When asked at a town hall on Wednesday to identify the cause of the United States Civil War, presidential candidate and former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley answered that the cause “was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do…. I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are…. And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people.”
Nikki Haley just retained the confederate flag on the South Carolina Statehouse. I hear people questioning Kamala Harris on the presidential ticket. She has accomplished exponentially more good for this country than Nikki Haley and much more qualified for the executive office. Again Nikki Haley as well as Trump and many others are giving the Democrats great talking points for 2024.
Why is anyone surprised by Haley's answer? Aside from her own history of ambiguous answers and stealth support for the Confederacy, she's now a token figurehead of a party based on lies, bigotry, deference to major funders and foreign powers, and embrace of authoritarianism. No way was she going to jeopardize her current prominence. As if MAGA people would actually vote for a smart woman with dark skin! Ha!
"....She rejected the long and once grand history of the Republican Party and announced its death to the world. " this gave me chills. And i will go to sleep tonight praying it to be true. wow....just wow.
Haley effectively squashed her chances of winning anything in the government and I am here for that. The questioner was accused by the R Party of being a Democratic plant. That’s hilarious because the question posed to Haley was an honest one and if you saw her paused reply, you will have noticed her pure panic. She was not happy. I was, however, laughing at her. You know, the funny thing is that she fails at admitting she is a woman of color. She could’ve saved herself but she blew it. I am so glad.
I am reading “Differ, We Must” and I had not previously heard Nikki Haley’s comments. I cannot imagine how aggrieved Lincoln would feel were he to hear his political progeny speaking like Nikki Haley. Thank you for, as always, the clarity with which you put events in context.
"Everything trump touches dies" is as true as ever. The question now is whether our nation can survive the taint of his touch during his time in office. Much as I would love to see the entire nation follow the lead of Colorado and Maine, I believe the answer to that question lies in the results of the 2024 election. We either crush the MAGA movement at the polls or we cease to exist as a free and democratic nation.
I think that you err, Heather, in attributing the death of the Republican party to Nikki Haley. I think that the Republican party of people like Liz Cheney, most of whose policies and positions I disagree with, but whose loyalty to our Constitution and our democracy I share and admire, has been dead for quite a while since it transformed itself from a political party, a group of people brought together by a set of shared ideas and values, into a cult, a group of people brought together by a shared reverence for a charismatic leader. The unwillingness or inability for three of the so-called Republican aspirants to the presidency to criticize the leading candidate did not start with Nikki Haley's omission of slavery as the cause of the Civil War. It has been building for much longer than that. Let's not give her credit that she doesn't deserve.
Somehow, I don’t think Liz Cheney would have addressed the question asked of Haley in the same way. This why her Republican colleagues declared her persona non grata.
Nikki Haley made the mistake of saying the quiet part about today’s Republican party out loud. “And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the WHITE people.” She was supposed to just hint at the white supremacy, not blurt it out.
Four of the enslaving states that seceding from the United States (South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Mississippi) wrote formal documents describing the “immediate causes” for their secession. They are horrifying, yet important to read. All four make absolutely clear that secession was chosen to protect their “rights” and “freedoms” to enslave Blacks forever.
Here are the very first sentences from Mississippi’s “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.”
“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”
This amazing letter needs to be plastered all over every major newspaper in this country!!!!! Again and again, regularly, until we've all voted blue and put Democracy back into office!!! As always, thank you so very much, Heather!!!
James Weldon Johnson, born in Florida in 1871, was a national organizer for the NAACP and an author of poetry and nonfiction. Perhaps best known for the song "Lift Every Voice and SIng," he also wrote several poetry collections and novels, often exploring racial identity and the African American folk tradition. (Poets,org)
*
When the Orders Came
Fatimah Asghar
"[We are] calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
‘Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, and educator. She is the author of the full-length collection If They Come For Us (One World/ Random House, 2018) and the chapbook After (YesYes Books, 2015).’
‘A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. Asghar is the Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day in January 2021 and is the writer and cocreator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls. She lives in Los Angeles.’ (poets.org)
We are in a quandary. I, for one, am enveloping myself in my dad's WWII uniform jacket and going into combat to save our democracy with hand written notes and cards...embellished with original art. I don't have guns, but I have passion and love for this country.
On Valentine’s Day, 1859, Oregon voted to join the United States. In order to do so, they had to accept a number of racist conditions imposed by southern states. It wasn’t difficult, many of the settlers on the first two wagon trains, who received part of the Willamette Valley, some of the richest, most fertile farmland in the world, were from racist areas to the east, or had southern sympathies. In fact, Oregon came within one vote of joining the South during the Civil War. And, for 40 years after the end of the Civil War, black people could legally be whipped out of the state, and were not allowed to be buried in the same cemeteries as white folks. That racism still exists today, in an area NW Oregon, and a city, Portland, Oregon, viewed as bastions of liberalism. Nowadays, it is much more subtle to use gentrification as a quiet tool of racism, rather than fighting the poverty inherent in racism, that so often leads to despair, crime, and addiction. During WWII, many black workers llved in a low lying area near the Columbia River named Vanport, and built Liberty ships. A great many lost their homes to the Great Vanport Flood. The community mainly occupied an area ironically named Albina, after that, and it has been systematically gentrified since then, raising property values and driving many out. The KKK was very active in SW Oregon, post WWII, and decades after, but i have not heard much about that since before 2000. I grew up in NE Oregon, 5th generation, now live in the Willamette Valley Yamhill County, where it lingers quietly. I never met anyone not white until i had graduated from high school, in a graduating class of 12. Thst summer, a contractor was in town, doing masonry work, and a young black man was doing a lot of that work. Although my friends and i all lived 8-13 miles from town, 4 of us were hanging out in the city park, where we and he met each other. It was very exciting for me to meet someone of a different race, and realize we are all the same. My father had told us all that he had a black friend in college, he talked him into going into bsr, and the owner threw him out. My father was so embarrassed and humiliated for convincing his friend to enter into such a horrid situation, that it bothered him for his whole life. He made sure we all knew about it, and I have never forgotten it. Today, our family and friends encompass people of many nationalities, races, and religions. All of us together constantly learn from one another. Stop learning and you begin dying. Today i work in the Oregon Wine industry, where i meet many Southerners, often white and black friends traveling together.
Nikki Haley just retained the confederate flag on the South Carolina Statehouse. I hear people questioning Kamala Harris on the presidential ticket. She has accomplished exponentially more good for this country than Nikki Haley and much more qualified for the executive office. Again Nikki Haley as well as Trump and many others are giving the Democrats great talking points for 2024.
Now Dammit Democrats, use them!!!!’
HCR - Now, that's a letter!!!
Why is anyone surprised by Haley's answer? Aside from her own history of ambiguous answers and stealth support for the Confederacy, she's now a token figurehead of a party based on lies, bigotry, deference to major funders and foreign powers, and embrace of authoritarianism. No way was she going to jeopardize her current prominence. As if MAGA people would actually vote for a smart woman with dark skin! Ha!
"....She rejected the long and once grand history of the Republican Party and announced its death to the world. " this gave me chills. And i will go to sleep tonight praying it to be true. wow....just wow.
Haley effectively squashed her chances of winning anything in the government and I am here for that. The questioner was accused by the R Party of being a Democratic plant. That’s hilarious because the question posed to Haley was an honest one and if you saw her paused reply, you will have noticed her pure panic. She was not happy. I was, however, laughing at her. You know, the funny thing is that she fails at admitting she is a woman of color. She could’ve saved herself but she blew it. I am so glad.
I am reading “Differ, We Must” and I had not previously heard Nikki Haley’s comments. I cannot imagine how aggrieved Lincoln would feel were he to hear his political progeny speaking like Nikki Haley. Thank you for, as always, the clarity with which you put events in context.
"Everything trump touches dies" is as true as ever. The question now is whether our nation can survive the taint of his touch during his time in office. Much as I would love to see the entire nation follow the lead of Colorado and Maine, I believe the answer to that question lies in the results of the 2024 election. We either crush the MAGA movement at the polls or we cease to exist as a free and democratic nation.
Excellent summary. The rise and now demise of the Republican Party. What will replace it? That’s the essential question.
I think that you err, Heather, in attributing the death of the Republican party to Nikki Haley. I think that the Republican party of people like Liz Cheney, most of whose policies and positions I disagree with, but whose loyalty to our Constitution and our democracy I share and admire, has been dead for quite a while since it transformed itself from a political party, a group of people brought together by a set of shared ideas and values, into a cult, a group of people brought together by a shared reverence for a charismatic leader. The unwillingness or inability for three of the so-called Republican aspirants to the presidency to criticize the leading candidate did not start with Nikki Haley's omission of slavery as the cause of the Civil War. It has been building for much longer than that. Let's not give her credit that she doesn't deserve.
Somehow, I don’t think Liz Cheney would have addressed the question asked of Haley in the same way. This why her Republican colleagues declared her persona non grata.
Nikki Haley made the mistake of saying the quiet part about today’s Republican party out loud. “And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the WHITE people.” She was supposed to just hint at the white supremacy, not blurt it out.
Four of the enslaving states that seceding from the United States (South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Mississippi) wrote formal documents describing the “immediate causes” for their secession. They are horrifying, yet important to read. All four make absolutely clear that secession was chosen to protect their “rights” and “freedoms” to enslave Blacks forever.
Here are the very first sentences from Mississippi’s “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.”
“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp
This amazing letter needs to be plastered all over every major newspaper in this country!!!!! Again and again, regularly, until we've all voted blue and put Democracy back into office!!! As always, thank you so very much, Heather!!!
To America
James Weldon Johnson 1871 –1938
How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?
Rising or falling? Men or things?
With dragging pace or footsteps fleet?
Strong, willing sinews in your wings?
Or tightening chains about your feet?
This poem is in the public domain.
James Weldon Johnson, born in Florida in 1871, was a national organizer for the NAACP and an author of poetry and nonfiction. Perhaps best known for the song "Lift Every Voice and SIng," he also wrote several poetry collections and novels, often exploring racial identity and the African American folk tradition. (Poets,org)
*
When the Orders Came
Fatimah Asghar
"[We are] calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
—Trump’s administrative team, December 7, 2015
they shipped us to the sanctuary camps
& we forgot our other countries.
like good schoolchildren we sung
the anthem loud, so loud
until we could hear nothing else.
not the birds delighting
over their young, or the dogs’ snarl
at our feet, or him on the news
hourly, growling. this is the cost
of looking the other way
when they come for us:
I build safety inside you
& wake in cuffs.
I’m all mouth. every morning
I whisper my country my country my country
& my hands stay empty.
what is land but land? a camp
but a camp? sanctuary
but another grave? I am an architect.
I permission everything
into something new.
I build & build
& someone takes it away.
From If They Come For Us: Poems (One World/ Random House, 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Fatimah Asghar. Used with the permission of the poet.
‘Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, and educator. She is the author of the full-length collection If They Come For Us (One World/ Random House, 2018) and the chapbook After (YesYes Books, 2015).’
‘A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Asghar has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. Asghar is the Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day in January 2021 and is the writer and cocreator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls. She lives in Los Angeles.’ (poets.org)
We are in a quandary. I, for one, am enveloping myself in my dad's WWII uniform jacket and going into combat to save our democracy with hand written notes and cards...embellished with original art. I don't have guns, but I have passion and love for this country.
On Valentine’s Day, 1859, Oregon voted to join the United States. In order to do so, they had to accept a number of racist conditions imposed by southern states. It wasn’t difficult, many of the settlers on the first two wagon trains, who received part of the Willamette Valley, some of the richest, most fertile farmland in the world, were from racist areas to the east, or had southern sympathies. In fact, Oregon came within one vote of joining the South during the Civil War. And, for 40 years after the end of the Civil War, black people could legally be whipped out of the state, and were not allowed to be buried in the same cemeteries as white folks. That racism still exists today, in an area NW Oregon, and a city, Portland, Oregon, viewed as bastions of liberalism. Nowadays, it is much more subtle to use gentrification as a quiet tool of racism, rather than fighting the poverty inherent in racism, that so often leads to despair, crime, and addiction. During WWII, many black workers llved in a low lying area near the Columbia River named Vanport, and built Liberty ships. A great many lost their homes to the Great Vanport Flood. The community mainly occupied an area ironically named Albina, after that, and it has been systematically gentrified since then, raising property values and driving many out. The KKK was very active in SW Oregon, post WWII, and decades after, but i have not heard much about that since before 2000. I grew up in NE Oregon, 5th generation, now live in the Willamette Valley Yamhill County, where it lingers quietly. I never met anyone not white until i had graduated from high school, in a graduating class of 12. Thst summer, a contractor was in town, doing masonry work, and a young black man was doing a lot of that work. Although my friends and i all lived 8-13 miles from town, 4 of us were hanging out in the city park, where we and he met each other. It was very exciting for me to meet someone of a different race, and realize we are all the same. My father had told us all that he had a black friend in college, he talked him into going into bsr, and the owner threw him out. My father was so embarrassed and humiliated for convincing his friend to enter into such a horrid situation, that it bothered him for his whole life. He made sure we all knew about it, and I have never forgotten it. Today, our family and friends encompass people of many nationalities, races, and religions. All of us together constantly learn from one another. Stop learning and you begin dying. Today i work in the Oregon Wine industry, where i meet many Southerners, often white and black friends traveling together.