Trump Still Silent on Serial Bomber Assassinating Black and Brown Folks in Austin

Austin, Texas police chief speaks to reporters after bombing
last week, (Huffington Post)

Last night the fourth terrorist bombing in Texas claimed two more casualties.

Two weeks and four bombs. But there is an element here that makes these crimes even more spectacular: The victims are black and brown, so Donald Trump is silent.

Imagine if the victims were white and lived in small-town Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?

From Shaun King at The Intercept:

Here’s what I know and what makes living in this country so damn exhausting: If the victims were white and the suspects were known to be Muslims, the president of the United States would care. In these cases, however, with no profile of the attacker available and a trail of black and brown victims, it seems like this square peg doesn’t fit into the round hole of Trump’s agenda. 

The United States has a white supremacist in the White House, with an emboldened base of white supremacists cheering this lunatic on.

Fascist America Remains a Grave Danger, Giant Step Backwards Looms

Madison, Wisconsin—Fascism is here in the United States, and has been since our nation's birth.

In our country built upon slavery, social dominance, and enduring, widespread imbecilic conceptions of race, fascism is a defining feature of America, an exercise in domestic terror.

If you're a black person at, or past adolescence walking, driving, shopping or breathing, there remains an expectation of police harassment, perhaps prison, and death-by-cop is a distinct possibility. [Note to black readers: Avoid Fitchburg, Wisconsin, in Dane County.]

Carving out a career while advocating human rights risks jail time and death in America; ask colleagues and friends of the late Sandra Brand, driven to suicide by Texas police.

Occasional massacres and 1,000-plus annual police killings are the norm, not tragic anomalies, (Kantrowitz, Mal Contends). But as President* Donald Trump struts and fumbles about, fascism can become much worse, taking us back as the last 60 years have more-or-less seen forward strides in human rights.

So, when Trump makes sadistic public appeals as the chief executive, the terror that Trump strikes is a familiar experience to a lot of Americans.

It matters what a president says. It matters that Trump minimized the Holocaust in one of his first public statements.

This lunatic is dangerous and in virtually every policy sphere is a public menace.

Today, every American should be ready with a plan to support Robert Mueller.

America already is a police state in many municipalities with occupying forces politically aligned with Trump.

Consider what is the predictable reaction of Trump to a criminal indictment of any member of his family or Trump himself? A lunatic in the White House is capable of inflicting much damage to our country.

Democrats and proponents of the experiment that is America need to stand up for the values and standards that animate their popular movements.

This means actively supporting Robert Mueller. This means actively speaking against Roy Moore.

That means speaking up loudly against Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, to pass a tax cut that will greatly benefit the wealthiest corporations and individuals, as a prelude to devastating Social Security and Medicare.

Democrats are not adept at getting their messages across to the American people.

Sure, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and sometimes Joe Biden speak eloquently on the ideals that make America great.

But the messages of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump must resonant louder or at least hit more chords with a majority or Trump wouldn't be sitting in the Oval Office and Bannon would not be getting Republicans to support the child-molester, Roy Moore.

The lights are blinking red.

Romare Beardon's work on American lynching

Charleston Is an Act of Domestic Terrorism, by Definition

Update: " The murders of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, is being investigated by the Justice Department as a possible case of domestic terrorism, a U.S Justice Department spokeswoman said on Friday." (Reuters)
 --
The Charleston Massacre (Grandin, The Nation, New York Times) is much worse than a hate crime from the American South.

It is an act of domestic terrorism by definition and should be treated as such.

18 U.S. Code § 2331 (5)
the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended—
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

This is an easy call.

"Black churches suffered at the hands of thugs and terrorists throughout the Civil Rights era, as they had for a century before, but such attacks aren’t a matter of remote history. As recently as the 1990s, a wave of fire-bombings hit black churches," notes Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.

Perhaps the Republican Party can see its racial taunts, racist dog whistles and its war on black Americans should cease immediately.

Perhaps Scott Walker and Paul Ryan could begin the cease fire; I wouldn't count on it.