It goes to show just how overworked I am that I’m only now getting to something I saw a week ago in a post at No More Mister Nice Blog, How Your Right-Wing Uncle Is Going to React to Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill. The point of the article is that Republicans will use Tubman differently how ever it works for them. So she will either be a terrible communist or a great gun loving Republican. It’s this latter conception of her that I find interesting and incredibly annoying.
The truth is that Harriet Tubman was a gun loving Republican. But the problem with that is that you can’t really compare someone who was born almost 200 years ago to someone today. Let’s start with the most obvious and silly thing. Of course Tubman was a Republican! The Republican Party was the anti-slavery party. I assure you that if chattel slavery were an open issue today, it would be the Republican Party that would be on television reading passages from the Bible to justify it. In the 1960s, the Democrats and Republicans crossed paths on this issue. This is the main reason why the south went from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican.
My message to Republicans: after decades of using racial dog whistles to win elections, it is time to embrace the fact that you are a racist party. The group of people who ended slavery in this country might have called themselves Republicans, but they don’t represent who you are today.
Who’d’ve Thought Harriet Tubman Was Like That?!
The issue of guns is a little more subtle but far more interesting. You see, in the early days of the union, the Constitution really did protect gun rights in a most feeble way. It was only after the Civil War that gun rights started to be expanded because the southern states were trying to disarm former slaves. So of course Harriet Tubman would be pro-gun — both before and after the Civil War.
Compare this to what I’ve found in my life to be the typical gun owner: someone who owns a dozen or more guns and is waiting for the revolution that keeps not coming. You know: Ammon Bundy. These are people who live in a fantasy land where every Democratic president is a despot just waiting to storm their home. Its particularly funny when you consider that our military now has drones. So when Bundy and his fellow idiots occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, it really didn’t matter how many guns they had. The government could have just blown them all up using a drone.
On the other hand, guns actually did provide former slaves some degree of protection against state governments that really were trying to kill them. So it not only makes perfect sense that Harriet Tubman would be a gun loving Republican, it was entirely predictable. Yet we get absolutely fatuous statements from conservatives like this:
So we are supposed to be surprised. Why? Because Republicans think we are as stupid and ignorant as they are.
A colleague of mine posted a meme about that on Facebook and I pointed out tartly that she couldn’t be a Republican because she couldn’t vote having died in 1913 before women had suffrage. Since he isn’t a stupid Republican he said she could have been able to vote if she had moved to AZ since we ladies had the right to vote right from the start. Because I failed to use the word universal, he was right damn it.
That’s only a good argument if she did move to AZ. And only crazy people live there. :-)
But the whole thing is stupid. It’s like claiming that the modern Democratic Party is responsible for the Civil War. And this is coming from modern Republicans who are in a racist party and yet get upset when you point out that Barry Goldwater ran a racist campaign. There are many things that the modern Republican Party and the old Republican Party share. And they are all the worst things.
I know it is stupid. We were joking around though and I thought it was funny since it was technically true.
But yeah, it is hard to get Republicans to admit to the racism.
It’s nice that you gave him his due. But it really means nothing to say such things. It’s like saying, “If only Tubman had lived longer she would have had the vote.” In a different universe, things would be different. What an insight!
Oh for heaven’s sake, it was just about a joke!
We weren’t being serious.
Fine, but you can never use the phrase “for heaven’s sake” because I’m older than you. “Jesus Christ” would work. But as a Christian, you may prefer, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
I had something funny to say but I forgot it. It must be because I am old.
Even the young frog feels old compared to the tadpole. Or as my brother used to say to me when we were kids, “Hardy har har har!”
That was part of an episode of the Simpsons when Bart steals Martin’s test!
I’ve lost the thread…
This has to be one of the worst written articles I have ever read. You write like you’re 12. I’d say you could do better but I doubt you could write past a 7th grade level.
Do explain what you mean! I’m all ears!
But I suspect your problem is, as usual with such comments, that you don’t like the content of the article. Just a guess: you’re a bigot, right?
I heard Trump going off bigtime on the $20 bill decision. H.T. was an important person and still is. There are many folks (of color) who could have been selected, but ya gotta start somewhere with someone…and I think she is a decent choice.
I would not be surprised to hear Trump espouse rhetoric about ‘lets send them all back home’ like times in the (almost distant) past. Hence, Liberia.
Get out your history books folks, cuz we are in for a bumpy though familiar ride.
I think Trump is smart enough to know which groups he can and can’t go after. I’ve never particularly thought that Hitler hated the Jews; they were just a useful group. Demagoguery is not about oppressing any given group, but about using fear and hatred to get power for yourself. Trump is classic.
Obvious as to why the democrats don’t want any African slave figure to be known republican since it would also expose their confederate history and present, different name but almost the same slavery, too many black people treating themselves and eachother like they’re not even human and submitting to the democrat party because they’re the hand the feeds them *smh* But it is being known more so now than ever, the democrat slave party has lost much of it’s power and come mid terms in 2018 they will lose the rest of it and the republican super majority will destroy them just like they destroyed the confederates in the past :) And there is nothing they can do about it :)
I don’t usually allow racist rants to go through, but I’m in a bad mood and I don’t feel like protecting you from yourself. This idea that blacks are stupid and childish for voting for the Democratic Party is deeply offensive. The fact of the matter is that most blacks were Republican in the past. That was when the Republican Party believed in civil rights. But with the civil rights struggle in the 1960s, the Democratic and Republican parties changed. And so did black voters — based upon the changed reality. All the racist Democrats moved to the Republican Party. The fact that people like you can’t see that indicates either a stunning level of stupidity or a level of bigotry that requires ignoring all inconvenient facts.
The use of “democrat party” is priceless. Conservatives really do behave like children. Sure, don’t call the Democratic party by its actual name! What a clever insult!
You are not welcome here. Nothing else you write will be printed.
What Crap – ‘Democrat and Republicans’ SWITCHED SIDES – this is the total baloney being spread to foster the illlusions about racism today. The total RACIST nature of Democrats is on FULL DISPLAY today with Omar, ACO, Tliab, and many others with their leftist theories that ‘only people of color can speak truth.’
How very inane and childishly ignorant.
Try some REAL history, not the public school pablum you so obviously swallowed whole.
I WATCHED IKE send the FEDERAL MARSHALLS to force DEMOCRATS to integrates schools in the 1950[‘s. Probably long before you were born.
Not much to discuss here. You didn’t provide any history to counter what I said. Of course: you couldn’t, could you? History is on my side. “History” is on yours. Don’t blame the public schools for your shocking level of ignorance.
All you’ve done in this comment is provide the world with a great example of what I’m talking about.