Monday, February 27, 2017

Who's Got Your Back? Day 5- Not a Supreme White Culture

It took my watching "American History X" last night to finally become fully aware that hate-filled racism is alive and well in the United States and just what that means for all of us, whatever our race.  You would think that I would have gotten that message after seeing President Obama treated by Republicans in Congress for 8 years as if he were to them nothing but a N-boy (pardon the expression but it conveys what happened).  

These esteemed Congress people got more and more brazen as Obama refused to behave in a less than completely dignified, patient, rational, and respectful manner.  Finally, they pulled out all the stops, discarded their constitutional duty, and refused to allow Obama to appoint a supremely-qualified Supreme Court justice.  The insidious nature of racism is such that nobody will ever prove that Obama was done in by it, but signs point to this being the most profound damage to our country ever caused by racist attitudes towards a single person.

I acknowledge that even saying this is highly controversial.  People simply cannot admit that this kind of outrageous injustice exists at the highest levels of our government.  But we better deal with it because the top 3 policy persons in the White House, Trump, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and their buddy, Jeff Sessions, all have strong associations with the white nationalist movement. A Huffington Post report into what is known about Bannon shows a person living in a world of hate and conflict that makes him believe that we (U.S. Christendom culture) are already at war with Islam and that this will have to become a raging all-out war involving destruction foretold in biblical accounts of the apocalypse.  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-apocalypse_us_5898f02ee4b040613138a951)   

It wasn't until I saw "American History X" last night that I saw the connection between such a dangerously unstable worldview and the mental mindset of racists.  Bannon told a conference in 2011 that "the Judeo-Christian West is collapsing.  It’s imploding.  And it’s imploding on our watch. And the blowback of that is going to be tremendous."(op.cit.)  Bannon is the right hand man for Trump and the first partisan strategist to have a permanent seat on the Security Council.  Jeff Sessions, who now oversees the investigation into Trump's ties with Russia, is their white nationalist ideological leader. (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2017/02/government_by_white_nationalism_is_upon_us.html )

Since Trump's election, hate attacks and threats on Jewish and Muslim people have increased threefold.  It appears that people who cowered in the background before are now emboldened to assert their worldview.  Trump banned Islamic countries and decried terrorism related to Islam, but hasn't addressed hate crimes related to white nationalism.  In interviews Trump refused to disavow the support of white supremacists such as David Duke.  

The immigration ban directly impacts everyone.  If one group is targeted now, every group that espouses alternate values, such as every true follower of Jesus, will eventually be targeted. Current European culture demonstrates a wonderful alternative to white "European" nationalism. Most Europeans learned the lessons of fascist Germany that we haven't. This is the European culture that has our back, white nationalism doesn't.

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