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| The Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) The Raft depicts the real-life tragedy of the doomed 1816 journey of the remains of the 19th-cenutry French frigate that saw the gruesome death of some 400 human beings—doomed by malevolence, incompetence and arrogance in a historic act of indecency captured by an appalled and fascinated Géricault. |
Trump's propaganda aimed to mobilize American whites for self-defense
Following Republican and only Republican howls of voter fraud comes voter suppression, an attack on the foundation of American democracy.
Though many Americans require no reason for the enactment of state laws obstructing the votes of blacks, browns and other latent criminals trying to pass themselves of as good Americans, the voter fraud lie is employed by every anti-voting rights activist from Donald Trump to state Republican Party hacks to local polling workers.
There simply is not enough room here for immigrants and minorities, who anyway do not enjoy a claim to living in the United States; this is a widespread sentiment which Trump seeks to exploit.
It does appear that the national mainstream press has had enough of the Republican nonsense on voter fraud. Witness the Sunday news shows last week as a senior Trump administration racist was forced to confront facts in an apparently new journalistic-political terrain, (This Week, (McGraw, ABC News)).
The Trump administration's Stephen Miller appeared on This Week was challenged in a manner not typically seen on the utter lack of evidence supporting Donald Trump's made-up claims of massive voter fraud.
For an important summary of the American political culture from Slate Magazine, see Jamelle Bouie:
Trump’s birtherism didn’t just feed anti-Obama distrust and paranoia among conservative voters. It helped feed a sense of grievance—a feeling that their country had been hijacked by nefarious forces, and they needed to take it back. And whether Trump realized it or not at the time, it also helped till ground for his eventual presidential campaign and its message of nativist anger and racist hostility. It is now important to remember all of this, as Trump and his backers stoke another conspiracy theory, aimed at delegitimizing a different set of opponents.No, Miller, Trump and the rest of the Republican Party do not have the goods.
Since November, Trump and his allies have adopted a similarly false and conspiratorial take on the election, claiming without evidence that millions of unauthorized immigrants voted in the presidential race, handing a popular vote victory to Hillary Clinton. 'In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,' declared Trump just a few weeks after the election. He doubled down on this claim during the presidential transition, repeating it during a meeting with lawmakers and subsequently announcing a 'major investigation' into said fraud. In recent days, the president has given a new twist of specificity to his claims of voter fraud, telling a group of Senate Republicans and Democrats that illegal voters from Massachusetts were responsible for Clinton’s win in New Hampshire.
On Sunday, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the president, offered his own support for Trump's claims. 'This issue of busing voters in New Hampshire is widely known by anyone who’s worked in New Hampshire politics,' said Miller in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. 'It’s very real. It’s very serious.' Despite being repeatedly pressed for evidence on this claim, Miller said, 'This morning, on this show, is not the venue to lay out all the evidence.' This is what someone says when he doesn’t have the goods.
What they do possess is bad intentions that is a grave threat to the American people.
Do not be surprised if you see contemporary brown shirts such as the Milwaukee cops who had recently set a special unit to drive around black neighborhoods, (replete with a command center), until the unit was later disbanded.
