Enter the Dragons
Tonight, Young protesters in Hong Kong are directly challenging China’s communist rulers. Inspired by kung fu legend Bruce Lee, their leaderless structure is frustrating efforts by the authorities to stymie them.
The protests, which started as a peaceful rebuke of the Hong Kong government back in April, have evolved into a direct challenge to Communist Party rule over this former British colony. With slogans such as “Free Hong Kong” and “Hong Kong is not China,” protesters have made clear they reject a future in which Hong Kong is inexorably absorbed into the mainland giant, eventually becoming just another Chinese city.
Protesters are provocatively calling the demonstrations an “era of revolution,” a formulation that has infuriated a ruling Chinese Communist Party determined to crush any challenge to its monopoly on power.
The protesters’ mantra – “Be water!” – epitomizes the movement’s tactics. A phrase borrowed from the Hong Kong movie star Bruce Lee, who used it to describe his kung fu philosophy, it is a call for flexibility and creativity, moving forward to press an advantage and pulling back when a strategic retreat is needed.
Its latest manifestation is the series of wildcat protests that have spread across the city in recent weeks. When the police turn up in numbers at one protest, the activists often engage them, tying down officers before melting away and reappearing to stage a fresh protest in another area.
Meanwhile…Back in Trumpistan
The statement, “It couldn’t happen here?” In today’s political climate is criminally naive.
What exactly can’t happen here?
Genocide? Chattel Slavery? The subjugation of women? Internment? Forced Castration of Homosexuals? Imprisonment of the Mentally ill?
It’s already happened in America and if we’re not vigilant, It will again. I for one have no desire to “Make America White Again”. Policy decisions by this administration are eerily similar to totalitarian regimes like the Chinese government who’s using police violence to crackdown on protesters. Yet most Americans stand by impotently.
Unprecedented American Presidential overreach in any other modern administration would have signaled an out of control demagogue. The offender would be publicly chastised even asked to resign.
Today? It’s just another Friday afternoon during the Trump Administration, where liberal pundits shake their heads, wring their hands and do nothing and the MAGA crowd stand in a burning house and applaud our collective demise.
Imagine, a U.S. citizen, a freshman Congresswoman of all people, denied entrance into Israel on a fact-finding mission and to visit her 90-year-old Grandmother by a sitting POTUS to satisfy a foreign ally looking for re-election?
Latest headline involving Trump, while I’m editing this piece, is a new low even for him. Drags Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s Grandma into his latest Twitter attack. He said the only winner in the congresswoman’s battle with the Israeli government is her grandmother who “doesn’t have to see her now”
And this is all public.
I’m surprised by American Jews that choose to support Israeli’s policies applauding this chilling autocratic move have forgotten or forgiven Trump’s own history of anti-Semitic remarks.
From the Article Titled- Jewish Groups Condemn Israel For Denying Omar, Tlaib Entry –
“The decision by Israel Thursday to ban two Muslim congresswomen from entering the country after tweets from President Donald Trump led some Jewish groups to lambast the decision.
The move to not allow Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan to visit would only exacerbate current divisions between the minority Democrats and the Jewish state and forgo them the opportunity to better understand the country and its people, argued several Jewish advocacy and lobbying groups with varying political ideologies.
“The fact that the U.S. president would urge the Israeli prime minister to bar members of Congress really does a disservice to this bilateral relationship and is yet another attempt by President Trump to politicize this relationship,” Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told Newsweek.
She called the move “unprecedented” and said that “never before have U.S. members of Congress been barred from entering Israel.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to ban Omar—who was accused of and condemned for making anti-Semitic tropes earlier this year—and Tlaib for “planning a campaign whose sole purpose was to strengthen” the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, highlighting the lawmakers’ lack of intention to meet with Israeli officials. Their itinerary from Israeli press showed they planned to meet with human rights and non-governmental organizations.”
Targeting these black & brown Congresswomen in the same week his vacuous lapdog Ken Cuccinelli mangling “The New Colossus” and Emma Lazarus, a week after the Tragedies in Ohio & Texas and rhetoric that only burnish Trump white Supremacist bonafides?
I can’t keep silent about this horseshit… Nor should you.
The New Colossus” is a sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus (1849–1887). She wrote the poem in 1883 to raise money for the construction of a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World).
In 1903, the poem was cast onto a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal’s lower level
It reads as follows:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
I don’t see anything about “Whites Only” Do you?
The audacity of these wealthy, subsidized, privileged white male bureaucrats, who never had an empty belly, want of clothing, modern convenience or hardships dare to demean anyone about “pulling their own weight” while enriching themselves off taxpayers like ticks on a dog is ludicrous in the extreme.
It speaks volumes about these inept civil servants unsuitably for their jobs and appalling lack of basic intelligence, moral fiber and blatant racism used as red meat to appeal to their angry base.
Over 100 million Americans today have at least one ancestor who came through Ellis Island. If someone didn’t need help if they weren’t in dire straights or mortal danger? If everything was “peachy keen” where they were? Why even come to America if not for freedom & opportunity?
We are a nation of immigrants.
By Trumps new “public charge” standards, most of those 100 million people today would fail to qualify for a green card.
We should all be concerned the people running our country (poorly) aren’t as smart as my own fifth grader. Or, after living in New York City for decades, never bothered to visit Ellis Island Museum to understand who were the people arriving there.
“Public Charge” rule is Racist and Dangerous
California on Friday sued the Trump administration to challenge the legality of this new “public charge” rule that could deny green cards to immigrants who receive public assistance, including food stamps, Medicaid and housing vouchers.
The lawsuit was filed by state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra in federal court in Northern California just days after the Trump administration published a new rule that could make it harder for many immigrants to get legal status in the United States.
“This cruel policy would force working parents and families across the nation to forego basic necessities like food, housing and healthcare out of fear. That is simply unacceptable,” Becerra said in a statement.
California is leading the lawsuit, which is also joined by Maine, Oregon, and Pennsylvania as well as the District of Columbia. A separate lawsuit has been filed by other states led by Washington.
Becerra said the new federal rule disproportionately impacts California, which is home to some 10 million immigrants, many of whom may be affected by the new rule either directly or by fearing to seek public services.
A major problem is this romantic retelling of history and “bootstrap” rhetoric, conservatives love to crow about but can be easily dispelled if you’ve ever opened a book on American History or as I stated above went to an immigrant museum.
Like it or not, opportunities for significant advancement in America has always been disproportionately afforded to those who are wealthy and connected.
As I wrote long ago in my article “Is America a Failed State?” Typically, a Failed State means a state has been rendered ineffective and is not able to enforce its laws uniformly because of the following five factors: high crime rates, extreme political corruption, an impenetrable and ineffective bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, and cultural situations in which traditional leaders wield more power than the state over a certain area.
Statistically, an American child born into poverty will likely remain impoverished.
All things being equal, the rich stay rich, the poor, stay poor and the unearned tail-wind of white privilege is real.
The unearned head-wind for everyone else is multiplied by several factors. Gender, Race & Sexuality are primary.
Turns out, being a wealthy, straight, CIS White Male is great in a Misogynist, Paternalistic, Racist, Homophobic society like the United States of America’s.
Where’s the lie?
That these men further white supremacy and classist discrimination? In the wake of El Paso and kids STILL in Federal Cages on the border. Isn’t a shocker to me. Many in this country, like Trump and Cuccinelli share and benefit from this world view.
The mass shooting in El Paso was one of the deadliest hate crimes in American history against Latinos.
The shooter left a manifesto with anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant sentiment.
Now, the fear among Latino people is palpable.
Latinos are calling this a turning point. The shooting, they say, has peeled back the hate behind words they’ve tried to ignore. It has sliced open the racism many grew up learning to navigate.
How do you turn the other cheek, they wonder, when the weapon is loaded with bullets?
The killing of 22 people in a border city has left them fearful of living in their own country: because of the brown color of their skin, because they speak Spanish or because of where they or their families were born.
Dads are telling their daughters, “Por favor, cuidase, mija,” pleading with them to be careful at work, keep quiet, have an exit plan. School is starting and along with it, some mothers are worrying if they should let their children speak Spanish at school, let them walk to class alone. Friends are telling their amigas, the ones who speak Spanish with an accent, the ones who are darker, who are both immigrant and Latino: Be aware of your surroundings.
These are American citizens living this way.
Now, this isn’t my first Rodeo. I’ve said it many times. Racism is as American as Apple Pie & Chevrolet. But my question is not for the Trump supporters. They wish me and mine ill, so fuck them, and the horse they rode in on.
The Fourth Estates allegiance in this struggle is questionable at best.
The newspaper of record, The New York Times (NYT) just had to retract and change the headline behind Trump’s abysmal reaction to white male terrorism.
Facing intense criticism, the New York Times changed a front-page headline about President Trump’s response to the back-to-back mass shootings that claimed 31 lives in Texas and Ohio.
“TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM,” read the original headline, which was slammed by members of the public, journalists and a number of Democrats, including several 2020 presidential candidates.
About an hour after the headline went viral in a preview of Tuesday’s front page, the Gray Lady announced that it had been amended.
“The headline was bad and has been changed for the second edition,” a Times rep told the Washington Post.
Later editions of the print edition carried the headline: “ASSAILING HATE BUT NOT GUNS.”
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the headline by tweeting that the front page should “serve as a reminder of how white supremacy is aided by – and often relies upon – the cowardice of mainstream institutions.”
In his address by TelePrompTer to the nation that Monday, Trump spoke about setting “destructive partisanship aside” and using “one voice” to “condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.”
This message, of course, stands in stark contrast to his own immigration policies and statements he has directed at minorities — including four Democratic congresswomen, including AOC, who he said should “go back” to where they came from.
And AOC was right, many journalists bent over backward to defend The Times blunder.
“One headline writer’s mistake is not cause enough to close the door on an army of truly great journalists who don’t write the headlines,” tweeted Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown.
LA Times reporter Del Quentin Wilber pointed out that writing headlines is hard.
“You are sitting there, trying to fit the entire story into 4 words. Maybe 3. Depends on characters. You are on crazy deadline. And you are also copy editing the story,” he tweeted.
Awwww, pobrecito! Poor New York Times! It’s not like they haven’t been doing this for 167 years!
DO YOUR GODDAMN JOB!
No. I’m not looking for Journalism to save the day. Very few can afford any integrity nowadays. My questions about the apparent lack of Resistance to clear and present danger to what little democracy still exists in this nation is for the vast silent majority of well-intentioned, pearl-clutching “Good White Folks” that love the title of “Ally” who don’t really understand what being an ally entails.
Hint: tisk-tisking while doing fuck all during the literal and figurative dismantling of American Democracy?
We tried that in 2016.
That ain’t it.
What are you waiting for?
My brave Chinese brothers and sisters in the streets of Hong Kong fighting for more democracy right now should be an inspiration. At the very least be assured cops won’t treat nice white American folks like Hong Kong police are brutally cracking heads over there.
Not yet anyway.
It’s all hands on deck youngsters. Time to put on your big girl and big boy pants. You are crew, not passengers.
Where is this “Resistance” you speak of?
How exactly are you opposing this administration?
How are you actively dismantling white supremacy within your own sphere of influence?
Do you know how? How are you educating yourself and others to do so?
When your descendants look back at this time. What will they discover about you?
Sad fact is, if you’ve ever wondered what you’d do during Chattel Slavery, The Holocaust, Japanese Internment, or The Civil Rights era of the ’60s?
Chances are, you’re doing it right now.
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