From Pine View Farm

“That Conversation about Race” category archive

Republican Thought Police 0

In the course of a longer article about recent events at Texas A&M University, Mary Ellen Klas summarizes the tactics of the Republican thought police (emphasis added):

Texas, like Florida before it, has steadily adopted an authoritarian approach to higher education. The goal is to target a marginalized group or racial minority whose ideas the Republicans in power find undesirable and use them as a cudgel to justify bringing state universities more firmly under governmental control. In the last year, the Lone Star State began enforcing a patchwork of policies aimed at purging diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state universities. It abolished independent faculty senates with faculty councils controlled by the governor’s appointees. And it banned a vague array of “expressive activity” and demonstrations on campuses.

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Occupation Nation, Reprise 0

Sam and the crew discuss the tactics of the occupiers. (Warning: There’s language in some of the video clips that they show.)

Afterthought:

Late in his life, my father said to me, “I’m glad those days are over.”

He was referring to the days of racism and segregation during which he and later I as Southern boys were raised.

But they’re not over. They may have been in abeyance for a while, but they are most certainly back with crosses burning.

America’s original sin of chattel slavery and the racist mythology created to rationalize it continue to exact their toll.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

It seems that the Trump maladministration is committed to exercising undue process of lawless.

And we are again reminded that mean for the sake of mean is a Republican family value.

(Syntax error fixed.)

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

At the Washington Monthly, Richard D. Kahlenberg peers behind the sheets of a recent action of the Trump maladministration and concludes that

Trump’s new enemy appears to be racial diversity itself . . . .

Follow the link to find out why he reached that conclusion.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

At the Detroit Free-Press, Randy Essex reminds us that

Since colonial times, America’s white ruling class has worked to instill fear of “others.” The landed elite recognized early on that if poor whites found common cause with native and Black people, free and enslaved, those landed elites were in trouble.

He goes on to argue that this, well, let’s call it “Southern Strategy,” is still being pursued and that Donald Trump’s bogus claims that cities are rife with crime (which is Trumpian code for “full of black and brown persons”) is an updated tactic of said “Southern Strategy.”

I commend his article to your attention.

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The Guiding Principle 0

Frame One:  Dark-skinned man says to the Roberts Court,

Click to view the original image.

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Stray Thought 0

Who other persons idolize can tell you a lot about the character and beliefs of said idolators. Indeed, they may even be said to hold up a mirror to said idolators.

For example, what can you induce about those who find this person to be admired?

Read more »

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Signs of the Times 0

When you don’t want to face factual reality, you can always remove any signs of the truth.

Honest to Betsy, you can’t make this stuff up.

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Iced by ICE 0

Sam and the crew find themselves–er–somewhat taken aback by the brutality of Donald Trump’s secret police ICE agents.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years, Notion of Immigrants Dept. 0

At SFGate, Paula Mejía writes of Angie ‘the ICE Chaser’ Vargas, a health care professional who has made an avocation of documenting the antics of Donald Trump’s secret police ICE agents in the Los Angeles area on her TikTok account.

In the course of the interview, she gets to the crux of what’s going on (emphasis added).

“I don’t think that it’s fair how [people are] getting preyed on. Honestly, let’s just say it for what it is: It’s racism, and they’re stereotyping us for being brown,” she says. “They don’t go up to white people and ask them for their documentation. You don’t see them in Seal Beach. You don’t see them in Newport Beach. You don’t see them in Laguna. They’re preying on our urban communities.”

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Rick Strom discusses ICE’s detention of legal workers at a Hyundai plant in Georgia. (Warning: The first couple of minutes are a chilling vision of what this nation is becoming under the Trump maladministration.)

From the Youtube page (emphasis added):

By her own admission, MAGA supporter and Congressional candidate Tori Branum was supposedly responsible for calling ICE on the Hyundai plant in Georgia that saw hundreds of workers, including South Korean nationals there for business purposes, rounded up and held in ICE custody, effectively costing the country billions of dollars in investments in the process.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

_____________________

*Mark Twain.

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Truth . . . 0

. . . has consequences.

When persons are punished for voicing truth in a civilized manner, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that we are a broken polity.

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Republican Thought Police, One More Time 0

Rick Strom tries to make sense of the senselessness.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

At the Bangor Daily News, Donna M. Loring hears a rhyme that sounds like

    Old Hickory,
    New trickery.

________________

*Mark Twain

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

Farron reports on a voter who got what he voted for.

And now regrets it.

Today’s Republican Party is a vile and loathsome thing.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

The Secesh are rising again after all these years, but doing so oh so politely.

Jarvis McKenzie was simply waiting for his work ride at 5:30 a.m. on July 24 when a white man fired a rifle over his head and yelled “you better get running, boy!”

Details at the link.

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Republican Family Values 0

Brian Kilmeade apologizes for letting the mask slip saying homeless persons should be executed.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

Driftglass hears a rhyme of an Establishmentarian kind.

_____________

*Mark Twain.

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Both Sides Don’t 0

Thom discusses the “both sides” scam and how false balance fuels extremism. (Warning: Commercial at about the five minute mark.)

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