“That Conversation about Race” category archive
Making America Grate Again 0
Aside:
On Thursday’s episode of the Bob Cesca Show, one of the participants–I forget which one–made a remark that resonated with me: that what’s happening today seems to echo the end of Reconstruction.
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
Writing at the Portland Press Herald, Peter Pressman and Edward A. McCulloch tell of a rhyme they are hearing. A snippet (emphasis added); follow the link for further reverberations.
The Nazis started with the Civil Service . . . .
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*Mark Twain.
A Notion of Immigrants 0
A Texas judge who was dealing with immigration case decided to visit the Texas-Mexico border. What he found was not what we’re being told. Here’s a tiny bit from his article:
Follow the link for some of the lessons he learned.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Clearly, if we don’t talk about America’s original sin of chattel slavery, then it must not have happened.
Because that’s the way history works.
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Will Bunch heard a chilling rhyme. A snippet (emphasis added):
The irony of all of this — good people cowering in their attics, praying to avoid getting cuffed and shipped thousands of miles away by camouflage-wearing soldiers — happening on Holocaust Remembrance Day is almost unbearable.
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*Mark Twain.
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
The Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher hears a rhyme in the firings this time. A snippet; follow the link for a parsing of the parallels.
Less than a week after Trump was sworn in, he fired 17 inspectors general.
Inspectors general are federal government investigators embedded in government agencies to ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse. Lofgren’s prediction came in a review of the book Watchdogs by Glenn Fine, a former inspector general fired by Trump after 20 years of exemplary service.
Last week’s pink slips violated a law enacted three years ago in response to Trump’s first-term firings, which mandated 30 days’ notice to Congress before the president could terminate an Inspector General.
Trump’s illegal assertion of executive power echoes the attempt 158 years ago by President Andrew Johnson to fire Secretary of War Edward Stanton.
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*Mark Twain.
A Notion of Immigrants 0
At the Washington Monthly, Garrett Epps dissects the duplicity implicit in Donald Trump’s attempt to despotically single-handedly amend the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Here’s a tiny bit of his article:
Follow the link for more about a judge’s perspective.
The Party of Flaw and Disorder 0
At the Des Moines Register, Rekha Basu looks at Donald Trump’s first actions in office and decodes de code (emphasis added):
At the other end was Trump’s order to dispatch thousands of military troops to the southern border to keep out migrants.
The message: Breach boundaries for me and you’re fine. Do it because you’re fleeing violence or persecution, and we’ll set the troops on you.
Follow the link for the rest of her remarks.