Saturday, January 16, 2021



White North Dakota lawmaker is branded racist for claiming black Americans are 'glad their ancestors were brought here as slaves' - but is backed by black Republican who says slavery was good for Africans who became Christians

State Rep Terry Jones, a Republican from New Town, has made the controversial statement while discussing his newly introduced bill that would allow residents to put down 'American' as their race on official paperwork.

House Bill 1333 would require state agencies to list 'American' as the first option on documents that ask for information on race.

Jones' remarks about slaves have been labeled racist by Fargo Black Lives Matter activist Jamaal Abegaz, who stressed that he is 'not happy that my mother's ancestors were stolen and brought here,' as first reported by The Forum.

But Michael Coachman, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate, who is black, has rushed to Jones' defense.

Coachman said that while slavery was terrible, he argued that it was good for Africans who converted to Christianity in America.

The controversy began unfolding after Jones introduced the bill on Wednesday, arguing that the legislation would help unite the country under a shared American identity, rather than allow race to divide people further.

Jones claimed that the American nationality qualifies as a race under a definition he offered as 'a group of people that has lived under common laws for mutual benefits.'

The US Census does not allow respondents to put down their nationality as their race.

Rep. Gretchen Dobervich, a Democrat from Fargo, rejected Jones' reasoning and said her colleague's bill would do nothing to heal the racial divide.

'I don't think [the bill] is meant to be racist, but the optics are not good,' Dobervich said.

Jones argued that people of all races and cultural backgrounds are proud to be Americans, including the descendants of slaves.

He added that his belief is rooted in a Reader's Digest article from the 1980s about a black doctor from the US who visited a war-torn African country and came away from the experience feeling grateful for slavery.

Fargo Black Lives Matter board member Jamaal Abegaz said Jones' comments are racist, crass and unrepresentative of the way many Black Americans view their ancestors' forced arrival on the continent. Abegaz, who is Black, emphatically said he's "not happy that my mother's ancestors were stolen and brought here."

'The unrelenting buffoonery of [Jones'] statement cannot be understated,' said Abegaz, a member of the Fargo BLM board, adding that his proposed legislation that would do away with racial identification on official forms is a 'piece of nonsense.'

But Coachman, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in November as a write-in candidate, and who has now emerged as Jones' supporter, said he believes questions requiring people to identify their race only sow division in the country.

Jones is a rancher and farmer with a wife and six children who was first elected to the State House of Representatives in 2016.

In the fall of 2020, state Democrats made a failed attempt to kick Jones off the ballot by claiming that he is a resident of Wyoming, where he operates several businesses.

Jones argued that he owns a home in New Town, pays North Dakota income tax, and has led a congregation at a Mormon church there for years.

In a ruling issued in September, the State Supreme Court ruled that Jones was eligible for re-election, which he won in November. His current term ends in November 2024.

Coachman is a retired Air Force veteran with a wife and three children who has run several statewide campaigns, including in 2018 when he made a failed bid for North Dakota secretary of state.

During his campaign for governor last year, Coachman criticized the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic and railed against restrictions, saying: 'we’re not free. We’re under bondage and being told to wear a mask when we don’t need to,' reported The Dickinson Press last October.

He also weighed in on race relations, which he described as one of the biggest problems facing the US.

'We the People of the United States ... Our Constitution says it best. We the People,' he said. 'It’s not We the Blacks, not We the Native Americans, We the Whites, We the Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Democrats or Republicans ... No, it’s We the People.'

Don't be a victim

Hugh Mackay

Victimhood is one of our favourite hiding places. Look what a hard life I’ve had! Look how hopeless my parents were! Look how badly I’ve been treated! If we allow ourselves to be consumed by self-pity, that may well turn into a hiding place, allowing us to settle for a superficial, reflexive victimhood rather than taking a deeper look at what we might yet become.

Having spent most of my working life sitting in people’s homes, listening to the stories of their lives and their views on every imaginable subject, I can say two things with confidence. The first is that everyone’s story is interesting: you have only to ­listen patiently enough to realise that. The ­second is that everyone has had their share of tragedy; everyone walks with shadows; everyone has been wounded, disappointed, wronged or misjudged. Everyone. And perhaps there’s a third thing, though it’s less universal: almost everyone resists the temptation to take themselves too seriously, or to fall into a trough of self-pity; almost everyone knows that there’s someone worse off than they are.

What you can never predict is how individuals might deal with misfortune and setbacks. Some of the most serene and gentle-seeming people turn out to be harbouring a seething resentment of “fate”. Some people who seem relaxed and ­charming turn out to be restless rogues or bullies constantly plotting revenge against real or imagined adversaries. (Indeed, I’m tempted to propose a law of human nature: charm is the ­preferred disguise of the rogue and the bully – that’s how they get away with it.) Others, whose experiences would move you to tears of sympathy for their loss, their sorrow or their tough luck, shrug their shoulders and look at you with a half-smile, as if to say: “What can you do? What can anyone do?”

Some people lead lives of quiet heroism – as carers for disabled children or parents with dementia, as visitors to lonely people in hospitals or nursing homes, as spouses who sacrifice their own career to support their partner’s aspirations or to raise their children – without even realising how heroic they have been. Others complain ­bitterly about the sacrifices they feel they have been forced to make.

Some people have experienced life-threatening illness and never once asked: “Why me?”; ­others have railed ceaselessly against the injustice of it all, throughout their illness and beyond. Some people have been bullied, harassed, abused or belittled by parents, teachers or people in ­positions of authority in the workplace, and maintained their dignity and courage; others have been discouraged and diminished.

All unpredictable. All part of the broad range of normal human behaviour. It’s unpredictable partly because of the crucial role played by luck in determining the trajectory of our lives. Yes, some of us can improve whatever situation we find ourselves in, through education, training and hard work. But some of us simply can’t do that because our genetic inheritance has left us with insufficient cognitive ability or emotional resources to rise above our difficulties, or because it has proved impossible to escape from a poverty trap or other crushing disadvantage. Unless we are irretrievably disadvantaged, being dealt this or that hand by the fates does not entail being defined by the hand we’ve been dealt. As Carl Jung put it: “I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”

Many people who experience illness or other misfortunes ranging from retrenchment or divorce to poverty or disability manage to display remarkable resilience, including a capacity to remain in touch with their essential loving self. But people who embrace victimhood in any of its guises tend to have an inflated sense of entitlement, are more likely to expect others to tolerate their rudeness, insensitivity or self-centredness, and are more prone to anger based on a sense of “the injustice of it all”.

What are such people ­hiding from behind that veneer of victimhood? What is it about portraying ourselves as victims that appeals to some of us? Given that the desire to be taken seriously is the most fundamental of all our social desires, is it that we believe victimhood to be the only way to get other people to take us seriously?

None of this is intended to downplay the ­misery of people trapped in the coils of tragedy or misfortune. Such people need all the sympathy, all the kindness, all the understanding and all the practical support we can muster on their behalf. But when they elect to play the victim role, that diminishes their capacity for self-reflection, as well as our capacity for sympathy: after all, if someone is wallowing in self-pity, it’s a bit hard to muster much additional pity to add to the existing swamp.

We sometimes adopt victimhood as a hiding place even when we are the architects of our own problems. We may complain about the inroads of IT into our life, as though “it’s nothing to do with me, I’m just the victim of all these messages I need to respond to”. Or, having crowded our lives with too many commitments, or failed to be strict or sensible about our priorities, we may sound just like a victim: “Oh, I’m so busy. I don’t know how I’m going to cope. People make so many demands on me!”

Sometimes, victimhood poses as martyrdom – not in the classical sense of a person dying for a cause they believe in, but in the more mundane, everyday sense of a person who has fallen into the trap of self-pity because of the demands being made on them. It might be the competing demands of work and family, or the burden of caring for (or even just worrying about) frail elderly parents, or the self-imposed stress brought about by taking on too much. By playing the martyr, we try to convince ourselves that there’s something heroic about our situation, that we are worthy of praise and admiration, and that people are not giving us sufficient recognition or sympathy. To perceive ourselves as having been martyred or victimised by our responsibilities to others is to have become deaf to the whispers of the soul.

There are a great many victims in our midst, all of them worthy of our attention and support: victims of natural disasters, of illness, of relationship breakups, of retrenchment, of prolonged unemployment leading to poverty and, yes, even of incompetent, neglectful or abusive parents. In whatever situation they find themselves, victims are entitled to expect compassionate responses from us. But the person who embraces the role of victim and wears it like a badge of honour is a person in need of a different kind of help.

The Coming Purge of All Things and People Trump

Around 3500 years ago in ancient Egypt, there lived a pharaoh who didn’t believe there were multiple gods ruling the universe. Pharaoh Akhenaten believed there was only one god — Aten the sun god. As you might imagine, this didn’t sit well with a lot of people. Priests who made a living assisting in the worship of other gods lost their livelihoods and since religion was a big deal in Egypt, a lot of important people connected to other gods lost quite a bit.

Akhenaten had sort of a co-regency with his son, Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who also believed in the one god. After their deaths, the priests and those who worshipped other gods took their revenge on both of them. They systematically erased both pharaohs from history — literally. They scratched out their names on carvings, they chiseled over their names on stone tablets, they destroyed every scroll where their names appeared, they toppled any statues that bore their likenesses.

How effective was this erasure? When a bust was found of Akhenaten in the 19th century, nobody could figure out who he was.

Not even the Soviets, who became famous for scrubbing their history books of Communist leaders who had fallen out of favor, did such a fabulous job in erasing history. This is all relevant because Trump, and those even just tangentially associated with him, are about to be erased from history by those on both sides who see a political opening to destroy their opponents.

Senator Josh Hawley has been fingered as the scapegoat in the mob attack on the Capitol. It’s not exactly clear why. It could be that he was the most visible Senator who, in a completely legal and constitutional fashion, challenged the results of the Electoral College. You may believe he was right or you may think him crazy. Whatever your opinion, what he did was perfectly legal.

Hawley’s sin was they he didn’t sit down, shut up, and accept without question the verdict of authorities. He decided to legally challenge the Electoral College results. No one knows if he really believed the conspiracy theories about magic voting machines, altered votes, and a stolen election. It was enough that a picture of Hawley was published showing him outside the Capitol building shaking a clenched fist at the protesters in support of their demonstration — a demonstration which was peaceful until it wasn’t.

There were thousands of Trump supporters peacefully demonstrating in front of the Capitol — just like the majority of protesters last summer were peacefully demonstrating against the police. But there were those on Wednesday in Washington and across the country last summer who sought to use the peaceful protesters to disguise their intent to commit violence.

Of course, a few minutes later, some in the crowd breached the Capitol building and the insurrection was on. But trying to cancel Hawley for his legal challenge to the Electoral College or support for peaceful protests has nothing to do with standing up for democracy. Hawley and other Trump supporters will be purged from society not because they supported violence as some Democrats did last summer, but because a chasm has opened up in America and anything and anyone associated with Donald Trump will be thrown in it. On the left, it’s not enough to defeat your political opponents. They must be destroyed.

The same treatment given to Hawley will be given to other supporters of Donald Trump, including ordinary people who might have a MAGA bumper sticker on their car or a Donald Trump coffee mug at the office. How many will lose their jobs, be shunned by neighbors, or kicked out of organizations? This is not the way to protect democracy or defend the integrity of elections.

We are about to enter a very dark period in American history. It won’t be Robespierre’s “Reign of Terror.” Guillotines won’t be set up on the mall or gallows erected in Central Park. But there will be terror nonetheless. And it won’t be the Josh Hawley’s or political big shots who will be terrorized. It will be people with everything to lose who will fear being purged.

America, 2021.

CBP Chief Says Biden's Immigration Proposals Already Leading to Skyrocketing Numbers at the Border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan says Biden's planned immigration changes are already contributing to an increase in new arrivals at the southern border.

Around 74,000 migrants arrived at the border last month, an 80-percent jump from the previous December. According to the outgoing Border Patrol chief, the uptick is the result of proposed policy changes by the incoming Biden administration.

"We’re already seeing the negative impacts of the proposed policy changes," Commissioner Morgan said on a call with reporters. According to Morgan, "cartels and human smugglers are spreading the perception that our borders will be open. In this case, they’re correct. They’re right: It’s not just the perception."

Joe Biden has pledged to dramatically increase the number of refugees permitted to resettle in the United States and roll back several Trump-era reforms.

"Halting construction of the border wall system, stopping deportations for 100 days, expanding DACA, ending MPP [Migrant Protection Protocols], providing free health care, providing amnesty to millions of individuals here illegally, and the list goes on and on. This isn’t an immigration strategy; it is an open-borders strategy," said Morgan.

The acting commissioner said he was reassured by Biden's decision not to immediately reverse President Trump's asylum restrictions in the midst of a pandemic, but equated the postponement of the policy change to simply kicking the can down the road.

"Mr. Biden himself said he’s not going to do what he promised on day one, because he knew that it would create a crisis — that was very good to hear, but it doesn’t alleviate the concerns that I have," Morgan said.

"It’s simply kicking the crisis can down the road. There’s got to be real reform to what their ‘open border’ strategies are."

With Democrats soon to be in control of both Congress and the White House, there is very little standing in the way of another amnesty.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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