Fear and Loathing, past and present

Also: There’s nothing nice about Nazis

There’s nothing new under the sun — at least that’s what the Good Book says — and the longer I live, the more I believe it is true.

Today I lead off with a bit of a history lesson, which might at first appear a bit dull except that it explains so much about the present we’re living now.

Many of you might believe the current dreadful practice of busing border refugees from Texas to selected so-called “liberal cities” is a disgusting practice that could only have been thought of by the current state administration in Austin.

Not so and we should be clear about where the blame lies. Gov. Greg Abbott cannot be credited with this little gem, he’s a mere copycat. It shows that one of the governor’s minions has studied political history.

Truth is that earlier purveyors of this dirty truck weren’t Republicans at all but Democrats.

Most of the Democrats of 75 years ago would not dare call themselves members of that party today. Once President Lyndon Johnson’s Voting Rights Act became law in 1965, many Texans of Johnson’s own party began jumping ship faster than you could say “Jim Crow.”

When I was in Marshall, a local historian told me that the revered Southern lady Inez Hatley Hughes of Harrison County remarked that the Voting Rights Act passage was the real moment that the South really lost the Civil War.

It was also the end of the uninterrupted power control by Democrats in Texas and across the South. The idea of equality for African-Americans was enough to gut the traditional Democratic Party in the South but the resistance to that movement empowered Republicans.

The situation has changed somewhat these days, particularly as some African-Americans are drawn to the Republican Party. At least it has changed for some. The tension between Republicans who support equality and those who aren’t that thrilled is surely one of the issues dividing the party.

Back to the story of sleazy treatment of hapless human beings.

In the 1950s, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate was not equal and that schools had to eventually integrate, groups called Citizens Councils were organized across the nation, eventually consolidating into one organization, though individual councils remained independent.

The stated goals of the councils included ensuring that schools were not integrated and opposing marriage between Blacks and whites. That would also be two of the goals of the Ku Klux Klan. Perhaps there was a bit of cross-membership.

The councils cropped up in almost every Southern community, with some of the most vitriolic in Mississippi. They could also be found here Behind the Pine Curtain, too. There were councils in Longview, Marshall, Smith County, Athens, Kilgore and even smaller communities and towns. They were prepared to do darn near anything to keep Black children from going to school with white children.

Then, someone in Mississippi or Louisiana had an idea. I’m not sure which came first, but New Orleans got most of the news coverage as recorded in the Tyler Morning Telegraph.

The citizens council would buy bus tickets — one-way, naturally — and offer them to Black people if they would leave the South and never come back. No Blacks in a community meant no Black children in school and council members believed that the free tickets would be enough to entice all the Black people to leave.

To sweeten the pot, council members told those who agreed to the program that there were good-paying jobs just waiting for them in the promised lands in the North.

It was a lie, of course, none of the councils had made any attempt to coordinate busing Black people to one of those “liberal” cities, or even trying to alert prospective employers that a labor force was on its way. It was merely a ruse to trap Black people into leaving.

Not surprisingly, most Black people had learned by this time not to trust big promises from powerful white men — maybe they had been paying attention to how we dealt with Native Americans. In any case, only a few dozen took the bait.

It’s striking just how closely the busing of refugees and the Black project resemble each other. In the 1960s, the councils sent Black people to Cape Cod, Chicago, New York City, and other places. They would have sent them to Los Angeles, but the president of the citizens council there was up to the same trick of busing Blacks out.

Like the refugees today, they were dropped off in parts of those cities where no one was expecting them and weren’t prepared to help them in any way. It was vile then and it is vile today. One difference is that the refugees have no say in where they are being taken and are rarely promised anything.

Other than New York Mayor Eric Adams, most of the receiving officials have been gracious in welcoming the helping the refugees. The same was true in the time of the citizens councils. Good human beings take care of other human beings in need.

We just need a few more good human beings in Texas politics.

———

If we could all put aside other differences for a while and just agree on one simple thing: There’s nothing nice about Nazis.

There’s no need to consider a Nazi’s point of view. Anyone who takes on the identity as a Nazi tells the world that they hate others and are willing to murder them, indeed, want those people — mostly, but not only, Jews — murdered.

That one thing is enough not to associate with any Nazi — ever. Nothing more need be said. You’d think that this would be clear to just about anyone other than another Nazi.

But you’d be wrong. The Texas Republican Party refused to agree with a resolution that stated that the state Republican Party would not associate with Nazis.

So you understand that the resolution was not difficult to understand, here it is in its entirety:

“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Republican Party of Texas have no association whatsoever with any individual or organization that is known to espouse anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi sympathies, or Holocaust denial.”

Really, is that so difficult or controversial? Apparently so.

At least the vote that killed the resolution was close — 29 votes for and 32 against. Who are these 32 people and what on Earth were they thinking? Being an optimist, I have to think that most Republicans are not Nazi-lovers and are just as angry about the vote as I am confused.

I can imagine the furor if, for instance, Democrats rejected a resolution condemning Chairman Mao.

Not a lot of difference there.