What Does the GOP Really Want?
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ~ George Orwell
Yesterday was Tennessee Statehood Day: June 1, 1796.
Yesterday, Tennessee politicians boasted loudly that Tennessee is the best state in the Union.
John W. Rose
Mark E. Green
These are also the same self-centered fools who voted for "Trump's Big Beautiful Tax Cuts for Billionaires Bill," which may be the most egregious redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy, at the expense of everyone else. Read it for yourself. These fools didn't.
If you listen to these Trump sycophants talk about the bill, you'd maybe get the impression that it's a great piece of legislation. But when you read the 1,100-page bill, you discover that Trump lied about it—and when is he ever NOT lying—and that he demanded absolute fealty from these political hacks. They repeat his lies. Always. They're spineless cowards. David Kustoff won’t even host “open to the public” town hall meetings because he’s scared.
But back to their boasting about Tennessee being the greatest state. You must assume their goal is to tell that lie in such a way that it sounds believable to their Fox News audience, and that the unintelligent will believe their Tennessee politicians are the cause for that greatness.
Tennessee is not among the top 10 states, where metrics such as healthcare, education, and standard of living are taken into account.
The Law and Order GOP is a joke. Their leader is a 34-Count Felon and serial rapist.
And if you really want to hear a Republican try to sound like members of the law and order party, ask them to explain the best ways to face crime in our state and here in Memphis. Their solution? More cops, more prisons, stiffer penalties, and longer sentences.
The year before my brother-in-law died, he was going to the doctor trying to figure out what was wrong with him. He was getting regular blood transfusions. Insanely ignorant treatment! How about finding out why he needed blood regularly? They treated the symptoms without treating the cause.
These GOP knuckle-draggers do the same thing when they talk about crime. Shelby County's Senator Brent Taylor is one of these on the local law and order soapbox.
Leaders who have been effective in curbing crime in their communities do this:
1) Study the successful steps other states and cities have taken to address crime.
2) Study the causes of crime, especially in a city like Memphis.
3) Initiate a multi-pronged solution.
I've lived in Memphis off and on since the Marine Corps transferred me to Millington in 1975 when the base there was both a Naval Air Station and the Naval Air Technical Training Center (NATTC). The base boasted over 20,000 sailors and Marines.
I've been a Memphian since I moved back to the States from Japan in 1998.
When I came here the first time, Memphis was in the throes of racial unrest and "the white flight." Court-ordered busing began in 1973 as an initiative to desegregate public schools. It was unpopular, to put it mildly.
It was no coincidence that Christian schools sprang up all over town like dandelions in 1972-73. White parents took their children out of public schools and sent them to Christian schools. The vast majority of these schools met in the buildings of the churches that founded them. Harding Academy and ECS were founded long before the busing issue came up.
A number of unusual developments began to occur in Christian education during the early 1970s. The anti-abortion movement (also mistakenly called pro-life) has its roots in Christian schools and colleges and tax-exempt status. You would be surprised to know what was happening then. I'll post an article in the comments about that.
The vast majority of those Christian schools were closed within 15 years. Two of them, Briarcrest and First Assembly Christian School, have continued to grow from their founding in 1973. It's interesting to me that each school now has anti-discrimination clauses in its bylaws.
I was born and raised in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and knew a lot about racism. However, the Memphis variety I encountered in the 1970s was much more aggressive and outspoken than what I was raised with. If you're a Memphian, you don't need me to tell you that Memphis has struggled with race problems from the beginning, with chattel slavery before the town was even incorporated in 1826. Memphis was a major market for the slave trade. The infamous Nathan Bedford Forrest was a well-known slave trader before the Civil War.
When people talk about crime in Memphis, white people think "black perpetrator." They won't say it in polite company, usually. But that's what they're thinking. Racists may say it out of hate. Statisticians will say it from the data.
Now, if we leave that discussion there, that white people want more police, more jails, more prisons, and longer sentences. And they don't really care how much those things cost.
Will that plan have a significant effect on crime? The data suggest a slight decrease in crime. However, the statistician will say there is little significance to justify the expense. White folks will get out their credit cards.
So if more police, more jails, and prisons don't have a significant effect, what does?
Addressing crime by addressing its root causes has a significant impact. But racists and white supremacists will call that "woke" and repeat the old lie Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens told on March 21, 1861:
"Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error ...
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
When current-day neo-Confederates—many have high-level positions in Trump's administration—insist that the Civil War was a struggle over state's rights and the Confederate flag is "heritage, not hate," point them to Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech."
Those racists, neo-Confederates, and closeted fascists are here in Tennessee, in Shelby County, in Memphis. They have positions of authority and responsibility in local, state, and national politics. They'll spend money on more police, jails, and prisons, but not a dime on programs that actually make a difference, programs that reduce the horrible poverty that fuels crime.
But those programs are slow-moving. It won't have an overnight effect. It will take years.
Racists, neo-Confederates, and closeted fascists don't really want to improve the lives of black families, black students, and black communities. Those woke programs are for radical leftists.
And Memphis crime won't be solved by parading the Director of the FBI around town and getting photo ops with him.
Changing the culture in poor neighborhoods, even providing breakfast at school for kids who would otherwise go hungry, are small steps forward. But the GOP votes against breakfast for kids.
Would you be surprised to know how many poor families don't have the internet at home, no computer, no printer; they don't even have a table or a desk to use for homework, no quiet space for doing their school work, no access to books, no one in the home who could help them with their school projects.
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."
~ Fredrick Douglass
Preach!