Don't get me wrong. I absolutely welcome the epiphanies

[bigtree]

...from white republicans who seem to have just now caught onto the fact that their government is terrorizing and killing people in this country, including citizens, in the wake of two people who aren't immigrants of brown-skinned slaughtered by federal agents.

I understand that these are people who have made a generational stand against immigrants and others who don't look like them have long felt comfortable in their apparent belief that their anti-immigration politics; as well as their anti-American ignorance about decades and decades of deadly assaults by police forces against communities and individuals of color; or their party's demonizing of LGBTQ communities and individuals, even as those innocent victims became targets of the guns their party refuses to regulate.

I also get that most of them actually just want to go back to the day when they operated their racism and bigotry with more of a wink and a nod, than with the fire hoses and attack dogs their ilk used in their youth against people seeking civil rights in this country.

But you know, it's something, more than nothing. I mean, here I am looking back with some favor on the days when we were fighting and gaining ground in an era of decimation and denial. That's how far we've sunk.

I welcome their words, and suggest we now endeavor to hold them to them. That's how I remember we did it in the past, moving cautiously out of centuries of repression and building coalitions of support to keep us moving forward.

I welcome their epiphanies.

I welcome their awokenness.

[Jersey Devil]

1. They're singing the same song they sang after Jan 6

Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, all had "enough" after Jan 6, until they didn't. I don't see how this will be any different.

[bigtree]

4. it's different because we can see they're dragging their butts behind the rest of the country

...no one is fooled by their attempt to regain the already soined ground they've lost.

But they've blinked and now they're primed to get knocked the fuck out.

This isn't about what they want anymore, and you can see than in the way they're scrambling to keep up with the rest of the country, losing political and moral ground everytime they breath a word of support for this asministration.

Political progress isn't a zero-sum enterprise, and it's mostly about momentum, and that's what we have going for us in the absence of any material lever of power to change anything.

.

[AZJonnie]

2. If you want to know why the days of epiphanies and "gaining ground" seem to be gone, I think it's this simple

[Freddie]

5. Please don't blame us Boomers

Pisses me off when we’re all generalized like that. Me and all my fellow Boomer friends and family hate his guts.

[AZJonnie]

8. Okay, but what you are implying was not my intended message, sorry if it came off that way!

This is not speaking to any individual persons or generations, what I'm saying is I think that we got a particularly strong era of social progress in the 60's and 70's because the population was relatively quite young and idealistic, but demographics have changed considerably since.

Those WERE the boomers and I'm not bashing that generation, at all My parents were boomers and both liberals. But many studies document that on AVERAGE, people tend to get more conservative as they age and/or become parents. Not everyone by any stretch, and not on all "issues". But on average, this is true, and *I believe* this is a big part of why it's gotten harder to make progress on social justice issues when judged relative to 1960-1975 era.

[leftstreet]

3. How will they put that genie back in the bottle?

I also get that most of them actually just want to go back to the day when they operated their racism and bigotry with more of a wink and a nod, than with the fire hoses and attack dogs their ilk used in their youth against people seeking civil rights in this country.

So true. Trump's lasting legacy will be the damage he inflicted on the core strategy of the GOP
LOL

[JohnnyLib2]

6. Insightful words of caution--

with a tinge of distrust. Thank you for this post.

[rampartd]

7. it took us 3 generations from king to obama, but we were getting closer

i am disgusted because this puts us into an era of "citizenship at will" where trump can deport us whenever he thinks that will make america great.

decimation and denial? i guess this is progress

1960 they would call me a "n.....lover"
1980 maybe "self hating white"

by 2005 on advance.net forum i was called a "race traitor" for the opinion that my black neighbors should be "allowed" to return home after katrina.

lord knows what they say on 4chan today.

"too cold to work. too sober to think." rampart

[bigtree]

9. so true

...and all of this has been described as a 'backlash' from the Obama terms in office, as validation of what we all see in our workplaces; the racism is STILL widespread, advantaged as it always was, as opportunism by far too many against people with darker skin than their own.

All of it openly encouraged, excused, and actually legislated to accommodate by politicians who made a political cottage industry out of the antipathies they foment and inflame,

Here we are with the bondage they intended for their darker skinned counterparts now being fitted for their own sweet selves, and they've never actually known that horror or felt that terror that they've blithely and wantonly inflicted on others.