I opened this blog about 15 years ago now, at another web-hosting service (now defunct — so lots of that archive material is largely down the memory hole). I opened it to track Mr. Hinderaker’s endless stream of confabulations — back then, mostly about the Iraq War, and Messrs. Cheney and Bush telling the same lies Mr. Hinderaker then repeated, to drive America into that war. [And to disastrously expand the war to where the enemy was… not present.]
In any event, during this intervening decade and a half, Mr. Hinderaker was caught repeatedly telling lies about the state of race relations in general — and the criminal justice statistics by race in particular. He told those lies presumably to stoke white fear — and “legitimize” openly racist views, on the far right.
Fast forward 15 years — and facing a nearly certain Trump annihilation in November at the polling places, John returns to telling his race-baiting lies, in the hopes of driving wedges into HRC’s campaign base.
Tonight he asserts that our 44th President has intentionally created and “fostered” race-based hate but Donald Trump… hasn’t(?). [Having watched Mr. Hinderaker all these years, he generally believes that being a person of color, and saying that one sees disparate treatment based on race — is a form of race hate baiting. Where I come from, that is “speaking truth to power.” It is factual. But I digress.]
Let us examine the facts, then. Here — in June 2015 — is what Mr. Obama said immediately after nine people of color were murdered while at a bible study and prayer meeting, at Mother Emmanuel, by a deeply twisted young white supremacist. [Here is what John said.] This was a moment when President Obama could have chosen to appeal to those divisions we all see from time to time. Did he? Of course not.
Here is a bit, from Mr. Obama:
…The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked. And we know that hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.
The good news is I am confident that the outpouring of unity and strength and fellowship and love across Charleston today, from all races, from all faiths, from all places of worship indicates the degree to which those old vestiges of hatred can be overcome. That, certainly, was Dr. King’s hope just over 50 years ago, after four little girls were killed in a bombing in a black church in Birmingham, Alabama.
He said they lived meaningful lives, and they died nobly. “They say to each of us,” Dr. King said, “black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely with [about] who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American Dream.
“And if one will hold on, he will discover that God walks with him, and that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace….”
I do not see hatred there. I see not divisiveness — I see an appeal to our nobler selves. All of our nobler selves — white, black and brown and yellow.
In contrast — in this post , immediately below — we saw how Donald Trump reacted when black kids were accused (falsely it turns out) of crime against a white woman. He took out a Y-U-G-E advertisement, in a New York paper, and sought the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York. That penalty hadn’t been available for rape, for over 100 years, in New York. So who divides? Mr. Trump, who sought an “organized lynch mob” be authorized by the Governor and the legislature, just hours after these young men were (again wrongfully it turns out) arrested.
No call to unite — only a call to bring the rope and the torches. He is a lost soul.
Again — all of which proves Mr. Hinderaker is just a recidivist liar — about race. And HRC will win by a safe margin in November — we can all expect that now, given this open dishonesty in every corner of the rhetoric from of Mr. Trump’s surrogates — such as they are.
Powerline Lies... 