By
SJ Otto
I'm glad to see all the
planned protests against the Donald Trump inauguration. I am also glad to see
all the Democrats and Celebrities who are planning to boycott Trump's swearing
in. This country is more divided than it has been since the Vietnam War. It
needs to stay that way. The Republicans have learned how to win elections. Now
they are poised to attack every government program that that poor people and
poor working people need to survive. That is evident as the Republicans in
congress get ready to end Obamacare (Affordable Care Act or ACA) and pull the
rug out from under 18 million people who presently have access to health care.
They will also take away the Medicaid expansion that many poor working people
rely on to stay healthy and ALIVE.
The attacks don't stop there.
Women's rights are under attack. And racist of every stripe are strutting their
stuff, with the idea "this is Trump country now." They feel free to
spew their racist venom with delight.
It is not just redneck working
class rubes spreading the hate. Consider
what Maine Gov. Paul LePage said just recently. According
to the Portland Press Herald:
"Maine Gov. Paul LePage said Tuesday that
the NAACP should apologize to white America, making the comment just hours
after he weighed in on the president-elect’s Twitter beef with a black civil
rights icon.
But the governor rewrote American history when
he misrepresented events surrounding racial segregation in the South.
“I will just say this: John Lewis ought to look
at history,” the Republican said during his weekly appearance on the George
Hale and Ric Tyler Show on Bangor-based radio station WVOM. “It was Abraham
Lincoln who freed the slaves, it was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant
who fought against Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice.”
LePage’s version of history erred on two key
points. Historians say that Jim Crow laws didn’t exist during the Grant
administration, and that Hayes’ presidency set the stage for the creation of
Jim Crow laws.
The governor’s criticism was aimed at Rep. John
Lewis, a civil rights leader and Democratic member of Congress from Georgia,
who announced Friday that he wouldn’t attend Donald Trump’s inauguration and
said, “I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president.” Trump
answered Lewis on Twitter, saying Lewis was “all talk, talk, talk – no action
or results. Sad!”.....
......LePage, later trying to clarify his
references to presidents Hayes and Grant, said the NAACP was casting all white
Americans as racists. It’s not clear why he referred to the NAACP in his
criticism of Lewis, who was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee in the 1960s, not the NAACP.
“The blacks, the NAACP (paint) all white people
with one brush,” LePage said. “To say that every white American is a racist is
an insult. The NAACP should apologize to the white people, to the people from
the North for fighting their battle.”
LePage is typical of the kind of Republicans that are
winning elections all over this country. His actions are destructive to the
common working man and especially the working poor. He is typical of the
backward, right-wing, repugnant and disgusting bullies that have crawled out
from under their rocks to poison our political Climate. His remarks are so blatantly racist it is
remarkable that he is able to stay in that office. When elected politicians
like him can get away with such blatant racism, it is no surprise that fringe
people on the far right believe their time is here at last.
It is no wonder that more than 60 Democrats plan to
boycott Trump's inauguration. We all need to let Trump and the Republicans know
that we may not be able to stop him from taking office, but he will be at war
with us his entire term.
Rep.
John Lewis, D-Georgia
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