Example One Million*

*= It’s just a rough estimate. 

 

I certainly have lost count, though, of the times I’ve had to make this point. It’s not an easy one to talk about—as noted below, too many white Americans simply don’t want to hear about racial inequities. But that doesn’t mean such inequities should be ignored. 

The example this time concerns Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Some of the more radical House Republicans recently pushed through an amendment to a House spending bill reducing Austin’s annual salary to $1. 

 

I guess the good news is that the amendment will eventually be dropped as the budget process plays out. (Hopefully it will eventually play out)

So, it’s symbolic. But what does it symbolize?

The Republican lawmakers in question say they’re taking this dramatic step because of their displeasure with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is widely seen as having been rushed and resulted in several bad outcomes. These include the deaths of American service members and civilians, and the abandonment of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. 

But Austin is not the only Secretary of Defense to preside over a chaotic withdrawal or the loss of American lives and treasure. During the Reagan administration, we lost hundreds of troops in a bombing in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983. An entire building was destroyed, nearly 250 Americans were killed, and the American mission eventually withdrew. 

 

No matter how disastrous the policy or how strong the political disagreements have been, though, no Congress has voted to try to humiliate and punish a Secretary of Defense in this way. 

 

And unlike Reagan’s Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, who was a civilian, Austin is a former general who served in the military for 41 years. And, as this article in The Hill notes, Austin “is the first African American to lead the Defense Department.”

So, an African American who has ascended to heights in the military that no other American from his background has achieved in our country’s history. And then we see this outrageous attempt to punish him.

Not that it’s about race, right? One thing we know for sure: when white American conservatives come up with some creative and bizarre new way to punish or attack prominent African Americans or political figures who are people of color, it’s never about race. I’m sure it wasn’t when Barack Obama was accused of being born in Kenya. Or when the right spread vicious rumors about Kamala Harris. Or with the treatment of Colin Kaepernick, who was quite firmly blacklisted from the NFL for exercising his 1^st Amendment rights. 

 

Or maybe it was. But it’s difficult to make that point in a civil way. White conservatives get quite upset when their cruel and over-the-top antics aimed at Blacks get called racism. They become very indignant and start talking about playing the race card.

 

When I try to make this point with white conservatives, you can imagine how it’s gone over. But in this latest case, I think it’s relevant to ask again. If you were Black, and you saw how this successful, highly respected African American was being treated, the extremes that white conservatives are going to in order to single him out for an unheard-of punishment… would you think race had nothing to do with it? Really? 

If you were a young African-American considering going into military service, or political service, and you saw how this groundbreaking role model was treated, what would you think? How welcome would you feel?

 

The reason white conservatives get called out on this stuff is because of their actions, which speak louder than their protestations of innocence. When your political party or movement is uniformly hostile to people of color, with just a few exceptions, it is not unreasonable to ask if race is a problem here. And I think it pretty clearly is. 

 

Again.

A very limited dip into the well of lies
From the Trump MTP Interview

NBC has been getting a lot of heat for its Meet the Press interview with former president Trump on Sunday, where Trump continued to double down on the lies he has spread on the 2020 election—and on his other potentially criminal activity. 

I did not watch the whole interview. Life is too short, and already too filled with unpleasant experiences, to voluntarily jump into that mudhole. However, two items did catch my attention. 

First was the outright, bald-face lie that Trump told about Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who recorded the phone call where the former president pressured the SOS to come up with fake results (“I just want to find 11,780 votes”) in order to overturn the Georgia presidential results. 

In the MTP interview, Trump said: “That was a phone call made in front of, I guess seven or eight lawyers. Brad Raffensperger, the head – who, by the way, last week said I didn’t do anything wrong; he said, ‘That was a negotiation.’ Brad Raffensperger, who I was dealing with, I appreciate that he said that. But he said last week, I didn’t do anything wrong.” 

The CNN fact check on that statement duly noted that there is no record of Raffensperger saying any such thing. But that is irrelevant: for Trump, the important thing is to muddy the waters and plant the claim that he was exonerated. Now, his followers can repeat the lie—they will fill social media and conservative news programs with the statement that Raffensperger said something that he didn’t say. And it won’t matter that they have no proof he said it. It has become a Trump talking point, and so, gospel. 

 

It was also illuminating listening to the former president bob and weave on the question of who convinced him the 2020 election was rigged. The answer? Some people, but mostly just himself. 

 

“I was listening to different people, and when I added it all up, the election was rigged,” Trump told [NBC’s] Kristen Welker in the interview, again pushing the false claim as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination for president.

“You know who I listen to? Myself. I saw what happened,” Trump said.

Of course, we know who he should've listened to. His Attorney General. His Vice President. The election officials of the states in question, who were mostly Republican. His campaign officials. The Department of Homeland Security experts who oversaw election security. The audits. The recounts. The 60+ court cases where it was established that fraud had not happened. (In the one case where the Trump campaign prevailed, fraud was not charged; it was simply a matter of deadlines for mail-in ballots.)

That's not who listened to. He listened to a cherry-picked group of lawyers who were telling him what he wanted to hear. Which was, basically, that he could not lose, and if he did lose, it had to be because it was rigged.

The “I listened to some people/I listened to myself” is another transparent attempt to muddy the waters and evade responsibility for his actions. And it is very much in line with the MAGA philosophy overall: believe what you want to believe, don’t pay attention to so-called “facts,” or “experts.” After all, who are they to tell us what is true and what is false?

What is reality, anyway? 

We can only hope that a judge and jury will decide that yes, there are knowable facts. That it matters what election officials and those in charge of election security say about the election. But the bigger problem is that too many Americans have bought into this mindset—that we can ignore the facts and just bend reality to our will. If we say it, it’s so. 

It's a crazy way to live. But not that uncommon these days. And I am forced to agree that the mainstream media is part of the problem. I think the new host of MTP, Kristen Welker, should get a chance to redeem herself after this spectacle. But she’s got some work to do.  

Nancy Mace is a truth-teller

Just a short note--I welcome a moderate Republican recognizing that the takeover of her party by the MAGA movement is going to have consequences. 

"'I’m pro-life. I have a fantastic pro-life voting record, but I also understand that we cannot be a**holes to women,' said Mace, who has been vocal about including exceptions for rape in measures to restrict the procedure."

Unfortunately, this is out of step off with the majority of Republicans, who have embraced the concept of being "the a**hole party." Not all, not by a long shot. But judging purely on polling results, with the majority supporting the biggest a**hole of them all, and putting pro-a**hole candidate Ron DeSantis in second place... it's very much a race to the, um, bottom. 

Rep. Nancy Mace says Republicans in swing districts are ‘walking the plank’ because of abortion restrictions