Mark Karlin: The Essential Question of July Fourth: Are All Americans Created Equal or Just Whites?
Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted to the Trump insurrectionists the morning of January 6, "Today is 1776," in which she signaled that it was a decisive moment to support white Americans to seize power away from any persons of color and the Democratic Party that overwhelmingly represents them. (Gage Skidmore)
July 5, 2021
BuzzFlash:“Making Good Trouble Since May of 2000"
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
Take the ceaseless headlines of the last few years sensationalizing and amplifying Trump’s mass psychosis and the conspiracy theories surrounding alleged Democratic “evil,” and you are left with one indisputable conclusion.
Virtually, all the culture wars and Trump and GOP Party cultism relate to the fundamental question of whether on July 4, 1776, the United States declared its independence for white people only from the British Crown, or whether it was the beginning of an experiment in democracy that had a resiliency baked into it that allowed for the eventual recognition as citizens of people of all colors, genders and backgrounds.
This is virtually the only issue that perenially dominates “news” in the United States: are we to return to become a patriarchal white-ruled colonial settler society or are we a model nation for inclusive growth and humanitarian expansion?
Yes, the question of whether or not “the freedom” that was promised on July 4th is applicable to people of a different skin pigmentation is central to the understanding of the great Grand Canyon legacy of settler colonialism that cleaves this country to near the breaking point today.
So much rests on the inherent notion that being white is a sign of superiority and the right to be at the top of the social and political order.
Trump, and now his political apprentices (who are vying to take his place), believe that both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution should be taken "literally,” which is the basis of the “originalism” foully propagated by the Federalist Society and now deeply seeded in our federal courts, including a 6-3 majority of believers in “originalism” on the Supreme Court. Therefore, the Republican base sees themselves as the true patriots and not seditionists.
That “originalism,” which has been so crudely championed as “white grievance” and “victimhood” was the basis of the undying devotion to Trump by whites who feel that to be “patriotic” is to be for the restoration of a white patriarchal society that not only does not feel guilty about the two original sins of the US: slavery and the decimation of Native-Americans. No, these were entitlements, according to the GOP reactionaries who see 1776, and the Constitution, as the apogee of white privilege that the US needs to restore.
Yes, the two sides of the coin of “patriotism” are either being patriotic to celebrate America’s whiteness and white rule or celebrating the resiliency of a nation founded to expand rights based on an evolving constitutional framework.
It’s gobsmacking for those who believe that to be a “patriot” is to embrace the promise of the evolution that was key to the creation of the United States that nearly half the US population today believes that whites, particularly (property-owning) males (the Rush Limbaugh smoldering fan club), are owed the right to govern the nation. This is not “patriotism”; it’s a faux claim to virtue and superiority on the basis of skin pigmentation.
It’s a decidedly reprehensible morphing of eugenics into a justification for the diminished prospects of whites who can’t keep pace with a dynamic society that requires change, not bigoted ossification.
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