What is the character of racist right-wing politics today? Is it the crazed white supremacist who plows into an anti-fascist demonstration in Charlottesville, VA or can it also be the assurance by Lindsay Graham that an attack against North Korea would result in thousands of lives lost…. but those lives will be “over there”? What about the recent unanimous resolution by both houses of Congress in support of Israel and criticism of the United Nations for its alleged anti-Israeli bias? Would that qualify as racist and right-wing, since it appears that the ongoing suffering of the Palestinians is of no concern? And what about the vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to go even beyond the obscene proposal of the Trump administration to increase the military budget by $54 billion dollars and instead add a whopping $74 billion to the Pentagon budget? More

The ugly scenes of neo-nazis, neo-Confederates, and self-proclaimed white supremacists marching in large numbers and brawling on the streets of Charlottesville shocked American culture. President Trump spoke three times commenting on those troubling events.  His first statement, given during a signing ceremony for a veteran’s health-care bill, was roundly condemned as failing to mention white supremacy, racism, or neo-nazis by name and instead condemning violence “on many sides.”  Under extreme political pressure from all sides and a sudden rush of resignations from his CEO advisory council, Trump spoke a second time, this time delivering remarks carefully crafted to dampen the storm of criticism engulfing him.  Then, on Tuesday, August 15, Trump unnecessarily revisited and undermined his own damage control from the day before in what was one of the longest and most heated press conferences of his tempestuous first half-year.   More

I have walked among them since I first learned to walk.  They surrounded me in blue-collar Utica, New York--an early capitol of Rust Belt America, back in the 1950s, where “nigger” was an all-purpose, white-on-white epithet on the Little League diamonds and basketball courts—though I never saw a black person in the flesh until I was eleven years old.  I still remember how astonished I was by the sight of him: somehow a “Negro” kid, roughly my age, had strayed into our Italian/Irish/Polish neighborhood, and he was sprinting desperately to escape before he got caught and stomped.  I was riding down Genessee Street with my friend Clark Battie in his dad’s pick-up truck. Old man Battie slowed down as we passed the terrified, wide-eyed kid and laughed quietly. “Look at that, Johnny.  The things ya see when ya don’t have your gun, huh?”  More