Category: politics

Donald Trump Degrades George Floyd’s Memory

Every day is a new low for Donald Trump as a member of the human race. On Friday, he dragged George Floyd’s memory down into the gutter, too.

Democratic and Republican party politicians alike don’t only represent and defend something horrible — our racist, exploitative system — but they sometimes say really horrendous things that reveal their true aspirations for capitalism and imperialism and how deeply flawed they are as human beings. In the bourgeois media, these moments are often referred to as “saying the quiet part out loud” — so named because they express what the speaker really thinks and the actions that speaker would really like to take. They often happen when the speaker doesn’t realize the microphone is on.

There are many famous “hot mic” moments. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan — doing a sound check just before a radio address while the Cold War still raged — said, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

There are also many examples of saying the quiet part out loud. In 2013, the state’s Republican Party chairman, Robert Gleason, admitted that the photo ID requirement that had recently been pushed through the legislature effectively suppressed voter turnout and that this had been the objective all along, thus exposing as a lie the claims about fighting “fraud.” He said it had “helped a bit” to lower Obama’s margin over Romney, cutting it to half of what it had been over McCain four years earlier. The Republican leader in the state’s House of Representatives, Mike Turzai, had already predicted during the campaign that the voter ID measure would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

Politicians typically try to walk back these moments. But not Donald Trump. There’s no such thing as a “hot mic” for this president. He even brushed off the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, claiming at one point that it wasn’t him speaking. And he doesn’t just say the quiet part out loud routinely; he memorializes it in writing in his Twitter feed.

Even his closest advisers expect this from him. You can see it in their faces.

In that context, consider what Trump said on Friday when trumpeting a surprising decline in official U.S. unemployment that the Boston Globe generously characterized as based on “iffy” data. Speaking in the Rose Garden, Trump revelled in how the analysts seem to have been proven wrong. His own economic adviser Kevin Hassett had warned of an impending 20 percent unemployment rate in June. Referring to the TV shows he spends most of his time watching, Trump said, “I think it was one of the greatest miscalculations in the history of business shows, business shows talking about Wall Street,” he said.

Reading from a prepared statement, Trump then managed to make some unremarkable but at least coherent points. For instance, he said:

Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement regardless of race, color, gender, or creed. They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement.

But the moment he strayed from the paper in front of him, the real Trump came out:

We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen. Hopefully George is looking down and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. It’s a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.

Trump then declared the economic figures were great “for African Americans, for Hispanic Americans, and for Asian Americans, and for everybody.”

Donald Trump is incapable of even pretending to have any empathy for a murder victim and his family. He also seems to be mocking the very idea of racial equality. He is a malignant narcissist who must make everything about himself — either by pointing to pseudo-accomplishments or playing the victim of the “worst attacks” in history. And so, Trump’s “tone-deafness” — as the mainstream media likes to call it — once again provoked the denunciations of other capitalist politicians and their media spokespeople.

CNN’s Maeve Reston said that this comment showed Trump’s “breathtaking disconnect from the pain and tumult that has unfolded in this country after George Floyd’s death. Speaking later in the day, Joe Biden criticized Trump: “George Floyd’s last words, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,’ echoed all across this nation and, quite frankly, around the world. For the president to try to put any other words in the mouth of George Floyd I frankly think is despicable.”

These are strong words, but what about the crime bill that Biden wrote? Isn’t that despicable too, given that it led to the United States becoming the world’s leader in locking people up — especially people of color?

Trump will be Trump. Every time the political talking heads on TV think he’s hit a “new low,” he shows that he has no low. But don’t let his particular brand of “despicable” confuse you. What is most despicable is the system Trump, Biden, and all the Democrats and Republicans represent — a system they are working overtime these days to keep from unraveling as people stream into the streets and say “enough.”

Democrats and Republicans sometimes hide their real agenda behind pretty words and phrases. Biden does this a lot. Trump doesn’t really. What ultimately matters is their actions. Democrats and Republicans alike actively perpetuate racism, violence, and oppression. Our job is to help turn the rage that is exploding everywhere into a political movement that puts Trump, Biden, and the rest of them in the dustbin of history.

Source: Donald Trump Degrades George Floyd’s Memory | Left Voice

Paris bans George Floyd protest planned at US Embassy

PARIS – French police have banned a demonstration planned to take place in front of the US Embassy in Paris on Saturday as protests mount around the world over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The Paris police department said on Friday it had decided to ban the demonstrations because of the risks of social disorder and health dangers from large gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trouble had broken out at another anti-police demonstration in the French capital on Wednesday. Thousands had turned up despite a police ban on the event in memory of Adama Traore, a 24-year old black Frenchman who died in a 2016 police operation which some have likened to Floyd’s death.

Unrest has broken out across the United States after the killing of Floyd, a 46-year-old African American who died after a white policeman pinned his neck under a knee for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis on May 25.

Source: Paris bans George Floyd protest planned at US Embassy

Pope Francis on the death of George Floyd: We cannot tolerate racism and claim to defend life

“We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.”

Pope Francis this morning spoke of his “great concern” at “the disturbing social unrest” in the United States following “the tragic death of George Floyd,” which he attributed to “the sin of racism.”

“We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life,” the pope said.

He did so in a message addressed to his “dear brothers and sisters in the United States,” meaning the entire nation and not just its 70 million Catholics, a senior Vatican source told America. He spoke to them during his virtual public audience from the library of the apostolic palace on June 3, which was carried by Vatican Media.

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J’accuse! General James Mattis Denounces Trump as Threat to Constitution

IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH

By General James Mattis

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

Source: James Mattis Denounces Trump as Threat to Constitution – The Atlantic

In Paris, thousands defy police orders to protest death of George Floyd

Demonstrators sought to highlight similar cases in France.

PARIS — Nearly 15,000 demonstrators defied police orders and marched in a sprawling protest against police violence outside the Paris tribunal Tuesday night, largely inspired by the killing of George Floyd last week in the United States.

The march was largely peaceful, but there were multiple reports of police deploying tear gas beyond the view of a Washington Post reporter. Video footage released by France’s BFM TV also appeared to show one group of demonstrators burning a Colonial American flag with the French and American names written on the white stripes.

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