The day he descended the escalator in his tower of gold, with head raised arrogantly forward as he held court at his press conference announcing his run for the presidency, he tossed down the bodies of Mexican people as if they were red Trump steaks as his initial stepping stones on his compassionless and brutal march to the White House.
Before his declared run, Trump arguably the most prominent of the so-called “birthers,” continually accused President Obama of illegitimacy as Commander in Chief by claiming he was born outside the United States, even well after the President released his official birth certificate. This along with Trump’s supposed investigations into Mr. Obama’s time spent in Indonesia as a child, and inquiries into his African roots on his father’s side coexist as not-so-veiled xenophobic and racist threats.
Throughout the remainder of his jaunt to the White House up to today, he stepped over the bodies of Muslims, black people, Latinx people of all nations, activists in Black Lives Matter since they did not matter to him, people with disabilities, bodies that did not fulfill his rigid standards of feminine beauty, former U.S. prisoners of war, Gold Star parents, women who have the audacity to fight to control their own bodies and their own lives, transgender people of all ages, couples in same-sex relationships, invading “alien” immigrants, dreamers, in fact, anyone and everyone who disagree with or criticizes him.
Most Republicans continually fail to speak out against Trump’s racist rhetoric and clearly racist policies except, on occasion, those who have announced their impending retirement from Congress. Most Republicans and conservative Evangelical Christians who personally may find Trump’s words and behavior morally reprehensible choose to remain silent for the promised shinning gold coins of ultra-right-wing judges placed by this President throughout the federal court system up to the Supreme Court.
Republican and Christian leaders and their supporters who don’t speak out are enablers and are themselves racist conspirators!
“Enabler” is the term given to those who fail to act to help abusers. “Passive bystander” or “bad Samaritan” is the name for people who are conscious of bad actions developing around them but fail to intervene.
Enabling and passively standing by take many forms, including conspiring with an abuser in a sinister plot, literally offering an addict substances, contributing to the denial of aggressors and addicts by asserting that they don’t have a problem, to downplaying the seriousness and making excuses for their behaviors, translating for others what the person “really meant,” downright lying, and so on.
How do Trump enablers sleep at night and get back up in the morning still willing to degrade and prostrate themselves by supporting Trump’s attack on our democratic institutions and seriously dismantling our country’s standing in the world?
Each time anyone enables an abusive action, they keep perpetrators and themselves further from the truth and from help, and they diminish themselves and their integrity more than just a bit.
For the Republicans to have any future as a party, they are fooling themselves if they think that by passively supporting racist policies or by merely presenting a few diverse faces will lead them to victory.
To remain viable, the GOP must craft a diversity of thought and a diversity of policies to give people something to vote for, something to embrace, something that makes peoples’ lives better, rather than rehashing the policies of the past and agreeing to the politics of hate perpetrated by Trump.
The late Dr. Derrick Bell of New York University Law School forwarded the theory of “interest convergence,” meaning that white people will support racial justice only when they understand and see that there is something in it for them, when there is a “convergence” between the interests of white people and racial justice.
Bell asserted that the Supreme Court ended the longstanding policy in 1954 of “separate but equal” in Brown v. Board of Education because it presented to the world, and specifically, to the Soviet Union during the height of the cold war, a United States that supported civil and human rights.
Let’s take another example: the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) president, Brigham Young, instituted a policy on February 13, 1849, emanating from “divine revelation” and continuing until as recently as 1978 forbidding ordination of black men of African descent from the ranks of LDS priesthood.
This policy prohibited black men and women from participating in the temple Endowment and Sealings, which the Church requires for the highest degree of salvation. The policy likewise restricted black people from attending or participating in temple marriages.
Young attributed this restriction to the sin of Cain, Adam and Eve’s eldest son, who killed his brother Abel: “What chance is there for the redemption of the Negro?,” stated Young in 1849 following declaration of his restrictive policy. “The Lord had cursed Cain’s seed with blackness and prohibited them the Priesthood.”
The twelfth LDS Church president, Spencer W. Kimball, who served from 1973 to his death in 1985, was supposedly touched by a vision, and he reversed the ban, referring to it as “the long-promised day.”
Well, we can ask today whether “revelation” or interest conversion was the determining factor in granting black people full membership rights in the Church at a time of ongoing and heightened civil rights activities in the United States and an increase in LDS missionary recruitment efforts throughout the African continent.
In another example, the issue of slavery became a lightning rod in the 1840s among members of the Baptist General Convention, and in May 1845, 310 delegates from the Southern states convened in Augusta, Georgia to organize a separate Southern Baptist Convention on a pro-slavery plank. They asserted that to be a “good Christian,” one had to support the institution of slavery and could not join the ranks of the abolitionists.
Well, again, whether by divine inspiration or interest convergence stemming from political pressure and shrinking church membership, 150 years later in June 1995, the SBC reversed its position and officially apologized to African Americans for its support and collusion with the institution of slavery (regarding it now as an “original sin”), and also apologizing for its support of “Jim Crow” laws and its rejection of civil rights initiatives of the 1950s and 1960s.
When the Republican Party realizes its interests to follow the expressed wishes of the majority of the electorate, maybe then the GOP will join with the Democrats to craft and pass comprehensive and compassionate immigration reform, maintain and possibly strengthen legislation to guarantee affordable universal health care, secure Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance, and other vital safety nets.
Maybe that’s when Republicans will end all attempts at voter suppression and gerrymandering, ensure reproductive freedoms for all women, work to guarantee marriage equality long into the future, help to reduce costs and expand opportunities for people to attend college and enroll in job training programs, and enlarge government guaranteed grants and loan options.
Maybe that’s when Republicans will maintain an equitable tax policy where the rich and super rich pay their fair share, pass a jobs bill that puts people back to work to repair our ageing and crumbling infrastructure, reverse its current trend of deregulation on Wall Street, banking systems, and the environment, and invest more in renewable and clean energy sources, and the list goes on.
Maybe then and only then will the Republican’s interests converge with ethically responsible governing.
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Photo credit: AP Photo / Andrew Harnik
