Within a week of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem recalling how she shot a 14-month-old puppy, Cricket, in her upcoming memoir, Donald Trump has said it’s impossible to consider her for his running mate. It’s crazy that a man who said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City and not get arrested has scruples for a woman who shot a puppy. I’m sure Trump has some history of animal abuse skeletons in his closet, but there’s a reason Noem is a No – the GOP really needs to win this year to survive.
Ever since the era of Richard Nixon, the Republican Party has decided to play hard ball with the American public. Incidentally, the reason Nixon even made it so far was that he gave a televised speech about the family dog, Checkers, a Cocker Spaniel that had been a gift but he and his family had loved. This was less than two weeks from the 1952 election. It basically made Nixon seem more modest and human. And anyone who loves their dog and says they’re keeping the family pet despite what happens to their job, probably helped Dwight Eisenhower win.
But where did the cruelty come from? In the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement and Voting Rights Act, many Southern Democrats and Dixiecrats realized that they could no longer support President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Nixon campaign used the Southern Strategy and the Silent Majority to convince everyone Nixon was going to rein in some of the madness that had happened during LBJ’s years.
However, so many people from the South and small-town America had been drafted and sent to Vietnam, they soon discovered they couldn’t continue with their racist, bigoted ways. They slept in foxholes with black people and Latinos. They had to take orders from black officers and NCOs. They even held their fellow service members as they were wounded or they had their lives saved by black or Latino service members. You can’t rotate back to the world and go back to your previous ways. Just as college seems to open young people’s minds, so does being in the middle of a warzone.
The anti-war protestors went from being college students to Vietnam vets, some of which had been permanently injured. As Marine Ron Kovic and others would discover at the 1972 Republican National Convention, they had served their country and had people call them “traitors” and were nearly arrested. And from there, the Nixon Republicans learned they can be as cruel and unjust as they want and get away with it. Imagine a bunch of Democrats calling disabled military vets “traitors” and spitting on them. That’s not saying Democrats can be awful people, but Republicans often get the mulligan.
Despite what people think, it didn’t start with Trump in 2015. No, they called Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton ugly when they were just kids. But Barron Trump or Bristol Palin were off limits? And how much the Republicans were so hateful toward Malia and Sasha Obama, you know, because they’re black. Yet, I seem to remember when Jenna Bush made faces and stuck her tongue out toward the media. But that was different. Bush is white and her father was a cowboy from Texas, even though he’s a Yankee born in Connecticut.
And speaking of which, there was the infamous “Willie Horton Ad.” This was a way the Republicans in 1988 got people to choose the father of the above-mentioned over Michael Dukakis. However, Horton never went by the name “Willie.” It didn’t matter. It got so many people on dog-whistle race baiting. Yet, Trump’s supporters cheered him when he pardoned that crazy Joe Arpaio. Why? Because a lot of people support Arpaio’s vision of a world where white men can harass, intimidate and threaten anyone they want.
Sadly, Trump brought out the types who should never vote. They had mostly stay dormant in their own worlds where they stayed even with Barack Obama was President. They don’t understand politics and they don’t understand how anything works. You need only look at those who stormed the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. They actually thought what they were doing would work. And they continue to mock President Joe Biden who has suffered from a stutter for years. If any other Presidential candidate had ever made fun of a disabled person, they may have never gotten this far. But it was the people who should never vote who were now supporting him mainly because they themselves have constantly mocked disabled people.
I’ve often said the problem that have led the GOP this way is that many of the Baby Boomers were born into a world that was very divided. And then during their formative years, so many things changed. It was too much for them to process. I mean, all those black and white photos of young people screaming at black people are your parents and grandparents. Or maybe not yours, but they’re somebody’s. And that’s why they don’t want this stuff coming up.
Yet, they show their true colors with the cruelty. A friend of mind opined a good theory that Boomers grew up after World War II and they had been fed this notion that America was the greatest country in the world. Granted, it did have a good manufacturing and business industry. But it was because the industry was almost non-existent in Europe and other parts of the world because of WWII. Then, when other countries rebuilt themselves, they attracted the business and industry. This happen to coincide with the implementation of Affirmative Action (which benefited more white women than any other demographic).
So, who gets blamed? Non-whites who are getting jobs where they’re not carrying trays, cleaning up puke or changing linens. And when the Vietnam vets needed the help of a grateful nation, we called them lazy. We want to remove benefits for the disabled, many of which can’t even make a go with what they have.
I mostly blame “that sumbitch Reagan” and the Republican Party for convincing so many people (Boomers and Gen Xers) that people on disability are lazy and floating “communism” and “socialism” around. Well, if we never had the Soviet Union helping us in WWII, who knows when Nazi Germany would’ve surrendered? They definitely didn’t want to surrender to the Soviets and literally eat their own dead in the prisons.
Now, you have Gen Zers entering the work force unable to make a living as Gen Xers and Millennials are also struggling as their Boomer parents and grandparents just call them “lazy.” Well, it was easier in the 1960s and 1970s to get a job because there was so much room for promotions and raises. Now, workers are expected to do two or three jobs for the price of one at a rate of pay that no longer can support a livable wage. And it doesn’t matter if you have a business degree or a theater degree, you’re going to have to jump through hoops to get a job that can take weeks or months of wait time.
I keep my fingers crossed that a day will come when Millennials and Gen Zers will be the major deciders for our elected officials. Some of the Gen Xers dropped the ball. I apologize but we did. We made the same mistakes our parents made. We were too busy focusing on nostalgia and “how bad we had it” while at the same time praising “those simpler times” to really do much effective change.
At least we don’t look through our youth with the same type of Rose-Colored White Privilege Glasses our parents did. Jesus, can you imagine a filmmaker doing something like American Graffiti or Dazed and Confused these days about the glorious time of the 2000s or 2010s? Of course not, because it would suck and people would be called out for romanticizing (even white-washing) bleak periods of history. Just about everyone born from the mid-1970s on has realized how crappy things have been. And unless you’re Seth MacFarlane, you can’t really make people happy about how bad things were by making a joke about a Saturday morning cartoon that aired in 1987.
That’s not to say that this type of behavior is only exclusive to a certain age range. People of all ages can be jerks and they can also be kind. The current debate over the “Man vs. Bear Option” on which a woman would prefer to meet in the woods shows it’s men of all ages. It’s not just the people getting the Early Bird Special at Country Kitchen Buffet who can be perverts and dangerous toward women. And young women nowadays are more vicious with the bullying with the use of the Internet and social media.
I don’t know if it’s peer pressure or just some silly expectations people place on each other. However, you don’t have to cave and treat other people and especially animals a certain way just because you live on a farm/ranch. My grandmother lived on a farm/ranch and my mom said she only slaughtered a chicken once to cook. My mom said she could pluck and cook it but my grandmother couldn’t kill it. I’ve known people who worked in restaurants where they served meat who were vegetarians. They weren’t jerks about it. They just didn’t like meat. And I know people who are conservative devout Christians who are vegans. They’re about as far as the stereotypical hippie vegan archetype.
A friend of mine has been in Serbia visiting and despite the area’s checkered history, she says people are generally nice. As she was walking along the streets at night alone, she wasn’t scared. However, if she was in America, she would be. It’s because we’re taught from childhood to always be afraid. But really, most people regardless of their skin color, how they dress and what they do for a living don’t have any intentions of harming others.
Rather than teach people, especially women, how to defend themselves, we ought to just teach people how to treat others better. It’s not a sign of weakness. Being cruel and inhumane is a sign of weakness. Being a good person should be a strength. It’s not “wokeness.” It’s sincerity and consideration. It’s really the Christian thing to do.
For a political party that may cease to be at the end of this decade, the only thing left they can do is stoke fear, animosity and ugliness.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 