Trump Supporters Still Want Their P*ssies Grabbed

At a recent Trump rally, women (and one guy) wait to have their genitals fondled.

Trump in 2005:  “…when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

In Trump’s mind, being a star means being above the law. So pussy grabbing by Trump is not illegal. 
Trump even admitted, "I was aware at the time that I was being recorded by a TV program".

However, this was just “locker room” talk, remember? He meant every word of it, he just didn’t mean for you to find out. It’s his way of puffing up his street cred with other serial sexual predators – by exchanging ideas for violating women safely behind locker room doors. You weren’t supposed to catch him admitting what he really did to his victims. But he thinks what he did was okay. He told the world he “could get away with anything.” Getting caught voicing his preferred method was his only miscalculation. And the people who voted for him approve that message!

Does he care if you disapprove? Does Trump care about anything other than making money off of gullible people? Trump has a simple five-word response that sums up his attitude. Verified by numerous named sources in Bob Woodward’s book Fear: Trump in the White House, one of Trump’s most frequent responses to a variety of issues is “I don’t give a fuck”, "I don't give a shit", or “I don’t give a damn.”

Case in point: Money trumps the law.

Trump in November 2016, to Chris Christie (when he and Steve Bannon explained to Trump that legally the money raised for the Trump transition team could only be used for actual presidential transition team tasks as it prepared to take over the government): “Fuck the law,” Trump shouted. “I don’t give a fuck about the law. I want my fucking money.”

THIS IS THE REPUBLICAN’S LEADER - AND THE BIBLE-WIELDING EVANGELICAL’S CHOSEN MORAL REPRESENTATIVE.

Congratulations GOP and Christians, this is the man seen as the embodiment of your values around the world. This is the man you believe God picked to lead the U.S.

Does he care about presidential optics he has created? Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, shoving aside Montenegro’s Prime Minister Dusko Markovic so Trump could be in front at the NATO members photo op in May 2017, being laughed at when falsely bragging about his accomplishments in front of the UN General Assembly. 3000 Puerto Ricans are confirmed dead from Hurricane Maria and its after-effects, which were criminally mismanaged by the Trump administration, yet Trump gives himself an A+ and told reporters "I think we did a fantastic job in Puerto Rico."  Trump proudly says he’s a nationalist…even though he admits he shouldn’t say it. He doesn't care that nationalism has strong negative connotations and is closely associated with white nationalism and in particular National Socialism…you know, Nazis.

Did Trump really hire “the best people” to work for him? Recent Trump administration departures include Nikki Haley, Don McGahn, Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster, Tom Price, David Shulkin, Rob Porter, Dina Powell, Scott Pruitt…many left under a cloud of corruption…and those names are just the most high-profile ones. These are Trump’s hand-selected “best people” and they have been either forced out or found they cannot work with him. Why would they no longer want to help Trump make America great again?

What about that massive parade that was supposed to showcase our great military (and by extension, it’s Commander-in-Chief), right down Pennsylvania Avenue…uh, soon, how 'bout July 4^th, no, no, Veteran’s Day on November 11^th, no wait…? Never mind, it’s been cancelled. As usual, Trump didn't give a damn about the cost until the Pentagon released figures showing the parade that Trump wanted would cost nearly $90 million. Then, to save face, Trump claimed he cancelled it due to budgetary concerns after Democratic politicians falsely inflated the price. That’s how Trump honors our military…with a false show of force designed to stroke his ego that would have wasted millions of dollars, it would have added nothing to military might or readiness, and that money would have been far better spent on our military families and veterans.

Does Trump actually care about helping our military? Trump has gone golfing at least 70 times since taking office yet hasn’t once visited troops in an active zone he sent them to. So far, all "General Bone Spurs" has done is use our soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force crews for photo opportunities or to send them off secretively - like they're a bunch of pawns or playthings - while he flexes his muscle and uses his military school background to play-act as the new sheriff in town. He told everyone on live TV he was smarter than our generals.
We lost four Green Berets in Niger October 4, 2017, because Trump added Chad to the list of seven banned countries - all because they didn’t use the right kind of paper for their passports. Chad troops then pulled out of Niger and the vacuum was filled by ISIS-supporting militants. With no advance intelligence, Trump ordered the US African Command to send lightly-armed US troops into the area with no plan, no support, no backup, and no extraction force available. Then when four Americans were killed (along with several Niger troops) Trump did nothing. Absolutely nothing. He even ignored the Defense Department's statement for him to read to the public about the ambush. Nor did Trump call any of the families of those killed until he was exposed at a press conference on October 16^th lying that he was the first president ever to call all the families of those who died in service to the US on his watch. He further sullied the whole affair by insulting the widow of Sgt. LaDavid Johnson, on her way to claim her husband’s body at the airport, and his off-the-cuff callousness was confirmed by the widow’s mother and her congresswoman who were riding in the car with her. Trump claims they are the ones who are lying about the incident, even though Chief of Staff John Kelly corroborated that Trump had said to the widow about her husband’s death “well, he knew what he signed up for…” 
How and why did we lose a SEAL in Somalia? Why was Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens killed in that botched raid in Yemen just a week into the Trump presidency? Why are we still losing military personnel in Syria when Trump can, and does, launch Tomahawk cruise missiles from the comfort of his golf resorts as his way of resolving issues in that country? Trump even salutes generals of countries we are technically still at war with.

         Taking care of our military starts with our veterans. Yet what has Trump done for them? According to the publication Stars & Stripes, Trump’s approach to the whole Veterans Administration issue was to appoint a trio of wealthy Mar-a-Lago members (those are people who pay him personally hundreds of thousands of dollars a year) who have no military experience to run the VA in secret. And although Trump has repeatedly promised his total commitment to “take care of every veteran”, now, almost two years into his administration, he has yet to detail how he would do that, or when he might start. Meanwhile, wait times at almost every VA facility have increased because Trump froze federal hiring and spending which blocked any additional staff or doctors being added, or upgrading with needed equipment, thereby degrading veteran’s health care even more.

Why hasn’t anyone handed Trump an AR-15 and asked him to show us how he would have confronted the gunman at Margery Stoneman Douglas High School during his killing rampage on Valentine’s Day 2018? Trump said that’s what he would have done, run into the building and confront the shooter. Lead by example, Trump.

Does Trump care that everyone around him considers him an idiot, or more generously, a child? – The transcript of the July 20, 2017 meeting at the Pentagon reveals Trump left a room full of staff members, Cabinet officials, and military leaders stunned after showing he couldn’t grasp simple concepts on diplomacy, and reasons not to launch a war - Rex Tillerson blurted out ‘fucking moron’ as Trump left the room; the West Wing resembles a dumpster fire as seen through the eyes of Michael Wolff in his book Fire and Fury, the September 2018 New York Times op-ed letter that claims others are actually running the government as "the adults in the room" instead of Trump, the entire White House is understaffed and feels they have to be the guardians at the gate to keep Trump from acting on his wildest impulses as chronicled in Michael Lewis' The Fifth Risk, reporter/author Bob Woodward, who has an impeccable record for honest and accurate reporting, writes in his latest book Fear: Trump in the White House that many are concerned that the president acts like a petulant five-year-old, or describe him as having the attention span of a 5th or 6th grader, incompetent, completely self-centred, lacking a moral compass. And don't forget, after claiming as a candidate in 2016 that "the world was laughing at us" Trump is the one who actually got laughed at - by the entire UN General Assembly on September 24, 2018.

Does he care about the deficit?

In September 2018, Trump's top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, gave a talk at the Economic Club of New York in which he said that tax cuts aren't to blame for deficits. It’s entirely too much spending, mainly on social programs. Just how could Kudlow make such a preposterous claim? Because the GOP - who rammed through that Tax Cut Bill that transfers the tax savings wealth to the top 2% of people in this country, authorized with Trump's signature - tells him to say that. They don't want to answer for what they did to the other 98% of Americans. But it is Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cuts - and only Trump’s tax cuts - that are fueling the increase in deficits. It is now 17% higher than at this time last year according to his own Treasury Department. And even though Republicans control the Executive, Judicial and Legislative arms of the government, there's been absolutely no spending discipline at all by them. However, Republicans blame what they call “obstructionist Democrats” as causing the spending increases that are ballooning the deficit...and claiming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are the culprits that really need radical reductions.

Does Trump care that a legal U.S. resident was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey? Jamal Khashoggi was no threat to Saudi Arabia. He was simply disliked by the Saudi prince over an article he wrote. And the official story, from the Saudi government, and even Trump himself, has changed five times? Is it okay for someone to murder a legal resident, then as president, a shrug of the shoulders is the only requirement in order to maintain a highly profitable financial arrangement (not just for US defence contractors but Trump personally)? Is it okay to kill journalists or representatives of the press? Is it okay to at least body slam them to the ground like Montana Senator Greg Gianforte did last year since Trump told a recent rally crowd that someone who could do that was his “kind of man”?

The presidency is supposed to be the beacon of moral leadership to the world. Instead, we have a president who has thoroughly disgraced, dishonoured, debased and degraded the office.

You in his administration…you in the GOP who cover for him...you evangelicals who CONTINUE to support him…you who voted for this vastly unfit-for-office man…you are all complicit. You are all enablers. You all figuratively lift your skirts every day and encourage Trump to grab your pussy because he's a star. And because he's a star, you support his getting away with ANYTHING by letting Trump just be Trump. As his hands grab your genitals it gives him the courage to imprison babies of migrant parents at the border, let economically-friendly countries kill American residents with no consequence, side with Putin against all of the US Intelligence agencies, sign a tax bill that promptly gave him a $2 billion windfall because tax breaks in the bill were specifically designed to go to real estate developers and people who own golf courses. How did that happen? That is going to make America great again? For who? Trump has not hidden who and what he is from anyone. By voting him into office, you have made this nation the laughing stock of the world. 

Just ask the UN. 

Trumpism - A Blight on America

Germany is a nation in which I have been interested since I was old enough to find it on a map. Because the U.S. had been involved in combating them twice in less than a half a century I was curious about the Germans. What drove them? How was the pitch for war made palpable less than 20 years after the Versailles Treaty was signed? Why were they willing to endanger another generation of Germans? My curiosity even made my xenophobic father heap scorn on me as being a “Kraut in my mind.” He ridiculed my research and interest because he felt I was ignoring our British/Scot/Irish roots and claimed I just wanted to “be German” or “be a Nazi.” I wondered what he was so upset about. I wasn’t making excuses or gushing about them; I just wanted to find out how the Germans were drawn into war so quickly and easily in the 20^th century. That meant I needed to study them.

My curiosity was stimulated because both of my grandfathers fought in World War One against German forces, and one of my uncles in World War Two. My interest was known to other family members. I went to a party at a relative’s house in the mid-1970s, and while there he introduced me to a woman named Geezy whose husband had been a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft gunner throughout the war. My uncle wanted me to talk with her partly because she grew up in Germany and lived in Berlin during World War Two, but mainly because of her stance. Geezy stated in no uncertain terms she loved Adolf Hitler and still thought he was a great leader. This was 30 years after the end of the war. I was stunned by her admission and probed hoping to find some rationale. She was unapologetic about his crimes against other countries and even against his own people. She didn’t care. If Hitler said it needed to be done, then it was the right thing to do. She was never a member of the Nazi party but she supported the Nazis 100%...even to that day. She said she would still vote for and support Hitler, despite all the revelations about what he did. She was proud of him.

Remembering her blind adulation stills seems eerie. But more disturbingly, it sounds just like today’s Trump supporters. It doesn’t matter what Trump does…they support him unconditionally. How do you reason with that kind of fanatic? Trump bragged he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose voters. He is saying they will support a cold-blooded murderer with no reservations. Trump also boasted that he loved “poorly educated” voters. He wasn't just talking about people who only had a limited education. He meant people who were deliberately ignorant; people who didn’t want to think things through, people that just took marching orders, people who didn’t read or question anything. These are the people we should be very concerned about because they are Trump’s sycophants, his supporters, his loyal base. They look upon Trump as a messiah. How are they any different than Hitler’s SS?

Like the SS, they throw out Nazi salutes to intimidate others. At Trump’s urging, they beat up protesters. Now they are even emboldened to march in nighttime torch-lit parades as though this is Nuremberg or Munich in 1938. It’s frightening because these Trump supporters are living among us like a fifth column by the millions. They believe it is Trump, or nothing else. This Trumpism is a danger to American democracy and its survival.

Germans have been addressing the Nazi Germany image for over 70 years but they will continue with that struggle for the foreseeable future. We in the United States are about to join Germany in our own long, difficult quest to improve our image and try to make amends for what Trumpism is doing to our country and to the world. Fifty to a hundred years from now, we will still be trying to shake off our own “Nazi-like” period. It will be much shorter than the twelve years Hitler inflicted on Germany, but the damage to the world will be the same. It will be a time in our nation’s history known as Trump’s America from 2016 to 2018. I’m no seer stating the end will be in 2018. It’s just that there are so many things roaring right at Trump at this point (undeniable Russian collusion, money-laundering, obstruction of justice, serial sexual assault, violation of the Emoluments Clause, violation of the oath of office…etc.) that I have no doubt one of them will most likely get him out of the White House shortly. Pence, Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, DeVos, Mnuchin, Tillerson, Conway, Miller, Huckleberry Sanders, Rick Perry, Scott Pruitt, Wilbur Ross, Trump’s kids, his son-in-law, and all the other enablers should be dragged out with him and left with broken bones, deep gashes, grievous injuries, missing teeth and hair and tossed in a bloody pile at the base of the Washington Monument. But we still have a ways to go to get there. I am concerned about what will happen to us before Trump is forced out of office. Trump unabashedly pits Americans against each other, claims white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers are good people, signed a tax bill to transfer the nation’s wealth to himself and his ultra-rich buddies, threatens nuclear war, attacks the free press, and lies even when the truth sounds better. His enablers in the Republican Party and his evangelical base cheer him on and urge him to keep it up.

Comparing the U.S. under Trump to Germany under Hitler seems outlandish but almost daily we are introduced to a new Trump outrage that makes us look more and more like a budding totalitarian regime. The world looked on in concern and then horror when Hitler turned Germany into a fascist state and finally launched a war. The world is now watching the U.S. do the same thing under Trump.

No one knows who originally made this quote, but it’s appropriate; for the citizens of Nazi Germany - to the U.S. in 2018…”We’re all in the same game; just different levels. Dealing with the same hell, just different devils.”

Enemy of the People

In order to be a successful authoritarian, totalitarian, dictator, or whatever you want to call it, you must have an enemy. Someone or something you define as evil for your supporters to focus on. That way, no matter what happens or how badly things might go, you can deflect them back to the real problem, the enemy.

For Hitler, it was the Jews. They were “outsiders", "an alien race", and "degenerates”. He added to their demonization by tossing in that they were the brains and the money behind the rise of Communism. Two enemies now rolled into one. It was the Jews who were to blame for Germany’s defeat in World War One, for the “stab in the back” to the German Army while in battle - by their government back in Berlin that ended the war, and for robbing the German people since the Jews supposedly controlled the nation’s financial institutions. First, it was just small attacks on Jews; bullies beating them up, smashing shop windows, and mocking the Jewish people thanks to a compliant press. Then, laws were passed to restrict where the Jews could work, shop, and live, synagogues were destroyed, and Jewish businesses burned down. Then the Jews were rounded up…it was for their own good, of course, to protect them from righteously angry Germans, put into work camps or banned from universities, hospitals, and any government function. And finally, when war came, which was again blamed on the Jews who now had no power at all in Germany, a Final Solution. At least six million paid with their lives.

For Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, it was teachers, college students, intellectuals, people who owned small businesses, anyone who was educated or successful. After the fall of the capital Phnom Penh, they wasted no time rounding them all up, putting them in horrific re-education camps that became killing grounds. By small groups, so as not to arouse suspicion, those prisoners were then taken out and executed. At least 2 million people, a quarter of Cambodia’s population, were slaughtered in this manner. That happened in the 1970s. The Khmer Rouge was forced into western Cambodia by the 1979 invasion by Vietnam and did not completely die out until 1999. Cambodia has STILL not recovered from it.

For Donald Trump, it is the American free press.

In a tweet he sent twice on Friday, February 17, 2017, Trump called the media “The enemy of the American people”. He is setting up the press so that criminal acts against them will be justified. Remember how easy it was for Trump to encourage violence against protesters at his rallies? Reporters at several rallies have already stated they have been harassed, pushed, spat upon, screamed at, and Trump supporters pointing their fingers like a gun and firing at them.Think it will be very long before someone actually carries that out?
          On February 16th, Trump had his first solo press conference. By all accounts, it was a wild, mind-boggling, grievance-filled rant. He spent his time justifying his election win…four months after winning, belittling the press over and over, making up statistics, showing his crass, bigoted side, and giving evidence that he has no understanding of what uranium is, the effects of nuclear weapons, or how government works. Others thought it was great entertainment and really put the press in its place. Right-wing radio commentators Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity sang his praises on the air. The media got what it deserved. (The irony was lost on both of them that they are the media too. It will only take a small point for them to run afoul of Trump and they will not be spared anything the other media is now suffering.) Less than a half an hour after the press conference ended, Trump tweeted out that he wanted his supporters to know how dishonest the press really was and that they would not tell the American people the truth about his press conference - even though anyone watching TV or listening to the radio could hear it live with no filter. How is that dishonest? 

The “dishonest media”, “the failing press”, “the fake news” "part of the problem" and "part of the corrupt system" are phrases Trump is using in his initial demonization of those who have a First Amendment right to ask him questions. Unless you agree with Trump 100%, you are the enemy. Trump has never read what one of our greatest presidents had to say about the press. "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." -The words of Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington in 1787.
         There will now be physical threats toward the media and violence is the next logical step. Trump will also pursue new and unique methods through the courts to close down or severely curtail the free press. And his supporters will willingly give up much of their First Amendment rights without a whimper.

The Wall              The Muslim Ban            Unregulated oil and gas pollution

Trump means what he says. He will do the things he has threatened to do. He is not concerned with other people's happiness or well-being, not even his supporters. He is concerned only with his own and to a lesser degree his family's. If his billionaire friends can enrich themselves off the corpse of the American economy, that’s okay too. But the lesson of Michael Flynn should give anyone who works for him pause. If someone makes Trump look bad, even if Trump is the cause of it, they will be thrown under the bus…or overboard with weights tied to their legs.

Those of you who don’t take Trump's words and actions seriously, keep in mind, in 1932, few people in Germany seriously thought that Adolf Hitler would become their chancellor. And when he did win constitutionally the next year, they deluded themselves into thinking various branches of government would keep him reigned in. Sound familiar?

When Trump Advisor Stephen Miller went on nationally televised shows last Sunday, and in his best Joseph Goebbels impersonation, warned the viewers that Trump’s authority “will not be questioned”, you can clearly see where things are headed.

Knowing what you know now - if you were Jewish in Germany in 1935, what would you do? 
         In 2017, what should Americans do?

The Coming Civil War

I hope I am wrong. I really, fervently hope I am completely off-base and that I’m worrying about nothing. But the signs are there that my worrying appears to be quite justified. I never thought this country could be threatened with ANOTHER civil war.

In the United States, we are about to elect a new president. Every other presidential candidate in past elections has gone along with the 240-year-old tradition that they would abide by the American people’s decision on Election Day. Even in the cases of very, very close elections like in 1876, 1960 and 2000, no candidate has, prior to this election, said that he would contest the outcome or even threatened to do so out of petulance, beforehand. And all of those candidates stayed within the framework of U.S. law.

Until now.

And what this will possibly lead to...is a civil war.

 On October 9, 2016, in his debate with Hillary Clinton, feeding on his assertion that the whole election system is rigged against him, Donald Trump refused to say whether he would accept the election results with “I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense, okay?”  He followed it up on October 20th by stating he would accept them...if he wins.Those are not empty words to his followers. He is telling them ahead of time that only he should win. If he loses, it proves the system is rigged against him. And since he will leave us in suspense when that happens, his Schutzstaffel-like followers will know he was cheated and act out everything violent they’ve displayed at his rallies, only now on a national scale. Think I'm kidding?

Remember cowboy-hatted redneck John McGraw who climbed past several people to lash out and punch Rakeem Jones, a passing protester being escorted out of the rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina? This will become a weekly, then daily, and finally, an hourly event. It may get even worse since afterward Mr. McGraw said on live TV that “Maybe next time we’ll have to kill him…” Several White Supremacist organizations and right-wing fringe groups have come right out and said there will be an armed insurrection if Trump doesn't win. So expect shooting, burning, drowning, hanging…it’s all good because Trump has his crack legal team ready to defend them. Besides, someone has to stand up to those ISIS-sympathizin’,America-hatin’,non-older angry white, "libtards" who won’t kowtow to Trumpism, in whatever form he decides in best for the nation.

Remember Shirley Teters of Asheville, NC, the 69-year-old grandmother on oxygen who was punched by a Trump supporter as the guy left a rally? Police were later informed the same man had grabbed and punched several other protesters inside and outside the building before slugging Shirley in the face, knocking her to the sidewalk and bashing her head against her portable oxygen tank. This will become an acceptable way of dealing with those people Trump supporters don’t like. If you don’t love the leader, you don’t deserve to be here...at least not without fresh blood pouring out of some wounds.

 Remember Trump himself bragging to his audience that he could shoot someone and not lose any support? The allusion there was, no one would stop him before or after he pulled the trigger because everyone loves him. He is giving his followers an open invitation to do the same. Find some liberal SOB who most likely supported Clinton…and shoot them...on Fifth Avenue. Do you think Trump is going to stop them? 

These are just the tip of an iceberg of hatred, violence, animosity, malevolence, and vengeance that will lead to a torrent of blood spilling. People who are not older white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (and even a few who are) yet have had absolutely nothing to do with Clinton’s success or Trump's failure will also be drawn into a fight or a battle just for living here...and they will pay dearly for it.

Trump commands not a group of supporters; he’s now their cult leader. They’ll follow him and do whatever he says as if he was Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson, Idi Amin, and Joseph Kony rolled into one. These men are or were demagogues. They thought they were the center of the universe; everyone else orbited around them and did their bidding. Trump will expect no less from his followers. And he understands what "low information" voters they are.

If Donald J. Trump loses the election...after whining and complaining that the deck has been deliberately stacked against him, the political polls and the media have been misrepresenting his support, the whole system is rigged, and that Hillary Clinton is a criminal, unfit to be president, and should be in jail, if not dead...his followers will not say “well, it was a tough election, but Hillary won. Let’s put aside our differences and work to make our nation the best it can be.”

They will want blood.

I hope I am wrong, but I am concerned that I am not. 

"Trump...command us. We will follow you!"

The Confederacy and the Cross

Living in Florida, I see Confederate flags all the time; in places where they offer to take “Old Time” photographs, in novelty stores along any major highway, faux battle sites, on beach towels, bikinis, race cars, and goofy license plates. I have no idea if those places are run or operated by racists. Maybe its because I considered the South the losers that I considered the Confederate-promoting items as simply something to sell at a profit, like a pair of shoes, so it is kept on hand for commercial, not bigoted, reasons. But that is derived from my ignorant white-centric view of the flag.

Still, I always wondered why they wanted to actually fly the Confederate Battle flag, like the huge one near Tampa at the intersection of I-4 and I-75. The war is over, the South lost, Lee surrendered, the Confederacy no longer exists, so what is it supposed to represent? No one flies a South Vietnamese flag anymore. We don’t fly the British flag from the colonial period, and you don’t see the flag of Mussolini’s Italy on flagpoles anywhere. So why fly the flag of the defeated side from a distant war? I suspect the recent attraction to flying the flag of the Lost Cause has to do with our current president, or rather, his skin color. Nothing satisfies some people like jabbing Obama and other like-minded people in the eye with the symbol of the slavery issue in a war that split the Union for four years. The flag's supporters always say "...but the Confederate Battle flag is not about hate, it’s about heritage". Really?

 Look at all that heritage on display.                    

Neo-Nazis, skinheads, the KKK, and other White Supremacist groups also fly the United States flag because you have to broaden your appeal to the people who live in states other than former Confederate ones. But the most frequent flag used for the past half century, with virtually no complaints from white Southerners, is the Confederate Battle flag, not the actual flag of the Confederate States of America; the Battle Flag. With whom are they in a shooting match? Defenders claim that just because somebody misuses the Battle Flag doesn't mean it represents anything bad. Alright, then what part did the bigots and racists get wrong?
       I understand why there was the call to remove the Confederate Battle Flag from in front of the capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina, and from the Mississippi flag. Walmart stopped carrying anything with the flag on it and many other stores have followed suit. Naturally, this will create quite a black market for sale of the flag. But those who have demanded its removal, or fought any display of it, seem to imagine the flag’s disappearance will signal the end of racism. As the band Aerosmith sings…“Dream On”. It won’t happen because the attitude is not based on the flag. The flag is a symptom, not the cause

                    Not much has changed in the state of Texas either

Ignorant, under-educated, narrow-minded bigots will not let go of their hate, and they hate a lot. For starters: liberals, moderates, gays, democrats, Yankees, carpet-baggers, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, long hairs, Prius owners, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Mexican’s, Native Americans (who were here before the bigot's ancestors arrived) and, of course, blacks. You see, blacks were freed by damned Yankees after the war and the people of the former Confederacy were forced, FORCED, to live in equality, side by side with them rather than owning them like animals and keeping them penned up in shacks and barns like…well, like cows, pigs and chickens. This ain’t right. Blacks used to be property and now they’re free…To live next to us…And use the same roads, buildings, water, and food, even breathe the same air! Hell, it’s like we now have to live in harmony with free-range farm animals. Damn them fuckin’ Yankees!

      When idiots lack understanding, comprehension is often found in firepower.

 The Battle flag’s presence across the south has been a simmering issue for over 50 years but the recent impetus to remove it stems from Dylann Roof killing nine people in cold blood this past June at a Charleston, SC church. Some people claim that since Roof was shown holding the Confederate Battle flag, it had a hand in inciting his hostility toward blacks, and that makes it's all the more reason to banish it. But he is also shown in shorts, t-shirt, and sunglasses. Are these any more indicative of a racist? No. Racism is a learned response from reading racist material, and from hearing about how and why one group is superior to another. Where might that have happened?

                                  One thing leads to another

 Many won’t like this aspect of the racism rampant in this country, but it is because of the Bible…a book that, at its core, is an explanation about why one group of people is exalted over all others. The Biblical god claims the “Jews are his chosen people”. When only a select few are glorified as “God’s favorites”, a two-tiered system is automatically generated where one is considered superior while the others are inferior. This is exactly what this biblical standard has fostered.
       The bible also shames blacks because Ham (the father of Canaan and the original ‘black’ according to many bible interpreters) saw his drunken father Noah sleeping naked in a tent. How stupid is it to condemn an entire race because of a fable? The bible specifically endorses slavery in Exodus 21. Jesus never condemns the practice either, and even describes how and when slaves are to be beaten. The bible was the justification for slavery being established and maintained in the U.S. and other “Christian” countries. It was the Southerners' justification for the preservation of slavery when Northerners had abandoned the practice as the North became more industrialized. Frequently, the bible is held up as the reason for the abolitionist movement, but it was really in spite of the bible. Quakers led much of the charge and did not use scripture for their reasoning. It was because they believed human beings should not own other human beings...to hell with what the bible stated.

       But the men who wrote the Confederate constitution did not see it that way. They explicitly wrote in the document that they recognized the Christian God (since 99% of Southerners were Christian) with the phrase “invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God”. Article IV, Section 3(3) specifies holding blacks against their will in perpetuity with “the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress.” Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens made it crystal clear that the Confederates considered the white race superior when on March 21, 1861 in a speech in Savannah, Georgia, he said “With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.” Notice the mention of Canaan from the bible as justification. 
       The roots of Western slavery stem from the bible, the roots of the Confederacy stem from the bible, and the roots of racism are found in the very same book. Is it any wonder the Confederates chose a cross to be on their battle flag?