When FBI Director Kash Patel fired two agents who had kneeled in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement five years before, his actions had the effect of upholding white supremacy. No statement of sympathy for those grieving the murder of young men of color by militarized police forces could be tolerated. Never mind that the agents kneeled in Minneapolis, where George Floyd died, and where the police officer involved was convicted of murder. Africans Americans are the other, Patel’s actions showed, on whom acts of humanity are wasted. Only some lives matter.
When Donald Trump refused to continue commemorations of Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives Day, a national commitment he pioneered in May of 2020 to end “the disturbing violence against these Americans and to honoring those whose lives have been shattered and lost,” he demonstrated that to him Indigenous lives did not matter, either. Indeed, when Trump tried to stir up white resentment in an affluent Long Island suburb against those who insisted that the local high school change its name, he worked in defense of white supremacy. The grievances of people of color, whether Indigenous or African-American, are illegitimate and worthy of contempt. You need not take these concerns seriously. Same thing with the former names of the Cleveland Guardians and Washington Commanders, two teams that have done just fine since they dropped their racist names and imagery. People of color want you to change what you are doing, Trump suggested, something they have no right to ask you to do. Only some people’s feelings matter.
We won’t talk about the past, Trump and his supporters have suggested, unless we do so in a way that instills a “patriotism” that celebrates white supremacy. You do not have to listen to the “Anti-American” complaints of those who have suffered for American empire. Images of slavery will be removed from museums, historic sites, textbooks and classrooms. The Trump Administration has demanded that teachers lie about this country’s past. For Trump and his followers, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. If they can convince you to believe that this country’s past is different than what the documents clearly show, they can claim that what has always been unjust is just, what has always been exploitative is fair, and what has always been explicitly evil is good. On those rare occasions when they concede a shortcoming, they say we have never failed because we have not yet finished trying to fix problems that ought to have been fixed generations ago. The notion that slavery and Indigenous dispossession benefited white immigrants to this settler nation is heresy in eyes of Republicans.
You can see it in the racist memes sent out by the fascist Department of Homeland Security, overseen by a freak who murders dogs and a meathead who hunts “illegals” while collecting bribes in paper bags. Above George Caleb Bingham’s painting of Daniel Boone leading settlers through the Cumberland Gap—into lands unceded by the Indigenous people who lived upon them—DHS posted on its Instagram page this image:
When white people cross a border and seize property from Indigenous peoples, it is something to celebrate. That point is made clear when DHS posted John Gast’s “American Progress,” a painting that represents more clearly than any other American work of art the racist ideas and attitudes underlying Manifest Destiny, with the caption “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.”
To point out that this country took its shape through a systematic program of Indigenous dispossession is to risk one’s life and liberty. That heritage is filled with racial violence. Republicans, meanwhile, attack affirmative action in colleges, encourage fear of American cities, and attack the integrity and character of people of color. They create a climate of fear, silencing dissent. The Republican Party, a diseased organism entirely in the thrall of its corrupt leader, truly has nothing else. They have no constructive or positive agenda. The economy is a wreck. The United States has squandered the respect of our friends and allies. And fascism has taken root. They have no significant legislative achievements and, indeed, their weak leader can only govern by the “executive orders” a weak Congress and amoral Supreme Court continue to permit. They have nothing.
There are three factors that can help the Republicans continue to hold power. One is the continued cowardice and fecklessness of the Democratic leadership which has been unwilling and unable to rise to the occasion. At the same time, Republicans stir up white resentments against the weakest and most marginalized groups in American society: the LGBTQIA+ community, immigrants (undocumented or not), and racial and ethnic minorities. They have nothing, and they know it. They stand for nothing but hatred and white supremacy. So they will also work with determination to rig the electoral system and make it difficult for those who wish to vote. All they can hope for is that they are able to continue to generate hatred and division. And despondency. It worked for Donald Trump spectacularly well in 2024. It is up to us not only to see that it does not happen again, but that we keep the receipts and hold accountable the Party and its leaders in the future for the things they have said and done. Democrats should loudly and proudly promise that if they take the legislative and executive branches of government, they will expand the Supreme Court and call to account Republican law-breakers.
Their viciousness is a sign that they sense that they are losing. I am so fortunate to spend my time talking with young people baffled by the party’s hatred. Like pests, the Republicans will break institutions and hurt people and ruin lives, but their time is limited. Once young people who could not care less about the culture war issues that haunt the Republicans’ take over, I hope this nightmare will be over. We can make the Republicans go away. It will take time and enormous effort to rebuild all that they have ruined. But we need to act. The sooner the better. 2026 cannot come soon enough.
