Racism has broken the minds of white trash AmeriKKKans since this country's founding on the backs of genocide and slavery. This is how plantation AmeriKKKa's rulers prevent the serfs from joining forces and rebelling against them as they loot the nation.

Self-destructive racism keeps the toxic, incompetent GOP in power, and is our most urgent national security crisis.

I dunno, Trump might be racist, but it seems more likely that he simply can't conceive of ANYONE as being better than himself, skin color notwithstanding. The guy is nothing but a gigantic ego floating around blindly.

Good Afternoon Charles,
I can appreciate this assessment from you:

"If out of the blue, a white person calls me a nigger or some such slur, I always check to see if they are mentally well. If I notice enough signs of illness in their tone, appearance, and manner, I drop the matter altogether and continue with my business. The thing to understand is that madness is never expressed in a cultural or social vacuum. It's almost never original. It needs materials from the world around it. Indeed, often the cultural material itself worsens the condition of an unwell and vulnerable mind."

However, would you feel the same if an African-American or a black person (of Caribbean or African ancestry) calls you that? Especially in the heat of anger? Is the sting the same? Would the party be considered "mad" or "crazy"?

Personally, I find the epithet repugnant in any capacity. And Indeed, I have heard it used black person to black person NOT as a term of endearment. One time, it was extremely difficult to inadvertently eavesdrop on an exchange. I certainly didn't want to listen to it. It was close quarters.

It doesn't stop being bizarre. Fun exercise I've been putzing around with is trying to gauge who might be an equivalent nutjob from the left, just in terms of pure lunacy. Maybe the "Rent is Too Damn High" guy. Imagine we'd elected that freaking guy president.

I think Rebecca Solnit did a fantastic job pointing out a critical part of the problem with D.T. ... he's a narcissist, sure, and has been rich enough to prevent anyone from telling him the truth. But now that he's "president", not only is there no one to keep him in check, his ego has inflated to grotesquely bloated proportions... pushing him past whatever sanity he still had.

It still amazes me that Corporate America ("America's Only Voter!") actually thought this guy would be a good plan for them...

We are all racists. It is in point of fact impossible to be anything but racist in this society. It's like having cancer. You can enter remission, but you are never really cured. I was born and raised in racism. I remember schoolyard chants we used as small boys when a fight broke out.. "A fight! a fight! a n****r and a white!". Nowadays, small children say "Eenie meanie minie moe, catch a tiger by the toe." In the 1970's, we replaced the word tiger with the n word.

My third grade teacher related a tale to a fellow instructor as I stood next to her of how she did some sort of exchange prohject where she went into Gary to teach while a Gary teacher came to East Gary to our school for a day. She said she couldn't pick a girl student out of a group and was so grateful when the child raised her hand, because "They really do all look alike".

Those hobgoblins exist on the margins of my consciousness. How could they not? My sister still claims Gary 'annexed' Miller Beach under Hatcher in the 1970's and stole all teh money from its white residents. The fact that Miller voluntarily joined Gary in the 1910's is something she could read in any Indiana history book, or on Wikipedia. But that wouldn't fit her narrative of Blacks taking over a white town and looting it. Nor would the fact that almost all of Gary's wealth is concentrated in Miller to this day.

My brother hates Blacks, too. I moved to Baltimore in August of last year. His major concern wasn't the low wages excessively hot climate. It's all the Black people.

Next to Deep River in a little park dedicated to the war dead from our little town, there is a market taht looks liek a tombstone that reads "East Gary". East Gary is where the folks who were too poor to live in Gary lived. We were the poor relatives of the slightly less poor. My childhood resembled an Erskine Caldwell novel. And I was told, from birth, that the blame for our poverty lay not in the steel magnates that paid low wages. It wasnt the fault of a school system that wouldnt teach us anything we couldn't use to make steel. Nor was it Saint Francis Xavier Church, which taught us that we should be happy in our poverty. No, our enemy was the archetypal Black man. He took our jobs, drove away the moneyed classes from the area who sued to employ us. He was violent, dangerous, scary. The devil. The boogeyman.

I hate my family. I hate them for what they did to me. My father who raped me. My mother who beat me and sent me to the hospital. My siblings who, after my parents threw me out, abandoned me- no faggots allowed in this family- until I was an adult with a master's degree and at the least the possibility of future financial success. My sister still tries to 'convince' me I'm not really gay. My brother still tells me beating me up as a boy was a good thing- it 'made me a man'. My father who went to his grave in 2005 after fulfilling his 1986 promise to never speak to me again for as long as he lived. My mother who maintains radio silence to this day.

To not kill myself (I did try and came close at least once to success in my adolescent destitution), I had to come to reject all that programming. It was a 1917 of the mind. All the old laws had to be repealed, the ones that deemed Blacks to be evil, the one that deemed the homophobic violence visited upon me to be holy rage. To paraphrase Lenin, I still bear the stink of the lumpenproletariat. I hate myself when I catch those little hobgoblins coming out of me. I hear a Black man shouting to his friend a block away, so loud the sound bounces off the buildings, and think silently 'why the fuck cant you just walk up to him and say hi, you damn ........" and then I stop myself, horrified. Disgusted with myself. I want to curl my lips back to spit out the sins onto the sidewalk, vomiting my shame.

On my way out the door, I wore a T shirt that said "I support Gay Rites", with two rainbow colored wedding bands on it. A tall guy from my floor saw me heading tot he elevator, and opted for the frieght elevator to avoid me. We arrived at the same time on my floor, so he marched angrily past me to his own door, and then slammed it, hard, to communicate his anger at me. I felt afraid, and a little shame. There's no reason for either- the one good thing about my past is that I know how to fight, and I'm fucking built, even in my middle age. Still, I felt the fear and shame again.

I wish I could scrub it away. Wash this whiteness off my skin, this background, this origin I never wanted.

Sometimes I will start reading a comment and it will keep going and going then I will realize GAH, I JUST GOT WANDERING STAR-ed! And sure enough I will keep scrolling for 10 paragraphs before reaching the next comment.. Get a LiveJournal, dude!

@8: Stop pouting, you'll get wrinkles.

11 It's called in-groups and out-groups and every human has been forming them since the dawn of humanity. NEXT

#8
“We’re all racists!” Oh give me a break! Tweety has ALWAYS proclaimed his out and out racial hatred learned at the knee of his VERY racist dad Fred Trump. From 1971 on Fred and Donny racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines in racial discrimination lawsuits over housing practices. When you use federal dollars from HUD you MUST abide to equal access. Yet over and over they had black people fill out applications, the Trumps dropped the paper into a trash can, say “Sorry no vacancies!” and rent to the next white people who applied. The few black people they did rent to...well the Trumps and their leg breakers made their lives hell forcing them to move.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/po…

When he visited his casinos--in that narrow window when they were open, he didn’t want to see ANY black dealers on the floor. He said he didn’t want blacks counting his money, only guys with little caps on their heads. They’re called yarmulkes, Tweety!

If ANY black person showed up at his rallies he either pointed them out as “There’s my black guy--look,look! Or yell at his sycophants “Get em out of here! Punch them in the face.” Even if the supporter was for him.

When a guy says “I’m the least racist guy you will ever meet, you are LOOKING at the most racist guy ever.”

Obama made fun of Donny at the 2011 WH Correspondents’ Dinner (along with Seth Meyers) and Donny never forgave them. The whole birther issue was nothing but showing white Americans that Obama really wasn’t a legitimate president.

So #8 you can use words such as lumpenproletariat or hobgoblins all you want--but your actions speak louder than this ridiculous self-flagellation and confessions of suicidal thoughts.

GET OVER YOURSELF!

@14 you're an MD ridiculing someone in part for having suicidal thoughts? Is your licensure current?

Also, your argument is invalid. W.S. says we mostly also grew up in racism. You say no, no, Trump is racist. Like two people can't both be racist at the same time, even one more than another?

Jesus Christ--when will we finally overturn the Oval Outhouse?

@14,

By refusing to understand the origins of American racism, you make yoruself incapable of defeating it.

The MD at the end of your name probably doesn't indicate Medical Doctor. if it did, you wouldnt be worthy of such a liscence. Is this how you approach your patients? If ever I wound up in your care, I'd sue.

Listen, racism is intergenerational. Its also ubiquitous. There's subtle messaging present in various aspects of our culture- the schoolyard chants I mentioned are one very personal example. A more modern version would probably be 4chan. And those who have steeped in that pervasive ideology will inevitably have residual effects. You do too, even if you dont recognize it.

Now, I am someone who realizes that racism is hard-boiled into my psyche after years of programming by the dominant culture. This realization enables me to deal with it before it harms anyone. You on the other hand, merely pretend it doesnt exist at all. So when you harm someone, you dont even realize youre doing it.

The unexamined life is not worth leading. Maybe you should examine your own, and see what hobgoblins persist on the edges of your own consciousness. If you did, you might stop yourself before you hurt someone.

Incidentally, the only posts by a Helen Nuschler on the web are associated with Circle of Moms, where you claim to be a family practice NP (http://www.circleofmoms.com/welcome-circ…) and (http://www.circleofmoms.com/toddler-moms…), and the Stranger. Your stranger post on 03/20/17 begins "as an MD. This would be contradictory, since you cant be both a nurse practitioner and a medical doctor. There is- or was- a Helen Neuschler, MD residing at 5 Pamela Lane Apt B in Rochester, NY, however she died at the age of 91 in 1993.

It could be that Nuschler is your maiden name. Your online profiles suggest that you either reside in Palm Springs, CA or Hawaii.

So, either you are a fraud (an MD and an NP, huh?) or you're not using your real name (I mena, come on, like Wandering Stars is my real name), or you're catfishing. The latter is the most likely option. However, you are in danger of criminal charges if your real identity ever gets doxxed, since it is illegal to offer medical advice while pretending to hold a medical licence which you do not in fact have.

@10,

Shut up, Tom.

@8: My god, get over yourself.

@20 - I'm not Tom, but it sounds like Tom is someone you should listen too.

Use caution when sharing deep issues like suicide in Slog comments. Besides getting snarky comments and crass retorts that could increase your depression, there are simply better venues for it such as individual counseling and/or increased exercise and better nutrition. And you should avoid alcohol.

Good luck.

@5 Fun exercise I've been putzing around with is trying to gauge who might be an equivalent nutjob from the left, just in terms of pure lunacy. Maybe the "Rent is Too Damn High" guy. Imagine we'd elected that freaking guy president.

A more local example is Tahir-Garrett. He ran for mayor, attacked a mayor, and more recently made anti-Semitic statements. The guy is obviously unstable.

@4 [Charles], would you feel the same if an African-American or a black person (of Caribbean or African ancestry) calls you that [an offensive racial slur]? Would the party be considered "mad" or "crazy"?

I think it is a safe bet. I think everyone believes that Garrett is unstable. Even his supporters, one of whom said

No one is asking Omari what he thinks. He's an elder in our community ... We don't send our elders to a nursing home because they say fucked up things (...) I don't think he's anti-Semitic or anything like that. I think he's an elder with a lot of trauma and hurt. ...

In other words, the dude is a bit crazy, but we shouldn't just put him in the home -- he is a respected elder who has been through some nasty shit. There was no reason to waste a lot of ink emphasizing that Garrett is mentally unstable. That was fairly obvious. What Mudede focused on was the fact that supporters didn't denounce Garett's statements. In the case of Trump, supporters are denying both the crazy part and the idea that his statements and actions are racist.

It's clear that tRump is mentally ill.The signs are numerous and keep coming. That his sycophants continue to behave like craven lickspittles is pathetic and shows just how far the republican party has fallen. It's like group psychosis has set in. The costs are high, in terms of our political life, but more importantly in terms of people's lives. Meanwhile tRump is using chemical weapons on a city of 200,000 in Syria...melting people with white phosphorus.