Isn't it odd that ...

[Kablooie]

the defeated enemies from America’s two most definitive wars, Confederates and Nazis, have joined forces to attack America once more under the guise of patriots from America’s first seminal war.

[tblue37]

1. Good point. K&R. nt

[stonecutter357]

2. K&R

[niyad]

3. k and r

[Caliman73]

4. Sad Reality. They have always been here. It is baked into the American Pie.

This is always difficult for people to accept because we want to see America as a country that lives up to the ideals and in many ways, we try and in many ways, we succeed.

The problem is that while your statement is correct in some respects, the reality is that racism and White Supremacy is part of the fabric of America and we have never really dealt with it in a definitive way like Germany in banning Nazi symbols and teaching the accurate history of the rise of Hitler. Germany embraced its history and its shame, unlike the United States with the issues of slavery, the Civil War and its aftermath, and even with the support of many Americans for Nazi Germany in WWII.

While we say that the founding fathers were "men of their times" the reality is that there was a belief, even by Lincoln until just prior to the Emancipation Proclamation that Black people were inferior. Racial prejudice was alive and well in the North as in the South, though obviously the South actively fought to maintain the status of Black people as "not human" but property. There was no indication that Lincoln wanted to "punish" the South for the war. He wanted to welcome them back as brothers. We don't know what he would have done had he lived. We know that Johnson, a notorious southern sympathizer was chosen as his running mate because Lincoln might not have won election without appeasing a certain base of support. We know that Grant supported radical Reconstruction and tried to do the right thing, but Hayes just as quickly sold Black people out issuing in the KKK and the retaking of the South by Confederates.

Over the decades the overt racism has been driven underground, but it is still there, it is part of the fabric out American society. Trump has just made it okay for the overt racists to come back out. It will continue when Trump is gone, until we truthfully and without fear, confront the whole of our history with relation to how people of different skin color and ethnicity (including people who were not originally considered White but became part of the coalition) were treated throughout our history.

[bigbrother05]

7. It was driven underground by the forces of progress and equality

Those better lights in the soul of America felt empowered by the wins of the Civil Rights movements even in the face of violence coming from the racist minorities. The RW media took hold when they were able to decry Political Correctness and Affirmative Action as reverse discrimination and intolerance on the part of those benefiting from the adjusted social order. The very tolerance and forgiveness shown by those formerly oppressed has been misread as weakness and the opportunity to heal may be lost because of the festering rot that is the heart of our racist heritage.

I fear a return to the confrontations we saw in the sixties without an enlightened government to act for the common good.

[Caliman73]

9. don't lose hope.

Remember that government was not all that enlightened during those periods either.

It took a lot of demanding and pressure to get them to do the correct thing. We can do it again. What I am hoping for is that we push further and make ourselves look in the mirror and confront our past honestly.

[Unrepentant Fenian]

5. You're right! Thanks for pointing that out!

[safeinOhio]

6. Love their biggest losers and

surrender monkies.

[Ford_Prefect]

8. Follow the money. I repeat: Follow the money! These groups do not exist in a financial vacuum.

Koch and others fund them through 3rd party back door routes as they do the Bundy gang and other RW fringe. They deliver just enough funding to keep going and then enable their coordination by arranging timely and discreet meetings between certain key members of various groups. Not to say the groups are incapable of organizing, rather their efficiency is amplified by this assistance and their aim is tailored. Jeff Sessions is known to be a fan as are Bannon and Miller.

[ck4829]

10. It gets better than that my friend

They want to pretend they're patriots and they're Tea Partiers yet they also revere the Confederates and the Nazis, yep yep, but hold on... They also want to say Russia is our friend even though about this time eight years ago they were screaming about Obama's "czars" (CZARS?! ISN'T THAT RUSSIAN!?&quot and not too long before that they were all calling liberals and progressives communists and not too long before that liberals and Democrats were all tools for the USSR, and this is all for their little future war of the global war vs the global south, white vs non-white, the west vs the east... in other words, the war between the Muslim and the non-Muslim, even though it was a Muslim state (Morocco) that was the first to recognize the US as a sovereign state... funny how the tea pots never mention that one.

[grantcart]

11. Joined with the neo Stalinists. A perfect trifecta

[progressoid]

12. K/R

[Skittles]

13. PATHETIC LOSERS

[susanna]

14. Very insightful, Kablooie. n/t