Are You Not Entertained?: Just Thought You Should Know 8/5/16

Dear GOP,

You're getting exactly what you deserve.  8 years of petty criticisms of the President, made up threats about immigrants being evil incarnate, the god awful racism not so cleverly disguised as constitutional loyalty (looking at you Birthers), the crusade against education/intellectualism, and the need for your base to be afraid of everything (even their own shadows because they're black) has finally culminated in this absolute farce of a Presidential campaign.  For the first time in our history, we may end up with 3 major political parties in this country because I don't see how moderate Republicans can possibly reconcile their views with their Presidential nominee and his minions.

Trump supporters, I want you to take a good long look at your candidate.  I mean a real look.  Think about the reasons you support him.  It certainly isn't about policy, he hasn't presented one that wouldn't cost more money than it saves. It's not because of his business acumen.  It doesn't exist.  Ask Atlantic City, NJ.  It's not because he's not a criminal like "Crooked Hillary".  She's been cleared of every charge leveled at her by every single Republican-led tribunal/witch hunt the GOP can think of.  Trump, on the other hand, is still in the midst of multiple lawsuits involving possible fraud.  Oh, and he might be a child rapist.  Not kidding.  Is it his superior values?  The values that he thinks permits him to routinely insult anyone who disagrees with him?  Oh I know, "he tells it like it is!"  Except when he's talking about having met Vladimir Putin and then says that he didn't.  Or that he saw a video of Obama personally paying the Iranians and then he says he was mistaken.  Maybe he was straight shooting when he said he would build that wall around us and then admitted he wouldn't?  The #NeverTrump Republicans, who I respect, though I disagree with their vision, at least had the spine to stand up for their principles.  The rest of the party leadership simply fell in line behind this pompous, entitled, ignorant windbag and it may have not only cost them this election but their party's future.  Among voters younger than 30, Trump is polling 4th, behind Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party), and Jill Stein (Green Party).  Think about that.  The nominee for the 2nd biggest party in the country is polling behind 2 people most of the country has. never. heard. of.  The 18-year-olds who are voting for the first time this election are looking at your nominee as the representation of your party and would rather vote for 2 people who are almost guaranteed to lose. Most people stick with the first party they vote for and the upcoming landslide is probably going to render your party irrelevant for the next 50 years.  As much as I despise Trump and what the GOP has become, that isn't a good thing.

Look, the truth is that the core values of the GOP aren't that crazy.  It's founded in the idea that people can take care of themselves if the government should just get out of the way and let us work. Neighbor helping neighbor instead of depending on handouts from Washington.  And there are valid criticisms of our current system.  Money in politics is a problem.  Even Bernie Sanders agreed with Republicans on that.  NAFTA was a disaster for the American worker and there are many non-college educated people who need work.  But too many times those frustrations tend to be expressed as outright racism when the reality is the answers to your frustrations are a lot more complicated than "blame the non-whites"  Our issues can't be boiled down to a few angry tweets and an agenda that's stuck in the nostalgia of yesterday's America.  On a personal note, I'm part of the first generation of African Americans who full rights as a citizen are legally recognized by our government, these are the good old days for me!  The world has changed. You can thank your conservative news outlets for not telling you just how much and what you can do to keep up instead of feeding you a steady diet of things to hate and fear. If you've been eating up Fox News, The Blaze, and Breitbart for the better part of the last decade, all it's gotten you is a pseudo-intellectual who claims to be your voice but has never been anything but an elitist 1% his entire life.  He's never not  been rich so how can he possibly be your voice if he doesn't even speak your language? Trump is the literal embodiment of the ugliness that has infected the principles of the Republican Party.  I would wear out my knuckles on my keyboard if I listed the times he's proven that he's not just a bad candidate but a genuinely bad person.  It's ironic that it took him slandering a Gold Star Muslim family, a religion he's vowed to ban from our country, to get people to finally see it's him that doesn't represent American values.  His nomination is direct evidence that the Republican Party is broken.  So broken that they're willing to trot out a racist demagogue in the vague hopes that they can re-take the White House by appealing to the very worst American fears.  We've reached the point where the house they've built is no longer safe for any American to reside in.  The roof is leaking, the foundation is shot.  The lessons of 2012, which called for inclusion and moderation, have been outright rejected and the results have been predictably disastrous.  If the party leadership continues to ignore the evolution of our country, its only natural that America will eventually ignore them.  Completely.

...Til Next Week!

You can read more about the "Growth and Opportunity Project" that was supposed to transform the Republican Party into a more inclusive party here.

Brexit, Black Republicans, and Faith: Just Thought You Should Know 6/24/16

I love and appreciate you Pastor, but I think you're wrong.

What do you do when your spiritual leader's politics are not congruent with your own?  This week as we mark the anniversary of the Emanuel AME Church massacre, I find myself at a special crossroads. My pastor, Rev. A.R. Bernard Sr., pastor of Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, NY, revealed this week that he is part of an "evangelical advisory committee" for the Republican presumptive presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.  Pastor Bernard and 19 other evangelical leaders, including the ultraconservative former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, met with Trump on Wednesday in New York, at his request, to discuss various matters of faith and policy before a larger meeting with over 1,000 church leaders.  While not giving his explicit endorsement (it was not required by the Trump campaign to sit on the board surprisingly) Pastor Bernard says he came away from the meeting "impressed" with Trump's sincerity and seemingly dismissed some of Trump's verbal flip flops as him being merely "inarticulate."  He appeared on several news talk shows including Roland Martin on NewsOne , Fox & Friends, and his weekly guest spot on Sirius XM  to explain his position but, and I say this respectfully, I personally find that position troubling.

Trump presents one of more uncomfortable tables for the Christian conservative movement to come to in recent politics. It’s not only his personal story that poses problems, filled as it is with unscrupulous business practices, two tumultuous divorces, and prior liberal leanings on topics like abortion. It’s his current policy portfolio, too. The two immovable pillars of Trump’s presidential campaign are opposition to undocumented immigrants and a fierce rejection of refugees from the Middle East. Those happen to be two of the occasional break points between the religious right and the Republican Party.  -- Trump's New Evangelical Advisors Neither Love Him Nor Hate Him.  They Just Want Him To Listen, Sam Stein, Huffington Post 6/22/2016

Pastor's argument on SiriusXM (unfortunately I can't post the link but it's 6/24/16 edition of "The Armstrong Williams Show" On Demand if you subscribe to XM) is that the neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have done anything for the African-American community so maybe something different is required.  Disappointingly, I heard the usual talking point trotted out to explain why Pastor Bernard, as a card carrying Republican, would be open to a candidate who has spent most of his public life living in opposition to the very values he lives by as a man of faith.

"He's not your typical Republican."

He also made the argument that evangelicals must make character compromises sometimes for candidates who do not have the sterling family record of a Barack Obama, who is still as scandal free as the day he was the elected.  To be fair, he doesn't explicitly defend Trump's most outrageous ideas, like banning Muslims from entering the United States, but he walked a fine enough line with his words to avoid outright condemning Trump for anything.  He didn't hesitate, however, to criticize Hillary Clinton for her husband's infamous "3 strikes" legislation that sent black incarceration rates soaring and on Roland Martin's show, bring up Bill Clinton's infidelity as a moral measuring stick to contrast Trump.  Both are notorious womanizers but neither of those points, in my opinion, can be tied to Mrs. Clinton since she wasn't even a politician in 1994 when 3 strikes became law and penalizing her candidacy for the sexual sins of her husband is wrong.  There are plenty of other, more legitimate criticisms, like the debacle in Beghazi during her tenure as Secretary of State, the e-mail scandal that won't go away, lying about coming under sniper fire in Yugoslavia, voting to go to war in Iraq as a Senator in 2002, and using racism in her campaign against Barack Obama in 2008. 

Look a Sniper! (Photo: Washingtonpost.com)

Neutrality is something Pastor doesn't believe in.  He likened it to being dead in the opening monologue to his radio show this week, but I'm not sure if Pastor realized not only the level of backlash he would receive, but how even granting an audience with Trump, a man who tried to openly sway the black vote earlier in this campaign by meeting with 100 black pastors and failing miserably to get their endorsement, would influence his congregation.  To reiterate, Pastor has not given Mr. Trump his endorsement but there are people who would vote for a cactus if their pastor stood next to one.  Conversely, mistrust of the church is at an all time high and while I'm sure he sits on that advisory board to preach a prophetic word to a potential president, Pastor's party affiliation (R), Trump's track record, his fellow pastors doing things like buying jets at their congregation's expense, and covering up immoral scandals, have even the most devout believers questioning the motives of their leaders.  Does that mean he shouldn't have met with Trump?  If you asked me yesterday I'd have told you he should have slammed the door in his face.  Today?  I can understand why you would want to be at the table in the unlikely event he does become President.  Being an advocate for issues specific to people of color is essential in the halls of power where we are too often forgotten about or subject to laws that are based on stereotypes, not reality.  It probably just disgusts me that it might be Trump's table in November.

Trump retweeted falsehoods like this repeatedly during the primary

Trump is loathed by most people of color and except for the few he finds useful to further his own agenda, the feeling seems mutual.  All of his African American outreach efforts up to now have come across as pandering rather than actual engagement.  Changing that was Pastor's stated goal for attending.  However, Trump's pattern of behavior suggests that not only will he ignore what these Men of God have to say but he'll use this meeting as a wink and a nod to evangelicals across the country without having to actually change anything about himself, his policies, or his politics.  For the latest examples just look to his statements about the Orlando night club shooting, where he made sure to take credit for "being right" before he offered any condolences to the victim's families.  Yesterday, he held an hour long press conference, praising the success of Brexit while touring his golf course, as a win for Britain because it mirrored his own plan for the United States.  Brexit, or British Exit, if you weren't aware, is a referendum in which the UK voted to leave the European Union.  Their decision to leave the organization after 43 years, unfortunately, was driven largely by opposition to the EU's immigration policy of accepting Syrian refugees and the short term economic pain will be excruciating for the working class Brits who voted for it.  We saw a small taste of that economic pain yesterday when the British Pound crashed post vote, instantly wiping out years of national wealth.  Long term, Britain has an even tougher road ahead as the current Prime Minister, David Cameron, immediately announced his resignation effective this October.  His successor could possibly being the bigoted former mayor of London Boris Johnson who was a leader in the campaign to leave and is literally the British version of Trump.  Also, they're now directly competing with the EU for foreign trade agreements and their young adults will now require visas to work anywhere else in Europe which will ultimately cost them even more jobs, likely sending their economy into a deep recession.  There is evidence to suggest that most voters didn't truly understand what they were even voting for as the Washington Post reported that the most Googled phrase in England yesterday was "What is the EU?"  Maybe it is  a preview of what will happen if Trump is elected. Anti-intellectualism at its finest, folks.  Are we going to allow racism to rob us of our future too?

The fact that the Donald is close enough to the Presidency that the man I look to for a spiritual perspective felt the need to grant him an audience is nauseating.  It's as if people expect Donald Trump to morph into a respectable presidential candidate when he's shown again and again and again and again exactly who he is.  It's the crux of his appeal.  I understand the desire for change.  I understand that there are millions of people angry with the direction this country is going right now.  I felt it when I pulled the lever for President Barack Obama in 2008.  More specifically, I understand that the Clinton's track record when it comes to black folks is spotty at best and the "lesser of two evils" thought process we usually use to decide is tougher than ever before.  I'm not sure what the solution is, but I know Trump's policies would be disastrous for the country economically, socially, and politically.  Starting a trade war by taxing imports, building a wall along the Mexican border, and trying to extort payments from our allies will not bring the secure manufacturing jobs of the past back to our shores.  Globalization, as the UK will find out, is something you can't turn back the clock on.  Attempting to do so, instead of preparing for the economy you actually live in, is literally cutting off your nose to spite your face.  Ironically, this is when I would listen to Pastor to see what his views were but after this week, I realize that maybe the bigotry and isolationism is exactly what the people want.  Maybe the dream of a multi-cultural society is just that.  A dream.  Maybe, I really just need to pray for God's will to be done, ensure me and my family are OK and stop placing my faith in anything or anyone other than Him. 

...Til next week.