[Editor’s Note: At this evening’s 7 o’clock meeting of the Culver City Democratic Club, filmmaker John Wellington Ennis will screen his new move, “Pay 2 Play,” which charges that oceans of money in politics is corrupting democracy. The meeting will be in the Rotunda Room of the Vets Auditorium.]
I hope everyone is having a wonderful and festive holiday season. As we take the time to celebrate our community’s bounty with our family and friends, I am troubled by the spate of incidents across the country that show a contempt and wanton disregard for the spirit of empathy for our fellow human beings. A dark undercurrent in American society is rearing its ugly head. In this hotly contested political season, overt bigotry and attacks on marginalized groups seem to be growing.
Last month a majority vote in the House of Representatives to ban Syrian refugees from seeking safety in the United States was a particular low point in today’s America.
What was especially disappointing about that vote was that 47 Democrats joined the House Republican majority in passing a ban. Turning away people in desperate need is not a value the Democratic party stands for.
Fear of “the Other” certainly is not what our party stands for. It is unlikely the bill will pass the Senate, but fortunately President Obama has vowed to veto it if it does.
Yet another low point continues to come in the form of Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign to try to win the GOP nomination by mocking and denigrating just about every group on the planet except for his fellow white, wealthy, straight, able-bodied male peers.
His bigoted barbs – from suggesting protestors should be met with physical violence to calling Mexica immigrants rapists, to suggesting that mosques be surveilled, and that the names of Syrian refugees be put in a data base – sound as if they come from a different era.
However, what is more frightening is how the mainstream media has, for too long, given him and other right-wing extremists the benefit of neutrality.
When political debates become a matter of “both sides do it,” blatant lies are called controversy and extremism is mainstreamed, our society becomes debased and our lives endangered.
Where is all of this going? Just last month, five Black Lives Matter protestors were shot and injured at a vigil for a young black man who was killed by police in Chicago.
Three people were killed at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. And in Irving, TX, open-carry fetishists reportedly were intimidating Muslim worshippers at a mosque.
Are we about to see a new level of political violence in America against people who don’t fit the mold of “straight, white, rich and Christian”?
Are too many of us going to sit back and look the other way until it is too late?
Ms. Moore, president of the Culver City Democratic Club, may be contacted at president@culvercitydemocraticclub.com
