Actually, from my experience the people on tape are expressing views more common and shared then we want to admit. I mean what percentage of this county and state vote for Donald Trump in the last election?
While it has been almost 40 years, I remember vividly living in New Orleans and traveling throughout not only Louisiana but also Mississippi and into Texas, the Florida panhandle and Alabama where almost every White person understood that Ronald Reagan was screwing them but loved Reagan because “he is screwing Black people worse”. Actually, that is not a direct quote because none of them said “Black people”.
While we may not want to admit it, but this is exactly how many of our fellow Americans think and talk when they think only “they” are in the room and can listen.
I don’t disagree that batshit crazy perceptions of “victimhood” animates a lot of loser/racists in life, and s a component of Trump’s “appeal”. But Trump is more a symptom than a cause of it. He has leveraged that into prominence and the take-over of the GOP.
The sickness that empowers Trump runs a lot deeper than just Trump.
Trump has normalized being a bellicose, retrograde, misogynistic, narcissistic asshole. So much so that emulating him will get you your own TV show, an opinion column in a national fascist rag, a podcast or a successful gig selling end times supplies online. Do any of the above well enough and you may end up holding national office.
There is a reason that part of Oklahoma is known as Little Dixie.
I grew up black in Tulsa, 200 miles from McCurtain County …a place we would never visit. Because Oklahoma was Indian Territory until statehood in 1907, it was slightly less racist than the surrounding slave holding states. Lots of black people fled to Oklahoma and established many black towns. My dad grew up in one of them.
But that corner of the state borders Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, and seems to compete to see if it can be worse than any of them. And it might be winning.
Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet When the wind comes right behind the rain. Oklahoma, Ev’ry night my honey lamb and I Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk Makin’ lazy circles in the sky.
Brand new state! Brand new state, gonna treat you great! Gonna give you barley, carrots and pertaters, Pasture fer the cattle, Spinach and termayters! Flowers on the prarie where the June bugs zoom, Plen’y of air and plen’y of room, Plen’y of room to swing a rope! Plen’y of heart and plen’y of hope.
I am old enough to remember when the Republican Party was normal and reasonable even though I may have disagreed with their policies. The people who have not abandoned ship as the party has morphed into a Fascist hate group are the problem. Their identity is so hardened as “Republican” that they are trapped in a view of themselves that they cannot let go of. The “is a Republican but a good person” shows the degree of their cognitive dissonance. It shows us how emotions dominate over reason even to the extent of refusing a Covid vaccine and risking death to stick it to the liberals. I wish I could dispassionately look at this as an interesting quirk of human nature but, I can’t. I look at the waste of life, money, opportunities to make this country even better and am pissed off Every.Damn. Day.
As i was reading the article, the thought crossed my mind that too many people to count were thinking that only libruls would suggest that mere talk about killing black people would be seen as wrong.
Yes, it is a sickness, and it runs very deep in this country.
Thing is, in many R voter’s point of view, it’s not, “He may torture animals or be a pedophile, but he’s a good person”, it’s much more like, “He may torture animals or be a pedophile, but he votes the way he’s told to”. Being a good person isn’t even in the equation.
“. . . the local county sheriff is arguing on Facebook that the recording was made illegally and tampered with.“
“Tampered?” You’d have to hire a studio full of voice actors reading an alternate script to make that extended conversation sound as if were staged (an aside: is “stupid” a dialect that can be coached?).
Not only were these guys bigoted enough to have that conversation, but they are deluded enough to think that anyone this side of a MAGA fanatic (or Klan member) would believe that they didn’t.
