The capitulation of
White America is one for the Ripley’s file -
believe it or don’t, but from backyard BBQs to
sports bars to Saturday salons, folks are
gawking like, “Damn, that was fast.”
Institutions that once swore they’d die on the
hill of principle have sprinted downhill to
kiss the ring - no, the pinky - of King Trump.
It’s almost as if half the country had been
rehearsing this loyalty pledge in the mirror
for years, only pausing long enough to cosplay
as “liberal-minded” Democrats when company
came over.
You know the types:
Reagen Democrats, Dixie-crats, Clinton
Democrats, “moderates” - translation: mostly
White folks who perfected the art of sympathy
theater. They can cry on cue about “the little
guy,” dab a tear for “the unwashed masses,”
then - when the fan gets hit - fetch the jar
of Vaseline, bend over, and ask in their best
boarding-school whisper: “Daddy, may I have
another?”
Meanwhile, our
pillars of virtue - politicians, Ivy League
temples, labor unions, four-star generals,
media empires - are showing the vertebral
integrity of Gumby doing hot yoga. Watch them
arch. Behold them fold. Listen closely and you
can hear their spines un-Velcro.
And now comes the
real magic trick: a Grand Canyon crack opening
inside the Party of Jackasses. The “moderates”
are already testing the mic for a national
“Stop and Frisk” revival tour and warming up
to martial law like it’s a pumpkin-spiced
latte. When Affirmative Action in the
workplace gets quietly strangled in the break
room, the silence will be so loud you’ll hear
a 312-pound orange rat pissing on gold-thread
cotton. Try not to slip.
Am I shocked?
Please. I’m just cataloging the rerun.
All that “progress”
we toasted after the Civil Rights era - shared
wealth, widened doors, equal promises - turns
out to have been a lease with options that
vanished the second a Black family moved into
the White House. 2008 broke something fragile
in mainstream White America; the sky didn’t
fall, but the masks sure did. Their response?
Trump: America’s revenge fantasy in a red tie.
Now, as the New Deal gets chewed like old gum
and LBJ & MLK’s Great Society gets pawned
for store credit, the fence-sitters reveal
themselves as rail-thin Trump stans clutching
their pearls and their 401(k)s.
Let’s drop the
pretense. White America - mainstream,
suburban, cul-de-sac America - has been
backing away from diversity like it’s a car
alarm in a quiet driveway. “Mix and mingle”?
They prefer “sort and sequester.” Separate and
unequal is back, this time with an HOA
newsletter and a QR code. The message is tidy:
We’ve got ours. You people can gladiator-fight
for crumbs on the floor and call it
meritocracy.
And for Black and
Brown folks? The weather report is clear:
scattered showers of “allyship” with long
droughts of actual help. Fair-weather friends
evaporate fast when the Trump tornado sirens
wail. They shrink. They squeak. They ghost you
before the storm even hits shore.
Malcolm X did not see
Democrats and Republicans as being the same
but as two different types of enemies.He famously
characterized the American two-party system
with this analogy: "The white liberals
from both parties cross party lines to work
together toward the same goal, and white
conservatives from both parties do
likewise... The white liberal differs from
the white conservative only in one way: the
liberal is more deceitful than the
conservative".
He also described it
as a choice between a "fox and a wolf,” Malcolm was so
very right.
So where are
Democrats today in all this? Playing hopscotch
in the middle. Always the middle.
Middle of what,
exactly? The middle of a lynching rope? The
middle of a book-burning bonfire? The middle
of a constitutional crisis? Every time
Democrats “seek compromise,” they legitimize
the GOP’s lunacy. Every time they “meet
halfway,” they move the starting line further
toward authoritarianism.
History shows us
compromise has a body count. And no compromise
was bloodier in the long run than the Compromise
of 1877.
1877:
The Original Deal With the Devil
After the Civil
War, during Reconstruction, Black Americans
experienced a flicker of democracy. Freedmen
voted in large numbers. They held office. They
opened schools and established businesses. For
the first time in American history, the
promise of equality flickered - fragile,
contested, but alive.
Then came the
contested election of 1876 between Rutherford
B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden. To settle it,
Democrats and Republicans struck a bargain:
Hayes would become president, but in exchange,
federal troops would be withdrawn from the
South. That decision - packaged as a noble
compromise to “heal” the nation - was really a
death sentence for Black political power.
With troops gone,
White supremacist paramilitaries, the Klan,
and the good ol’ boy networks swooped in. Jim
Crow laws sprouted like weeds. Poll taxes,
literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and raw
terror erased Black participation in
democracy. Lynchings rose. Segregation
hardened. Reconstruction - the nation’s first,
halting attempt at multiracial democracy - was
strangled in its crib.
The Compromise of
1877 didn’t save the Union. It preserved White
supremacy at the expense of justice. It was a
betrayal written in blood, with echoes that
lasted nearly a century.
Trump’s
America: The New 1877
Fast forward to
today, and the ghosts of 1877 are rattling
their chains again. Trump is openly pushing
for a new “compromise” - not hidden in
smoke-filled rooms this time, but shouted from
rally stages and blasted across Truth Social
in all caps.
Voting
rights? Gone.
Republicans are purging voter rolls in Black
and Brown districts, closing polling places,
and gerrymandering districts until they look
like spilled spaghetti. The Supreme Court has
gutted the Voting Rights Act, and Trump is
promising nationwide voter ID laws designed to
suppress urban turnout.
Education? Whitewashed.
Florida textbooks now describe slavery as “job
training.” School boards are banning books
about Ruby Bridges, Toni Morrison, and even
children’s stories featuring non-White
characters. History itself is being rewritten
to erase Black suffering and Brown resilience.
Immigration? Criminalized.
Trump has promised mass deportation camps,
proudly framing them as “Operation Wetback
2.0.” He’s not just talking about border
control; he’s threatening to uproot entire
communities and strip America of its
multicultural foundation.
Diversity
and equity? Targeted. DEI
programs are being dismantled across
universities and corporations. Conservatives
now rail against the word “equity” as though
it were a four-letter slur. Trump and his
allies are pushing for an America where only
one kind of history, one kind of culture, and
one kind of people dominate.
Sound familiar? It
should. Just as 1877 marked the rollback of
Black progress, today’s MAGA movement is
laser-focused on reversing the gains of the
Civil Rights era, the Voting Rights era, and
every incremental advancement since.
Democrats
on Repeat
And where are
Democrats as Trump sharpens his guillotine?
Teetering in the
middle, exactly like their predecessors in
1877.
Back then, they
sold out Black America for the sake of
“national unity.” Today, they risk selling us
out again - sacrificing the rights and
advancements of Black and Brown Americans in
the name of “bipartisanship” or “keeping the
peace.”
You hear it every
election cycle: “We have to appeal to
moderates.” But let’s be clear - moderates
don’t exist when one side is fighting for
democracy and the other is fighting to end it.
The “middle” isn’t a place of principle; it’s
a graveyard where justice goes to die.
Compromise in 1877
bought White peace at Black expense.
Compromise in 2024
or 2028 risks doing the same - handing Trump
the keys to a future where Black votes are
nullified, Brown families are deported, and
history itself is scrubbed clean.
Lessons
Unlearned
The real tragedy is
that Democrats know this history. They teach
it in their speeches, mourn it in their
commemorations, and yet, when faced with the
modern version, they act “shocked.” It’s like
watching someone read the instructions on a
bomb and then proceed to light a match next to
it.
1877 should have
been the cautionary tale that defined the
Democratic spine: never trade away the rights
of the vulnerable for political expediency.
Instead, Democrats seem determined to repeat
the cycle - choosing quiet surrender over
noisy resistance.
Trump, of course,
is counting on this. Just as the Redeemers of
1877 counted on Northern fatigue and apathy,
Trump counts on today’s Democrats to fold in
the face of his threats. He knows that
weakness is his greatest weapon.
Enough
Is Enough
The question
staring Democrats in the face is this: will
they let Trump turn history into a rerun? Will
they replay the Compromise of 1877 and watch
America slide back into White nationalist
control?
Because make no
mistake, that’s what’s on the ballot. Not just
tax rates, not just immigration policy, but
the very soul of American democracy. A vote
for Trump ‘28 is a vote to resurrect 1877 -
this time with MAGA hats instead of hoods, and
“Stop the Steal” chants instead of Confederate
battle cries.
The Democrats can
either stand tall and fight like they’ve never
fought before - or they can shuffle to the
middle of nowhere, clutching their brunch
menus, and wonder why history keeps repeating
itself.
But history doesn’t
repeat itself by accident. It repeats because
we refuse to learn.
