Thank you for this incandescent biography of Fannie Lou Hamer. I knew about her helping to register people to vote, but I didn't know about her backstory. It's hard (and yet easy) to believe that she and Tim Scott lived in the same world...
I fear for the African American community, as well as all the communities of color. The incoming supremacists are "othering" all who don't fit the white, misogynistic ideal. My mixed race friends are fearful of the violation of social norms by the White House. We all need to hear Fannie Lou Hamer's name, and her words, daily.
Thank you for this, Stephen. Well done, as always. 💔
O/T, sorry —I hope it’s ok if I post this GoFundMe here. This is a fundraiser that’s been set up to help former MPD police officer Michael Fanone, who nearly lost his life on 1/6/21 and has been struggling financially ever since he resigned from the force in late 2021. MAGAts are making his life more miserable than ever these days, so please help out if you can! Thanks.
reading the horrifying account of Fannie Lou Hamer's beating and her resulting disfigurement, I had to keep checking the date and seeing it was 1963 not 1863.
Fannie Lou Hamer is an American hero, who is sadly ignored in the history books. Also sad - Scott is one of my senators, and along with the other, Graham, is a disgrace, as are all who support trump. If not for them, he would have NEVER been elected in the first place, and certainly not the second time.
As for millions watching the inauguration, I have read that the ratings were much lower than those for Biden's. Being vindictive, I hope that all of the those MSM outlets rolling over for trump, get wiped out for surrendering to him, rather than opposing him and speaking truth to power.
Our neighbors are taken with a madness. It is the madness of folly. One they have given into willingly. Nevertheless, they are captured by it.
They cannot be appeased. Folly never can be. It insists that day is night, that wrong is right, that slavery is freedom, and demands that you not only agree, but praise them for their right thinking.
Folly cannot be reasoned with. You cannot find common ground by agreeing that there might be clouds in the sky so it could be night or day.
Folly can only be opposed. And it must be opposed and crushed utterly and irredeemably, or it will return again doubly determined to crush reason, compassion, and empathy and force people to agree with it on pains of death.
An excellent history lesson! I would love to understand how to expand it to the TikTok generation, who seem to have the attention span of a fruit fly. How does one impress the importance of individual human rights to those who don't understand (or even know about) the blood and sweat and deaths that it took to first secure them? And how does someone like Tim Scott, who surely does know the history, convince himself to ignore it?
Scott should've learned the maxim from TabithaSpeaksPolitics: "Tokens get spent."
At some point I got to see the live video of Scott's "I sure love YOU." That was...a visceral sort of pain. It really hurt seeing that.
I mean hell, Scott actually IS more qualified than so many of the useless hacks on President Klan Robe's shit list. And that's by design of course...the plan is to destroy these agencies. But he didn't even get consideration.
The sad irony of LBJ appeasing the Jim Crow Democrats at the '64 Convention by not seating the Mississippi Freedom Democrats is that the Mississippi Dems kept him off the ballot throughout the state that year anyway, basically handing the state to Goldwater.
Appeasing evil does not work--you have to fight it in bold, open strokes. Another irony here is that sometimes by doing so you can even win over those who were opposed to you but respect that you showed guts. (Another anecdote--some pollsters in early '68 asked George Wallace fans who their second choice was--they chose RFK, because they thought RFK showed guts and stood for what he believed in. Lesson--projecting strength is a winner, projecting weakness never is).
The problem is we're so many generations removed from Hamer's time that you have a lot of younger people taking those sacrifices for granted, and guys like Tim Scott will always see keeping his career in the GOP as more important than anything his grandparents went through. And to that end, he can rationalize anything if it's to his benefit to do so.
Couldn't be more true. Americans have had a decent democracy for so many decades they take it for granted and can't see or believe what has come to our doorstep and they are blindly letting it in. The younger generations haven't witnessed some of the backslides we encountered and fought through and I don't think history is being taught well. Thanks for your inciteful comments.
That to me is the best explanation for this moment in time--sure, America is facing hardships and it's not great for everyone, but that's been true at all times in our history and for most Americans things are better than they used to be (health, material comforts, quality of life) with the usual caveats. So how to explain the "burn it all down" mentality that has taken over, and would make more sense amid massive hyperinflation (e.g., Germany 1924) or depression (U.S., 1933)? I think we have become decadent, too far removed from the sacrifices, too many think "racism is over" because we had a black president and there are no "Whites Only" signs at restaurants, that it's harder than ever to find a job because they cannot even remember 2009 let alone 1980 or 1973 or 1933. The Internet makes it worse, because you can cull your information sources to give you an echo chamber rather than inconvenient facts, we feel lonelier than ever, ironically, when if anything this interconnectedness should make us feel more entwined.
So with all that, we are willing to throw it all away because we cannot really remember what it was like to have so much less.
Trump could hand Scott a truncheon and then Scott would beat whoever Trump told him to.
We need a lot of things, but one of them wasn't Donald Trump.
Thank you for this incandescent biography of Fannie Lou Hamer. I knew about her helping to register people to vote, but I didn't know about her backstory. It's hard (and yet easy) to believe that she and Tim Scott lived in the same world...
Oh to be as courageous as Hamer. We're gonna need some people with "sand" as I always like to say. Not many around anymore.
Thank you for this timely reminder.
I fear for the African American community, as well as all the communities of color. The incoming supremacists are "othering" all who don't fit the white, misogynistic ideal. My mixed race friends are fearful of the violation of social norms by the White House. We all need to hear Fannie Lou Hamer's name, and her words, daily.
Thank you for this, Stephen. Well done, as always. 💔
O/T, sorry —I hope it’s ok if I post this GoFundMe here. This is a fundraiser that’s been set up to help former MPD police officer Michael Fanone, who nearly lost his life on 1/6/21 and has been struggling financially ever since he resigned from the force in late 2021. MAGAts are making his life more miserable than ever these days, so please help out if you can! Thanks.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/show-your-support-for-michael-fanone
reading the horrifying account of Fannie Lou Hamer's beating and her resulting disfigurement, I had to keep checking the date and seeing it was 1963 not 1863.
Thank you for this history of Fannie Lou Hamer. Scott should keep her words outta his mouth.
Fannie Lou Hamer is an American hero, who is sadly ignored in the history books. Also sad - Scott is one of my senators, and along with the other, Graham, is a disgrace, as are all who support trump. If not for them, he would have NEVER been elected in the first place, and certainly not the second time.
As for millions watching the inauguration, I have read that the ratings were much lower than those for Biden's. Being vindictive, I hope that all of the those MSM outlets rolling over for trump, get wiped out for surrendering to him, rather than opposing him and speaking truth to power.
Our neighbors are taken with a madness. It is the madness of folly. One they have given into willingly. Nevertheless, they are captured by it.
They cannot be appeased. Folly never can be. It insists that day is night, that wrong is right, that slavery is freedom, and demands that you not only agree, but praise them for their right thinking.
Folly cannot be reasoned with. You cannot find common ground by agreeing that there might be clouds in the sky so it could be night or day.
Folly can only be opposed. And it must be opposed and crushed utterly and irredeemably, or it will return again doubly determined to crush reason, compassion, and empathy and force people to agree with it on pains of death.
Or paraphrasing Falcon (Anthony Mackie) in The Winter Soldier:
'I don't think he's the kind you save. He's the kind you stop.'
An excellent history lesson! I would love to understand how to expand it to the TikTok generation, who seem to have the attention span of a fruit fly. How does one impress the importance of individual human rights to those who don't understand (or even know about) the blood and sweat and deaths that it took to first secure them? And how does someone like Tim Scott, who surely does know the history, convince himself to ignore it?
Wow.
I wish he’d wake up and realize!!!
Excellent reminders and information. Yes, Tim Scott deserves all the accolades you have for him here. ;)
Scott should've learned the maxim from TabithaSpeaksPolitics: "Tokens get spent."
At some point I got to see the live video of Scott's "I sure love YOU." That was...a visceral sort of pain. It really hurt seeing that.
I mean hell, Scott actually IS more qualified than so many of the useless hacks on President Klan Robe's shit list. And that's by design of course...the plan is to destroy these agencies. But he didn't even get consideration.
Scott doesn't get that TFG just never saw any value in him beyond a black face to make it look like he wasn't racist, simply by association.
Scott is a shameful disgrace and a groveling greedy coward. Fits perfectly in the Trump Party. RESIST!!!
The sad irony of LBJ appeasing the Jim Crow Democrats at the '64 Convention by not seating the Mississippi Freedom Democrats is that the Mississippi Dems kept him off the ballot throughout the state that year anyway, basically handing the state to Goldwater.
Appeasing evil does not work--you have to fight it in bold, open strokes. Another irony here is that sometimes by doing so you can even win over those who were opposed to you but respect that you showed guts. (Another anecdote--some pollsters in early '68 asked George Wallace fans who their second choice was--they chose RFK, because they thought RFK showed guts and stood for what he believed in. Lesson--projecting strength is a winner, projecting weakness never is).
The problem is we're so many generations removed from Hamer's time that you have a lot of younger people taking those sacrifices for granted, and guys like Tim Scott will always see keeping his career in the GOP as more important than anything his grandparents went through. And to that end, he can rationalize anything if it's to his benefit to do so.
Couldn't be more true. Americans have had a decent democracy for so many decades they take it for granted and can't see or believe what has come to our doorstep and they are blindly letting it in. The younger generations haven't witnessed some of the backslides we encountered and fought through and I don't think history is being taught well. Thanks for your inciteful comments.
That to me is the best explanation for this moment in time--sure, America is facing hardships and it's not great for everyone, but that's been true at all times in our history and for most Americans things are better than they used to be (health, material comforts, quality of life) with the usual caveats. So how to explain the "burn it all down" mentality that has taken over, and would make more sense amid massive hyperinflation (e.g., Germany 1924) or depression (U.S., 1933)? I think we have become decadent, too far removed from the sacrifices, too many think "racism is over" because we had a black president and there are no "Whites Only" signs at restaurants, that it's harder than ever to find a job because they cannot even remember 2009 let alone 1980 or 1973 or 1933. The Internet makes it worse, because you can cull your information sources to give you an echo chamber rather than inconvenient facts, we feel lonelier than ever, ironically, when if anything this interconnectedness should make us feel more entwined.
So with all that, we are willing to throw it all away because we cannot really remember what it was like to have so much less.