Trump Jr. seems like a winner too.
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Yep thanks, that’s what I ham-fistedly tried to say at the end. Basically Clinton succeeded in spite of the conditions of his upbringing, while Trump was inspired and bootstrapped by his doting wealthy father. That makes it much more relevant what Trumps father stood for. Which as we all know wasn’t much of anything nice.
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At least they were from Hope.
Trump is from Queens.
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What, you don’t believe the sins of the fathers should be visited on the children, and the children’s children children? You don’t believe that inferiority is inherited by bloodlines?
You are not worthy of Klan membership, then. That stuff’s straight outta the bible, y’know.
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So if you know so much valuable history, why are you continuing to make excuses for Trump Sr when he was not your average paddling electric blanket pseudoMason?
What is the point of this 'splaining if Trump brags that he shares his father’s values, and they’re both fucking racist, in his father’s time and today?
You seem to be trying to defend his beliefs through his sheer presence in the Klan when we are observing the combination of his beliefs, his actions AND his presence in the Klan, all of which factors into his son’s white supremacist Nationalism.
Is there some nuance here you forgot to mention? Because your arguments are hollow, suggesting some sort of truth you have yet to speak.
You can’t just pull the “it was a different time” when being arrested for inciting race-related riots is not something that history can contextualize as anything but pure hate.
It’s already been discussed that Klansmen of old can learn and work towards doing some good now. But claiming that we’re all potentially a part of a modern-day Klan because of our membership in BoingBoing, that’s a serous perversion of History and fact. It was like the Masons, but “the Good Old Boy network” remains to this day racist as fuck, and so are the areas the promote it.
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Ah, intellectual dishonesty, I’m not surprised.
The issue is that he’s like daddy, he’s no innocent, poorly maligned. But get in those zings about how liberals are the true racists against racists when we disrespect racists for their racism.
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I don’t think I have ever excused Tump Jr or Sr. In fact I agreed with mindy that it excuses nothing. Maybe you are confusing me with someone else.
I am not making an argument.
I… I have no idea what you are talking about. I never suggested this in the least. Am I falling for a Poe’s Law thing?
If your life isn’t enriched in learning some contextual history, then I don’t know what to tell you. I personally found it extremely interesting learning about the rise and fall of the Klan in the 20s - 30s as well as why it rose and fell. It wasn’t just backwoods Southerners back then.
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Could be, I don’t get it either…
I find the Klan’s American history interesting, especially since my wife’s grandmother lived through the period when the Klan was said to have ruled Indiana, and she was adamant that nothing of the kind occurred, and would bring out diaries from the period as proof. I always have suspected that the localization of news that was normal for the period (near-instantaneous global coverage and the corresponding increase in ideological homogeneity are modern phenomena) prevented her from knowing what was really going on in the state capitol.
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On the contrary, I find history of all secret societies fascinating, good and ill.
But the commonality and side-purposes of the Klan (my favorite was the MLM aspects of “pure” Klan robes and cross-burnin’ paraphernalia) don’t contextualize his father’s acts in a “this is how things were then” sense.
Perhaps I was responding to that aspect, of it was offered in a more detached manner o would’ve taken it as more funfact-y. 
I offered it as “contextual note”. Fun fact seem a bit too glib, but that was essentially what it was. I don’t know how more detached I could have made it. I didn’t even make a “this is how things were” statement. You weren’t alone in trying to put more meaning behind it, but I think in the further posts I clarified that it excused nothing and any opinion I offered was more in line with “the past is repeating” in that the Klan of that era was high and anti-Catholic and immigrant policies. Much like today.
So far, you are the only person I see arguing at this level. Stay classy.
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In other words, the KKK is the same group of racists and terrorists it’s always been. Thanks, Captain Obvious!
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I would say it’s not, although in a sense it’s just because they are lamer than ever.
The big difference between now and Trump’s father’s era is that members are no longer accepted in polite society. At one time, KKK members attended mainstream churches in full regalia (very rare today, once very common) and people put flags on their porches to show their support; but even in North East Rising Sun, MD (a Klan stronghold in my youth) I no longer see residents proudly displaying their KKK affiliations any more, and the sign on the edge of town is long gone.
So, because you no longer can get political and social capital from open membership, ambitious amoral types (such as politicians, bankers, casino developers, and other gold diggers) aren’t interested in membership at all, and that is a big difference. It’s a smaller, less educated, more tattooed Klan now than it was in the heyday of Father Coughlin.
I track them through the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, mostly.
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That’s exactly the sort of thing people hate the ACLU for… although it’s not the first highway the KKK has volunteered to clean up, apparently.
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Which is what I took as @Mister44’s point. The 2nd Clan was not (merely) a regionally associated terror group. They weren’t even just specifically an anti-black group. They were big, and influential. And particularly in the north anti-immigrant and white nationalists above all. They were basically a fairly popular white nationalist political party, quietly existing under the surface of existing more public facing political parties. That’s rather important information to remember given what we’re looking at with Trump, and that we’re now seeing evidence of direct familial connections to that era of the Klan.
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Yeah, today a mainstream political figure might be just as racist and evil as any Klansman, but he still wouldn’t join the KKK, because it would cost him too much. Note how US senators and congressmen stampeded out of the CCC once it became openly racist.
Personally I’m not going to judge he-who-must-not-be-named based on his father’s actions, but I still think those actions are interesting and newsworthy
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If they actually do it, I guess file this under “A broken clock is right twice a day”?
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Yeah not the first time. Nor is this the first go round on the issue in Georgia. Apparently local KKK chapters like to “adopt a highway” because they like forcing states to hang up KKK signs. What they don’t do (including this Georgia case) is ever bother to pay their contribution or show up to do the highway cleanups. In the past they get knocked out of the program because of that key thing about participating in the program. Which they don’t. They sign up. Get the state to hang the sign. Then peace out. Then they sue the state when they get booted for not fulfilling the requirements. Pop up for a photo up cleaning the road for the papers, and placate the court. And repeat. Its a legal trolley, and its been going on for decades. I remember reading about the Georgia case in like 2004. More about making headlines and quick gratification from the 1st amendment validation. I’m surprised the ACLU got involved at all. Georgia must have tried some ill advised legal wrangling to try and make it finally stop, since the racists have traditionally not had much luck making it about constitutional rights.
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I have to admit that I guessed this was exactly what was going on.
