This is long, and maybe too long for most people. It took me three days to watch it all. But it is even handed, it is informative, it is well documented, and it is truly how I and so many feel. I loved TYT, but about the time Cenk decided to run for office and gave a lot of control over the company / show to Anna, I noticed a shift / change in both hosts and the company direction. Cenk became very bitter and anti-democratic party, while Anna became overly more assertive on every show. When Cenk came back so bitter from being what he felt was unfairly treated by the democrats but others felt was him trying to claim a position without doing the work others had done before him Anna started talking over him, interrupting him, not letting him finish his sentences. But at the same time if he tried to interrupt her she got very vocal about it and wouldn’t tolerate it. She was now in charge and she wanted the world to know it. It showed how she felt about her position, she had the authority and say, so don’t disagree with her. That was very off-putting for me a long time viewer and supporter of the show. But then Cenk’s constant vitriol against the Democratic Party started to interfere with his reporting on Biden. Right from the start he wanted Biden to do the impossible and when he did not Cenk couldn’t even give him credit for what he did get accomplish. Cenk being a bombastic fighter spent two years demanding Joe Biden attack and call out Joe Manchin and pushed for the most virulent attacks on him. Which would have lost the democrats the control of the Senate and stopped any left leaning judge appointments. Then Cenk got more bitter towards Biden and other progressive members of congress who did not throw the disruptive bombs he wanted to destroy the party, so he openly attacked the very groups he started along with attacking all progressives. What crossed the line for me what his attacks on Biden and openly trying to promote primary challengers to him talking up fringe candidates, knowing historically any time a sitting president was primaried they lost, giving the other party the win. He did not care, his bitter anger was more important to him. He kept up his now constant attempts to tear down Biden to the point he is doing the work of a republican challenger for president. I wrote that when I canceled my long time membership, that Cenk was doing the work of the Republican Party in tearing down and maligning Biden. This hard right turn of Anna’s and Cenk’s weirdly not even willing to listen to any criticism of her was the last straw for me. He is not even really addressing the issue that Anna made as the start of this problem, and keeps misrepresenting it. If Anna wants to be called woman that is great, if trans women demand to be called women that is great and everyone would do as they ask. But there are transmen with parts that medical people need to address and that are on medical forms / question forms. It was pointed out so often that no one in conversation referred to Anna as a “birthing person” but she still took offense to the term even existing. She was demanding a medical term to be inclusive not exist because she felt it diminished her as a female. Total right wing maga fundamentalist thinking. This is entirely a case of two people drinking their own Kool-Aid on their own importance and getting called out for it. Their egos have gotten in the way of the work they were doing. I can no longer support them as they are, and I hope people will watch this well researched and documented video. Hugs
Cenk Uyger, Ana Kasparian, and The Young Turks have had a history of scandals and controversies throughout the existence of the network. I want to talk about that history, as well as the events leading up to their recent meltdowns on the podcast circuit and Twitter.
I am not a religious person. I do not believe in the supernatural nor in any deity. I am a confirmed heathen. I enjoy being a heathen and do not hide it. But by My Dogs That Love Gravy, I do appreciate and respect this man, this person Rev. Ed Trevors! I respect him, I support a lot of what he says as is clear in that I repost his videos. I think I could sit in his congregation and hear a sermon of his with no anger or disgust. I could spend a happy pleasant afternoon in chat with him. I wouldn’t believe in his deity or in their holy book, but I do believe in his message of inclusion. It is one I not only support but want to amplify.
I want to make one thing very clear on this site, my Play Time (that some days doesn’t feel much like playing or fun), I am against hate, bigotry, discrimination, and abuse of others. Notice in that list I did not include religion, faith, personal codes of conduct, worship, or any particular deity / religion. When I joined the military I took an oath to support the constitution of the US and its principles, which I still believe in. One of those rights was for people to worship their own gods in ways that did not harm others and government wouldn’t / couldn’t form a preference for any religion over any other, including simply having none.
Notice in the above paragraph I did not include being able to force others to worship and live as you do. I am against that and the hate churches that preach that. I post a lot against them. Just as I don’t insist everyone have same-sex relations just as I do, I fight against heterosexuals who insist others must have the opposite sex relations they do. I support trans rights, but I don’t insist all cis people must be trans, must dress as the gender they don’t identify with. When you break it down into those terms you see clearly what the bigot haters are trying to do, what they want to force the world into, a mold of them, just like them and only them. And they misuse their religion and deity to do this.
Which leads me back to the Rev Ed Trevors. Here is someone that understand his faith is not justification to harm others. His faith is not a weapon to use to hurt those who are different from him. Instead he uses his faith as a guide on how to live his life and treat others. Just as I do with the Christians who come to my Play Time I respect and admire him. Those people are welcome and deserve our respect, and that goes for any faith that comes here with the same ideas of respect. Hugs
The article link is from Ali, thank you Ali. The court ruling was all about racism, returning the more affluent whites back to the preferential position while denying underprivileged people of color a higher education. The end result is classes of mostly or all white people going on to lead businesses or large law firms leading to political power and people of color being regulated to lower income labor servitude jobs. The 1950s all over again. It is an attempt by racists to make a white power nation continue. Hugs
The right-wing activist behind SCOTUS’ Affirmative Action decision is now attacking a venture capital fund that supports Black women-owned small businesses.
ATLANTA, GA – APRIL 07: (L-R) Tobey R. Sanders, actress Keisha Knight Pulliam, and Arian Simone attend the “Festival of Laughs” tour at Philips Arena on April 7, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia.
On Wednesday, the nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a lawsuit against an Atlanta-based venture capital fund that supports Black women and other minority-owned small businesses. The nonprofit was founded by none other than right-wing crusader Edward Blum, who has made it his mission to destroy affirmative action.
The lawsuit filed against the Fearless Fund alleges that the fund is “operating a racially-discriminatory program” in violation of the Civil Rights Act. The Fearless Fund was founded by three Black women — executive Ayana Parsons, actress Keshia Knight Pulliam, and entrepreneur Arian Simone.
As their website notes, less than 2.2.% of all Venture Capital funding goes towards women-founded businesses, and less than 1% of total funding goes towards businesses founded by women of color. And yet, for some reason, folks like Blum are convinced this number should be even lower.
It’s worth noting that Blum and his team are clearly riding high from Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision. In fact, they cite it at the top of their lawsuit.
Even before this lawsuit, conservatives were looking for ways to weaponize the Supreme Court’s decision in the workplace. In July, 13 Republican attorneys general wrote a letter demanding that Fortune 100 companies stop their affirmative action programs.
Amalea Smirniotopoulos, NAACP Legal Defense Fund Senior Policy Counsel, says that these Republican attorneys general are trying to make the Supreme Court’s affirmative decision about something it’s not.
“This was another attempt to chill completely lawful efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion by corporations,” says Smirniotopoulos. “By really trying to stretch the meaning of the decision in the Harvard and UNC cases and frankly by also restating things that have always been true about discrimination law and employment.”
“This letter is a scare tactic,” says University of New Mexico Constitutional and Employment Law Professor Vinay Harpalani. “And unfortunately, it’s a pretty good one.”
Although the Supreme Court decision didn’t touch on hiring practices, Harpalani says that conservatives will certainly try to use it as a basis for challenging race in employment. “The law, as it is now, allows affirmative action in employment,” says Harpalani. “But if the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, I’m not at all confident that they would continue to allow it.”
The immediate threat is that companies begin to back-away from DEI programs, said Justin Hansford, Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University.
“Some of these companies weren’t really doing that much anyway… and what they were doing was done only under pressure,” says Hansford. “This could be an excuse for some companies that already didn’t want to push the envelope on diversity to start walking things back.”
As for the lawsuit against Fearless Fund, an obvious concern is that it could scare off investors who might otherwise want to similarly invest in women of color. However, it’s still too soon to say (especially in this climate) whether the case has legs.
Talked about Barbie bein woke this weekend at my shows. (I’m new to posting these vertical standup clips on YT so forgive me if it’s weird or not workin right.) See me live: http://www.traecrowder.com
Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during the Family Leadership Summit, July 14, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
PUBLISHED: July 26, 2023 at 1:25 p.m. | UPDATED: July 28, 2023 at 4:43 a.m.
Long before Moms for Liberty, there were the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Their passion and influence kept generations of Southern children ignorant of how slavery had caused the Civil War and how cruel it had been. The “war between the states” was rather over “states’ rights” and tariffs. Confederate soldiers were the heroes of a “Lost Cause.” Kindly masters had been considerate to contented slaves.
Reconstruction was bad. The Ku Klux Klan was a benevolent civic organization.
The Daughters didn’t have to pull the truth from shelves. Its influence with state boards kept offending books from ever being printed or bought. When a University of Florida professor wrote that the South had been more in the wrong in the Civil War, the Daughters of the Confederacy got him fired.
In Florida, more than a century later, Southern revisionism is at it again.
Here’s one of them: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Another is worse: “Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to (the) 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C., Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre” (emphasis added).
Andby?
In each of those massacres, Black residents were not the instigators. It is a fraud on history and a libel on them to imply that they were. There were cases where residents of African American communities took up arms to defend their homes, their families and themselves. But they were guarding against armed mobs, seething with racism, bent on arson and murder.
Feeding a fiction
From Donald Trump on down, contemporary Americans playing on race for political advantage have been trying to denigrate the Black Lives Matter movement by accusing it of responsibility for violence. The “and by” phrase, unnecessary and gratuitous and now officially part of the Florida social studies curriculum, feeds that fiction.
Stephen Hudak/Orlando SentinelWilliam Maxwell, a Vietnam-era veteran and resident of Ocoee for two decades, kneels at the gravesite of July Perry in Greenwood Cemetery. Perry, who encouraged Blacks to register to vote, was lynched by a white mob after the Ocoee Massacre in 1920.
The mob that ravaged Ocoee in Orange County, where 25 homes burned and at least eight people died, was incited by two Black men attempting to vote. The massacre at Rosewood, which erased the settlement, was set off by a married white woman’s claim that a Black man had attacked her. The official state history cites Black survivors, who said the assailant was a white lover. (For a link to the Sentinel’s 100th-anniversary coverage of the Ocoee Massacre and images of our 1920s coverage, please visit our web site at orlandosentinel.com/opinion. We’re making that historic coverage, along with other fascinating local history, free for everyone this week.)
For Black history, Florida’s previous standards were extensive and objective, unlike Southern propaganda of the 1900s.
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These images reflect the contemporary coverage of the Ocoee massacre by the Orlando Sentinel.
But one rotten apple can spoil a barrel, and this one has two. There was nothing beneficial about slavery, except to the masters. When slaves learned a trade, such as blacksmithing, carpentry, or caulking wooden ships, as Frederick Douglass did, it was not for their benefit but for the convenience and profit of their masters. And many of them arrived on these shores with those skills already mastered.
Vice President Kamala Harris accurately described slavery in her speech at Jacksonville, which was aimed at DeSantis without mentioning him.
“Adults know what slavery really involved,” Harris said. “It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity … It involved subjecting to people the requirement that they would think of themselves and be thought as less than human… How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities … that there was some benefit?”
A defense from DeSantis
After DeSantis first said he “wasn’t involved” in writing the standards, he is now defending them.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is arguing that some Black people benefited from being enslaved and defending his state’s new African American history standards that civil rights leaders and scholars say misrepresents centuries of U.S. reality. https://t.co/LQwYSaqhPw
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 23, 2023
This would be a good time for him to begin admitting he was wrong. His critics are feasting on this one.
DeSantis owns this horrific mistake, even if he didn’t personally write the standards. It is his education department, run by his appointees.
Cues are obvious in the dog whistles he’s sent. He banned critical race theory in schools (where it wasn’t even being taught.) He signed a law meant to banish all talk of the relevance of past or present racism from Florida schools and workplaces. He’s made it easier to purge school library shelves of innocuous books some people found to be objectionable because they reflected other cultures or talked about the history of civil rights.
The Department of Education’s attempt to document the “personal benefit” issue backfired. Of the 16 historic Black people it cited, as many as half had never been enslaved, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Others, notably the educator Booker T. Washington, acquired their skills after they were freed.
Douglass’ master kept most of the money he earned caulking ships in the Baltimore yards. Fearful of being sold South, Douglass made his escape to become an eloquent, world-famous advocate for the millions in chains.
His memoir recalled how the master, Hugh Auld, rebuked his wife for teaching him the alphabet when he was 11.
Literacy would “forever unfit him for the duties of slave,” Auld said. He should “know nothing but the will of his master and learn to obey it.” This harsh reality, which viewed high-quality education for African Americans as a threat to Caucasian control of society, echoed for decades as Black students were forced into segregated schools. Even now, some schools in high-poverty areas with large minority populations can lack access to options such as advance placement or International Baccalaureate programs.
This is the hideous legacy DeSantis is trying to revive. And no matter how much he squirms and dodges, he can’t erase the stain his actions are leaving on Florida’s reputation.
Coming later this week
DeSantis’ attempts to weaponize racism are turning Florida into a laughingstock and, at long last, turning fellow Republicans and donors against him. Why did it take so long?
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
Wow, oh wow. This is so informative and full of information I had to go over some spots several times. The host talks rather quickly, more than I am used to and I did not check the CC as I was listening only as I was doing something else. But my dogs that love gravy she has this stuff down. Hugs
These white men won’t quit until the US is a Christian theocracy policed by Christian Taliban moral police thugs. Some important quotes that show their mindset. Regardless of the legislative strategy, the panelists agreed changing the culture of America to take on a Christian biblical worldview, which will require all pastors to take the same position on abortion as their own. Also week-long series of events hosted by Operation Save America, an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim religious group that wants all Americans to follow “God’s law” and their interpretation of the Christian gospel. The panel was part of a week-long series of events hosted by Operation Save America, an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim religious group that wants all Americans to follow “God’s law” and their interpretation of the Christian gospel. The moderator of the panel, Derin Stidd, opened by asking, “Why do you all hate women?” to which the men laughed. Hugs
Florida's new African American history standards include a requirement that middle schoolers learn "how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit." @goni_lessanhttps://t.co/DCjauBVLbV
Enslavers defended slavery by claiming it was a “positive good” for Black people. Today Florida’s Board of Education approved new Black history standards that note enslaved Black people developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”https://t.co/xNEIZoK4o3
^ That captures it in a nutshell. The education of slaves was to benefit the people holding them in bondage as property.
Some of his fans are disappointed they don’t get to see him in action.
So DeSantis and his followers trash talk and urge boycotts against a company in which the trust fund HE oversees invests; and when his followers boycott the company and crash the sales, he threatens to sue the company. What a maroon.https://t.co/UcBeyANmTL
If I’m understanding this correctly, DeSantis praised the Bud Light boycott, claimed he’d never drink the beer again, and now wants to sue because … the boycott he endorsed and engaged in had consequences? https://t.co/cKJyHkvZVB
It seems entirely premature, but the looming Oct. 1 deadline for state parties to submit delegate changes to the RNC has the Trump team moving to lock down their support now—and know where they might stand if there’s a 2nd ballot on the floor. https://t.co/E4LE7i5we6
Texas A&M University said on Friday that its president would retire “immediately” after fallout surrounding political pushback of a new director of its journalism program because of her work promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
Germany’s 1933 civil service law applied to university professors as well as elementary and secondary-school teachers. … Scholars who were Jewish or supported left-leaning parties struggled to find research and teaching positions in public, government-supported German universities and often worked in private ones instead. With the passage of the new law, the Nazis attempted to root out any dissent to their policies and ideology that remained in German higher education.
They call it other things, like “Protecting Children” or “Academic Freedom”. None of which is their actual goal, but it’s just bigotry and racism repackaged to make it more palatable.
Honestly, who would be against diversity? Racists… that’s who.
🚨BREAKING: Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signs new congressional map that does NOT contain the second majority-Black district that the U.S. Supreme Court required.
Gay and trans people exist, get over it! Gay and trans kids exist. LGBTQ+ people are real and in every part of society. We deserve equality and our civil rights. We deserve representation in media as much as white religious people. These programs are not sexual acts or positions instructions. These programs do not teach kids how to change their genders and flaunt their parent’s god. What they do is give kids information on what some feelings they are having might be, they teach that different people exist. These programs increase understanding, acceptance, and tolerance for people that are different. That is what really is horrifying to these religious bigots. They seem to think if they deny that LGBTQ+ people are real, if they wipe out any representation of them in media of all kinds, they can make the LGBTQ+ disappear. Poof, gone. It doesn’t work that way! It is like claiming that redheads don’t exist and removing books and movies that have redheads in them that redheads will disappear. Do they think if they ignore people of color, they will just stop existing? It doesn’t happen that way. Like red hair and skin color being LGBTQ+ is something you are born as, it is not learned or a lifestyle choice. Remember there have been gay and trans kids / people in all the history of the human existence. I grew up in a time and place where there were no books about gay kids, there were no movies with gay kids, there were no out gay people among anyone I knew. Yet I was gay, I knew it in every part of me that I was attracted to boys growing up. I felt it, I was experiencing it, but I had no understanding of what it was. As I got near my teens, I thought I was the only one in the world that felt this way. How great it would have been for me in school to have been able to see a movie with a gay boy and have it be accepted as normal. How great it would have been to read stories of gay boys instead of straight boys and girls only all the time. It is like if you were black and had to watch movies or read books with only white people in them. And think how great it would have been had a teacher explained to me and my classmates what those feelings were, and that there was a world of good role models for people like me. Think of the years of teenage bullying that could have been avoided or tempered if the schools / teachers had inclusion and acceptance programs. These religious bigots want their kids to be able to shame and insult / bully LGBTQ+ kids without any push back or consequences. These bigots have to learn to coexist with others. They are not living in a bubble, in isolation. They are like the Amish except they are not happy with themselves being allowed to ignore advances / changes in the world but they are demanding that everyone else do so also. They are demanding that everyone live as they do and the world pretend that only they are real. Hugs
A group of parents is suing the school board to allow them to opt their children out of LGBTQ+-inclusive lessons.
Parents protest Montgomery County Public Schools no opt-out policy.Photo: Screenshot/WUSA9
Parents are demanding that a Maryland school district allow them to opt their children out of its LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum.
As Axios reported last month, in March, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Rockville, Maryland, ended a policy allowing parents to opt their students out of the district’s pre-K–12 language arts curriculum, which had been updated to include books featuring LGBTQ+ characters.
States across the country are banning discussions of LGBTQ people in schools. Not Maryland.
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According to a district statement on its “Inclusive and Welcoming Learning” initiative, the LGBTQ+-inclusive materials are part of the district’s efforts to cultivate “an inclusive and welcoming learning environment” and “to create opportunities where all students see themselves and their families in curriculum materials.”
In a Frequently Asked Questions section of the statement, the district notes that there is no “explicit instruction on gender and sexual identity in elementary school as part of content instruction,” adding that the LGBTQ+-inclusive books “include a diversified representation of people.”
The decision to end the opt-out policy, which the district instituted last October, led to an outcry from religious groups and members of the community. Protesters began showing up at Montgomery County School Board meetings in late March.
In May, a group of Christian and Muslim families sued the Montgomery County school board and superintendent, arguing that not allowing them to opt out of the lessons violates their First Amendment rights.
“Our clients represent families from all across Montgomery County with diverse religious faiths,” Will Haun, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty which is representing the families, told KATV in May. “And while they have differences on those issues, they share one thing in common, which is the right of parents to direct their children’s religious upbringing and their education, especially when it comes to sensitive issues, like a person’s identity, their child’s own identity.”
According to WUSA9, the lawsuit points to a Maryland law that requires school systems to establish opt-out policies for students. But in its own court filing, MCPS said that the school administrators are allowed to deny opt-out requests if they become too burdensome.
“Individual schools could not accommodate the growing number of opt-out requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment and undermining MCPS’s educational mission,” MCPS’s response read.
Last Thursday, both protesters and counter-protesters again descended on a Montgomery County School Board meeting. As WUSA9 reported, the protest against the no opt-out policy was led by Muslim parents, one of whom argued that religious children were being bullied and labeled as bigots by their peers.
“You say you want to protect the rights of trans children and their families while simultaneously you violate the rights of other children and their families,” Nadhira Rasheed said.
Rachel Hull, the parent of a non-binary child, was among the counter-protesters. “Much of the opt-out arguments are couched as parental rights and religious freedom,” she told WUSA9. “But what it boils down to is that the LGBT+ community is being told that their very existence is abnormal. And that their identity should be a source of shame.”
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD – MARCH 6, 2014: Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).Photo: Shutterstock
“Under the Hitler regime…the most important thing that I learned…was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problems. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence.”-Joachim Prinz, Rabbi of Berlin, exiled in 1937 to the United States, from his speech August 28, 1963 in Washington, DC
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” –Voltaire
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Who will fight for those left behind? Why these LGBTQ+ activists won’t leave Florida
“If Escobar couldn’t kill me, neither will Ron Desantis.”
Shortly following their high school graduation in Southern California, two 18-year-old young men, best friends since childhood, drove to a casino just across the Nevada state line where they intended to play video games before returning home the next day.
After engaging in the games for a while, one of the friends, Jeremy Strohmeyer, walked toward the restrooms. Seeing that he entered the women’s room, the other young man, David Cash, walked in to see what Jeremy was doing. He noticed that Jeremy was playfully throwing wadded paper towels at a young black girl, who seemed at first to have enjoyed the attention.
But then the scene turned violent. Strohmeyer grabbed 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, placed his hand over her mouth, and spirited her into a toilet stall as Cash watched by the sinks. He entered an adjacent stall and mounted the toilet edge allowing him to peer down as he saw Jeremy continuing to muffle the girl’s screams and warning Sherrice to keep quiet or he would kill her.
Not wanting to get involved, Cash returned to playing video games. He did not attempt to stop his friend from attacking the young girl. He did not seek help or call law enforcement officials. He calmly played games and waited the 20 minutes it took for Jeremy to return. David asked Jeremy what had happened.
“I killed her,” Jeremy asserted with a certain serenity in his tone on that summer evening in 1997. Soon thereafter, the two friends coolly entered nearby casinos where they enjoyed mechanical rides and continued to play video games until it was time for them to return home.
With the assistance of the video security system implanted at the casino, Strohmeyer was eventually caught, tried, and convicted to life imprisonment for rape and murder. Cash, on the other hand, was never indicted because inaction was not a crime in Nevada at the time.
In reaction to the case and the lack of charges against Cash, Richard Perkins, Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, sponsored the Sherrice Iverson bill requiring Nevadans to notify law enforcement if they witness violent acts committed against a child. The law took effect in 1999, and a similar measure passed in California one year later.
Asked on a 1999 CBS 60 Minutes segment, The Bad Samaritan, whether if given a chance, he would do things differently, Cash said, “I don’t feel there is much I could have done differently.” Asked a similar question during an interview on a Los Angeles radio station, Cash gave a similar reply and added: “How much am I supposed to sit down and cry about this?” he asked. “The simple fact remains that I did not know this little girl. I do not know starving children in Panama. I do not know people dying of disease in Egypt.”
The Long Beach Press-Telegram quoted Cash as saying that he wanted to sell his story to the media. One movie company offered him $21,000. He added. “I’m no idiot,” he declared. “I’ll (expletive) get my money out of this.”
In not taking action to intervene on behalf of Sherrice Iverson, David Cash colluded in her death. “Enabler” is the term given to those who fail to act to help abusers. “Passive bystander” or “bad Samaritan” is the name for people who are conscious of bad actions developing around them but fail to intervene.
Though I have studied the Holocaust and other genocides, until I discovered this case, I always had the gnawing and seemingly unanswerable question pulling at me, “How could these incidents have taken place throughout the ages”?
David Cash taught me that mass murders happen on the macro level when people on the individual and collective levels let them happen, when witnesses– so-called “bystanders” – do little or nothing to intervene. When people either allow their fear or reluctance to “get involved” and supersede their empathy.
David Cash refused to see, hear, and stand up to do the right thing in the face of evil around him.
For the past eight years, the not see Republican Party has continually refused to see, hear, and stand up to the would-be authoritarian dictator, Donald J. Trump. By burying their heads in the political sand, they have permitted Trump to grab, assault, and ravage our governmental institutions physically and figuratively.
I now fully understand the process in the rise and takeover of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
Staying silent
Empathy, that special and majestic human quality, has always been a vital life force of our humanity. As we understand in psychology, unless there is developmental delay, infants demonstrate the rudimentary beginnings of empathy whenever they recognize that another is upset and then show signs of being upset themselves. Very early in their lives, infants develop the capacity to crawl in the diapers of others even though their own diapers don’t need changing.
Though empathy is a part of the human condition, through the process of socialization, others often teach us to inhibit our empathetic natures with messages like “Don’t cry,” “You’re too sensitive,” “Mind your own business,” “It’s not your concern.” We learn the stereotypes of the individuals and groups our society has “minoritized” and “othered.” We learn who to scapegoat for the problems within our neighborhoods, states, nations, and world.
Through it all, that precious life-affirming flame of empathy can wither and flicker. For some, it dies entirely. And as the blaze recedes, the bullies, the demagogues, and the tyrants take over by filling the void where our humanity once prevailed. And then we have lost something very precious.
David Cash represents the termination of empathy on the individual micro level, resulting not only in the possibly preventable rape and murder of a young girl, but the death of his own soul. And when the demise of empathy comes to people who are around powerful leaders and their willing subjects, the consequences, on the macro level, become exponentially deeper, more toxic, and more tragic.
Jeremy Strohmeyer and Donald Trump were cast from the same mold with their narcissistic, sociopathic personalities. Cash comes from the same mold as many current members of the Republican Party in that they lack sufficient empathy, which overrides their actions.
For example, Trump knew early of the deadly potential of the Coronavirus, but he decided to lie to the public while failing to mobilize any discernible national policies and actions due to concerns for stock markets over the health and safety of the people. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
Trump has referred to our military personnel as “suckers” and “losers” for joining the military, for being captured, for dying, and for receiving meager financial compensation. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
Earlier, he carelessly blamed the mayor of London for being incompetent after a terrorist attack on his city. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He accused the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico of playing politics and being ungrateful, and the Puerto Rican people of being lazy and expecting everything to be done for them on their “bankrupt” island after a “500-year” storm virtually shut them down and people clung desperately to life. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He referred to white nationalist neo-Nazi terrorists in Charlottesville, Virginia, who showed up for a so-called “Unite the Right” rally, as well as the counter-demonstrators, as “Good people, on both sides.” Regarding his reference to the white nationalists, many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He mocked a disabled reporter, took away the rights of trans students to use bathrooms most closely aligning with their gender identities, demonized Latinx people, Muslims, and women, ridiculed Gold Star parents who sacrificed so much while Donald Trump sat on his gold-plated toilet and attempted to take away affordable health insurance from an estimated 20 million low-income people. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
And he behaved as if the series of package bombs sent through the mail to leading Democratic politicians and activists was nothing more than an inconvenience during the closing days of the midterm election season. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
Trump separated young children from their refugee parents and placed them in cages as if they were feral animals. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
And he risked the very lives of members of Congress and his own Vice President on January 6, 2021, after he lost over 60 court cases in his attempts to circumvent the results of a fair election. While some Republican leaders harshly criticized Trump at the time, they ultimately reversed themselves and got on their knees to kiss his ring.
Empathy can save the world
Quite frankly, I find few differences between the attitudes and actions of Jeremy Strohmeyer on the micro level and Donald J. Trump on the macro level.
I find few differences between the attitudes and inactions of David Cash and the majority of the current Republican Party in their refusal to stand up and act in the best interests of a young girl, in Cash’s case, and in service to the fragile democratic experiment we know as the United States of America in the case of the Republican Party.
Though the Cashes and Republicans are more numerous than we can even imagine, empathy has always been an antidote to the poison of inaction, prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and scapegoating, and to bullies and demagogues who take power and control.
Empathy is the life force of our humanness, and ultimately it is the key to our recovery during the current crisis in our country.
I often wonder how Trump’s Republican bad Samaritan enablers can sleep at night and get back up in the morning still willing to degrade and prostrate themselves by attacking our democratic institutions and seriously dismantling our country’s standing in the world.
A recent poll taken by The Hillfound that 80% of registered Republicans believe that if elected as the next President of the United States in 2024, Trump should be able to serve even if he is convicted of multiple felony charges, including in the case of willingly and unconstitutionally holding onto classified documents. Even in the case of the documents, many Republican leaders either failed to speak up or they are speaking up in his defense.
Each time anyone enables an abusive action or actor, they keep perpetrators and themselves further from the truth and from help, and they diminish themselves and their integrity more than just a bit.
I have been stuck time and time again on the post-factual campaign, transition, presidency, and now post-presidency of Donald J. Trump. I get stuck on the lies, the verifiable lies, big and small that he spreads and on his direct attacks on our democratic institutions, like the entire judicial system, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the State Department, state legislatures and secretaries of state who would not overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.
Even more troubling, however, are Trump’s enablers who spin the facts by turning themselves into virtual pretzels in defense of Trump’s attempts – to paraphrase Voltaire – to make us believe his absurdities he uses to give himself permission to commit possible atrocities.
His sustained and vicious attacks on what he refers to as the “dishonest and corrupt” media imperil our very freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately, many of the outlets within the Fourth Estate, while making some mistakes, fact-check themselves and our politicians, including Trump, and by so doing, exposes his lies for what they are.
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD – MARCH 6, 2014: Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).Photo: Shutterstock
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