Stephan: Trump is gone, but made world of Trumpism continues unabated. How can this be? The answer I think is that we have not fully comprehended how Trumpism came to be. The truth is the right-wing media, finding it very profitable, has created a mental bubble of nonsense, hate, racism, and insanity so pervasive that both ordinary citizens as well as state and federal political officials cannot seem to extract themselves from this hallucinatory reality. This is going to have long-term negative consequences for the country that are poorly understood. Here is the proof of what I am saying. I think that to have access to the public airwaves and cable networks a news operation must be compelled by law to present information that is factually accurate.
Photo illustration by; Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Credit for images: FoxNews and FoxNews.com.
Despite former President Donald Trump’s departure from the White House and disappearance from social media, state Republican parties are still promoting pro-Trump conspiracy theories and moving further right than ever. Some Republican lawmakers have seized on the unfounded voter fraud narrative to try to impose new voter restrictions out of concern that widespread voting could hamper their electoral chances.
The Arizona Republican Party on Saturday voted to censure Gov. Doug Ducey, a longtime Republican Trump ally who fell out of favor when he refused to question his own state’s election results and certified President Joe Biden’s win in the state. The measure, which focused on Ducey’s delayed coronavirus restrictions, did not mention his decision to certify the results, though it came up often among the state’s Republicans. The Arizona GOP also censured Cindy McCain, widow of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who opposed Trump. The party also re-elected chairwoman Kelli Ward, who backed Trump’s baseless legal crusade and filed a
Stephan: I think this is a very important trend to recognize. We are becoming a majority-minority nation, and will be there by 2040-2045. A large number of Whites find that unacceptable because they define American culture largely in racial terms, and see this demographic shift as a loss of White privilege. This is going to be an ongoing trend of resentment, anger, and hate, until our culture recognizes that fostering wellbeing for everyone regardless of race or gender is in the best interests of everyone.
Angry, resentful, White voters
For some, Joe Biden entering the White House has felt like a sigh of relief: The president who unabashedly led the country with hate and helped orchestrate the deaths of more than 410,000 Americans in a pandemic is finally gone. Biden signed 17 executive actions on his first day as the country’s chief executive, and has signed about another dozen since. He has made it his priority to reverse and reject much of Trump’s agenda.
While his gestures so far spell hope, other Americans are holding their breath, familiar with how progress in America always comes at a price. When Black Americans in particular make strides toward equality,the determined hand of white supremacy pushes back. Emory African American studies professor Carol Anderson calls this phenomenon “white rage.”
According to Anderson, white rage is legitimatized through the policies that make up the American political framework. It lives in voter ID laws and manifests in the Black votes that are never cast. It lives in criminal sentencing laws and plays out in a war on […]
Stephan: The linkage of racism and guns traces back to the founding of the United States. The 2nd Amendment exists in part so that slave patrols seeking to recapture slaves that had fled to the free states could carry their weapons into those states, and the free states could not block them from doing that. White Supremacy violence and the linkage with America's gun psychosis is the biggest terrorism trend in the U.S..
A supporter of President Donald Trump carries a Confederate battle flag on the second floor of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Credit: Mike Theiler/Reuters
The defining photograph of the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6 was that of a man strolling through the broken halls of our national Capitol, amid the smashed windows and assorted rubble of the failed coup, proudly brandishing a Confederate flag on his shoulder and hoping to overturn an election decided largely by Black voters. It’s an image that tells the story not only of Jan. 6 or of the Trump presidency, but also of all the steps that led to that moment — the whole history of hate in America captured in one frame.
For me, the echoes of that picture reverberated back nearly six years, to the day my mom — Ethel Lee Lance — was shot and killed while praying in Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Church along with eight other Black Americans, including two of my cousins and one of my closechildhood friends. In the months leading up to that tragic day, my mom’s killer […]
