dear cornelius,
my disagreement with trump's politics is pretty basic. it isn't simply style. i suggest people who haven't seen spike lee's latest film on the KKK do so, and reflect on what that racist, violent group intended to accomplish by terrorizing the black population.
it is not foreign to us, in america, to have had to live with the organization that used lynching and bombing, etc., to drive the ex-slave population of this country into subordination. it morphed, survives today in multitude branches, groups of racial extremists, or simply whites who are bigots.
that is the world, the mindset, that trump appeals to daily.
there is no real compromise possible.
mccain did lots of things that i did not like; took positions, as on iran, that were deplorable. but he had the courage to stand up to the american firster, that is, the neofascist figure who rallies racial hatred to his cause. there is no middle ground here.
go see the movie; listen to belafonte. it is all there. not in hiding. if 90 percent of republicans still support him after using mexicans as his targets, including children on the border, then there is no meaningful way to rationalize trump's evil. we have seen it before, in history, and know the consequences of fascism. it is rising today in europe; now sweden with a far right party garnering 20% of the population, just like the afd in germany;just like the italian govt; just like the front national in france. they all build their support on appeals to racial hatred.
we stand up to them, or let vile politics sweep up the populists into their fold.
go see spike lee's movie, and tell me that trump is anything less than all those other vile rightwing politicians. this is the challenge of our times.
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Tuesday, September 4, 2018 5:22 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: THOUGHT FOR TODAY:. On John McCain. (by Bolaji Aluko)
Chidi,
As they say , "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
This is one of the questions that McCain must have faced in Vietnam : What is or was your mission here?
One of the strongest impressions that McCain made on me was during his campaign bid for the White House when he was asked what he thought should be done with Iran. He then sang his own version of the Beach Boys song , his own version went, " Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Bomb Iran!"
On the whole it must have been a pretty perspicacious move by Senator McCain to forbid President Trump attending his funeral service, not that Trump is the sort of guy who would be likely to start shedding any crocodile tears at John McCain's funeral, but there is / was the real danger that should Trump have had any occasion to also "do" a funeral oration - forget about your namesake Mark Antony, you know that Trump would have probably stolen the show and what would have dominated the reports would have been what Trump said - or did not say. You know that Trump often shoots from the hip – at least tweets from the hip - and according to Wordsworth that is often the beginning of true poetry: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."
It is easier to associate Trump with the first part of what Wordsworth said than the second part of that definition, "emotion recollected in tranquillity"; For me ( a Trump fan) it's easier to imagine Trump when thinking of McCain some time ago, Trump "seething", even in tranquillity. Of course not the type of tranquillity which follows earthquake or orgasm.
In the optimistic discourses about "peace in the Middle East" do you remember the frequency with which the phrase " "peace and tranquillity" occurred?
As Chairman Arafat used to say in those days,
"The peace of the brave,
not the peace of the grave"
"The peace that passeth all understanding "
On Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:29:52 UTC+2, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM wrote:
What extraordinary things did John Sidney McCain do? Isn't he just a construct of the American political establishment?
CAO.
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