I trust you don’t need me to convince you that Republicans are the party of White Supremacy. The presence of Bannon in the Fuhrer’s Reich, and decades of innumerable dog whistles should have already done that. However, it’s refreshing to see a journalist expose the bigotry and debunk the bogus claims of Republican racist policy.
This week during a press briefing on the Trump administration’s latest immigration bill, CNN’s Jim Acosta had an interesting exchange with White House Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller. It was an eye opening look into the mindset of this administration and those pulling the strings. The public reaction to it was another example of how divided we are as a country and exactly how misguided many have become.
When Acosta compared the verbiage in the new bill to “The New Colossus,” the poem written on the base of the Statue of Liberty, Miller attempted to rewrite history by stating the words were added later. In doing so, he was insinuating that the poem and its meaning had no bearing on American history or policy.
I grew up in the ’80s, and I remember “Liberty Weekend.” That was the celebration and rededication of the Statue on its 100th anniversary. I remember that poem being read more times than I could count, I also recall having to memorize it in the 5th grade. Ronald Reagan, during that event, said that America was made up of “a special kind of people from every corner of the world, who had a special love for freedom.” He understood the fabric and DNA of this country.
He understood what made us.
Make no mistake, America is in distress. We are on the verge of forgetting our past and forfeiting our future to the ideology of white nationalism. We live in a nation founded, built, and loved by immigrants, yet today its part of our history many wish to deny. By attacking and demonizing the immigrants of today, we till up the roots of those who came before that made us who we are.
From <Huffington Post>
The video in the article cannot be embedded, but I found a more extensive clip.
Barf Bag Alert!!
Now Republicans will argue that they could not be racist, because they are protecting African Americans’ jobs. But all they are really doing is pitting brown against black. By using a divide and conquer strategy, they isolate both groups to exploit them.
Kudos to Jim Acosta. No matter how nasty Miller got, he kept resisting. It’s your turn.
RESIST!!
15 Responses to “Republican White Nationalism Debunked”
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The PLAQUE was added later. The POEM was in the U. S. before the statue was. It was written for a campaign to raise funds to build the pedestal. Even though the physical plaque didn’t magically come into being right away, the words were always a part of it. I think we need to clarify that, probably not to us, but to Republicans, so they will be less able to call us on their lie which is a half-truth (or maybe a tenth-truth).
Watch Miller twist in the white nationalist wind! He mangled Jim Acosta’s words trying to give them meaning that was not there. Fortunately, Acosta is a well spoken and persistent reporter.
I was going to do a post today about this very incident but partially based on a Think Progress article and partially based on an AlterNet article. How many times have I said that the US is no longer entitled to claim the Statue of Liberty nor Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” which is inscribed on a plaque at the entrance! Emmanuel Macron, the French President, should repossess the Statue of Liberty until such time that the US lives up to The Statue’s ideals!
Drumpf and his cabal are doing to the US what nobody else has been able to do — take the US to the gutter of civilisation.
Resist, Persist and Remove!!!
God, Miller is part of his (dt) gang of liars and thieves.How disrespectful, and Kudos to Mr. Acosta for standing up to this thug.
Thanks, Tom
“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor”: Trump Admin Attacks Emma Lazarus’s Iconic Poem on Statue of Liberty
STORY AUGUST 04, 2017 Video (CC), text includes exchange between Jim Acosta & Stephen Miller. Discussion with Amy Goodman & Esther Schor.
ABOUT EMMA LAZARUS
Emma Lazarus’s most famous poem gave a voice to the Statue of Liberty, but her remarkable story has remained a mystery until now. Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980s, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity—as a feminist, a Zionist, and a trailblazing Jewish-American writer. Schor argues persuasively for Lazarus’s place in history as an activist and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today. As a stunning rebuke to fear, xenophobia, and isolationism, Lazarus’s life and work are more relevant now than ever before.
ESTHER SCHOR, a poet and professor of English at Princeton University.,
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/4/why_emma_lazaruss_iconic_poem_the
TIMETABLE:
Creating the Statue of Liberty w/ rare photos
1865 – 1886
https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/places_creating_statue.htm
“The New Colossus” is a sonnet that American poet Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) wrote in 1883 to raise money for the construction of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
Rare Photos of the Statue of Liberty Being Built in 1883
http://twistedsifter.com/2013/05/rare-photos-of-the-statue-of-liberty-under-construction/
Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor – Jun 17, 1885
Unveiled
On October 28, 1886, the statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World” was officially unveiled. The day’s wet and foggy weather did not stop some one million New Yorkers from turning out to cheer for The Statue of Liberty. Parades on land and sea honored the Statue while flags and music filled the air and the official dedication took place beneath the colossus “glistening with rain.” When it was time for Bartholdi to release the tricolor French flag that veiled Liberty’s face, a roar of guns, whistles, and applause sounded.
In 1903, the poem was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal’s lower level.
.
The part we all know, which is that part which is sung in the video, is only the final (almost five) lines of the sonnet, and the whole thing is well worth revisiting:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Between the uplifting ideals it expresses – and our national failure to live up to it even when we thought we were trying – and the disparagement and abandonment of it by the current regime and its supporters – I personally need a Kleenex.
Thank you both for the history lesson.
The extremist views espoused by this Administration will, I fervently hope, inspire MORE voters to get up and actually VOTE in the mid-terms! I am very active in the Democratic Party. Flawed though the process is, unless and until we have greater voter participation and activism, I am very concerned. So far, we have seen an increase in volunteerism.
Gerrymandering, attempts to restrict voter participation, and the bullying rants of this Administration must be viewed seriously by the electorate. Fascism is rearing its extremely ugly head.
Welcome Beth!
Amen!
In case you were wondering w/e happened to that nasty, evil Sid kid from “Toy Story” …
Dang!! It’s uncanny!!
Does it really matter that the plaque was added a few years later? Should the discussion be allowed to go there at all?
The sentiment behind the plaque obviously has been a strong one for over a century and shouldn’t depend on what time it was added to the Statue of Liberty, or when the statue was put up for that matter. The discussion should be whether the majority of divided America still are “a special kind of people from every corner of the world, who had a special love for freedom” (to quote another, often reviled, Republican president) who still value those principles and offer them to others.
While you make an excellent point, since the toothpaste is now out of the tube, it really can’t be put back in, but needs to be cleaned up. Or maybe it’s not toothpaste but hemorrhoid ointment.
I had not read your clarification of the timeline of the placement of the plaque, Joanne, nor Jim’s, before I wrote my comment so it had absolutely no bearing on your first rate discussion on the hemorrhoid ointment, Joanne. It was more out of my general annoyance of most of the media which picked up on the content of Miller’s babbling instead of on the fact that he never even answered Acosta’s genuine question on what this new immigration policy meant to those poor and huddled masses America prides/prided itself on giving refuge to.
Drumpf (administration), thy name is deflection.
But you still made an excellent point!
Thanks all. Hot pooped hugs!