Degradation

No wonder the KKK has endorsed Trump for re-election.

In case there was any doubt about the slime this “President” represents, his awarding of the Medal of Freedom to one of the most despicable people in the country should erase it.

Limbaugh is as close as Trump could come to awarding the medal to himself.  He has mocked all manner of human suffering, and he shares Trump’s obsessive hatred (actually, jealousy) of Barack Obama, whom he has referred to as a “Hafrican American,” and about whom he liked to play a mocking song called “Barack the Magic Negro.”

And of course, Limbaugh was an enthusiastic birther.

As Ed Brayton has noted, barely nine months into the Obama presidency, Limbaugh declared (with no evidence at all) “In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the Black kids cheering.” It was only a small part of his constant insistence that that “race riots are part of the plan that this regime has.”…Brayton also reminded readers of Limbaugh’s constant attacks against immigrant communities.

In 2019 alone, he said that “the Democrat party has imported the third world into this country and they have not assimilated,” compared asylum-seekers coming to the U.S. border to the invasion of Normandy, and quipped that “maybe toilet water is a step up for” some migrants.

Both CBS and the New York Times have published lists of the incredibly offensive, racist and sexist garbage that Limbaugh has regularly spewed–ample evidence that bestowing the Medal of Freedom on this pathetic gasbag makes a mockery of an award intended to highlight human–and humane–achievement. Rush Limbaugh doesn’t belong in the company of people like Elie Wiesel, Rosa Parks and Mother Teresa. In a just world, he would be shunned by all decent people.

But of course, Donald Trump is not a decent person.

This travesty is just one more bit of evidence–if any more evidence is needed–that the political divide Trump exemplifies is not between Republicans and Democrats. It is between white nationalists and the rest of us. It is simply no longer possible for voters to pretend that they support Trump because they approve of his non-existent economic “policies” or because they they are grateful that he’s been putting unqualified ideologues on the federal bench.

What Trump voters really approve of are the attitudes, bigotries and ignorance constantly and crudely expressed by the Rush Limbaughs of the world and parroted by Trump–and the “policies” that give aid, comfort and encouragement to the KKK and Neo-Nazis.

There is a meme I’ve seen several times on Facebook, a quote by a self-identified German (whether accurately attributed or not, I don’t know):”Dear America: You are waking up as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.”

In November, we will be in a position to assess the accuracy of that numerical observation.

Comments

OMGs of the Day…

Sometimes, it’s really hard to choose the most appalling news of the day.

I could begin with the continued embarrassment that is Dick Lugar’s campaign.

Yesterday, Lugar was one of 31 (male) Republican Senators who voted against reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act; evidently, “true Indiana conservatives” consider laws against wife-beating an infringement of their liberty. Today, we learn that Lugar has invited aging crooner Pat Boone to campaign for him. Whatever his merits as a singer, Boone is primarily known today as a right-wing crank. He is a creationist. He has compared gay activists to terrorists. He is a “birther” who insists that Obama was not born in the U.S. and is not a Christian. He is exactly the sort of person the Dick Lugar I once admired would have avoided like the plague.

Granted, Mourdock is a toad. But watching Lugar frantically shed what is left of his integrity in an effort to appeal to the baseness of the GOP base has been endlessly disheartening.

Lugar is hardly the only public figure who has allowed his ego to trump his judgment. Today’s news also focuses on Eugene White, who seems equally intent upon disgracing himself.

It seems that White is doing everything he can to torpedo the impending State takeover of several IPS schools. He’s refusing to turn over student information, spreading misinformation to IPS parents, removing equipment from the targeted schools and otherwise making the transition as difficult as possible–all without any apparent regard for the children whose education is supposed to be his first concern.

I am no fan of State Superintendent Tony Bennett, who clearly has an ego problem of his own, and I harbor grave doubts about the wisdom of the state takeover. But White’s response is infantile and destructive–a description which, come to think of it, has characterized his entire tenure at IPS. A school board that took its responsibilities to children seriously would have fired him long before this.

Whatever happened to public servants who wanted to–you know–serve the public?

Comments