45 Comments
Jun 8Liked by Stephen Robinson

I saw it. It was disgusting to listen to him.

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Jun 8Liked by Stephen Robinson

donalds is a real horse’s duck.

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Jun 7Liked by Stephen Robinson

I suspect that Donalds doesn't believe a word of what he says. This is about unbridled personal ambition. It's disgusting.

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This guy is the absolute worst.

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Jun 7Liked by Stephen Robinson

Thanks for this, Stephen.

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There are so many examples of terrorism against islands of black American prosperity, Tulsa isn't an isolated incident, Black folks have been denied a firm footing in society by the same forces that have stacked the supreme court. To wax nostalgic of Jim Crow in 2024 should wake the MSM from it's slumber but it won't.

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

Jews were so much closer to each other in the Warsaw ghetto vs spread out all over Poland. It was a true golden age.

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

You are right of course but I couldn’t bring myself to “love” your post, which is very apt and powerful.

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

drumfp is not going to choose donalds because of his name albeit race too. There can only be one donald even with/without s. What a shameless, immoral pos, debasing an entire group of people, that too, to whom he supposedly belongs. Shamelessly sucking upto a racist, allegedly rapist, traitor, misogynist, tutinlover, bankrupt fakebillionaire!

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

Well, he does chose McDonald's often.

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Jun 6·edited Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

Honestly and truly, what the actual fuck is wrong with republicans? This does explain why they don't want the entire history of our country taught, so people will believe this utter horseshit from Donalds and the rest of that ahistorical batshit party.

(that question is rhetorical)

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Self loathing is a terrible thing.

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And he SHOULD loathe himself, helping to pump poison into our communities, then he wants to turn it around and shit on us "legally" with Republicans.

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Actually he loathes himself because he's a conservative. He's been trained to hate the color of his own skin. Hate is taught.

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Jun 6·edited Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

"Hate is taught."

Carefully taught, as the Rogers and Hammerstein lyric goes.

https://rodgersandhammerstein.com/song/south-pacific/youve-got-to-be-carefully-taught/

I am stunned that this was in a musical debuted in 1949...because it's a direct indictment of US racial discrimination,

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Wow! I am too. It certainly is damning. Just like Blazing Saddles couldn't be released today because it too was an indictment of racism.

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Jun 6·edited Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

When Donalds is talking about black families and "LBJ's H.E.W." he's indirectly citing Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous/infamous white paper, written for the LBJ admin. on "The Negro Family." He's also mangling it. It's true that Moynihan attributed Black poverty to unstable/female headed families - that accounts for its fame and its infamy. But everything else in the paper contradicts Donalds' thesis.

First, HEW was formed in 1953 - the Eisenhower administration - not during LBJ's. Second, Donalds is obliquely referring to the "Welfare" part of HEW, meaning Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which was established in 1935. (The date of its establishment is a clue as to who the primary beneficiaries of AFDC were; White folks, who've always outnumbered Blacks on the "welfare" rolls.) Moynihan does not say "welfare" is a cause of unstable Black families. In Part III of the paper, titled "The Roots of the Problem" the root is

Slavery. (I set this apart just the way Moynihan's paper did, a one word "paragraph" under the chapter heading.)

The first full paragraph states: "The most perplexing question abut American slavery, which has never been altogether explained, and which indeed most Americans hardly know exists, has been stated by Nathan Glazer as follows: 'Why was American slavery the most awful the world has ever known?' The only thing that can be said with certainty is that this is true: it was.'" Moynihan goes on to show a lot of reasons American slavery was the worst that ever existed - much worse, for example, than Brazilian slavery.

Of course, one of the main horrors of enslavement was that the children of enslaved people were also enslaved. Another horror is that Black families were routinely broken up when enslaved spouses and children were sold to different slave-drivers. This, and the astounding lack of human dignity accorded to the enslaved (astounding even compared to slavery in other countries, like Brazil) - an indignity compounded by almost 100 years of segregation - is basically why Moynihan said Black families were unstable.

Today, this is part of what we mean by "systemic racism." For centuries Blacks have lacked the ability to acquire generational wealth, and generate the social capital that Whites can. There's more to systemic racism than this, but to me, anyway, this is the undeniable core of Black inequality today, also known as "the lingering effects of slavery and segregation."

Finally, I note that Moynihan's paper came out in 1965, when LBJ had been president for just over a year, and before any of his Great Society programs, so Moynihan was clearly not blaming LBJ, or even Democratic policies in general, for Black poverty.

Sorry this is so long, but though I'm a White guy, I've been thinking about this longer than Donalds has been alive. (I can even recite conservative claptrap better than Donalds, an unfortunate by-product of caring about the issue.)

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

An excellent and highly informative post. You demonstrate exactly why the GOP wants to suppress education about slavery and its lasting legacy. It would indeed make white students uncomfortable to hear that and they might be tempted to show empathy to their black counterparts which would never do.

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They use this document like they use MLK's lifetime oratory: distilled down the That ONe Sentence That They Like.

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

Excellent points. Donalds seems to push this idea that "racism was tough, so was poverty, but at least our family bonds were strong" when there's really no evidence that bonds were stronger then than now. A legacy of slavery breaking up families, then under Jim Crow many being forced to leave home to try and find work (and escape the greater horrors of Jim Crow Mississippi for the lesser but still awful horrors of northern segregation)--these things had a lot to do with family breakdown, but in the right wing narrative the real evil was "government giving people free food".

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

" the real evil was "government giving people free food"."

Exactly. I am still stunned by the complete lack of self awareness of 'conservatives' like Craig T Nelson, "I've been on welfare, I've been on food stamps. Did anyone help me out? No!" https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/comments/1b0240v/craig_t_nelson_ive_been_on_food_stamps_and/

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author

Thanks so much for this informed response!

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

Thank you for education.

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

Thanks for this. It’s sad that apparently the only people who know 20th century American history are those of us who lived through it.

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

Ain't it the truth.

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

I'm just a white lady of Mexican descent down here in Arizona, but, I read stuff. Weren't there lynchings during Jim Crow? Poll taxes? Reading tests? "separate but equal" (not equal at all). Black men paid less than white men? Black women treated like trash? I mean, SERIOUSLY. I hope his audience booed his ass.

Also, the Party of Lincoln bit the dust around the time Barry Goldwater ran for President...

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

The word disgraceful doesn't even begin to describe it.

Just like another trump vp " hopeful" namely Tim Scott.

Both would gladly volunteer to crack the whip on the backs of their brothers until they were bloodied and raw and either passed out or died.

Mistakingly thinking their own lives would be spared. " Massa won't hurt me! Massa loves me!"

Fools

No one will be spared

Cohen tried to warn R's during his Congressional testimony.

Donaldson and Scott are examples of the worst kind of racism and bigotry.

Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner to boot.

Revolting

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

"he should physically experience, on a deep visceral level, what they did before opening his mouth again" if only...also what is it with these goombas claiming to be taken out of context? What possible context could excuse such ignorance and hatred?

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

It is deliberate lying.

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

I just have such trouble putting my anger to words right now.

I want to slap the taste out of that stupid quisling's mouth. This fool is a YEAR OLDER than me. His parents were subject to Jim Crow! Does he have ANY older members of his family? Do those people look forward to segregated housing, schools and water fountains (always of lesser quality)

Clearly his parents never had Eyes on the Prize in the family book collection.

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Jun 6Liked by Stephen Robinson

I heard about his comments a couple days ago. I don't think it's possible for them to stop. They know they've been caught saying Black people were better off under slavery before, and they've been caught saying this about Jim Crow, too. And yet they keep repeating it. Donalds is even correct to the extent that his particular formulation of this insulting lie is somewhat more limited to the even more insulting and grandiose lies told by his peers, but that shouldn't save him.

We simply have to keep calling them out for this until they day that they die and eventually maybe we'll have a generation where this doesn't happen -- at least not at the level of federal elected officials.

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