Name:   johndoe - Subject:   Definitions matter. Date:   7/21/2019 4:25:29 PM

"As usual you missed the entire point." 

No. I get "the point." You're trying to say the shoe doesn't fit when it fits you perfectly.

"We are all very familiar with the use of “racism” up until 2015."

It hasn't changed. Up until ca. 40 years ago, it is a mantle people like you would have worn proudly. It's gone out of style, but #45 is doing his best to bring it back.

"Nothing Atwater said in the 80s applies today."

Let me get this straight: you're saying that you believe the Republican party - the "party of "Lincoln," the same party that allegedly passed all that civil rights legislation in the 1960s, adopted a policy of appealing to racists in 1968, continued that policy for an unspecified period of time, then magically returned to being the "party of Lincoln?" Dang, that's a pack of obvious self-serving lies right there.

The truth is that everything Atwater said still applies. The only difference now is that you guys lack his subtlety, and the rest of us know your code language very well.

I'll quote Andrew Gillum when he responded to Ron DeSantis in a debate during the Florida gubernatorial race in 2018: "I'm not saying you're a racist, I'm saying all the racists think you're a racist." This applies to #45, as well as to a number of current politicians, all of them Republicans.

Was George Wallace a racist? Was Jesse Helms a racist? Was Strom Thurmond a racist?

We all know the answers to the above. Of course they were. They capitalized on their racism to gain and retain political power.

Is Jeff Sessions a racist? Of course he is. He was denied a Federal judgeship in 1986 for that very reason.

Are birthers racist? Of course they are. That's what motivated their spreading such an obvious lie.

Is #45 a racist? Of course he is. He was sued by the Federal government and lost for housing discrimination in 1973. He is widely known to use racial slurs against both people of color and Jewish people. He took out newspaper ads calling for the death penalty to be carried out on five innocent young black men. He led the birther movement. He called Mexicans rapists and drug dealers. He claimed a Federal judge could not rule fairly because he had a Spanish name (that judge was born in the US, BTW). The list goes on and on. When you deny what's right in front of all of us, it strains credulity to think you're stupid enough not to recognize the obvious. The reasonable conclusion is that you see the same things we all see and are OK with them.

Are you a racist? I know the answer to that one. Do you?