The Difficult Truth of 1619 — #11

There are similarities between the Post-Civil War Reconstruction atrocities and the Post-2020 Election Insurrection.

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“The number of voters supporting Trump, a white nationalist President, increased when he ran for a second term. And when Trump lost, some of his supporters led an insurrection in the nation’s Capitol, seeking, just as white mobs had done repeatedly during Reconstruction, to overturn and delegitimize an election won by a multiracial coalition of voters.

Then, in response to well-organized Black, Latino and Indigenous voters helping turn heavily Republican states such as Georgia and Arizona blue, Republicans began a coordinated effort to introduce and pass hundreds of bills that would make it harder for millions of Americans to vote.

Some have called these efforts—which came not even a year after the death of civil rights icon John Lewis, who in the 1960’s nearly lost his life to secure voting rights for Black Americans—the worst attack on voting in more than fifty years.” p. 455-456

And did you see the anti-democracy, white nationalist ex-President’s comments about all this in a speech the other day?

“On Thursday, former President Donald Trump told conservative radio host Wendy Bell that if he were to return to the Oval Office he would grant pardons and also apologize to participants in the January 6 insurrection. Trump promised that if ‘I decide to run, and if I win, I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons…with an apology to many.’” Slate