The Republican Unholy Trinity

                                          The Republican Party’s Unholy Trinity

         By continuing to genuflect and kiss the ring of Donald Trump, the Republican Party reveals the true unholy Trinity it worships: White privilege, racism, and gun violence.

         First, let’s make a clear distinction between white privilege and racism. White privilege, built on the foundation of white supremacy, is that sense of entitlement white people —- particularly white men (like Tucker Carlson) —- have which believes in the unquestioned RIGHT they have to CONTROL the levers of power in our society. Any threat to their grip on that power —- be it from African Americans, women, Latinx people, Asian-Americans, the LBGQT community —- and they reel in paroxysms of victimization (tune in to Fox News at any given moment if you want to see this in real time). White privilege is embedded in the societal structure of the United States —- its government & political parties, its economic system, its basic social status (structure), all of which were designed and controlled by white men from the very start. Let’s be honest: the Constitution (the 3/5th clause, the Electoral College), Supreme Court decisions (the Trail of Tears, Dred Scott, Plessy), and years of legislation (Jim Crow, the Chinese Exclusion Act, etc.) have only served to reinforce a worldview that is based on white men not only being in charge but being entitled and privileged within that system. Consider the centuries of privilege white men have accrued —- being the only ones admitted to “elite” colleges, where they created networks that continued in their domination of the economic and social systems throughout our history. Simply look at the work required for minorities (including women, LBGTQ, et al) to gain the simplest of rights (voting, access to public facilities, admission to universities, etc.) —- rights that have always been granted to white men. Those who continue to argue that they are “white and don’t have privilege” are lacking perspective, historical knowledge, and, I’d contend, a realistic view of the world. I know that being a blue-eyed white guy named “Johnson” was nothing but good for me from an early age. That sense of white privilege is the first solid leg of today’s Republican Party’s three-legged stool.

          Regarding racism: the latest violence against a minority (the Atlanta Asian-American murders) reveals the deeply inherent racist bias of policing —- which is only one aspect of the historic and divisive racism the nation has nurtured for over 400 years. Reflect on this: imagine if the gunman who killed 8 people in the Atlanta area had been Black or Latino. Like Dylan Roof, the 21 year old white man who killed 9 people in a Charleston, South Carolina church, the Atlanta assailant, even though he was considered “armed and dangerous,” was arrested by white officers without “incident”—- and then we were told he was having a “bad day.” Eugene Robinson wrote about failing to hear if George Floyd might have been having a “bad day” --- and I’d add Eric Garner, Philando Castille, Sandra Bland,  and Breonna Taylor (as the start of a list), wondering if those people were having such “bad days” that they deserved to die. But the policing is only an extension, an arm, of a system that has violent embraced racism from the start. In keeping with a system of white privilege, racism is a natural outgrowth. The “other” (be it black, brown, yellow, red, gay, female, etc.) is always seen as a threat —- because the white people in power, from the start, know that those who are discriminated against, who are the target of terrorist violence, who are treated as “less than,” will, given the opportunity, seek justice and equality. The real sickness of the racist mind is the assumption that those who have been on the receiving end of their racist treatment will react violently (because the whites in power have,  historically,  used violence repeatedly against any who challenged them —- including white workers who wanted to unionize!). This racist mindset is now a solid leg of the Republican’s  three-legged stool.

         The final leg of the stool, of course, is guns. This is a hill the Republicans are willing to die on.  Let me be clear: I do not want to do away with the Second Amendment and I do not want to “take your guns away.”  I do, however, want much more strict regulation  of: a) how people are able to acquire guns; b) what kinds  of weapons and ammunition are available to the public; and c) how we keep track of who has what.  The people I know who are gun owners are incredibly responsible --- their guns are in safes and/or otherwise secured in their homes (for “self-defense”).  The problem we have in this country right now, as we saw this past week in Georgia, is that in any number of states a person, on a whim (or worse), can walk into a gun store and walk out with a lethal weapon --- no background check, no waiting/”cooling off” period, nada, nothing, zilch.  We know that “gun shows” proliferate a vast number of states and anyone can acquire a tactical assault weapon (the big regulation” is that weapons can’t be “automatic,” meaning they take a little bit longer to fire shot-after-shot (and we discovered that “bump-stocks” make that point almost irrelevant).  Yet, despite the number of mass shootings we have seen year-after-year, the NRA has convinced the Republican Party that the “Second Amendment” is more important than the First!  And that’s the final leg to the Republican Party’s three-legged stool --- its unholy Trinity.
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       Let’s remember that this is not Trump’s doing alone --- he inherited a half-century of right wing/Republican evolution into this party of “No,” this party that stands for nothing other than “power” and blocking/stopping progressive change.  Remember it began with Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority/Southern Strategy” and continued with the Reagan and H.W. Bush dog whistles about “welfare queens” and Willie Horton.  It was advanced by Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” and  W. Bush’s “compassionate conservativism.”  With the explosion of the internet and the beginning of widespread conspiracy theories (remember “9/11 was an ‘inside job’”?) Trump’s “birther” mythology and his tv celebrity were perfect platforms to transform the white privilege/racist/gun-loving party into the 35,000 lies/insurrectionist-supporting party.  And that’s who they are.  They continue to LIE, blatantly, and genuflect at the Holy See of Mar-a-lago, where their Babylonian Captivity (aka the Avignon Papacy) is playing out.  It will take time to undo the half-century of what the Republicans have constructed.  Other political parties have died due to their inability to evolve --- the Federalists, the Whigs, the Know-Nothings --- and we may well be witnessing the Republican Party’s self-immolation.  Only time will tell.
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