Russian Election Manipulation Outrage Syndrome, The Black Patriot and Clear and Easy Politics.
On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, former CIA Director and Trump Transition Adviser James Woolsey goes in on the idea that the Russians “hacked” this election. He points out that the Russians didn’t hack into voting machines and change or wipe out votes. To him, people are just getting all huffy over a conflation of misunderstood events and terms, specifically that while Trump isn’t GETTING security briefs he may still be READING them.
That thar’ is a mighty fine bit o’ Trumpsplainin’. A much calmer and higher-minded but no less bat-sh$t crazy version of something produced by the great “President Obama Started the War in Afghanistan” Katrina Pierson. However, this tattered Trumpsplanation has a mink-like lining of professional-sounding certitude.
Meanwhile, on another show, former CIA operative and author Malcolm Nance, skidded from his usually measured disdain of politicking the Intel community to offer a higher-pitched and disgusted refutation of Trump’s devaluation and dismissal of Presidential security briefings.
In explaining just how dangerous it can be to obtain the intel for the Presidential briefing, Nance invoked a vision of the CIA Memorial Wall for Operatives killed in the line of duty by saying, “I have 3 friends on that wall!”
Nance, a Black man, stood in the middle of Woolsey’s field of contrived indifference and planted a flag of patriotism on the high ground.
Something like that should be easy to follow. Patriotism in moments like this should be easy to follow. But there’s a gap in understanding what some Black folk tend to call patriotism and what some White folk tend to call patriotism.
If we boil it down to the everyday person’s self-interest then it’s easy and clear to see. For most of the history of this nation (and by most, I mean up to about 3pm yesterday), Black folk did not receive MOST of the protections of The Constitution in theory or practice BY DEFAULT. Even after the civil war … even after the civil rights movement … even after Hope and Change.
Whether we’ve known it or not we’ve always been at arm’s length from full participation as full citizens and recognized human beings in this nation. We’ve scooted logic over to give ourselves room to think we have control over OUR devaluation, but the old “it only matters what you answer to” only makes sense when those calling you n!gger have no power in your life.
Otherwise, we need to pay attention when: a policeman calls your mother a n!gger, a doctor calls your sister a n!gger, a judge calls you a n!gger … an administrator, a supervisor, an executive, a banker, etc.
On that scale, which can grow to include neighborhoods and cities and regions, it’s far easier to comprehend the conundrum facing Black patriotism. Why suit up for rights that never materialize? Why step in for gains never realized? Why spill blood for others’ right to dehumanize?
Despite the quick retort, “Because we, as a nation, are bigger than those small ideas…” none of those questions are easy to answer.
And they shift.
To such degrees that they are not curbed … even in the face of battles where not a bit of distraction can be tolerated. A thinking Black man or woman cannot afford to blindly hold the tenets of this nation as truth and/or constant without understanding the “rabid dog” nature of it all which often turns on him/her in an instant. Our patriotism is seasoned with what, for us, is often unequalled amounts of skepticism, dread, distrust, anger, astonishment, and marvel at this nation’s ability to, every generation, secrete new racist purulence. And the most flag waving of us can find ourselves becoming Mr. Nance articulating a personal but measured outrage.
With that in mind it should be simple to grasp any ambivalence Black folk have about talking treason regarding the now disclosed Russian DNC hack. It is clear that Republican leaders were presented with the CIA findings. It is also clear that Republicans, like Mitch McConnell, for months saw no value in acting as “Americans” but, rather, as conservatives. It is, again, clear that these Republicans should be found, at the very least, in dereliction of their duties and possibly treasonous. However, despite so much being so clear, Black folk can and will ask how this is any different than the voter suppression employed by the Republicans to manipulate elections and silent the voice of a chunk of the electorate.
Rev. William J. Barber II of Moral Mondays
The reporting has been consistent. From North Carolina’s Reverend William Barber’s Moral Mondays to Ari Berman’s brilliant and maddening reporting about the Republican effort to disenfranchise millions of citizens and silence their voices.
Because, unlike the Republican fake charge of voter fraud, conservative masterful wielding of fear and the manipulation of laws has entrenched in our process one MORE spine of hate against citizens trying to use their voices in this democracy.
Of course one has to ask — where were the Democrats? Some shuffled alongside Republicans, outwardly, up to and until Trump held a bunch of “and you can bring your white hoods too!” rallies. That is a blog for another day. Conversely there’s been President Obama, who’s had to govern past the repugnant White Man’s Land Party. And in that vein, President Obama understood what a gift his dropping of the Russian bomb, although already reported months earlier, would be to a party built on anti-Obama mythology and conspiracy theories. So he asked for a bipartisan intelligence conference where both parties could put politics aside for the greater good.
The Democrats said “yea” and then…
“According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.”
Shortly after this, Black folk in America again found out that they had to wait hours to vote, programs instituted for early voting were shut down, and thousands had been thrown from the voting rolls. In other words: more of the same from conservatives.
Meanwhile, and days after the September silence story broke, in a “have a little arsenic from Grandpa” Christmas sweater, McConnell gave a half-throated defense against the allegations of his horribly partisan sit-down in the conference room months ago: “It defies belief that somehow republicans in the Senate are reluctant to either review Russian tactics or ignore them.”
Bringing to mind that such partisanship, because of eight years of Republican intransigence, is so EASY to believe that McConnell had to answer the article with a standing “Nah-uh!” press conference.
If Mitch McConnell and the other Ruski-publicans should stand trial for knowing America, in what may be called an act of war or just bitin’ the CIA’s style, was being hacked, then shouldn’t the writers, sponsors, implementers, and administrators of voter suppression laws be tried for treason as well? Why should we be Rachel Maddow-jaw-dropped (and it was) over the manipulation of an election when an entire party of this nation saw no problem with manipulating AT LEAST five election cycles?
This is some 50+ years AFTER the civil rights movement.
Patriotism would demand the jobs and jailing of the Republicans that sat in that conference room and dismissed the CIA findings.
Black Patriotism has been wondering why they weren’t in jail in the first place.
— brandonbowlin