists in Charlottesville and they are an articulation of him, and both are a logical extension of a party that has too often refused to rebuke them.
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White supremacy, all across the spectrum, is what lights the way to the final step as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. articulated in his The Other America speech in 1967:
Republicans, these people and this president are your progeny. That is the other inconvenient truth.
Dave Starsky
(5,914 posts)This was the natural endgame to which they were consigning us. This was the inevitable result of that dreadful bargain.
Donald Trump is the reductio ad absurdum of EVERYTHING the Republican party stands for, and I hope that no one ever forgets that.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)Otherwise, the GOP would have collapsed after having embraced racism.
Everyone objects to sweeping statements about 'the South' but that is the Petri dish in which this horrible disease festers and grows.
So you might as well say that the GOP just noticed something awful that they could latch on to. The strategy was to exploit the evil that was already there.
ehrnst
(32,640 posts)to the minority of Americans who hold racist, misogynistic and xenophobic veiws.
We are the party of the future, not the past, and we need to remind Americans of that.
VaBchTgerLily
(231 posts)GoCubsGo
(32,094 posts)All one has to do is look at the legislation the republicans have enacted over the past several years. The GOP and their Supreme Court toadies gutted the Voting Rights Act. They are the ones who have been purging minorities from voter rolls, and gerrymandering their votes into oblivion. It is republican governors, secretaries of state, and state legislatures who have been shortening early voting or eliminating it altogether, reducing the numbers of polling places in minority-dominated areas, and otherwise making it difficult for minorities to vote. They are the ones hacking away and women's rights throughout the country, as well. The only difference between them and the clowns with the tiki torches is that they are actually in public office and enacting the very sorts of things the racist marchers stand for.
dalton99a
(81,590 posts)No truer words
cp
(6,660 posts)Including the origins under Nixon of "war on drugs" and why, and what Blow says about "soft white supremacy."
Very thoughtful.
DarleenMB
(408 posts)think he did the right thing.
Wounded Bear
(58,713 posts)bronxiteforever
(9,287 posts)Solly Mack
(90,787 posts)Been saying it and saying it.