An HBO Miniseries Is Not Real History

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If you want to be a hate-filled bigot, Hollywood will show you the way. John Cole (who else?):

I’ve been watching Show Me a Hero on HBO the past few weeks, and you should too. They are showing two episodes a week, and the final episodes will be aired this upcoming Sunday, so if you want to watch them live you have ample time to catch up on the last four. The true story focuses on young mayor in Yonkers attempting to put public housing in predominately white neighborhoods.

[…]

t’s all the old racial ugliness brought up again, and man is it timely. Or timeless (and yes, I am aware that this is the third post to link this- it’s just so terrifying):

The group said Trump has their best interests in mind, while other Republicans are looking out for themselves. “We’ve got to show the Republicans that we’ve had it with them, that we will not be there every single time. They treat us like crap and they lie to us and promise us things and then they expect us to vote again,” said a Republican woman. “That’s why we want Trump.”

The crowd in the room was angriest about national security. Nearly all of them, it appeared, had an unshakeable feeling that U.S. border was porous as a sieve and that the very things that once defined the nation: army, border and national pride—were fading. They complained of America’s reduced standing in the world, and Obama’s apparent ineptitude in challenging Russia, Syria and ISIS.

When the group listened to a clip of Trump claiming that as president “the military is going to be so strong” that “nobody is going to mess around with the United States,” nearly everyone registered approval on their dial meters of 100—a seldom occurrence among focus groups.

“We love our country and we love what our country stands for,” said a woman who added she comes from a military family. “I look at where we are now as a country where entitlements are just totally out of control. Our borders have completely dissolved. We’re not what we used to be. I want to people to represent my interest.”

Trump’s unapologetic focus on strengthening the border—he wants to build a wall and deport all 11 million immigrants before letting many back into the country—excites many conservatives, as well as some who don’t traditionally vote Republican. Though he has announced scant specific plans, Trump has said he will expand the military, commit to veterans, and take a tough line on dealing with China and Iran.

“He’s not afraid,” said a woman who voted twice for Obama. “He keeps prodding on even if people give him negative press. He doesn’t change and apologize.”

A couple years back, I thought the Republican base would be clamoring for a bully-boy asshole like Christie. I just didn’t realize they wanted a xenophobic fascist, but I probably should have.

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As I am sure you are all aware I am not Trump fan, but I’m not sure how you get “xenophobic fascist” from that particular passage. On the other hand I can understand why middle class people would object to low-income housing projects being built in their neighborhoods. You don’t see them building “projects” in upper-class white liberal enclaves, do you?

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.

John Cole hates white people, especially the conservative kind. Which is kinda funny because he is white and used to be a conservative. I’m guessing there are some issues there. Frankly I’m surprised he hasn’t gone full Shaun King/Rachel Dolezal and tried to pass as transracial.

In John’s mind, white people are bad. With the exception of an enlightened few (such as himself) we are racists who carry the original sin of slavery and segregation. Republicans are the worst of the worst, especially when it comes to race. Southerners and Tea Partiers are the worst of the worst of the worst. According to John Cole they are the modern KKK.

Which is really ironic because up until a few years ago John’s senior senator was a former Klan member:

West Virginia’s Southern Democratic United States Senator Robert C. Byrd was a recruiter for the Klan while in his 20s and 30s, rising to the title of Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of his local chapter. After leaving the group, Byrd spoke in favor of the Klan during his early political career. Though he claimed to have left the organization in 1943, Byrd wrote a letter in 1946 to the group’s Imperial Wizard stating “The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.” Byrd defended the Klan in his 1958 U.S. Senate campaign when he was 41 years old.[9]

Despite being the only Senator to vote against both African American U.S. Supreme Court nominees (liberal Thurgood Marshall and conservative Clarence Thomas) and filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Byrd has since said joining the Klan was his “greatest mistake.” The NAACP gave him a 100% rating on their issues during the 108th Congress.[10] However, in a 2001 incident Byrd repeatedly used the phrase “white niggers” on a national television broadcast.[11]

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Getting back to that HBO miniseries you might wonder where in the Deep South Teabagger part of our nation that Yonkers is located. Well, it turns out that Yonkers is actually a suburb of New York City!

That young mayor was a Democrat, but he wasn’t the hero that John Cole thinks he was:

In 1988, at the age of 28, Wasicsko defeated six-term Republican-Conservative incumbent Angelo R. Martinelli, age 60, to become the youngest-ever mayor of Yonkers, and the youngest mayor in a major American city.[6] Wasicsko won by a margin of 1,466 votes of the 42,700 cast.[3]

The major issue in the 1988 election was the court-ordered integration of public housing in Yonkers.[3] As a candidate, Wasicsko advocated for “for resisting the court-ordered integration by legal appeals.”[2] Martinelli and Wasicsko “had not taken dramatically opposite positions on the integration dispute, but … Mayor Martinelli had become identified with much of the emotion surrounding the issue,” contributing to his loss.[3]

As mayor, Wasicsko changed his position when the city’s lawyers told him that the case was hopeless. He did so not because he thought it was right, but because he had no choice but to comply.[6] After his death, his executive aide at the time said that “He wasn’t pro-desegregation, he was pro-compliance.”[4]

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so the US Department of Justice was trying to desegregate Yonkers? Who was the Attorney General back then? It was Edwin Meese, a Republican. And who did Meese work for?

Ronald Reagan.

Is your mind blown?

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