Caribbean Life Newspaper

New Normal XVIII: Iceberg Joe By John Burl Smith Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham tells Ali Velshi “Donald Trump’s recent attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters are a move of desperation because ‘he has nothing else to hang this campaign on.’” Also Yamiche Alcindor, White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, added, “Donald Trump’s return to racist attacks may indicate he, ‘is starting to acknowledge that he might lose’ in November.” Such statements from the press, has conservative media pundits creating scenarios that reflect panic not only among the Trump campaign but donors and surrogates. A great example is reflected in a fear filled and panicky article by Andrew Stein for The Hill. Stein’s rambling piece reminded me of Trump’s dash to the White House “panic room” before gasing peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square. Stein begins, “Democrats’ silence on our summer of violence is a tactical blunder.” He opined. “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” ‘So asked Joseph Welch, the attorney who stood up to the bullying by Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) during a “1954 Senate hearing.” And once he said it, the nightmare that was McCarthyism was over.’” Too bad Donald Trump will not disappear from the “Oval Office” as easily. Stein asked, “Who will be the Joseph Welch who wakes us up from this new wave of reverse McCarthyism? Today, you are blacklisted if you don’t support a far-left agenda.” His rant made it seem Americans are living in an alternate reality. For readers to understand my confusion I had to provide at least Stein’s first paragraph to highlight his preposterous supposition. So, I needed to stop here and do a double take on Stein’s Grand Canyon leap from “tail gunner” Joe McCarthy, the architect of the “Second Red Scare,” to former Vice President Joe Biden. Stein’s reach, for most Americans today, is a bridge too far. Republicans like Stein are desperately trying chill Mr. Biden’s momentum by using metaphors that requires readers, who did not live through situations like McCarthyism or have not read about it, to somehow help him complete his stretch. So, like a reenactment of “tail gunner” Joe’s theatrics, with Stein in the lead role, opened up on Democrats in a machine gun blast of accusations that shot holds in his argument. He railed, “It’s time that a Democrat crossed the invisible picket line to condemn both the ‘cancel culture’ and the ‘mindless violence’ in our cities. It’s time that a Democrat stood up for the First Amendment in this country and the need for an open political debate. And it is time that a Democrat exploded the nonsense that what is going on in Portland and Seattle is just protest and not destructive anti-police, anti-American violence that needs to be stopped, not coddled. Unfortunately, today’s Joe Biden is not that Democrat.” Stein left out the fact that, unlike Republicans, Democrats are thanking their “lucky stars” that former Vice President Joe Biden is “not” that kind of Democrat. First, for example, Stein did not need to travel all the way back to the 1950s and dig up Joe McCarthy to find an outrageous and ridiculous politician, when America presently has Donald Trump in the White House!! Next in their desperation Republicans are raising the issue of age, but “Trump has fail to resemble Michelangelo, trying to paint Mr. Biden, as ‘mentally unfit’ in his efforts to make the case that, “if the 77-year-old Biden leaves the post before the end of his term, America will end up with a Black Lives Matter cheerleader in the White House.” However, in that particular case, “the pot cannot call the kettle black.” I will admit Mr. Biden has tripped over his tongue and made what for Republicans consider major political blunders. But I say, it is not how many times Mr. Biden trips over his tongue misspeaking that matters, his gaffes and lip-de-flops are minuscule in terms of impacts, of Trump’s horrendous COVID-19 response and what he has put forth as cures. Coupled with his caustic racial and divisive rhetoric and appeals, as well as his support for confederate monuments and flag waving white nationalists, represent far graver threats to all true Americans, especially those veterans, who actually faced America’s enemies on battlefields. Let’s we forget I remind, Trump has yet to make any statement, lip-de-flop or otherwise, regarding “Russia’s bounties” on US troops, as well as currently melting in US elections. So, while Mr. Biden may be apt to misspeak, his flubs are far less costly and harmful to America’s interest, than Trump not speaking, even if he uses the same phrase several times without coming to a conclusion. Mr. Biden simply needs to cease trying to explain or characterize black people and simply talk about what he is going to do, when he speaks. There are several other points in Stein’s rant I now address, but before that I want to speak to the efforts by Republicans to define the former Vice President as ‘Unfit Joe,” “Sleep Joe,” or “Slow Joe,” and now “No show Joe,” regarding the debates, but all they are getting from Mr. Biden is “Mojo.” Unable to break through, after being hot on his trail, trying to lure “no show” Biden out of his basement since February, but Republicans have been complete frozen out by Mr. Biden’s torrid media basement campaign. Republicans should be calling Mr. Biden “Iceberg Joe.” Next, the so-called “cancel culture” Trump and Republicans continue bringing up “is their new hoax.” For those that lived through McCarthyism or have read about it, know Donald Trump is a “tail gunner” Joe clone. But, brings up McCarthy, whether Stein knows it or not, McCarthy would feel right at home in today’s Republicans Party, given their complete disregard for the US Constitution and First Amendment Rights. Trump, like McCarthy and Stein, when 1st Amendment Rights are mentioned, see anyone who doesn’t agree with them, especially law bidding American peaceful protesters, as dangerous radicals associated with “antifa,” which is another “new hoax” and fictitious comparison to intimates protests are a dangerous threat. Stein’s attacking salvo against the “radical left,” raising “tail gunner Joe” from the dead, as he did, was to insinuate young progressive are communists, but there is no Communist Party-USA, Trump’s buddy Putin is the closer to that insinuation. Today, after almost 20 years of being reshaped in the image of “tail gunner” Joe’s Republicans, “the Grand Old Party,” seems to be singing its swan song of “cancel culture,” trying to “beg the issue” hoping to issue and recreate an environment where American cities believe their stability is threaten’ by “Black Lives Matter” and peaceful protest like in places like Portland and Seattle. Conjuring up ghosts from the past, like Joe McCarthy, is to scare old white folks, so they will cling to Donald Trump, as his last gasp strategy for hanging on to the White House. Then there is Trump’s buddy from the impeachment trial Rudy Giuliani, who sent letters from the Trump campaign requesting a fourth presidential debate in early September. With Giuliani trying to call balls and strikes, I see Stein’s whole game as trying to draw Vice President Biden out, so every losing Republican can use him for target practice. Demanding an additional debate, they hope to use Mr. Biden as a foil during the debates, praying Donald Trump will eviscerate Mr. Biden. However, any intelligent American knows one cannot debate a man that has not spoken a word of truth since before entering the White House. Lying is how Donald Trump built his business and made it to the White House. Lying is Trump’s only consistent characteristic and strategy. Debates are about establishing facts upon which listeners can decide truth. American voters will receive from such debates, the same types of lies they witnessed from Trump’s “dog and pony show,” during the early stages of the coronavirus taskforce briefings in the “rose garden.” The whole debate charade will be an effort to make the former Vice President look ridiculous before voters, but will not establish truth. However, just to show he is not afraid to debate Donald Trump, I would agree to 3 debates spaced out over the last 10 days before November 3—Election day!!! But, the shot in the back Stein hoped would cover his torus with his scurrilous attack, if it had been on target, was to use the First Amendment to excuse and justify Trump’s crackdown on peaceful protesters. Over the last 3 months however, news reports have established clearly that white supremacists and other Nazi and Confederate flag waving far right extremists, like “the umbrella man, “The American Wolf” and the “ Compton California “Executioners” LA County deputies, have been identified by federal authorities as currently targets. These individuals and groups are accused of being provocateurs that smashed windows and starting fires, during early BLM protests, which conservatives blamed on BLM protesters. Trying to hide behind the First Amendment, in this particular case, Stein left his butt hanging out, for anyone that supports “Black Lives Matter” to put their foot in it, just for fun. Now, this rebuttal turns to what Republicans term “anti-police and anti-American violence that needs to be stopped, not coddled,” according to Stein. Whether it is called “anti-police” by Trumpty-dumpties or de-fund the police by BLM, what black people are talking about and trying to stop are insults and degradation, like the story by Teo Armus, “Colorado police apologize over viral video of cops handcuffing Black girls.” Calling such outrages “mistakes or overzealous unthinking cops” are after the fact alibis intended to turn the page or change the subject from what really happened in order to focus on something a black person said, did or had. Again however, an apology can never erase the pain, humiliation, degradation and psychological damage descendants of American slavery suffered and endured, since being kidnapped and shanghaied off to North America, beginning in the 1450s. Continuing incidents, after 4 months, it is clear to African Americans that white people are happy with white men, police or civilian, killing black men and women, whether on the street like George Floyd or in their beds like Brennan Taylor, even out for a jog like Ahmad Arbery, because they and their children are not dying at the hands of police with impunity. This will stop and young black children, moms and dads will be in the streets until it STOPS!!!!! It does not matter what people like Stein says, slavery’s descendants, support and want to see more protest like “What is Black August and how is it different than Black History Month?”, which Harmeet Kaur covered for CNN. She explores why the “new normal” mindset and narrative “Black Lives Matter” and other young blacks reflect as they fill streets all over America to make this point. We are not going to stop. Trump can send troops, tanks, bullets, gas whatever; we will continue to stand, as we have, since becoming kidnapped victims in the 1400s. For example, Monifa Bandele of the “Movement for Black Lives” told (CNN), “During Black August, we honor Black freedom fighters, many of whom were killed by the state or imprisoned “like H. “Rap” Brown, now known as, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, who is currently serving a life sentence for murder, because he defended himself when he was ambushed by two Fulton County Sheriff’s deputies in 2000. The attack on “H” Rap Brown was similar to the reign of terror from the “Executioners” currently against black people in Compton California. Black people are still fighting to free Jamil, “Rap” Brown, Abdullah Al-Amin, as a true freedom fighter. Let us be clear, policing in America evolved from slave catchers even before the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made catching “runaway slaves” a national policy. This policy gave poor whites men jobs and slaves catchers could kidnap and shanghai any black person off to the South that did not have on their person manumission paper when accused of being a running away slave, (Twelve Years A Slave the Story of Solomon Northup). Today, as back in the 1850s, police do not have to recognize the Constitutional rights of black people, as they do white people. Without cause or on any assumption a white man has in his head about a black person, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, after the fact and a black person lies dead, the white cops are not held responsible for their erroneous judgement or conjecture. If the victim is white an entirely different scenario develops. The slave catcher scenario is the only mindset operating for police, judges and juries presiding over the death of a black person. Justice is not the goal, rather justifying police actions is the goal of any investigation, if police even bother to investigate, like Sandra Bland, who police say hung herself in a Texas jail. No black man or woman’s life is worth destroying a white person’s career is how white people view “qualified immunity.” Make no mistake about it, police unions’ underhanded rapid fire assaults on descendants of American slavery is not simply blind hatred, it is a very thinly vailed deception Republicans have devised which aims to drive Vice President Joe Biden into the desperate arms of Donald Trump. Republicans have no place to go and those that recognize this fact are like passengers aboard the Titanic, fighting for space in lifeboats or just lifejackets, as the Titanic took on water. Most that were able to escape the sinking ship, fell victim to the icy water and most died for lack of rescue, like victims of COVID-19. This is the fate Republicans have left America, as their sinking party has left them to fin for themselves, as Trump’s sinking reelection hopes go down like the Titanic, which is why I said earlier Republicans should call the former Vice President “Iceberg Joe.”