(ThyBlackMan.com) There’s an age-old axiom that says that one should ignore what people say, and watch what they do. The truth of that axiom is on full display during this Trump impeachment effort. In spite of the fact that conservatives have a long tradition of wrapping themselves in the flag, wearing flag pins in their lapels, and claiming unfettered patriotism and loyalty to our Constitution, now, when push comes to shove, and their self-interest is on the line, the truth of their grossly flawed character has come to the fore, and that truth is, their only true loyalty is to the maintenance of their power, bigotry, and greed.
.
The very word “conservative” in a political context means that a person is dedicated to “conserving” past traditions, and in America, that means the preservation of White supremacy at any cost – and that’s exactly why conservatives are fiercely loyal to Donald Trump. Many of them don’t even like him personally, because they know that he’s neither conservative nor liberal. His one and only philosophy is promoting Donald Trump. But the GOP and over 81% of White Evangelicals have entered into an evil alliance with him to protect Trump, as long as he protects them from their waning power due to the rapidly changing demographics that threatens their grip on power over the country.
.
That explains the fanatical fixation that conservatives have on so-called “security” on our Southern border. Their fixation is not on national security at all, it’s actually about White security, and disallowing any more non-White people into the country. If their concern was actually about national security, why aren’t they just as concerned about our Northern border, where hordes of White people cross into the country illegally? So it doesn’t make sense. Why put bars on your back door and leave your front door wide open?
.
And if White Evangelicals are actually following the teachings of Jesus, how could they possibly turn a blind eye to Black people being murdered by rogue cops on the street, and in their homes, and be completely accepting of the atrocities being committed against non-Whites on our Southern border? If they truly viewed America as “That shining light on the hill”, and truly followed the teachings of Jesus Christ, they wouldn’t tolerate the abuse of another human being. They rise up in protest. Melania Trump protested her son, Barron’s, name even being brought up in the impeachment hearings, while she hasn’t said a word about her husband literally tearing the children from the arms of immigrant mothers and putting them in cages – and she’s an immigrant herself, but she’s a White immigrant.
.
Melania got into the country on an “Einstein Visa”, the EB-1, reserved for people who are highly acclaimed in their field – the government cites Pulitzer, Oscar, and Olympic winners as examples – as well as respected academic researchers and multinational executives. Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I fail to see any special talents that Melania possesses, other than the talent to maneuver her way into bed with a billionaire, which probably wasn’t very hard with Donald.
.
.
So the fact is, so-called Evangelical Christians and patriotic conservatives only adhere to their highfalutin Christian and patriotic values as long as it’s convenient. When it becomes inconvenient they revert back to the selfish and animalistic nature that allowed them to enslave and brutalize millions of Black people and commit genocide against 200 million Native Americans. So the gullible and/or self-serving Black people who either collude with these people, or just sit back and refuse to vote, are literally suffering from a mental illness at worst, or gross stupidity at best.
.
And poor White conservatives are no better, because the people who lead the conservative movement don’t care any more about them than they do non-Whites. Poor Whites are simply manipulated as “useful idiots” whose anger, fear, and votes are being used to promote the rich and powerful, or the conservative agenda.
When conservatives first arrived on these shores, they brought with them the European notion of class distinction. They have always suffered from the distinctly undemocratic attitude that the only inherent value of the average American is as servants to cater to the whims of the upper class.
.
Alexander Hamilton, one of this nation’s conservative founding fathers, believed that the rich and “wellborn” should be given a permanent share in government. He said:
.
“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people…. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.”
.
Hamilton supported a lifetime appointment of the President (after being selected by congress, instead of the people). Can you just imagine that, Donald Trump FOR LIFE!!!? But America dodged that bullet during the Federalist Convention that took place between May 14 and September 17, 1787.
.
Since most of the founding fathers came to America to escape the aristocratic class system in Europe, Hamilton’s desire to preserve the class system was resoundingly defeated in favor of an unfettered democracy, but that didn’t mean that people of Hamilton’s point of view would quietly go away. Instead, they became the conservative coalition, and lowered their profile as blatant aristocrats, and continued to pursue their agenda by using their wealth, power, and various other strategies to divide the people to achieve their agenda, and that’s what we see today. That accounts for why conservatives tend to be specialists in obstructionism and division, and why the American people ALWAYS suffer under conservative governance.
.
In 1921 — eight years before the great depression — Republicans took over the helm of this nation for 12 years. During that time there were three Republican administrations, the first of which was the administration of Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding’s administration for one thing more than any other — scandal. It was during Harding’s presidency that the Teapot Dome Scandal erupted. His administration was considered the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States — until Nixon’s (Watergate), then Reagan’s (Iran\Contra), and finally Bush’s (Iraqi War).
.
Next, in 1923, came Calvin Coolidge, the president that Ronald Reagan is said to have most admired. Coolidge’s policies of large tax cuts, allowing business a free-rein, and his encouragement of stock speculation contributed greatly to the impending stock market crash and the great depression that was to follow.
.
In 1929 during Republican, Herbert Hoover’s administration, the stock market crashed – much like under the Bush Administration – starting the Great Depression, but back then there was no Barack Obama to come to the rescue or mitigate the damage early on. So in spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Herbert Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. Much like Republicans of today, Hoover and his Republican Party had absolutely no compassion for either the plight of the American people, or America’s veterans who had put their lives on the line for this country.
.
During Hoover’s administration, 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
.
The conditions were horrific. During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work they had no income, so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents. So three generations of a family could be living in one household – and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and the wife lived with the family.
.
They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 and no paid vacation. In addition, since there were no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family – sick grandparents and all – would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
.
As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So, in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery – the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
.
Think back to the “Little Rascals” we use to watch as kids, and how ragged they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come-up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. At this very moment the Republican Party is attacking Social Security, Medicare, Education and many other programs to force the poor and middle class to pay for the huge deficit created by their $1.8 trillion tax cut for the rich.
.
But finally in 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal democrat, was elected overwhelmingly. He immediately surrounded himself with a group of the finest minds in the country, including Columbia professors Adolph A. Berle, Jr., Rexford G. Tugwell, and Raymond Moley, known at the time as the “Brain Trust.” After assembling these men and others he went about the business of developing a” New Deal” for the working- class people of this country.
.
The New Deal had two components – one, to help the economy to recover from the effects of the great depression, and a second component to give relief to the American people and to ensure that they would never be placed in a position of total destitution again. To help heal the economy Roosevelt created programs that regulated business, controlled inflation, and brought about price stabilization; to bring relief to the people he signed The National Labor Relations Act which guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining, and he created the Social Security Administration to guarantee workers some sort of income once they became too old to work. He also signed the Fair Labor Standards Act which protected worker’s rights and set a minimum wage for workers, and all of these programs are under brutal attack by the Republican Party as we speak.
.
With his New Deal in place, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this “bleeding heart liberal”, not only led this country out of the worst, Republican-generated, crisis that this country has ever faced, but went on to lead the free world in victory over Hitler in WWII. He then ushered in the most sustained era of prosperity that the world has ever known.
.
One would think that conservatives would have seen the light, but their passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the lower and middle classes seemed to transcend all logic. Thus, from the moment the New Deal went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. The closest they’ve come to succeeding started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, “Reaganomics”, which led directly to the Great Recession of 2008 under George W. Bush. Then Barack Obama came along just in time to prevent the world from going into a second Great Depression. So like everything else Donald Trump likes to brag about, he actually inherited his “great economy” from President Obama.
.
Thus, the economy is doing great in spite of Donald Trump, not because of him – and as we speak, the GOP is attacking Medicare, Social Security, and other safety net programs put in place in order to help to protect the average American so they can pay down the tremendous national debt created by their $1.8 trillion tax cut they gave to the rich. So in essence, they’re taking from the poor to feed the rich.
Our grandparent’s generation – the generation that experienced the Great Depression, fought WWII, and who we refer to as “The Greatest Generation” – wouldn’t let a Republican anywhere near the White House. During their era, Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to office four times, and finally died in office on April 12, 1945. The Republicans had to promote the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution limiting the president to two terms in office just to have even a remote chance of getting into office.
.
But finally in 1953 they managed to elect the hero of WWII, Republican, Dwight Eisenhower to office, but even he was a Republican in name only – in 1957 he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas to integrate a segregated school after Gov. Orval Faubus tried to prevent Black students from entering, and as his final act in office he warned America about the Military-Industrial Complex, the very people that Donald Trump and the Republican Party represent today.
.
So here we are 243 years later and the conservatives are still at it – attacking our educational system to keep Americans dumbed down, trying their best to destabilize or destroy any program that prevent the average American from being totally reliant on them, and stirring up hatred, fear, and animosity among the people to keep them divided and from thinking clearly.
.
Nevertheless, the average brainwashed Republican will say, “But we’re the party of Lincoln. It was the Democrats who created the KKK and engaged in lynchings during the Jim Crow era”. But that’s a gross manipulation of the facts. In order for the facts to be made clear it’s important to replace party affiliation with political philosophy. While it is true that the old Democratic Party was filled with racist conservative “Dixiecrats”, during the Civil Rights movement under moderate Republican Ike Eisenhower, and later, Democratic presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic Party came out for civil rights. As result, the conservative Dixiecrats migrated to the Republican Party, and Republican liberals moved to the Democratic Party. Thus, the two major parties completely changed their previous political polarities. Therefore, if the Civil War was being fought today, the Republicans would be the Confederacy.
.
So the facts are clear – conservatives have always been this nation’s bigots, both racial, and class bigots – regardless to what party they were in.
Staff Writer; Eric L. Wattree
