“Now That’s Trumped Up!”

Well, it’s been two weeks since we awakened to learn that someone we believed could NEVER be elected President of the United States did just that. I guess this is how racists felt on November 5, 2008, the day after Barack Obama’s first election! It’s going to be a long 4 (or maybe even 8) years! My advancing age, professional status, and commitment to try to be a better Christian keeps me from saying what I really want to say. But I’ve come up with a substitute term… This is really, “Trumped up!” Here are just a few of the things I think are “trumped up” about the results of this election:

– A man with 5 children and 3 baby mamas was elected…that’s trumped up!
– A man who committed adultery on ALL of his wives was elected…that’s trumped up!
– The first-lady-elect (for now) has pornographic pictures of herself circulating while people denounced First Lady Michelle Obama for wearing bare arms…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect is an admitted sexual predator…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect built his entire campaign by instigating racist, sexist, homophobic ideologies…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect’s “appeal” to Black voters was by telling them they were all poor, unemployed, uneducated, and violent and asking what they had to lose by voting for him…that’s trumped up!
– The President –Elect demonized all Muslim families and suggested that all Muslim immigrants needed to be “extremely vetted”…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect started his campaign for the presidency by declaring our current president was not even a citizen of the United States…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect made a claim about bringing jobs back to the US while he is a primary mover for outsourcing in his own businesses…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect announced his candidacy while claiming that Mexico was sending its murderers and rapists to the US and he would build a wall between the two countries that Mexico would pay for…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect clearly lost all 3 presidential debates and demonstrated his unstable temperament…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect ran on a platform of “making America great again” (but I can not determine what bygone era of greatness he was referencing)…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect kept his tax returns secret from the American public for the entire campaign…and still has not revealed them…that’s trumped up!
– The New York Times revealed that the President-Elect has paid NO taxes for the last 10 years. So while the rest of us are paying for defense, social security, highways, schools, health care, etc., he’s paid for NOTHING…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect has been endorsed by the KKK and other noted hate mongers and White supremacists…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect began filling his cabinet and other key staff positions with racists and alt-right ideologues…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect encouraged thuggish and violent behavior at his campaign appearances…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect claimed he would prosecute his opponent when he won the election and led the cheers to “lock her up”…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect wants the nation to withdraw from international agreements and partnerships like NATO…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect wants to dismantle a health care plan that is the signature program of our current president and is likely to end up with many poor people without coverage and the rest of us with coverage with super high deductibles …that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect wants to appoint Supreme Court judges that will control women’s bodies but will likely let old men get those little blue pills for free…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect claims to know more about ISIS than the generals whose job it is to know, plan and execute military strategy…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect claimed he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue (NY) and still not lose any voters …that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect claims that climate change science is a hoax…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect ran a campaign based on fear and doomsday scenarios … that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect is allegedly a billionaire who has poor people believing he is actually going to do something for them …that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect is a reality show celebrity who has never run for any public office…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect believes he is the smartest, most charismatic, captivating person ever (despite a orange face and perhaps a hair transplant)…that’s trumped up!
– The President-Elect ran a fake University, was sued for fraud and recently settled for $25 million…that’s trumped up.
– The President-Elect is petty and petulant and explodes in Twitter ® rants whenever someone criticizes him …that’s trumped up!
– We may have to live with this man as president for at least the next four years…that’s trumped up!
– If the President-Elect messes this thing up the nation is stuck with his vice president who is a dangerous ideologue…that’s trumped up!

In the end, we have visited much of this foolishness on ourselves. We acted as if President Obama’s legacy would remain intact and because we weren’t enthusiastic about his Democratic successor we did not mobilize to stop who we got. And that is trumped up!

Stay Black & Smart!

“Straight Outta Commonsense”

By now dear reader you have seen or heard of two popular culture phenomena. One is the movie, “Straight Outta Compton” that is doing incredible box office despite being in fairly limited circulation and the other is the Internet memes that have been derived from the film. I don’t want to spend time on the film that although being hailed as excellent filmmaking is dismissive of the misogyny and the truth of the documented abuse directed toward Black women that was a reality of hip hop group NWA. I also don’t want to spend any time on all of the clever, silly, and in some cases offensive memes that bear the “straight outta” insignia. I’ve made my own, “Straight Outta West Philly” meme to post on Facebook pages and laughed at clever ones like the “Straight Outta Melanin” meme featuring race imposter, Rachel Dolezal. No, instead I want to appropriate the “Straight Outta” fad to talk about what we are seeing in the political sphere.

A few weeks ago we witnessed the first Republican presidential debate. There are so many declared GOP candidates that the FOX network that sponsored the session had to break them into 2 tiers with the higher polling group being featured in prime time. I have paid attention to political information since I was about 12 years old. I listen to presidential press conferences (whether the President was someone I supported or not), I listen to political pundits, and I read political commentaries and analyses. I am drawn to politics and policies because I have seen what difference the rhetoric and implementation of same make in the lives of people. When Lyndon Johnson uttered the words, “And, we shall overcome,” it spelled a shift in the nation’s civil rights winds. When Ronald Reagan declared, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” it set a series of events into motion that reflected the movement of democracy in East Berlin. Political speech can have power and it can have meaning.

Unfortunately, at this point in the presidential election-cycle the political speech is being dominated by Donald Trump and quite frankly I find him to be “Straight Outta Commonsense!” The more frightening fact is how many Americans are energized by his foolish talk. Many years ago I remember a “60 Minutes” interview with President Jimmy and Mrs. Rosalyn Carter. The interviewer asked them a question about President Reagan but Mr. Carter, always the gentleman, refused to say anything personally negative about Mr. Reagan. But, Mrs. Carter said something profound when she said, “This President makes us comfortable with our prejudices!” In other words, under Ronald Reagan we could talk about people as “Welfare Queens” and suggest that poor people should wait for funds to “trickle down” from the wealthy. However, I don’t think Ronald Reagan was without commonsense. He was totally out of touch with the lives of everyday people and he had absolutely no clue about Black folks, but he wasn’t without commonsense.

Actually Donald Trump does not lack commonsense. Donald Trump knows EXACTLY what he is doing. He lives and works in one of the world’s most diverse cities. It is filled with Black people (from all over the world), Latinos (from all over the world), powerful and accomplished women, and language speakers from everywhere. Trump is not naïve about these differences. His many financial interests require him to employ a diverse workforce. No, it’s not Trump who is straight outta commonsense, it’s his likely constituents. Trump knows that the people who will vote for him have deep-seated and almost virulent racism and bias toward anyone who they perceive as different from them. So, Trump took a calculated gamble that suggested that people like this would be drawn to a discourse of prejudice and racist animus. Trump and his people know that such people are “straight outta commonsense.”

Trump has been so effective with this nonsense that he has drawn the entire Republican candidate field into his orbit. He knows that “his voters” are those who are weary of a Black president and any mention that “Black Lives Matter.” They do not care that Trump rarely provides one shred of evidence for his pronouncements about Mexican immigrants as rapists and thieves. They do not care that it would be virtually impossible to build a wall across the southern border and then expect Mexico to pay for it. They do not care that Trump utters nothing but contempt for women and has been disparaging to national war hero, Senator John McCain. He knows “his voters” are “Straight Outta Commonsense” and that if Black people don’t “stay woke” we may be led by a president who wants us all to be “Straight Outta Commonsense!”