Morality is not a Negotiation

The leadership of the United States government has many benefits.  As the US President, the officeholder is the most well-known politician on earth; he and she leads the world’s most vigorous military-industrial complex. The job is consequential no matter the identity of its occupant. Some have seemed dwarfed by the enormity of it, while other holders seemed to be larger than the office- raised the Office to the level of their dynamism.  

One underrated role of the Chief Executive of the United States is the moral leadership that follows the office like a shadow in the noonday sun.

The  recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia brought a fresh and alarming focus on the belief in  racial superiority- the KKK, Neo-Nazis-  and Right wing terrorists. 

White supremacy is not a new idea, it was part of the nonsense fed to a poor White population by a few rich Whites that got filthy rich from the filthy business of chattel slavery.  It is the reason for the Second Amendment- has nothing to do with private gun ownership—rather, everything to do with forcing poor Whites to round up escaped slaves and support a badly outnumbered state militia.

The US President as a sympathizer with white supremacist, neo-Nazi, White Nationalist extremist—that is new. It is unfortunate, and a cause of national and international concern. The issue is morality, and Trump has challenged humanity’s line in the sand- the universal moral position  that every person has the right to life and possesses fundamental equality

The Historical Perspective

The United States has evolved into a nation that tries to live up to its lofty mottos and declarations of freedom. Perhaps it is the naivete of a young nation or the hopefulness of its relative innocence, but the words of freedom ensconced in its Declaration and fundamental framework have taken on a life.  Breathed into existence by the hopes of the victims of greed and destruction in Young America, the Red, Brown, Asians, and Black joined an array of European outcasts as claimants of a nascent American mantle of equality.

Slavery was the beginning

There may be no more dramatic story of the rise from difficulty that the taking of millions of Africans into THE GLOBAL CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE OF CHATTEL SLAVERY. As a nation, the US emerged as a sanctuary for amoral capitalism; the American system of slavery was based on kidnap, rape, murder, and false imprisonment with hard labor.  Unlike Brazil and the Caribbean, those Africans chained and bound to the United States had no hope for freedom except by escape—and, after about 150 years of human bondage, the bloody Civil War was the first purging of America’s sins of enslavement.

The southern white population was another victim of chattel slavery. The chronic depression caused by antebellum forced African labor left most southern white families in land locked economic deprivation. The Civil War created a class of victims unique in history- thousands of brave men fought and died for the principle of slavery. Slave ownership was an economic privilege that was largely impossible for the vast majority of Confederate soldiers. After the bloody fighting and defeat, the southern white population was left to hold on to the false flags of slavery- States Rights and economic freedom to exploit human property- such a spectacle, so many shattered lives and families- all for a rich slaver’s dream- it became a poor working man’s nightmare.

After Freedom- the fight for freedom

The eras that followed the bloodiest war on US soil left decades of victimization along with the heroic African progress toward freedom and equality. The violence of the Reconstruction Era, led to the systematic use of laws and violence against Africans in the Jim Crow era. The World Wars focused the thought of the globe on freedom and survival. It was the concern with democracy around the Globe that fed the domestic drive for equality- the supremacy of foreign policy over domestic laws was felt as Woodrow Wilson and a generation of progressive leaders sought to break the cycle of expanding global conflict and reducing oppression.  

 The landmark Silent March of 1917 was emblematic of the dignified struggle for basic human dignity- freedom from violence and lynchings. It was the beginning of the Civil Rights era.

In the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II, Blacks finally began to emerge into a partnership with mainstream America—leaving an awful disgrace of lynching, persecutions, and yet facing de jure segregation and outwardly demonstrated racial hatred. The battlegrounds became education, housing, voting, social equality, and economic justice. The era was dominated by the inspired leadership of Dr Martin Luther King.

The 60’s and Change

The Great Society efforts of LBJ in the aftermath of the Kennedy Assassination boosted urban Black communities by fostering housing and community action. In the wakes of the King and Robert Kennedy assassinations, the Democratic Party became the agent of promoting political change for Blacks, Latinos, and Asians. But after the brief Carter Presidency came a hard-right turn in America, and the nation fell into Reagan and a swoon of Bushes, poor national security, and coverup warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today, the society bears traces and scars from the treatment of Black Americans at every level of the society. We have Black billionaires- but they are just as likely to get pulled over and shot while unarmed by a police officer as the low-income urban Black.  

Police killings have become a modern scourge of Black existence. They occur randomly like lynching and tolerated by a color-conscious society that lives in denial of the fact of a growing list of dead African-American men and women.

The background sound of racial hatred towards Blacks manifests in the cruel ways it is intended to be. The Black Lives Matters movement is a global uprising and outpouring over the outrageous levels and incidences of violence against Black men in America. In the US mainstream of thought, it is a terror organization that purports the supremacy of Blacks over Whites.  It is a case of the killers blaming the dead victims, and turning to the White audience to take a bow.   

Morality is not a negotiation, because there are no winners if there are losers.

Morality is a key to a consensus about truth; without a sense of agreement on right and wrong, the society fragments, dissipates, and ultimately dies. Truth is the lifeblood of democracy. Morality is not a crass commodity left up to the current occupant of our nation’s leadership. The National morality preceded and will follow each temporary holder of the nation’s public trust. Like the heat in the ever-warming air of this little globe, truth rises above the fog.  Morality is the bond that keeps the US intact; it underpins our notions of freedom and progress. It inspires the continuing debate on the possible directions and ways to improve life here.

Trumpism, the amoral pursuit of personal wealth at the expense of the US and its people, will not likely endure in the face of a critical understanding of the directions it urges. The current instances of Trumpism include ideas that the population clearly rejects: openly corrupt government, fascist control by business interests, oppressing Mexican immigrants, converting the society into a white homeland, and promoting hatred towards race minorities, Jews and Muslims.