By Andre M. Perry
Validating racism is SOP for McConnell.
...One Washington Post columnist stated (click here) the President motives were clear, to “create chaos, distract the masses, look mad, take care of business.” The Post columnist is not alone. The four women who Trump targeted, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), held a press conference the next day and declared the clearly racist comments a distraction.
Policy encompasses written legislation, mandates, acts, and regulations in governments, institutions and businesses to influence behaviors. Those who charge that Trump’s bigoted vitriol is a distraction wrongly limits policy to those written, concrete forms. Policy also comes in the form of practice—regularly exercised procedures that are also used to influence behaviors. Many policies are unwritten or are implied through communicated rhetoric. Many voters make decisions and vote on racist rhetoric just as they would act on issues of foreign policy or social security.
Racism should never be diminished as a distraction—history shows well that the strategic deployment of bigotry is a default practice used to undercut democracy. Inserting nativist, xenophobic language has been the reliable prelude to codifying bigotry into law.
The Know-Nothing Party of the 1800s worked to prevent immigrants and Catholics from holding elected office. The party, which at its peak included more than 100 elected congressman and eight governors, rose to power with nativist propaganda.
One poster read, “All Catholics and all persons who favor the Catholic Church are…vile imposters, liars, villains, and cowardly cutthroats.”...
