I believe it started much later than 1995, after the GOP apparatus saw what was happening across the country and realized they were quickly becoming the minority party. Operation REDMAP was launched in 2010, with great success, particularly in state legislatures which control congressional districting.
Not really. REDMAP was a key step in the process, but here’s a gift link to a good New York Times Magazine article (I assign it to my Political Geography students) about the prior history.
You could say the seeds were planted as early as 1973, when a “young conservative activist named Paul Weyrich— a Wisconsinite, as it happens — came up with a scheme that would challenge the liberal hegemony in state governments, helping to found the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.”
Note that “a major breakthrough came during the 1994 midterms, when Representative Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America unified Republicans up and down the ballot around a single, national message. Not only did they have control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades; they also recorded striking gains in America’s statehouses, flipping 20 chambers, while not losing any.”
This is what you get when someone is not held accountable for their misdeeds. He got away with the last insurrection, so now he’s just announcing Round Two already.
But the blood will be ketchup.
Tan the Conman says his opponents are not even people:
It was on this issue that Mr Trump departed almost completely from his prepared remarks as he labelled his political opponents inhuman: “In some cases, they’re not people.” He’d provoke that same dehumanising imagery as he delivered his latest rant against illegal immigration, this time eyeing a new enemy in the arrival of residents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Repeating “they’re coming in from Africa”, the former president sarcastically declared: “The Congo’s a very nice place, I imagine.”
Ah, yeah. Like saying Blacks aren’t people is a new twist in the racist bag of tricks.
Interesting picture to accompany this article, though. I see Tan the Conman saluting, but I don’t see any North Korean general.
Where I live, South Africa, we have a fairly large number of Congolese refugees.
Every single one I have met - and being refugees, often in very low paying jobs, and I converse with them in my terrible French, as often their terrible English is not much better - every single one is strong, determined to succeed, even in a foreign country known for xenophobia.
Trump is also xenophobic, but for more racist reasons than cultural reasons - there is widespread jealously here of the work ethic of foreigners. I guess similar to the US. If you have literally walked a thousand kilometers to another country, probably crossing a couple of other countries, you are a formidable person who is likely to use that strength to be successful.
I mean, it’s not news that Trump is a despicable human who probably could not even locate the Democratic Republic of the Congo on a map (let alone realising that there is also a country named Republic of Congo next door).
Anyway. Mild rant over.
But for those who want a taste of Congolese music (soukous, kwassa-kwassa) mixed with US country, look no further. As if you were even looking before…
A friend’s band - Spotify
Well why not? If he tries to pull another insurrection in January 2025 it’ll be 2030 before our fantastic AG gets the ball rolling on prosecuting it. And the Republicans have shown they clearly will not punish him for traitorous actions and words. There’s literally no downside to him going out in public and literally threatening the electorate in total. Because that’s what he just did
Informative post — thanks.
I briefly tell my students about the Congo War — the phase from about 1998 to 2003 was the worst war since WW2 (in terms of dead and wounded), depending on how you count indirect effects like disease. It’s sometimes called the Great War of Africa, because it involved factions from about seven surrounding countries.
I also briefly tell them about the great Congo basin, similar in its biodiversity and size to the Amazon.
And, I end the brief overview on a hopeful note — a music video that gives a sense of a better present and especially (we hope) future there.
Now back to your regularly scheduled Trump kvetching!
Yeah, I am orginally Zimbabwean, and obviously Mugabe chose the worst faction to support. As a country, not that I got much choice in the matter, we made pretty much everything even more wrong. We largely contributed to a massive refugee problem all over Southern Africa, and I am ashamed of that horribly poor decision and the results.
On the other hand, I doubt your “stable genius” could name a single external country involved in that conflict.
/end hijack.
Seems like a reasonable statement, not a hijack.
I love your way of saying this. Every wave of immigrants was despised by those whose parents or grandchildren were often also immigrants, just from a different race or country or religion. It’s the strength and courage to become something better that is so encouraging. It’s hard for me to understand why all the hatred, except as a way of showing how weak and worthless of a person you are. I wish someone would make this as a basis of a speech: it could become Biden’s Gettysburg Address for example.
Agree. The folks that are recent immigrants that I have had dealings with all seem very hardworking conscientious folks. Often doing thankless jobs.
They are not here to to hurt us. They are here to get themselves get out of a desperate existence.
Just wanted to throw in my 2 cents on this. I have had some similar experiences, and i know anecdotes are just that anecdotes, with recent immigrants.
The first was a young lady I worked with in my early twenties. She was from Puerto Rico, and it was in possession of a legal degree of some sort, not sure exactly what kind, but she told me the story about how even though technically Puerto Rico is part of the United States, she couldn’t use her degree here as it wasn’t the based on American law. That makes sense but at the same time I couldn’t shake the idea that she was a college educated attorney who was stuck working a part-time job at a retail store. And of course because she absolutely looked Puerto Rican, and English was far from her first language, everyone treated her like s***. Didn’t like it and it was a Early education for me on how a recent immigrants were treated in this country. This would have been circa 99, 2000.
A couple of years later I got a job working in an IT department for a small company. And in that department was a young gentleman from Romania I want to say it was? I could be wrong on the exact country but it was an Eastern European one. And he spoke barely a lick of english. But he knew his s*** and when it came to computers and networking. He taught me a few things that I didn’t know about at the time.
Both of these people were super reliable and super hardworking.
Not true! Now which side was Nambia on?
You’d think that the people who are at his rallies would realize that it isn’t AI when they actually saw the gaffe by trump in person, but they don’t seem to see the problem.
I have worked with a lot of Mexican Immigrants and they do a thankless job for little pay. They seldom file tax returns so they don’t get the refunds that they’d probably be eligible for.
It really pisses me off that they are using the murder of Laken Riley in the way they are. I wonder where the outrage is for the murder of Audii Cunningham.
I don’t see any mystery in it. I read something once about fraternity hazing. Everyone hates going through it. Four years later, some of those same students are perfectly willing to subject the next group of incoming freshmen to the same treatment, or even worse. They had to go through it, they had to earn their way into the fraternity, it’s only fair (they tell themselves) that new members earn their way in, too.
I think the same thing may be at play with immigrants. “My grandparents were discriminated against when they came here. No one would hire them because they were Irish (or German, Korean, etc.). They didn’t even speak the language, but they worked their asses off and proved that they deserve to be here. Now I won’t hire anyone who speaks Spanish; it’s the American way!”
Or the South African way, any country with immigrants.
Was Niger a part of this conflict? I’m pretty sure Trump knows about Niger. He’d probably mispronounce it though.
Ha!
(Factual answer: No, but the Sahel states of West Africa have their own issues, sadly.)