George Conway: Trump is a Racist President

As a post yesterday noted, the time has truly come for my Republican "friends" to decide once and for all who they are.  Are they decent, moral people, or are they with Donald Trump and the Klansmen and alt-right figures cheering his racism and cut from the same foul, racist cloth as Trump. It's time they condemned both Trump and the political party that refuses to condemn his overt racism and walk away from that political party all together.  Doing nothing is not a moral option.  If they fail to walk away from Trump and the GOP at all levels, they are complicit in that very same racism and, frankly, might as well start wearing a KKK or Neo-Nazi lapel pin so that the rest of us know at a glance just how toxic they are and can avoid them whenever possible. Similarly, those of us who make some true effort to follow the Gospel message can then point them out to our children and grandchildren and tell them such people are who they never want to emulate or even socialize with.  In a column in the Washington Post, George Conway, husband of Kellyanne Conway, part of Trump's equivalent to Hitler's Reich Minister of Propaganda - how they remain married baffles me - calls out Trump for what he is: a outright racist. By extension, he calls out all of those who continue to support Trump and/or try to conveniently look the other way.  Here are column highlights: 

To this day, I can remember almost the precise spot where it happened: a supermarket parking lot in eastern Massachusetts. It was the mid-1970s; I was not yet a teenager, or barely one. I don’t remember exactly what precipitated the woman’s ire. But I will never forget what she said to my mother, who had come to this country from the Philippines decades before. In these words or something close, the woman said, “Go back to your country.”

I remember the incident well, but it never bothered me all that much. Nor did racial slurs, which, thankfully, were rare. None of it was troublesome, to my mind, because most Americans weren’t like that. The woman in the parking lot was just a boor, an ignoramus, an aberration. America promised equality. Its constitution said so. My schoolbooks said so. The country wasn’t perfect, to be sure. But its ideals were. And every day brought us closer to those ideals.

How naive a child could be. The woman in the parking lot — there were many more like her, it turned out. They never went away. Today they attend rallies, and they post ugliness on Facebook or Twitter. As for the victims of historic racial oppression, no matter how much affirmative action (or reverse discrimination, or whatever you want to call it) the nation offered, they, too, had resentments that never went away — in part because of people like the parking-lot woman. Those resentments often led to more, not fewer, charges of racism as the years passed — charges of institutional racism and “white privilege.”

Which, in turn, bred another kind of resentment: Why, asked many an unaffluent white parent, who may never have uttered a racial slur or whose ancestors may never have held anyone in bondage, does my child have to check a box to her detriment, or be accused of “white privilege,” when the only privilege she has received came from the sweat of my brow? Why are people like me being called racist, when all I’ve done was mind my own business?

And how naive an adult could be. The birther imaginings about Barack Obama? Just a silly conspiracy theory, latched onto by an attention seeker who has a peculiar penchant for them. The “Mexican” Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel incident? Asinine, inappropriate, a terrible attack on the judiciary by an egocentric man who imagined that the judge didn’t like him. The white supremacists’ march in Charlottesville? The president’s comments were absolutely idiotic, but he couldn’t possibly have been referring to those self-described Nazis as “good people”. . . .

No, I thought, President Trump was boorish, dim-witted, inarticulate, incoherent, narcissistic and insensitive. He’s a pathetic bully but an equal-opportunity bully — in his uniquely crass and crude manner, he’ll attack anyone he thinks is critical of him. No matter how much I found him ultimately unfit, I still gave him the benefit of the doubt about being a racist.

But Sunday left no doubt. Naivete, resentment and outright racism, roiled in a toxic mix, have given us a racist president. Trump could have used vile slurs, including the vilest of them all, and the intent and effect would have been no less clear. Telling four non-white members of Congress — American citizens all, three natural-born — to “go back” to the “countries” they “originally came from”? That’s racist to the core.

What’s just as bad, though, is the virtual silence from Republican leaders and officeholders. . . . the Republicans don’t want to give succor to their political enemies; because, knowing how vindictive, stubborn and obtusely self-destructive Trump is, they fear his wrath.

But none of that is good enough. Trump is not some random, embittered person in a parking lot — he’s the president of the United States. By virtue of his office, he speaks for the country. What’s at stake now is more important than judges or tax cuts or regulations or any policy issue of the day. What’s at stake are the nation’s ideals, its very soul.

As I watch this horrible man spread hatred and division, I again get a sense of what decent Germans may have felt as Hitler rose to power.  Sadly, too many looked the other way rather than fight hatred.  That failure to act turned out very badly for many Germans, their country and the world.  Have we really forgotten the lessons of WWII and the bigot who helped bring it about?

Blame Trump for Growing Anti-LGBT Backlash

The year 2015 saw heady advances for LGBT Americans under a gay-friendly presidential administration and the Supreme Court's marriage ruling in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.  Fast forward three years and triumph has turned into nightmare as the Trump/Pence wages war on LGBT citizens, argues that we have no civil rights protections and can be rejected by health care professionals that cling to Bronze Age beliefs.  In larger metropolitan areas, most of us still fell some remaining sense of safety, but in the hinterland and "Red America", things must be terrifying for many, especially LGBT youth who may see their hopes for the future fading and suicide perhaps looking more attractive as a means of escape.  An article in the Washington Post looks at the increasing and well justified anxiety felt by many LGBT Americans who now find themselves back in the cross-hairs of hate merchants and a vile White House regime.  Here are excerpts:

The movement for LGBT rights has made stunning progress in recent years. But the latest results of an ongoing poll commissioned by the gay rights organization GLAAD, which is releasing the results at the World Economic Forum in Davos today, suggests that just because change has come swiftly doesn’t mean it’s durable. For the first time since the survey began in 2014, non-LGBT Americans told pollsters that they’re less comfortable with their LGBT neighbors. And the number of LGBT survey respondents who told pollsters that they’d experienced discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity jumped by 11 points. [T]he results suggest that Americans are taking advantage of an environment in which it has become more permissible to express discomfort with marginalized groups, even as people don’t want to be thought of as bigots. The number of non-LGBT Americans who gave what Gerzema called “the PC response,” telling pollsters that they support equal rights for LGBT people, held steady at 79 percent. But the number of respondents who said they would be somewhat or very uncomfortable having LGBT members of their faith communities, learning that a family member was LGBT, having their child taught by an LGBT teacher or study LGBT history in school, finding out that their doctor was LGBT, or even seeing same-sex couples holding hands all ticked upward. President Trump’s most venomous public statements haven’t targeted LGBT Americans. But his policies have, from his selection of Mike Pence as his running mate and Neil Gorsuch as his first Supreme Court nominee to his attempts to ban transgender people from the military. The rollback of LGBT rights may be quiet, but it’s still consequential. . . . . especially w1hen it means failing to respond to rising homophobia and anti-LGBT violence in countries such as Chechnya, Egypt and Indonesia.
 Yet facing off against procedural changes when other Americans have to contend with the president’s undisguised animosity “is actually more of a challenge for us, because it keeps it out of the headlines more so than immigration,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis.  Philanthropist Ari Getty is supporting some of that work via a $15 million grant to GLAAD that she sees as an investment in the future for her children, August and Natalia, both of whom are LGBT, and their friends. She hopes in particular that storytelling can focus as much on the achievements of LGBT youth as on their struggles. It’s a revelation that progress isn’t always permanent. The Supreme Court struck down elements of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013, and efforts ranging from voter ID laws to attempted purges of voter rolls have made it harder for many Americans to cast their ballots. The Americans who integrated city buses, public schools and lunch counters are held up as heroes even as the country has become increasingly segregated once again. But these reversals represent slow declines after major victories. This rising discomfort with LGBT Americans comes just eight years after Obama signed a repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that kept members of the military closeted and a mere 2½ years after a Supreme Court ruling made marriage equality the law of the land. A 2015 GLAAD study found that 50 percent of Americans “said that we were done, that we had achieved full rights and acceptance,” even as “in 29 states, you can still be fired for being LGBT,” Ellis said. 

Stress, Hostility Rising in American High Schools in Trump Era

Since November 9, 2016, I know that I have felt more stress and anxiety as civic discourse has coarsened and LGBT citizens have become increasingly a target for mistreatment by the federal government under Trump/Pence.  I have also come to realize that some who I thought were friends may, in fact not be my friends and may even support discrimination against me and others in the LGBT community not to mention against members of racial minorities.  And I am an educated white male with a career that would allow me to reopen my own law firm if things ever came to that.  Not everyone has that safety net.   Thus, I can only imagine the the stress and increased anxiety that racial minorities must be experiencing as the occupant of the White House continues to fan hate and bigotry and the Justice Department takes actions to allow open discrimination against people like me and others.  One venue where hate and bigotry is not easily avoided is in America's high schools where the situation shows how much damage is being done to younger generations.  The Virginian Pilot reports on the findings of a new study that ought to disturb decent, moral people (which, in my view, excludes Trump supporters).  Here are highlights:

Student anxiety and hostility on public high school campuses has worsened since Donald Trump became president and is affecting student learning, according to a new UCLA report.

More than half of public high school teachers in a nationally representative school sample reported seeing more students than ever with "high levels of stress and anxiety" between last January, when Trump took office, and May. That's according to the study, "Teaching and Learning in the Age of Trump: Increasing Stress and Hostility in America's High Schools," by John Rogers, director of the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California at Los Angeles.

[N]early 80 percent said some students had expressed concern for their well-being because of the charged public conversation about issues such as immigration, health care, the environment, travel bans and LGBTQ rights, it said. Furthermore, 40 percent said concerns over key issues - such as Trump's ban on travelers from eight countries, most with Muslim majorities; restrictions on LGBTQ rights; and health care - are making it harder for students to focus on their studies and making them less likely to come to school.

"I had students stand up in the middle of class and directly address their peers with racial slurs," the report quoted Ohio social studies teacher Aaron Burger as saying. "This is not something I have seen before."

Here are key findings from the report:

• Stress and concerns with welfare have increased, particularly in schools enrolling mostly students of color.
• Polarization, incivility and reliance on unsubstantiated sources have risen, particularly in predominantly white schools.
• A growing number of schools, particularly predominantly white schools, have become hostile environments for racial and religious minorities and other vulnerable groups.
• While some school leaders avoided issues related to the political environment, others moved proactively to create a tolerant and respectful school culture. When leaders did not act, student behavior grew dramatically worse.
• As the national political environment has become more threatening, bellicose and uncivil, more young people are subject to adverse socio-emotional and academic consequences. These changes also undercut the democratic purposes of public education.
• Educators can mitigate some of these challenges, but they need more support. Ultimately, political leaders need to address the underlying causes of campus incivility and stress.

The policy issue that concerned students the most was the Trump administration's statements about immigration, including the deportation of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children and are known as "dreamers." Jeff Seuss, a social studies teacher and coach in Nebraska, reported that some of his student athletes now live in "survival mode," never knowing if they will be deported to a country they never lived in.

79 percent of teachers reported that their students have expressed concerns for their well-being or the well-being of their families associated with recent public policy discourse on one or more hot-button issues, including immigration, travel limitations on predominantly Muslim countries, restrictions on LGBTQ rights, changes to health care, or threats to the environment.

"Many teachers described how the political environment 'unleashed' virulently racist, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic or homophobic rhetoric in their schools and classrooms. An Indiana English teacher explained: 'Individuals who do harbor perspectives on racism and bigotry now feel empowered to offer their views more naturally in class discussions, which has led to tension, and even conflict in the classroom.'

Sadly, this is precisely what Trump voters wanted: to make those the deem to be "other" fearful and threatened.  It is a testament to just how toxic conservative "Christian values" have become.