Why Are We Coddling White Men?

The first two sessions of the historic January 6th Hearings have been riveting, incredibly informational, and a study in how the nation coddles privileged white men.

Led and guided by the steady authoritative Rep. Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, and executed by Rep. Liz Chaney, Wyoming, and Rep Zoe Lofgren, California, the methodical presentation of facts, videos, and live testimony has delivered everything the nation needed to see and hear, but which a significant portion of the nation has refused to see and hear over the past few years: That Donald Trump, as president, oversaw, planned, funded, recruited, and was the loudest cheerleader and highest executive ever to actively work to end free and fair elections.

The level of illegal activities by Trump are only rivaled by the similar illegal activities by his official White House staff, other cabinet members, personal and government lawyers, media personalities, and of course his immediate family.

None of the aforementioned people have been charged with a crime eighteen months after almost undoing American democracy.

Members of Trump’s team told the nation – most via videotaped dispositions conducted over past year – how they knew that Trump lost and that they repeatedly told him he lost by presenting him with facts, and results that he refused to accept. How they launched spurious lawsuits with false charges of fraud, and how they extended their efforts to various state election officials.

Along with official White House staff, Trump also turned to advice and counsel from what can only be described as his personal confederacy of dunces: Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, Roger Stone, and Sean Hannity.

We saw video of notorious former Attorney General Will Barr arrogantly full of himself recounting how he repeatedly told Trump each new report from Sidney and Rudy were bullshit, false, stupid, and batshit crazy. Human Toaster Barr would have audiences believe he was some sort of good-guy who helped preserve democracy, but that is as far from the truth as healthy food is from any of Trump’s daily meals.

Barr helped cripple the Justice Department and after he resigned – which he is trying to retcon as something noble – he told the world he supported Trump and that given the chance, he will vote for him again.

There were and are no heroes in the former president’s administration. William Barr or his assistant Bill Stepien are not heroes, and neither are Jared Kushner, Mick Mulvaney, or Mark Meadows.

Do you see the theme here? Can you see what all these men have in common besides working for Donald Trump?

More than anything, the country is witnessing how privileged white men in power are coddled incessantly by the justice system, law enforcement, major media, television pundits, and their voters who ignore there criminality and hypocrisy and reelect them time after time.

There is actual video of Trump and his inner circle dancing while they watch the Capitol be overrun. The disgraceful and widely circulated video should be reason enough to jail the lot of them.

But it isn’t. And we all know why.

We are eighteen months post insurrection and none of the orchestrators have been charged, much less jailed. The Trump foot soldiers who took over the Capitol of the United States of America have gotten light sentences, small fines, and have been granted so much leniency that if one didn’t know better one would think they stood outside the Capitol peacefully – like people who marched peacefully for Black Lives but who were met with overwhelming force of police, SWAT, military helicopters, Homeland Security, and other law enforcement agencies.

Seeing the video again this past week and witnessing how there was no protection for the Capitol for the World’s Greatest Superpower, with the Greatest Military, Greatest Law Enforcement, and Greatest Intelligence Apparatus is as jarring now as it was watching it live.

When we juxtapose the responses between peaceful mostly Black protestors, and mostly white protestors on January 6th, America and the world saw, again, the stark unyielding proof of the country’s renowned unequal system of justice.

We all know the Capitol would have run with blood and there would have been thousands of Black bodies on the steps if we had dared do what those white men did.

Why do we know that is true though? Because every American understands the simplicity of two forms of law enforcement that responds with immediate and lethal force against Black people, while accommodating with seductive leniency threats by white men.

We know it. You know it. That is why the vast majority of district attorneys, Attorneys General, Sheriffs, and judges are white men. And this isn’t republican or democratic – both political party’s white voters almost exclusively elect white men to those positions.

As long as the person loudly proclaims they will be “tough on crime” with the word “crime” being a euphemism for “Black and brown people,” they will be elected. This isn’t a controversial viewpoint, and it has always been this way.

White people want white men to protect them so no matter how awful those men are in those jobs, they’ll be reelected time and again, or replaced with a clone who again promises… they’ll be tough on crime. But none of them who were in government when the very soul of the nation was under attack, acted or did anything.

This doesn’t take away from the Capitol police who briefly tried to stop the riot, but the fact none of them discharged their weapons at any of the threats of violence let us know that when the next police officer shoots and kills the next Black child because a phone or cigarette in the child’s hand made the cop “Fear for his life” we know that the actual fear is the Black skin, not the perceived weapon.

The Capitol was so easily taken because contrary to the American mythology, there wasn’t a lone fighter who would save us from a rouge evil government. There was no Jason Bourne, Jack Reacher, John Wick, and no Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, or Charles Bronson. No Batman, Ironman, Captain America, or Luke Skywalker.

There is no Superman coming to save any of us from white men and their hundreds of millions of personal weapons.

The U.S. Capitol was protected from terrorists who look like what Hollywood tells us terrorists look like: mostly brown, but also Asian, and whatever “Middle Eastern” means.

And as we saw, the Capitol was and is protected from Black citizens.

The Capitol though had no defense against white men who rampaged, tore up, defecated and urinated in, and treated the historic Capitol like the worst house on dorm row.

The history classes we all sat through taught us to revere the Capitol. To learn of how it was built, how the traitors of the confederate never waved their flags there; and when touring, how guests should be humble, honored, and respectful at all times.

Those white men forever destroyed the myth of a hallowed hall.

And none of the leaders or funders of the insurrection has been charged with a crime.

Maybe someone will be charged at some point in the future, but rumblings from the Justice Department speaks of a hesitancy to charge the ringleader, Trump, because of, reasons.

I wrote before, that Trump will not go to prison, and I still feel the same. There is not mechanism in government or law for arresting, trying, convicting, and sending to jail a U.S. President.

We are having public hearings to get to the bottom of the muck and ensure the historical records are accurate and reflect all the damage done by Trump and his soldiers.

But through it all, the country is coddling Trump and his men who tried to undue the world’s “leading” democracy.

Hell, we are having public hearings in an attempt to convince other white people that what Trump and his soldiers did – actually happened. The entire spectacle is attempt to convince seventy-million trump voters that all the lies he told you are, well, lies, and tell them in a way that they can understand: By having white men recount them.

And at the same time we are told the Justice Department still isn’t certain if Trump can or will be charged, his followers continue to murder Black people who are shopping, kids who are in school, while they continue to threaten government officials, and Planned Parenthood doctors and employee. And because it is Pride month, they’re targeting Pride events.

The Idaho terrorist attempt by a group calling themselves Patriot Front – more like Hatriot Front– rented a U-Haul, packed it with weapons, and then got caught near a Pride event. Once caught, they were gently handled and coddled by local police.

The group of thirty-one white men, ages twenty-one to thirty-eight, came from eleven states all for the purposes of murdering Pride event attendees. Nobody was bothering them but they decided that having their own all-white neighborhoods, almost all-white schools, with textbooks with almost all white histories, with all-white teachers, who live in cities with all-white government and law enforcement, with all-white local and state elected officials, with all-white bankers, loan officers, and small business owners.. somehow made them feel that they are oppressed. And so, a natural thing to do was load up a U-Haul with weapons and go kill Pride attendees.

They had no fear of police or retribution because their entire lives are spent in homes, schools, cities, businesses, and states that are made and designed exclusively for their success.

And yet, there they were, in Buffalo, Charleston, San Lorenzo, Wisconsin, Charlottesville, Las Vegas, Oklahoma, Tulsa, and so many other cities that have been terrorized by white men simply because they decided that domestic terror is their god-given right and their constitutional right.

Today’s coddled white men are no longer only The Klan, they are now also Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, Patriot Front, 3%’ers, 1776, and other nutty names. These privileged white men – and let’s be clear, they are men, not boys – have money to buy millions of weapons and travel nationwide to hate-events so they are not economically anxiety driven either. This is unchecked hated, raised and nurtured at home, in church, and in communities that are exactly what their parents want: overwhelmingly white.

But these fella are not new, unique, or particularly creative. They are tired, boring, redundant, and no different than their forefathers who were just as awful, ugly, and un-American.

The other similarity is they are coddled just like their forefathers. Just like the confederate traitors who returned to life and government and took over without repercussion. Just like the designers of segregation and Jim Crow. Just like those who created redlining and ghettos, who put freeways through our neighborhoods, and who polluted our water and homes. Those who lynched our people, burned our schools and churches, bombed our cities and homes, and shot up our churches faced almost no consequences.

They are no different than voters who today will not fund our schools, or build affordable housing or grocery stores where we live. Who won’t hire us, pay us as much, and who fire and direct layoffs at us with frightening efficiency.

They don’t make medicine for us and perhaps worse than all of the aforementioned, they surgically gerrymander us to prevent us from voting.

And now, except for Rep Bennie Thomson and one election official, the hearings are almost exclusively white people questioning other white people about the bad things done by other white people.

The rest of America of all races, ethnicities, and cultures are watching those who govern the rest of us and holding us to standards they don’t hold themselves to, debate and dive into how white men almost ended democracy.

It is crazy just to write those words and realize that none of those men are in jail. It is normally fruitless to ask questions that focus on hypothetical situations, but let’s bother to do it anyway.

What if President Obama:

• Said it was okay for his Vice President to be hung?
• Told democratic-led states to invalidate all the votes
• Told democratic-led state election officials to throw out votes, decertify electors, and only send democratic electors loyal to him
• Told Generals to deploy military helicopters to buzz protesting white people
• Fired career Justice Department, FBI, Secret Service, CIA, Homeland Security officials and replaced them with unqualified Black men who professed loyalty to him
• Hired his kids as advisors even though they could not pass security background checks
• Refused to send the National Guard, local police, or Homeland Security as the Capitol was being overrun by thousands of angry Black men
• Was on Camera dancing in celebration as the riot raged

It is very clearly understood by every American that if even ONE of those hypotheticals were true, there is no doubt that white Americans, Democrats, Republicans, and everyone else, would shut the nation down until he resigned in disgrace, and was arrested, perp-walked, and sentenced to significant years in prison.

But just as assuredly those measures would be taken with President Obama – and let’s be honest, the same is true for Vice President Kamala Harris – we can be just as assured that nothing would happen in any of those scenarios if the president were white.

Because all those actions were taken by a white male president who sits comfortably in Florida still professing that in his drug-addled (allegedly) mind, that he won the election, the election was stolen, and that the current President, Vice President, Speaker of the House and others, should be jailed in Guantanamo or hung.

He isn’t in prison and exhibits no fear because he knows that there is nothing anyone will do to him because he has unlocked coddling at historic levels that are so comprehensive, that his coddling aura extends to all his staff and all those terrorists roaming the country killing, threatening, and wilding like the dangerous terrorists they are.

Whatever is causing so many white boys to grow up to be angry violent white men – home life, lack of good parenting, lack of oversight in schools, religious white supremacy taught at church – whatever it is – the nation needs understand that it isn’t working and it will continue to endanger the rest of us until they get their white boys and men to respect the rule of law, respect other people and cultures, and most of all, to mind their own business and leave the rest of us alone.

Charging and arresting Donald and his band of angry criminals would go a long way towards righting the wayward American democracy.

And white parents discontinuing coddling their white boys and holding them accountable for being decent humans, good neighbors, and people who mind their own business, would go a long way towards relieving the anger and stress they give the rest of us.

© by Myron J. Clifton and Dear Dean Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

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Myron J. Clifton is slightly older than fifty, lives in Sacramento, California, and is an avid Bay Area sports fan. He likes comic books, telling stories about his late mom to his beloved daughter Leah, and talking to his friends.  

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