An Open Letter to Trump Snowflakes

Outrage

I have had many people bitch me out because I say I don't respect Donald Trump. They say things like "we endured 8 years of Obama, suck it up buttercup." My response to that. FUCK YOU. Period. This man-child in the White House does not deserve my respect, and he will never get it. This is not a normal president. We have a proto-dictator in the White House, and those of us who see it CANNOT remain silent. Just a short list of his high crimes and misdemeanors"

He colluded with Russia, whether he was successful or not does not matter. He may very well have failed at that jut like he fails at every single thing he does. That does not matter, intent to betray is as much a crime as success in the act. He actively worked with a known adversary of the United States to try to swing an election, asking Russia, on primetime TV to hack his opponent and spread information.

Since then, he has ripped into our traditional allies and NATO, while embracing Putin. He has waffled on mutual defense agreements that date back 70 years. He has turned his back on the countries that have stood by us for decades, and even centuries for some. I was raised in a military family, I have had generation after generation, all the way back to the American Revolution, fight, and sometimes die, for this country. This action is no less than treason, a treason for which he should be hung by the neck until dead, as American Law dictates. I'm surprised Ronald Reagan hasn't risen from the grave over this one.

But that isn't it. He treats women like the only asset they have is beauty. He publicly degrades women, insults them openly. Thanks to his behavior, sexual discrimination against women has risen dramatically. He has publicly tried to shame women with the most vile insults I have ever seen, literally suggesting the reason one anchor was hard on him was because she was on her period, and claiming another was "bleeding badly from a face lift." This sort of behavior is revolting in any context, let alone coming from our supposed president.

He is openly racist. He calls Hispanics "Rapists." He calls for complete bans on Muslims. (Except for ones in countries that he does business in, those are OK, even if they did actually fund terrorism, unlike the countries affected by the travel ban.) He has created an environment in this country where little children are TERRIFIED of their government, and terrified that at any moment their parents could be taken away from them. Hate crimes in this country are exploding. White supremacists are openly marching, and claiming that their day has finally arrived. Blacks are being told by elected leaders to "go back to Africa."

But even the naked racism, sexism and treason isn't enough. He trashes the Constitution, a document which, by that way, one of my ancestors SIGNED. He runs roughshod over checks and balances, referring to the Judiciary as "so called judges." He tells the Senate to end the Filibuster, which is an essential tool to help preserve the rights of the minority against the will of the majority. (And remember, not that long ago, the Republicans WERE that minority being protected.)

But worse, he is treating this country like his own personal wealth machine. He has refused to divest from his companies, refused to distance himself from the day to day running of his companies, refused to stop promoting the "Trump Brand." He is treating the presidency as a money making opportunity, and inspiring others in the government to do much the same. This violation of the Emoluments Clause will complete the transition of our country to a kleptocracy.

He has eviscerated government, handing vast power to his children, people who we didn't elect or confirm through the Senate. Almost all functions of the State Department are now being handled by his children, which is what occurs in banana republics. He has shut down the war crimes office, which sends a signal that the United States is no longer interested in prosecuting those crimes on the world stage. I find it funny that just a decade ago, we started a war in the Middle East because of supposed war crimes, but now can't even be bothered to have an office to investigate them.

He has eliminated the FBI investigation department tasked with looking at Right Wing Terrorists, a group which, according to the FBI itself, has had far more success in attacking Americans than Muslim Terror Groups collectively, and which have killed, in the last 50 years, more people than died on 9/11.

In six short months, he has taken a wrecking ball to this country. Every day, the news is more and more like a reality TV show. Every day, he becomes more and more unhinged, attacking any organization or any person that doesn't kowtow to him. He treats his administration like it is some sort of ratings game. He has even had the audacity to suggest he should be put on Mount Rushmore. I will blow the fucking mountain up myself before allowing that atrocity to happen.

So no, I am not going to treat him with respect. And if you don't like that, you can go fuck yourself. Just like Trump is fucking the country I love.

Don't Paint the World With That Brush

Guilt

So, as I often do, I have a question, brought about by the rush to accusation in this country.

After the Chattanooga shooting, I saw a number of posts saying that ALL Muslims need to be locked up to keep us safe, because they are inherently evil and un-American.   The hate leveled at the Muslim community ranged from mass deportations, automatic revocation of American Citizenship for any Muslim to, in the most horrifying case, a person who said that Hitler had the right idea, just the wrong religion to run through the gas chambers.

Any by the way, I do want to point out, that has now set a new high (or low) bar for the use of Godwin's Law.

Another example, today, I saw a post that had a guy in a medieval Knights Templar outfit standing "guard" outside a recruiting office, to "scare off the Muslims."  I guess because, obviously a war that occurred almost a thousand years ago, still should strike terror in the hearts of Muslims.  Also, as a point in fact, the Christians lost that war.  Constantinople became Istanbul, Rhodes fell, and the Keys to Holy Sepulcher are still held by a Muslim family.  (Although this last one is actually a funny story for another day.)  

Now the question, if we need to lock up all Muslims in this country, why are we not saying the same thing about the Tea Party and other Right Wing groups? We've had 2 mass shootings in the last month or so from those terrorists, and only one from a ,Muslim Terrorist.  Doesn't that mean that Right Wing Terrorists are twice as dangerous as Muslim Terrorists?

Although the worst act of terror in this country came from Islamic Terrorists, let us never forget the second worst, Oklahoma City, came from a Right Wing anti-government terrorist.   We call Nidal Hassan, the Ft. Hood Shooter, a terrorist even though he was an active duty officer in the US military.  In fact, the Wikipedia page calls it the worst terrorist attack to ever take place on a domestic military base.

Let's contrast that with the Charleston shooting.   Dylan Roof was a self avowed Neo-Nazi, who literally confessed that he staged the attack to start a race war.  The Wiki page on the attack asks whether it was a hate crime or a terrorist attack and concludes that it was a hate crime.

And here, I have to ask, WTF?

Starting a race war, ie killing all non-whites, is simply a hate crime?  It is a terrorist attack, and also an act of sedition.  Any action intended to start a Civil War, is, by definition, an act of Sedition. 

I'm going to digress for a minute.  Why is one event a crime, and the other is a terrorist attack?  I have to be honest and state, one was done by a white guy, and the other by a "non-white Muslim"  (And yes, I know, most Muslims are actually Caucasian by the anthropological definition, but try explaining that to most Americans.  This is a country where the Irish used to be classified as a "non-white" race.)    I can't deny racism and religious bigotry play into how we are classifying the two attacks, and I'm not even going to try.  That is far beyond the scope of this post.

To return to the point, the Department of Homeland Security has said in the intelligence assessment of February 20, 2015, that Right Wing Terror Groups are the single biggest security threat that we face on American Soil.  (Other organizations are very dangerous abroad, but not inside this country.)  In fact they estimate 24 attacks by "sovereign citizen groups" since 2010.  And we can add at least 2 more shooting rampages in just the last month, plus the 8 Black Churches that have been burnt, bringing the total number of attacks to 34 in less than five years.  If you do the math, that averages to 7 Right Wing Terrorist Attacks in this country per year in the last five years.

For comparison, there have been 15 attacks by Muslim Terrorists in this country in the same period.  And, to cite sources, that number comes from an Anti-Muslim group that wants all Muslims removed from the country, so that number is not going to be purged in any way.

This means that just like in the last month, historically, over the last 5 years, there have been TWICE as many terrorist attacks from Right Wingers in this country as there have from Muslims.  I think it is apparent which group is actually more likely to go on a rampage.

So again, I ask the question, "Where are all the calls to lock up all Right Wingers, especially those that espouse Neo-Nazi, anti-government, or sovereign citizen beliefs?"  Obviously, those groups are even more dangerous than the Muslims.

But that is, simply put, complete idiocy.

We can't paint with a broad brush.  You will never get safety by arbitrarily locking up large segments of the population.  Let's stop the rhetoric here.  Imprisoning large groups of people on the possibility that they MIGHT commit a crime is not only going to do nothing to make us safer, it is a complete rape of the Constitution.  The Constitution states unequivocally that you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.  This is a freedom that is guaranteed under the bill of rights, along with the right to face your accuser, the right to a trial and all of the other freedoms that our Founding Fathers established to protect the minority from the Tyranny of the Majority.    We haven't always been really good at protecting these rights, but anyone who loves the Constitution should always strive to become better and hold to it's principles more strongly.  

Further, the actions of someone with the same beliefs you have do not, under any circumstances, establish YOUR guilt.  Guilt by association is not a legal precedent.  Also, it is one of the great fallacies that completely undermine a debate position.   I know a number of people who hold extremely conservative beliefs, and they are no more a threat to this country than the Muslim friends I have. 

And as a point of historical fact, the last times we got this hysterical about specific groups in this country, we ended up with the McCarthy hearings of the 50's and the Japanese Internment of World War Two.  It has taken decades, but we have finally realized that both of those were atrocious behavior on the part of the Government.   We have paid reparations, to the victims of both, but how can you mend lives shattered? 

So my point is, stop the rhetoric.  Accept that there will always be a fringe element in all groups that will do horrifying things.  Try to stop them through honest police work, but don't eviscerate every single thing that generations of brave men and women fought and died to protect, just because you are afraid.

Fear isn't worth losing your soul over.

Mad As Hell

Liberal

I am getting sick of the bullshit lately on Facebook.  I literally can't open it anymore without seeing some attack on Liberals, claiming we are un-American.  Traitors. Evil.  Post after post about how Liberals are offended by the American Flag, offended by expecting people to work, and offended by Christianity.  How we hate everything "American."

And to this I have to say: shut the fuck up.

I love my country.  Every Liberal I know loves their country.  We can be disappointed in it, want it to be better than it is, and be pissed off at the things it does, and still love it.   Stop beating us with the traitor stick just because we don't agree with you.  (And also, stop waving in our faces that the Democrats were behind the Civil War.  Of course they were, we know that, but we also know that the two parties have changed significantly since Lincoln.)

Let me give you a brief of my family history.  My family has been here since the 1650's.  I have ancestors who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.  My family has fought in EVERY war America has been involved in, and has since before the United States was the United States.  They have pioneered the West, and built cities in the East.

I had an uncle who was immortalized in the Band of Brothers; he was the soldier who got shot in the ass.  My Grandfather sacrificed his lungs and his health working in the shipyards during World War II.  My father served in the A Shau valley, where he earned a Bronze Star.  And he wasn't drafted, he signed up willingly as an enlisted man, and then went to college to reenlist as on officer.   Then, working for the Department of Defense after retiring from a 20 year military career, he was the arms negotiator for the Camp David Accords.

On the Civilian front, My great Aunt Winifred was one of the first Doctors to research a cure for Polio, funded personally by Franklin Roosevelt.  My Great Uncle was the Vice President of Caterpillar Tractors.    My mother served as a deputy Press Secretary for two Governors, a US Senator and a two US Representatives. 

And all of them, EVERY SINGLE ONE, as far back as we go in this country, was a Liberal. 

So, I have to say, I'm sick of it.  Sick of being accused of being a traitor, just because I believe in the Social Compact, Equality and Justice, because I am sick to death of war, because I don't believe that apologizing for atrocities committed by the government equals hatred for my country, because my heart is torn apart every time I see a black man executed without trial by an out of control police officer.

But apparently, these views and beliefs are no longer acceptable thoughts for a true American.

So I'll tell you what is not acceptable, the Confederate Flag.  It is a flag of treason.  It is a symbol of hate, and in my opinion, ANYONE who proudly flies it is a traitor to America.  It's simple.  It is a symbol of taking up arms against the lawful government of this country, and of disdain for the US Constitution.

But even more, what is not acceptable is the fetishization of rebellion and revolution.

If you hate an America that allows people like me to be citizens of this country, please have your revolution, build camps and execute us all.  We had a chance in this country to finally start to move the dialog forward on the inherent racism of the Confederate flag, and of the systemic discrimination that still plagues our country.  We had a chance to come together as one nation and say, enough, no more.  We had a chance to finally start healing the festering wound that has refused to heal for a hundred and fifty years.

But what do we get?  The nincompoops on Fox not-news claiming the Charleston Terrorist Attack is not racially motivated, but is better understood as an anti-Christian Crime, perpetrated by a person who hates America.  Yes he hates America, in that he hates seeing a Black Man walk down the street unbound and unshackled.  We get a massive condemnation of any company that exercises their right to refuse to sell anything related to the Civil War.  We get outrage that the left dares to be outraged by racism, discrimination and symbols of hate.

I see the Right in this country shred both the constitution and every single human dignity, while claiming to be the only TRUE Americans.  I see the Fundamentalists eviscerate the message of Jesus, all the while claiming that "GOD HATES FAGS."  I see the Neo-Confederate traitors call for revolution, all the while screaming "I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK."

So I will put it out there.  If you don't think that I am a good American, if you think I am damned to hell because of what I believe, if you think this world would be better off if I was dead, then FUCKING DO IT.

Quit your whining, and pull the GODDAMN trigger.  Round us up and stick us in those camps that you claim are being built to execute YOU.  Have your Kristallnacht and your Reichstag Fire to paint us as the enemy, and lock us into Ghettoes to prevent us from committing race treason.  And then live with what you have done.  Own it, revel in it.  You will get to write the history to paint yourselves as the saviors of America, and since we will all be dead, we won't be able to contradict you.

OR, SHUT THE FUCK UP, and admit that even though we disagree, we can agree to do so, and still respect each other.  Work with us to heal the wounds that have now bled for a century and a half.  Admit that we care as passionate as you do about this nation, and join with us to make the country better and stronger.  Meet us halfway, and we will do the same.

The country stands at a precipice like none since the Civil War, and just like then, our side cannot stop what is coming.  No matter how hard we might try to change the course of the ship,  there's still a madman at the wheel trying to crash into the iceberg.

And if we do so, the whole ship will sink, not just the liberal half.  

The choice is in your hands.

The Revision of Cultural Nostalgia

Blindness

So, I haven’t blogged in quite a while, but recent events with Cliven Bundy have prompted me to write a sequel to my last post on the structure of racism.

Before I begin, I want to state clearly that I completely disagree with Bundy’s insensitive and inflammatory racial comments.  In no way is what I am saying a defense of him or his view, rather, it is an examination of Southern culture.  (And yes, he isn’t from the South, but his views are typically Southern none-the-less.)

So now for the kicker, Bundy most likely does not view his statement as racist.  He is probably confused and bewildered by the very accusation.  And at the root of that confusion is “Gone with the Wind,” and the re-imagining of the myth of the Antebellum South.

Despite popular belief, the South actually won the Civil War.

Oh, they lost the battle, and lost it decisively.  However, the Civil War didn’t end with Appomattox.  It didn’t actually end until Margaret Mitchell won the war, completely and decisively.

“How?” you might ask.  Easy, she completely recast the story of the Civil War.  She painted a picture of a noble and oppressed South, devastated by the tyrannical forces of Lincoln.  She depicted happy, contented slaves, who needed their wise masters to teach them how to live.  Most importantly, although subtly, she recast the war in terms of State’s Rights instead of being about slavery.

These three depictions turned public opinion toward the South being the victim, not the aggressor in the conflict.  No longer was the story that the South was willing to tear the Union apart simply to keep owning other humans, instead, it was a noble fight for local government taking precedence over an overreaching and monstrous Federalism.

One hundred and forty nine years after the formal peace accord, the Southern Myth of the tyranny of “Big Government” is now the prime paradigm in the land.  For all intents and purposes, the Federal Government is paralyzed and neutered.  They are so frightened they can’t actually enforce a just and valid law requiring nominal grazing fees for running cattle on public lands.  And, believe me, it was fear that stopped the removal of the cattle; had they proceeded, it would likely have sparked an actual rebellion in Nevada.  Probably not a revolution or civil war, but certainly a conflict on par with Shay’s Rebellion.  Worse, that rebellion could have spread out of control and into other states and regions.  It might have taken years to calm the turmoil in the country, sparked by a single act.

Further, you can see the actuality of the victory in the fact that many Americans hate and fear the Government.  They view the government through the Regan filter of “the scariest words in the English Language are ‘I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.’”  When you view Federalism and a strong central authority as the most dangerous thing in the world, the Union has ultimately lost the war.

But to return to the original point, in addition to fully buying into the Mitchellian myth of the tyrannical Feds, Bundy has bought the story of the “happy slave” hook line and sinker.  This is a common trope in the South, where people cannot wrap their brains around the abject horror of American Slavery, which was actually the MOST abominable version of slavery the world has ever seen.  Period. 

The reason for that is, in American Slavery, not only did you own people, but you had the right to sell families apart from each other.  You could sell a small child from his parents, a wife from her husband.  In fact, actual marriage between slaves was a criminal offense.  No where else in history was this ability to split families allowed.  Further, it was punishable by death to teach a slave to read or write, or give them any education.  Both teacher and pupil faced this punishment.

But people in the South, and even in the rest of this country refuse to own up to this reality.  They like to think that it wasn’t in slave owners interests to abuse their slaves and that they would obviously care for them as a valuable asset.  It’s natural, because this is such a horrific time in American History, and it comforts us to think we were kindly masters.  However, that is a lie we are telling ourselves.  We were brutal, vicious and evil at that time, and no amount of whitewashing will ever erase that fact.  The reality was not “Gone with the Wind,” it was “12 Years a Slave.”

But Cliven Bundy is a product of the myth.  He is a person, like many others in America, who actually believes that the African American population was better off as slaves.  Thanks to Margaret Mitchell, we think the slaves were well cared for, maybe as well as a pampered pet, or something like that.  And as such, he probably genuinely believes that his statement shows compassion and caring for the Black population of Nevada and of the USA.

Further, mix in the idea that federal assistance is akin to slavery, and you have a view that many Americans are still slaves; slaves to a nameless faceless bureaucracy intent on draining away all that is good and right in the world.  Suddenly you have a picture that Bundy thinks the benevolent Plantation Owner who loved his slaves like a person loves their pets is a far better slavery than slavery to the evil that is the Federal Government.

In his view, slavery gave the people purpose, skills and a reason to live, and welfare takes away all of that and replaces it with a godless communism.  And in that view, communism is far less free than actual slavery.  (Ignore the fact that the social safety net is not communism, and isn’t really even socialism, the Far Right and Tea Party refuse to see the distinction, so I will paint the world through their filter.)

And by this token, he is, to his way of thinking, being compassionate and caring.  He thinks that people were actually better off as literal property, as opposed to virtual possessions.  And he isn’t the only one.  Many politicians and even average Americans hold this view.

And ultimately, this is the danger of nostalgic myth.  Because we like to paint the world of the past in a coat of rosy happiness, we do not learn the actual lessons of the past.  People, even educated people, in refusing to come to terms with our atrocities, and coloring history with a haze of nostalgia pop off and make claims like Bundy did.

And when that takes full root in society, we repeat the sins of the past, and have to again suffer the punishment for those sins.

The Structure of Racism

Reverse-Racism

Yesterday, my friend Marc posted a fascinating article about how Reverse Racism literally cannot exist because of the actual meaning of Racism.  (You can view the original article here.)  It unleashed a firestorm of vitriolic commentary on Marc's news feed that included a mind-blowing comment that I will reprint in full, because it floored me so much.

            "See I'm being discriminated racially right now.  Proof that blacks have too much power:              we haven't rolled into the ghettos in force to make them stop their genocidal war against              whites."

Seriously?  The Blacks in America are conducting genocide against white people?  The 1950's called and they want their racists back.   

But this horrific outpouring of venom displayed by some of the people in Marc's feed got me to thinking about things that I haven't discussed in a blog post in a while.  Being the quasi-social scientist that I am, I felt the need to write about this because people today conflate two different terms. This conflation further inhibits any valid  discussion about race or privilege. 

To begin, I would like to summarize some of the points of the original article and expand on them.  The author makes the very correct point that there is actually no way that "reverse racism" can even exist; the term shows complete ignorance of what racism is, which is a system, as opposed to prejudice which is a personal trait.  Further a person who is a racist is both (highly likely) prejudiced and a subscriber of the system of racism, much like a communist believes in communism.  And to further hammer home the point, "ism" is a suffix that denotes a ideological system, therefore, racism is a system of racist beliefs.

On the other hand, prejudice (derived from the Latin prae-judicium or literally "judgment before the facts") occurs when one individual or group pre-judges another, typically a minority or otherwise un-empowered group. It can be used to create a prejudicial stereotype, as we have seen in abundance in all groups. 

Prejudice can exist in anyone, and in fact most people have some sort of prejudice in their personal make-up.  Whether they fight this impulse or act on it is up to them, but the core of prejudice is there in a wide range of the population.  Further, prejudice can lead to discrimination on an individual basis or in a systematic manner.  Regardless of this, prejudice can be seen at it's base level as a personal failing, and one that can be held by anyone regardless of their status as majority or minority.

The article, however, did not address prejudice, it discussed racism.

Racism is the systematic discrimination of a group of people based on an actual (as in skin color) or perceived trait. (as in religious orientation.)  Racism holds that one group is naturally superior to another, by right of something inherent in their genetic makeup.  Although this concept predated the understanding of genetics, it came into full bloom at the end of the 1800's, when science discovered genes.  Taken further, racism, at it's most extreme leads to Eugenics, which is the attempt to excise the inferior "genetic material" from the gene pool.

Further, although this is not addressed in the article, Racism can hold two flavors, although they are often intertwined.  The first type of Racism is Systematic, where one group is specifically targeted for differential treatment.  Police racism, as seen in the "Stop and Frisk" policy that is so controversial, falls into this typology. 

"Stop and Frisk" is a perfect example of Systematic Racism.  Certain people, namely young black males, are determined to be a group that is more likely to commit a crime, and therefore should be stopped and searched any time they are doing "something suspicious," like buying an expensive belt at Barney's in New York City.  Muslims are also the victims of systematic racism when they are profiled as terrorists.  On the other hand, white people, even when actually doing something suspicious, are rarely stopped by cops.  Further, they are even less likely to be taken in for questioning, charged or convicted.  Because of this, a disproportionate number of people in prisons are African-American.

I would also like to note that Systematic Racism is more closely rooted in prejudice and stereotype than the other type of racism.  It often derives from sweeping generalizations such as, "young black males are far more likely to commit crimes" or "Muslims are more likely to be terrorists."  Sometimes there is a small shred of truth at the core to justify the beliefs, which is then thrown out as a justification of Systematic Racism.  But it should be noted, even when there is some truth present, it usually is distorted and taken out of context. 

For example, while white boys commit as many crimes on average as black youth, they are far more likely to get probation or juvenile hall where their black counterparts are often sent to adult prison.  Similarly, while there are quite a few Muslim terrorists today, in the 80's the world's largest and most powerful terrorist organization was actually the I.R.A., so by the reasoning of a certain group tends to terrorism, people with red hair should be subjected to much more intensive searches than any other group, including Muslims.  Further, since so many people in this country helped the I.R.A., Americans should be suspect whenever they travel abroad. 

The second sort of Racism can be termed either Institutional or Structural.  This occurs when the entire system is structurally set up so that a minority group is denied the opportunities afforded to the majority.  Although prejudice can inform this type of racism, it is generally rooted in a sense of entitlement; "I am better than you, so therefore it is natural and appropriate that I have more opportunities than you do."  Most of the Deep South is founded on a Structural Racism core.

What is interesting about this fact is that there may not always be direct prejudice in this system.  When I lived in the South, there were many people I met that did not claim any sort of prejudice to African-Americans, and yet vehemently defended the system that kept minorities politically un-empowered.  The typical answer when confronted with the atrocities of the system was, "You have to understand, that's just how things are done here."  Another statement that I heard a lot was, "I'm not racist, some of my best friends are black." while they voted for politicians who kept the discriminatory apparatus locked in place. 

However, if you support a system that is Structurally Racist, sorry, but by definition, you are a racist.  What you are not necessarily is prejudiced; you're just entitled and oblivious.  And yes, you can be racist without being prejudiced. 

To return to Structural Racism, it is very clear in the educational system in many places in the South.  The schools down there have re-segregated, and have done so in a way that cannot be easily undone.  There will not be an ability to forcibly desegregate them, and have the National Guard enforce it, as there was in the Civil Rights Era.  The reason is, most of the white people have pulled their children out of the public school system and placed them in private schools, either religious or secular.  The ones who can't afford this option are more and more resorting to home-schooling.  This leaves the public school system overwhelmingly populated by "minority" students.

This is even worse than the old "separate but equal," where a thin veneer of comity was attempted.  Now they just pull the kids out of the public system and defund it so that there is little actual education left in the schools.  The public schools have become poorly funded warehouses and day care centers where only the most basic skills are taught.  In no way does a public education in many places in the South prepare students for any sort of higher education.

And this is where the Institutionalization of Racism can be easily seen.  Without the ability to get a quality education, doors to greater potentials are closed.  Not completely of course, there are always ways for the occasional lucky or brilliant kid to escape the trap, but for the most part, most of the children who start and end in the public school system are locked out of many opportunities, thereby not competing with the more entitled white children.  Worse, in this system, help for "disadvantaged" children becomes a form of patronizing charity, further embedding the structural racism into the scheme.

Now on to the reason why "reverse racism" cannot be a thing, at least for the most part.   Given that the system is not set up in such a manner that minorities have the ability to engage in systematic discrimination, there is not the ability to for them to engage in actual racism.  In other words, because they do not control the levers of power, they cannot set up an opposite system to block white people from achieving in life.  They do not block whites from good jobs, nice housing in safe neighborhoods or any of the other trappings of life that the entitled white population expects.  

As a side note, I do want to point out, there has been one group that has been able to actually create a form of reverse racism on the structural level, and that was the Irish.  The Irish, having all normal pathways to assimilation closed to them took over the New York and Boston Police Departments, and in doing so, blocked many non-Irish from entering the force, hence the stereotype of the Irish Cop.  They also took over the Catholic Priesthood in America, but that was a much less powerful position.   Through their power on the police force, they then insinuated themselves into the political machines of several major metropolitan areas.  By doing that, they forced the doors open for their brethren.   However, as I noted earlier, the Irish have long ties to terrorism, so this power play shouldn't be surprising.

Other that that instance, and quite possibly because of it, "reverse racism' has never actually taken hold in this or any other country.  Even when "minorities" are actually the numeric majority, they have not been able to move the levers of power in their direction, even today. 

Systematic and Institutional Racism are on full display today in the frantic efforts of the Far Right in attempting to disenfranchise minority voters through a host of laws designed to suppress the vote.  Cloaked in the sophistry of "voter fraud" these laws are designed to make it harder and less likely for minorities to vote, thereby structurally maintaining a white majority in votes cast, even if the actual percentage of eligible voters skews the other direction. 

By weakening the number of votes of people of color, and concentrating those that remain into isolated districts, the white power system can continue to exert a chokehold on power.  And the worst part of it is, short of violence, it becomes almost impossible to weaken that grasp, as we saw in the 1960's.   Part of the reason that the Civil Rights movement turned so ugly at times stemmed from the need to shake the edifice of control down to its roots.  Even then, the institutional and systematic racism continued, albeit in a somewhat modified and cloaked form.

Therefore, by definition, "reverse racism" cannot exist, and even if the power structure flipped and African-Americans and Hispanics took control of the country, and further oppressed the white population the same way that we oppressed them, it would still be just plain racism, not reverse racism.  Racism can only really exist among the ruling class.

That said, what can, and does exist is prejudice, and it does exist on both sides;  I have met some minorities who were prejudiced against whites.  However, even though any form of prejudice is wrong, it is understandable that minorities might hold ill will against whites.  It is unfortunately a natural reaction to oppression that people come to hate their oppressors.  It is also natural to extend that hate via stereotyping and projection to everyone of that ethnic group.  When you are accustomed to being hated for what and who you are, you tend to hate everyone who is not like you.  However, this is not reverse racism or even reverse prejudice, it is simply standard issue prejudice.

To illustrate this, I would like to return to my experiences gained from living in Savannah.  While I was there, I witnessed the day-to-day, almost casual, racism that was on display there. I saw first hand the fact that blacks were shoved off into a school system that did not in the least prepare them for life, while white people sent their kids to private schools that did so. I saw cops stop and harass black people, who were doing nothing wrong, for the simple crime of being blatantly black in public. I witnessed people with advanced degrees working in menial jobs, simply because the color of their skin prevented them from attaining a better position.  I also saw people being told to "know their place and not try to rise above themselves."  Further, I saw people unable to leave this racist system because they had no economic ability to do so.

In addition, I saw people who were actually angry every time they saw a black person who did not wear shackles on there ankles.  I heard people say that they would like to see slavery put up for a vote among white people, because they would re-institute it in a heartbeat.  Worse, I found out that they still maintain lists in the South of who owns who, in the hopes that they can someday reclaim their property. THAT is racism.

As a natural response to this racist system, some people become very prejudiced against their oppressors.  I'm sorry if some of you get hurt feelings when a black person gives you a dirty look, or acts prejudiced towards you, but given what I witnessed with my own two eyes while living in Georgia, I can completely understand and support their position.

In my next post, I will examine how the discussion of "reverse racism" not only stops honest discussion of racism in America, but actually contributes to the problem. 

The Inconvenience of Reality

Others

The truth does not set us free, it typically just makes us uncomfortable.  A prime example of this is the rampant racism in this country.  Despite, or more likely because of, electing a black President, bigotry has not declined.  Tangential to this is the strong uptick in sexism that runs parallel to racism.  This is the uncomfortable truth that we face.  However, rather than just complain about the phenomenon, I would like to try to examine some root causes of the behavior: shame, fear, and identity.

The first driver of prejudice is shame.  For generations we literally enslaved blacks and we oppressed women.  Both were treated appallingly by the power structure and denied recourse to protest that repression.  Black men were not counted as people until after the civil war, and then it was a further 100 years before they truly earned the right to participate in the democratic process.  Women didn't get a universal right to vote until 1920, although some states adopted suffrage before that.

This is shameful, and any rational person in 2013 should recognize how appalling that truth is.  However, people don't always react the same way to shame.  Some people, and I would hope the majority, although recent events make me question that assertion, use the shame as a driver to guarantee that those mistakes are never repeated.  Shame has been used throughout history as a powerful method of discipline in a social structure, and therefore is often corrective.

Unfortunately, some people cannot correctly process shame.  Instead they refuse to see their behavior as inappropriate, and actually transfer the shameful behavior onto the actual victims.  You see this in a number of events recently.  President Obama being constantly criticized as un-American, arrogant, uppity, and a host of other epithets that condemn him for the audacity of becoming President.  You also see this in the Trayvon Martin case, where the black teen is de facto guilty, and judged to be in the wrong automatically, even though, if he did fight back, he was acting under the same principle that allowed George Zimmerman to legally murder him.  And even further, you see this is the repeated refusal to acknowledge rape as an actual crime, and the pushing of the idea that women contribute to their own rapes through their bad behavior.

In all of these cases, shame is being transferred off of the person who cannot accept it, and it is being placed on a person or group who in way have any guilt in the matter.  This is unfortunately a common behavior pattern among people who lack the maturity to face a horrible reality.  Part of the problem here is that since they did not personally engage in those behaviors, they feel that they bear no responsibility.  Further they feel that assigning them responsibility for the actions of people in the past, or other people in the present, is utterly wrong.

This is correct as far as the individual goes, but there is another layer at play here and that is societal guilt.  Societal guilt is not personalized, but belongs to a large group of people and is the method of mitigating bad behavior by a culture.  A prime example would be the Holocaust; only a relatively small percentage of the German population actively participated in the atrocities, but a wide swath stood by and watched it happen.  In this, they became complicit, is not directly guilty; and that is what societal guilt is meant to address.

Even though the Civil War ended almost 150 years ago, and the Equal Rights movement ostensibly came to an end 30 years ago, much of the bad behavior is still being perpetrated.  But rather than acknowledge it, the guilt is off-shored and placed on the people who do not deserve the blame.  The racist attitudes justify the ill treatment of minorities and women, by essentially blaming them for their own condition.  In doing this, the racist and sexist attitudes become fully justified in the mind of the person who holds them, and removes the burden of shame.

And to address another elephant in the room, there is a genuine phenomenon of reverse racism and counter sexism, where minorities and women turn the tables against white men.  However, it should be noted that this phenomenon is distinctly different from traditional racism and sexism.  These are response behaviors, basically stemming from the idea, "You hate us, so we will hate you back just as much."  Although it drastically increases the problem, it is a natural response.  However, since is it such a different imperative from traditional racism, I am going to leave it out of this discussion.

The second driver is fear.  As I have discussed in previous blog posts, the fear-anger-hate chain is powerful and ubiquitous.  But the root imperative is fear.  With racism and sexism, the fear is both extremely simple and highly convoluted.  The root cause of the fear is the idea of loss of privilege, white men have essentially run the show in most of the industrialized world for centuries.  Losing that basic power structure is deeply troubling. 

White men have been on top for so long that we literally do not know how to function in a world where we are not the ultimate power.  You see this in the repeated meltdowns over President Obama.  He is going out there and acting just like a white man, asking for motorcades, for marines to hold an umbrella over him, traveling the globe and talking to world leaders as an equal.  How arrogant of him.  To many who fear the loss of their influence, he is the ultimate harbringer of their doom.

The convoluted part comes in the realization that ye shall reap as ye have sown.  The comedian Patton Oswalt talks about using a time machine, and how it would be great to use it to visit the past, because there never has been a time when being a white man hasn't been awesome.  However, he cautions against using it to go to the future, because what we have done is going to catch up to us, and the future is "gonna suck."  We are going to eventually have to pay for our millennia of bad leadership decisions.

This fear drives both racism and sexism.  They are the dying gasps of trying to stave off an inevitable future where the white male has, at best, limited ability to control events, and at worst will become the oppressed minority.  The fear of what might happen to us makes it imperative that we keep everyone else down, by whatever means are necessary, and bigotry serves that very well.  In fact, through careful application of it, we can even get some of the oppressed people to buy into the story.  Allen West and Phyllis Schaffley are perfect examples of this.

Add to that the second layer of fear, the fear that we are not superior.  Much of racism and sexism is supported by the indisputability of the superiority of the white male.  We view ourselves as smarter, more talented, better leaders, and generally better people than either minorities or women.  And every time one of the other groups does an excellent job in a "white role" it undercuts that certainty.

This is also why President Obama gets described as lazy, ineffectual, and incompetent.  And unfortunately, to be honest, it comes from both sides of the white political spectrum.  The issues of complaint about the President may be different, but underlying both sides is this hidden message that a white man could do it better.  The lionization of Bill Clinton by both side proves this idea.  I should note here, there has been significant criticism of the President from the African-American community, but it is fundamentally different in tone, and often echoes the idea that he isn't doing enough for their community.  However, given the issues surrounding his Presidency, he would only make it worse and heighten the racism, if he actually did more.  Notice the furor over his  relatively mild statement regarding Trayvon Martin,

The last piece of the racism puzzle is identity.  For much of human history, the world has revolved around ideas of us and them.  We define ourselves by certain identifiers, race, religion, and culture.  The ideas of what make us, "us" are very powerful and form the basis of a racial identity.

The vampire mythic sequence illustrates this very well, we are both drawn to and repelled by the other.  In the older vampire stories, the monster wanted to seduce our women and steal them away, which meant that he had to be destroyed with a stake through the heart.  This symbolized the need to strike at the core of the dangerous other.

In today's world of "sparkly vampires" we want to mate with the vampire, not to embrace the other, but to subsume the other.  The ultimate message of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight is that we need to make the vampire more like us.

This returns to the issue of bigotry.  We can accept a black man if he is more white than the average white man.  In fact, most of my white friends who have the one black friend typically describe them as "the whitest black guy in the world."  By taking on a "white" identity, the otherness becomes neutralized and they are save.  Even if they are a different skin color, they do not challenge the predominant white identity of our culture.  They become "neutralized."

The same goes for women.  If a woman acts girlish in the work world, she is basically a threat to the cultural identity of what an employee should be.  If she cries, or talks about "female problems" or in any way breaks the mold, she becomes a danger.  Basically, to function effectively in the work world, a woman must be indistinguishable from a man.

However, there is a double standard for women that does not exist for racial issues.  It is OK, and even expected, that a woman fill a traditional role in the non-work realm.  That is also part of the identity issue, a woman has a specific role to play in our cultural structure.  She can step outside of that at work, but not outside of work, and that is part of what is expected.  However, a minority can never step outside of the "white" role, or they instantly become a threat.

The problem with this arises from the fact that we are not allowed to talk about these issues, and that acerbates all of them.

If we were allowed to address the issues of shame, we could talk openly about the atrocities of slavery and Jim Crow and try to make some sort of peace with the past.  We cannot fix what has gone before, but we certainly can acknowledge that we have done horrible things and commit to never repeating them.  Germany engaged in this purging of their societal soul after World War 2.  They did not eliminate the Nazi movement, but they served to marginalize it to the point that only the most extreme racists would embrace it.  In this context, shame becomes a powerful tool to cleanse out the festering rot of bigotry.

Second if we could openly discuss our fears and our insecurities, we could meet them head on.  Most of the time, fear is unfounded, and in this case, it is particularly so.  If we were allowed to have open discussions that made people realize that another group's success does not in any way diminish our own, we might come to terms with our fears.  Just because white male influence is waning does not mean that we have become reviled.  However, if we do not address this issue, our fears will become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Finally, we need to stop defining our identity by race, sex or creed.  Even defining identity by nationality can lead to problems, but that is a more natural division.  At lease, if kept in check so that it doesn't devolve into extreme nationalism, it can become a tool to unify people.

At the end of the day, we need to realize we are all Americans, whether we are male or female, white black or brown.  Only then can we begin to move past this mess we have made for ourselves.

God is a Bullet

Victim

I am going to be blunt here, Trayvon Martin was murdered.  I don't care mental contortions what a racist jury in the South had to tie themselves into, he was murdered by a man who unfairly profiled him, stalked him and murdered him in cold blood.  I lived in the South for close to five years, and I knew that there was no way that Zimmerman would be found guilty of killing a black man.  I also know, from living in the South, that if Zimmerman had killed a white teenage boy named John Martin, he would be facing the death penalty. 

But wait, you say, he was half Hispanic, he couldn't be guilty of a racially motivated crime.  And to that I say, bullshit.  Just because he was also a self-described minority does not absolve him of racism.  Racism does come in all forms and among all people.  Just because Zimmerman was not lily-white does not mean that he did not target Trayvon Martin based solely on the color of his skin.

Zinmmerman had a long history of calling 911 and reporting people for the "crime" of being blatantly Black in public.  He also called 911 on the night of the murder, and even though he was told to let the police handle it, he still stalked and killed Trayvon.  The facts show that he put himself in the position to have a confrontation; he escalated the situation rather than diffusing it.  Further, he escalated it when he did not need to: at the time he began stalking Martin, no crime was being committed; no one was in danger; and the only thing happening was that a black teenager was cutting through a neighborhood.

A black teenager walking through an affluent gated community, obviously that is a crime that deserves execution.  And Zimmerman appointed himself, judge, jury and executioner.

But wait, you say, Travon Martin attacked Zimmerman, and he shot the teen in self defense.  But, even if that is factually correct, Zimmerman put himself in the position in the first place.  He could have followed the police directive and LET THE COPS HANDLE IT.  Sorry for shouting, but that is a critical point.  HE DID NOT HAVE TO BE THERE, ZIMMERMAN MADE A DELIBERATE CHOICE.

But, lets go a little further.  Zimmerman was acquitted based on the "Stand Your Ground Law," that is basically a get out of jail free card when it comes to murder.  Flip the situation around again, and imagine that Trayvon had killed Zimmerman on the exact same grounds of self defense.  How do you think that would have flown.  Trayvon would have faced murder 1 charges and would probably have been sentenced to death or life imprisonment.

And still further, lets look at the situation from Travyon's perspective.  He is walking home from the store, having gotten a bag of candy, and takes a shortcut.  He then gets stalked by an older man, which could be considered "stranger danger."  He's in a situation where he doesn't know if he's going to get mugged, raped, (Yes it does happen) or killed (Which did happen)  He "Stands His Ground" when the crazy old guy pulls out a gun, and defends himself.  And for defending himself, he is killed.

Everyone talks about Zimmerman's right to defend himself, as a white adult man, no one talks about Trayvon Martin's right to defend himself, as a black teenager. 

If you are going to have a law like Florida's, then both parties have the right to "Stand Their Ground," when no crime is being committed, and none was that night, except for Zimmerman stalking an unarmed teen.

By the way, I want to nip something else in the bud here, Hispanic is an ethnicity, like being French, it is not a race.  You can be white Hispanic, Cuba, black Hispanic, Dominican Republic, Asian Hispanic, the Philippines, or Meso-American Hispanic, Guatemala.  I have a good friend who is Hispanic, and he has red hair and the last name of Gordon, but he is still Hispanic, and identifies himself that way.

To return to the point, Zimmerman put himself in a situation, by his own choice that threatened the life of a young man, who may or may not have tried to defend himself.  If that is exactly what happened, it shows the danger of laws like the one Florida has, where it is essentially a license to kill someone with impunity.  If Trayvon did not even try to defend himself, then Zimmerman killed him in cold blood.

And that is the definition of murder.

And now begins the crowing of the Right: Trayvon deserved to die; Trayvon was a racist because he used the word "cracka;" that Zimmerman was unfairly prosecuted.

And again I call bullshit.  No teenager, who is just walking through a neighborhood, even if it is a gated community, deserves to die.  So what if he used the term "Cracka?" That is in no way shape or form anything like the term "Nigger."  It does not carry anything of the evil of the N-word, which in my opinion is the single worst word in the world, no term is more belittling, racist or vile than that word.  And just to satisfy Godwin's Law, the N-word is the Hitler of language.

And finally, Zimmerman was fairly prosecuted.  Given the circumstances, if I was the prosecutor, I would have sought first degree murder charges, given that he stalked the teen.

The vile rhetoric of racism spewing from the Right makes me ashamed to be a white American, for fear that my non-white friends might just think that I agree with some of this hatred.  Many people thought that electing our first black President would stem the flow of hatred in this country, when in fact, it has done nothing but acerbate it.  The hate in this country is hitting a crescendo, building vile inequity upon hideous innuendo, demonizing an innocent teenage boy, and blaming him for his own murder.

However, the single worst thing I have heard is what Zimmerman's attorney, Mark O'mara said, that if Zimmerman were black, "he never would have been charged with a crime."  Really?  In the South? A black man killing a white boy would never have been charged?

He would have been executed next week.

There's a green plaid jacket on the back of the chair
It's like a moment frozen forever there

Mom and dad had a lot of big plans for their little man
So proud!
Mama's gone crazy 'cause her baby's shot down
By some teenage car chase war out of bounds
It was the wrong place wrong time wrong end of a gun.
And its sad, sad, it's sad!

Shoot straight from the hip, yeah.
Gone forever in a trigger slip
Well, it could have been
It could have been your brother.
Shoot straight shoot to kill, yeah.
Blame each other, well, blame yourselves, you know
God is a bullet have mercy on us everyone

-Johnette Napolitano

Know Thy Place

Placism

A couple of months ago, I was reading a very interesting book called "Better Off Without 'Em," which is an exploration of Southern culture, and how, for all intents and purposes the South really is a distinct country from the rest of the United States.  The book is on the whole, very interesting, but it is pretty much a condemnation of the South.  A lot of it is on the money, but it is harsh.  And I should say here, any part of the country could be dissected like that and a negative book written on it.  As much as I love the West, we are also very different from the rest of the country and we have cultural normatives out here that can really frustrate and upset who did not grow up here.

However, in the book, he introduced a concept that I had never heard of before, but now that I know about it, it is a perfect explanation of many things going on in the country right now, especially things in the South, and things in the Presidential race.

The concept is called Placism.  Placism is similar to racism, and in fact, they often go hand in hand with each other, but it is possible to be a placist and not a racist, or visa versa.  In fact in the South, poor white people face many of the same Placism challenges that minorities do.  The basic idea of placism parallels classism; with placism, as long as you remain in your place, and don't try to challenge the social structure, you can get along just fine.  Step outside of that box, and all hell will descend on you.

After reading about it, I realized that I had actually known about it while I was living in the South but I just ascribed it to run of the mill racism.  The episode that sticks in my mind was a conversation I had with the woman who ran the diner that I frequently ate lunch at.  She told me about an incident with her daughter's new job in Birmingham.  Her daughter had gotten an MBA, and gotten a good, although entry level, job in an investment company.  On her first day on the job, her new boss told her, "There are many opportunities here for a person like you, as long as you know your place and don't try to rise above yourself."

And that is the core of the problem.  There are many opportunities for someone, as long as they don't try to rise above themselves.  In other words, they cannot show up decent upper class white folks.  They cannot be visibly smarter, more skilled, or more accomplished that their "betters."

Once I started looking at my experiences in the South through this filter, things began to make more sense to me.  For example, as I have pointed out before, on the evening news, no matter who won the game, they would almost always show a white guy scoring a point against a black guy.  For example, they never showed a black guy making a basket, unless both teams were entirely black.  I had thought of that as racist, which is probably a part of it, but now, through the new filter, I realize that it was a visual to show cultural dominance.  Black people cannot show up white people.

Another point that is explained by placism was the faculty and staff demographic where I taught.  There were very few African-American faculty members, but there were a number of foreign born black faculty.  The staff had many African-Americans, but typically, they were in subservient roles such as security guards and administrative assistants.  There were a few in middle management, but the upper echelon of the school, both in faculty and administrative roles was exclusively white.

While on the surface, that looks like racism, it goes deeper than that.  If it was racism, why could foreign blacks get slots on the faculty while African-Americans didn't?  Placism, and the fact that educated people from other countries exist outside of the normal class structure, is a better explanation. 

And I would like to note, skilled foreigners often exist outside of normal class structures, no matter what country you are dealing with.  I applied for, and was interviewed for, several jobs in the United Kingdom, which is a notoriously class-ridden society.  I talked to a few American ex-pats living there, and they told me that they had no problems moving between the classes, and everyone accepted them.  Class in this case was strictly for the natives.  Similarly, one only needs to look at the percentages of foreign born doctors and engineers to see that in action in our country.

However, this does not translate down to the unskilled or semi-skilled end of the spectrum.  The uneducated immigrant faces the worst sort of Placism imaginable.  Back to my personal work situation, African-Americans comprised almost all of the security force at the college.  Although it was a low paying, more or less dead end job, there was a certain dignity that came from the responsibility of keeping the college secure.  The janitorial staff, which is the lowest end of the scale, was entirely Hispanic immigrant. 

And this is the norm everywhere.  Anyplace you go in this country, the first generation low skill immigrants are shoved into menial, and often degrading, jobs.  The doors to education and social improvement are closed and barred to them.  It is only the second or third generation that is allowed to break out of the placist role that is assigned to them. 

And then, that often only happens if they do not look different from the rest of the people.  The Irish were, in their day, treated just like Mexican immigrants are today, however, once they lost the accent, they could easily blend in with the rest of society.  Still, you only need to look at the occasional and very subtle discrimination of "gingers" to know that one segment of the Irish, the one that looks different, is still not as fully assimilated as the rest of them.  Being a redhead won't block you from a job or an education, but, I can say from personal experience, it does limit your dating options.

Blacks and Hispanics, except for the very light skinned, tend to get locked into certain roles permanently.  And furthermore, the people who are very light skinned, almost indistinguishable from white people, have many more opportunities available.  You can see this in this Harvard Study.

So how does this concept of Placism translate to Presidential politics.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both rose above their station, and both have been more viciously attacked than any President since the Reconstruction.

Bill Clinton faced the same placism issues as President Obama.  He came from a poor background, and he rose to the pinnacle of American society.  And the Right never forgave him for it.  They tried to destroy him and stop him from having any legacy.  Specifically, they wanted to show that a person from his socio-economic background was not equipped to be President, because the inspiration of Bill Clinton was that anyone, from any background, CAN become president.  He was the first truly middle class president since Truman, and we all know how that ended.  (Truman ended up for years on the worst president list; he's better now.)

And Bill Clinton set the stage for President Obama, who also does not come from the background that we expect of our national leaders.  Racism does play a part in the hatred of Obama, and I will not deny that.  There are many people who cry, in coded words, I don't want a black man as my President.  But that isn't the full story, it is only half of it.

Similarly, not all possible aspects of Placism are in play with the President.  Remember my example of the foreign black faculty and remember, Barack Obama's father was not born in this country.  As my mentor Joe said, shortly after Obama's victory, "It is no accident that our first black President was not descended from slaves."  He explained that, at least for the first black President, he could not have won with the baggage of slavery in his past.  Again, Joe was talking about Placism, I just didn't catch on. 

However, that said, Placism is still strongly at work in most aspects of the hatred of Obama.  Obama was raised by a single mother, he came from a relatively poor background, certainly middle class at best.  Also since his father was foreign, he carries the Placist taint of "not one of us" that you see in the Birther attacks. 

Look at the other attacks on him and you can see Placism all through them.  He got where he is because of affirmative action, which means, he could never have gotten into Harvard on his own accord.  He was a community organizer, which means, he worked in poor communities filled with poor people.  He's lazy and incompetent, which means, no one from his background has the skills to run the country.

And the single worst thing that he did; he beat a rich old white man out to become President.  He showed him up in a landslide.  He made him look bad.  He rose above his station.  He didn't know his place.

And that is nothing compared to the Hell that will open up when he beats Mitt Romney, the ultimate scion of who the Placists think "should be President."  The poor black kid wiped the floor with the rich man who is entitled to be President because of "Who he is."

It will be an interesting four years.