How Dare They Compare This Impeachment to a Lynching?
On the heels of the of the day the nation has set aside to honor the memory of Dr Martin Luther King, Trump has compared his impeachment to a lynching and Lindsey Graham has seen fit to step up and defend the pronouncement:
How dare they?
Trump has no real sense of what a lynching was. How dare he compare his circumstances to that which is among the most vile and virulent aspects of the history of African Americans in the United States of America?
How dare he?
How dare Lindsey Graham, who must certainly know, and be accutely aware of, the history of South Carolina, his home state:
How dare he?
“Lynchings were a “racial terror tool” used to control and victimize blacks and to enforce segregation and Jim Crow laws.”
Anyone who doesn’t know this knows nothing at all about the truth of the history of black people in this country.
Comparing any white person’s adverse experience, however unusual or rare, to a lynching is as about as insulting and disrespectful as it gets. In this regard, it is superseded perhaps only by the “n” word as the ultimate in destructive hurtful usage of language…
How dare they?
Anyone who doesn’t believe that racism dwells in the government at the highest levels, and in virtually every subordinate level, isn’t paying a bit of attention to current events and the current state of affairs in America….
In my view, Trump and Graham both, should be impeached for entertaining and articulating the hatred expressed in the thought that this impeachment is like a lynching, which is the epitome of a false equivalency….
Or, should I say they should be lynched for expressing such a false and erroneous equivalency?
The very idea of this impeachment being a lynching runs contrary to all that these two gentlemen hold sacred and dear…
Neither would be caught dead being lynched…
How dare they?
01/23/2020 @ 8:13 pm
Apparently, we are now required to check the box marked “allow comments” before we publish a post…
01/23/2020 @ 9:57 pm
Thank you for doing so.
You overestimate the guys you’re talking about. Trump is unlikely to know much about actual lynching other than as a figure of speech and Graham is unlikely to care. Trump has built his political career on legitimizing the idea that minorities in general and Blacks in particular are politically oversensitive and are not entitled to precisely this sort of courtesy. He and his followers don’t get how traumatic a reference this is because they have no experience with real trauma when it comes to law enforcement. They have always been in power and have neither the experience nor the interest in what it’s like to be out of power in the way that real lynching victims were.
“The very idea of this impeachment being a lynching runs contrary to all that these two gentlemen hold sacred and dear..”
Oh no it doesn’t. And that’s the problem. They, particularly Trump, because Graham is less of a fool and more of a cynic, are truly offended by the idea that they should be treated like the disenfranchised that Trump in particular views as Losers and Graham views as inferiors.
The biggest lie Trump ever told, and we knew it at the time, was his Oath of Office. He is interested in protecting and defending himself. He neither understands nor gives a flying fuck about the Constitution. Somewhere under all of this Graham is a bit embarrassed, perhaps particularly by his violating his own oath of office, but Trump is not embarrassed at all. Trump believes in privilege like a medieval lord with no sense of noblesse oblige. His philosophy is “I deserve more than anyone.” These are people who think you should shut up and suffer because you’ve gotten more from Government than you deserve.
Now Trump is getting more donors, particularly from businessmen who are very happy with their tax reductions. Like everyone else who supports Trump, their votes are being bought at the expense of their country.
It’s like this (written by Tom Paxton but Arlo Guthrie performs it better here)
01/24/2020 @ 10:09 am
I thought I’d left a long comment here but I don’t see it. It must not have posted.
How dare they?
One of them doesn’t know the history, the other doesn’t care, and neither has any way of beginning to relate to belonging to a population that vulnerable, nor are they remotely interested in doing so. Trump views vulnerable populations as losers while both view their own positions as thoroughly entitled.
Trump’s political career is specifically built on the proposition that minorities are oversensitive to the point of being tyrannical and that they’ve gotten way more from Government than they deserve, so a backlash to these ingrates is entirely appropriate.
To get to that proposition you have to be unaware of a lot, ignore a lot, or both. That’s how they come to draw an analogy about lynching.
“The very idea of this impeachment being a lynching runs contrary to all that these two gentlemen hold sacred and dear..”
Huh? No it doesn’t. That statement involves a serious misconception of what they hold sacred and dear. Certainly not the Constitution – Trump’s greatest lie thus far was his Oath of Office. Trump has always viewed the Constitution not as something to be upheld and protected but as a minor inconvenience to be manipulated as much as possible. Graham may have once valued the Constitution but those days are over and don’t get me started on McConnell, who has done far more damage than either of them.
And that’s before I even get to calling them “gentlemen.”
01/25/2020 @ 7:21 pm
Re; Sicilian/Race
As a child living on the West Side of Stamford I witnessed a restaurant proprietor direct his employee to break the glass used by a Black patron after the black man exited the eatery which as I came to find out was commonplace in that predominately Italian neighborhood.7-8 years later during a visit to tourist areas of Miami Florida in the early 1970’s I was greeted by a sign clearly in place at the entrance of a popular lounge “No Colored”. There is documentation supporting the statements published regarding the treatment of immigrants and references to being compared to Coloreds and Negroes.My research indicates that the inferences were attributed to the type of work the European immigrants accepted. It seems the barrier was primarily level of literacy, skill set and lack of language not their skin tone. The Italian community is notorious for segregation based on the area of ancestry and they themselves make reference to each other by skin tone. The culturally diverse immigrants including those of European ancestry revised the face of whiteness in America and were fully ratified as white with the federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus and the global celebration of St Patrick. I am not familiar with an article in the US Constitution which was implemented to require equity for any citizens specifically other than for African American citizens. The Constitution speaks of people,citizens,persons,other persons(a euphemism for slaves) and Indians not taxed(it’s their tax exempt status that matters). The reference to lynching is a tool. It erodes a sense of value and relinquishes accountability while diminishing the severity of the murderous acts perpetrated against African American families in our country. Any attempt to dismantle racism in the US will be met with resistance from the current US president.
01/28/2020 @ 4:32 am
Well put Jayne…
In the 1950s, a Las Vegas hotel completely drained their pool because black entertainer Dorothy Dandridge stuck her toe in the water…
This kind of racist response/reaction doesn’t occur where a white person with a dark complexion is involved…
01/24/2020 @ 10:25 am
The comment I wanted to leave earlier was in regards to lynchings being only directed at “black people” vs. “people of color”.
I know in the past we have discussed whether my Sicilian ass qualified as a “person of color”, but because I believe it does I’d like to point out that throughout the South Sicilians are/were considered people of color, were subject to the exact same Jim Crow laws and were the “recipients” of the “honor” of being the victims of the largest single mass racially motivated lynching in U.S. history.
In other words, I’m not disagreeing with you one bit, but I think you are being too narrow with your definitions by limiting them to “black people” vs. all people of color.
01/24/2020 @ 10:59 am
Kosh,
“The very idea of this impeachment being a lynching runs contrary to all that these two gentlemen hold sacred and dear…”
This is what they hold sacred and dear:
“Lynchings were a “racial terror tool” used to control and victimize blacks and to enforce segregation and Jim Crow laws.”
Given the fact that referencing a lynching has obvious racial overtones, you should know that
this is a tongue in cheek slap at Trump and Graham….
Referring to them as ‘gentlemen’ should be the tipoff…
The punchline should be the dead giveaway:
“Neither would be caught dead being lynched…”
Neither of these two would tolerate being treated like a “nigger”….
Re McConnell, you get no argument from me….
01/24/2020 @ 11:33 am
Ron, I’ll see your “nigger” and call with “wop”, “greaser” “guinea”, “wog”, “eyetie”, “goombah” and “dago”. (and I have no doubt that both Trump and Graham use those “euphemisms”
01/24/2020 @ 4:59 pm
Amy, if you go ‘all in’ with those admittedly insulting, denigrating, and hurtful epithets, you’re still leaving the pot short by a few hundred years of American History re slavery, oppressive exploitation, and the economic, social, political, and linguistic systems and structures associated with it…
In short, there is no equivalency…
Re your poker analogy:
Your hand is too weak for you to win the pot…
In poker parlance,you’re ‘drawing dead’…
01/24/2020 @ 11:21 am
Amy, your argument isn’t with me….Your argument is with groups like the Equal Justice Initiative:
According to the Equal Justice Initiative:
“Lynchings were a “racial terror tool” used to control and victimize blacks and to enforce segregation and Jim Crow laws.”
When people like Trump and Graham use terms like ‘lynching’, the very specific and exclusive racial reference is to black Americans who they think of and refer to as “niggers”…
The “n”word does not, nor can it ever be broadened to include ‘people of color’ which is a politically correct euphemism that is much too civil as a descriptive expression for the likes of Trump and Graham to utter…