No, this is not some The Plot Against America-style alternative history on Netflix. It is the scene-setting for an actual coup d’etat in the American heartland in the 1920s.
Nearly a century later, the media are reporting that Donald Trump’s continuing and ongoing threats to a peaceful transition of power are unprecedented in American history. The Washington Post editorial board remarked that when Americans see defeated political factions take up arms or send opponents to jail, a common response is, “this can happen in Zimbabwe … or Russia, or Cambodia, but not here. Not in the United States.”
But Americans don’t have to look overseas for antecedents of political coups. They can look at the Oklahoma State Capitol in 1923. What took place there fits the dictionary definition of a coup d’etat:
“A sudden, decisive exercise of force in politics.”
“Enter a room filled with people and inquire about the Klan and the result is similar to turning on a light at night in a kitchen and watching cockroaches scatter.”
Echoes of 2020 unrest
The Klan’s overthrow of a governor is worth recalling, in part, because the 1922 Oklahoma election echoed many divisions of 2020.
The Democrat, Jack C. Walton, had his own version of the centrist versus progressive split in the party. Like President-elect Joe Biden, Walton stitched together a coalition of leftists, centrists and people of colour. The Socialist Party had been surprisingly strong in Oklahoma during the 1910s, but had never achieved real power. The remnants of that party backed Walton.
During the campaign, Walton denounced the lynching of an African American man named Jake Brooks in Oklahoma City, while the Republican quietly accepted the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan.
Moderate white voters in the cities of Tulsa and Oklahoma City were slow to perceive the insidious influence of the KKK in the political mainstream. But the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 had proven the organization was not the “benevolent society” of its propaganda.
When the KKK built a massive convention building called Beno Hall on Tulsa’s Main Street, the organization marketed “Beno” as short for “benevolent.” But everyone knew it meant “be no immigrants, be no Jews, be no [n-word].”
The new Oklahoma Grand Dragon was a pharmaceutical salesman from Oklahoma City named N.C. Jewett. He went on a public relations campaign to assure anxious moderates that the KKK’s aim was to help maintain law and order.
“A person could not drive on the roads outside Tulsa without being hijacked,” Jewett told the press.
The Klan promised to fix all that.
A terrorism campaign
In reality, the KKK conducted a campaign of terrorism backed by police and city officials. Lynchings were the most notorious acts, but more common — even everyday — occurrences were whippings, beatings and death threats. Police often stood by as the Klan carried out activities, and its intimidating behaviour inspired copycats, including one group who kidnapped a Black police officer and cut off his ear.
After winning a decisive election against the Republican, Gov. Walton sought to suppress the KKK, but with little luck. In Tulsa, a Jewish man suspected of dealing narcotics was kidnapped and beaten. Walton read that the man’s penis was flayed open and he was near death in hospital. The governor demanded accountability, but was met with silence from local investigators.
Walton had toyed with Klan support during his campaign, but now he was ready for total war. “There cannot be two governments in Oklahoma while I am governor,” he declared to the press. Everyone responsible for the Klan’s terror would face justice. He deployed the National Guard to find Klansmen and set up military tribunals to try them.
Legislators started impeachment proceedings against Walton for an abuse of power.
By sending out the troops, censoring the press and declaring martial law, the governor lost support from former backers who hated the Klan, but feared the state was descending into a dictatorship. The governor ordered the legislature to disperse and said that “the troops will be ordered to shoot to kill if that is necessary to prevent the assembly.”
Less than a year later, a special train car of Oklahoma Klansmen pulled into Dallas for the Texas State Fair. A banner on the car read: “Did We Impeach Walton? Hell Yes.”
This episode is misremembered as a tale of corruption in the state’s highest office. Three governors were impeached between 1910 and 1930, and if Walton is remembered at all, it is for misusing the National Guard. As with the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, the white establishment of the state wanted this episode forgotten.
No aberration
The Klan’s overthrow of Walton is a pointed reminder that white nationalists once wielded raw power in American politics. It is also not an aberration. In 1898, white nationalists in Wilmington, N.C., massacred the city’s Black population and overthrew its newly elected mayor.
We downplay seemingly ridiculous white nationalist groups like the Boogaloo Boys at our peril. And rhetoric about the exceptionalism of American democracy is neither helpful nor accurate.
There is, however, one hopeful note in this story of a forgotten coup in the American heartland.
By 1925, even the white populace of Oklahoma had seen enough. Anti-Klan movements in small towns sprung up as self-defensive leagues (Antifa in rural America!). Voters tired of a secret society choosing candidates in Beno Hall and beating up anyone who strayed from the Klan’s white fundamentalist world view. Membership declined and masked crusaders became the object of scorn in popular media.
Editor’s note: When Joe Biden becomes president on Jan. 20, 2021, he will lead a fractured nation whose political factions are separated by a chasm. In his victory speech, Biden asked Americans to “come together” and “stop treating opponents as enemies.”
Is healing possible between red America and blue America? We asked experts on political polarization whether Biden’s goal is realistic.
Biden’s supporters were urban and suburban dwellers who differed in many ways but shared concern about the mishandling of COVID-19. His tent contained centrist Democrats and economic socialists, Black Americans intent on addressing systemic racism and members of the LGBTQ community defending their rights.
Such election results signal that Americans are resistant to either party’s domination, which is effectively a call for collaboration. With society shocked by COVID-19 casualties and Trump’s unconventional presidency, the pieces of the American political puzzle may fit together in novel ways.
Toning down the rhetoric, resisting extremism, avoiding vindictiveness and stressing pragmatic solutions can build up a common ground that will mend the fraying fabric of our society.
Dan Raviv, an author and media analyst, contributed to this article.
America’s political divide will be very hard to heal
-Robert Talisse
In his victory speech, Joe Biden said that partisanship “is not due to some mysterious force” but “a choice we make,” asking Americans to “give each other a chance.”
Listening can heal only when our divides lie within democracy’s mutual ground – the basic principle that, despite their differences, citizens are political equals. Today’s bitter partisanship has eroded this mutual ground in the United States.
In order to heal, Americans must recover the democratic mutual ground. Doing so would require rehabilitating people’s views of their fellow citizens. That is, Americans would need to see other Americans as people first, independently of their partisan affiliation.
If we already define ourselves and others in terms of partisan loyalties, the road to healing does not run through more political dialogue. Instead, Americans would need to do things together that have nothing to do with politics, engaging in activities that in no way express our partisan loyalties – volunteering with a community organization, for example, or joining a bowling league.
Monday, 28 December 2020 04:57 Written by lindaikejiblog
A parked camper van exploded in the city of Nashville, Tennessee, US, early on Christmas morning, leaving three people injured and knocking out communications systems across the state.
According to the Police, a recreational vehicle (RV) was broadcasting a warning message to leave the area and exploded a few minutes later.
The explosion remains a mystery. According to CNN, there were gunshots first that startled residents awake in a downtown Nashville community on Christmas morning.
When people looked out their windows a little before dawn, they saw an old, white motor home parked on their street.
Then the sound of a woman's voice started emanating from the recreational vehicle, with a warning that there was a bomb that was going to go off in 15 minutes.
When the RV exploded, it shattered windows and sent flaming pieces of debris through the air, damaging several buildings.
Mayor John Cooper said the blast was caused by a "deliberate bomb."
Three civilians were hospitalized and are in stable condition, officials said.
The unusual warning that came from the RV likely saved lives. Serious injuries were also avoided due to the police officers who took the warning seriously and cleared the area.
Metro Nashville Police Department Chief John Drake on Friday evening, Dec 25, said investigators found tissue near the blast site. They will be examined, he said, to determine whether they are human remains. He could not say how close the tissue was to the site where the motor home exploded.
A woman has become $2.4 million richer after suing police for wrongly arresting her while she was naked.
A woman has cashed out a whopping $2.4 million after being wrongly arrested while naked.
The money was paid by a Colorado county after the woman sued for being wrongly arrested during a welfare check at a sober living facility in Cañon City.
Fremont County paid the sum last week to Carolyn O’Neal after she sued the sheriff’s office for unlawfully arresting her while she was naked inside her apartment in May 2014.
Deputies had responded due to concerns she might harm herself, the Denver Post reported.
O’Neal told three responding male deputies she wasn’t going to hurt herself and was naked while preparing a bath but the officers used a key to enter her apartment and tossed her onto a bed before arresting her, the newspaper reported.
O’Neal was still naked when she was taken to jail, where she was put in a restraint chair for several hours. Deputies also twice used a Taser on the woman despite her arms and legs being restrained at the time and being forced to wear a spit mask, according to the report.
“This was an outrageous case,” O’Neal’s attorney, David Lane, told the Denver Post on Sunday.
“Law enforcement officers who believed they were above the law got smacked down hard by a jury. And unfortunately, this costs the taxpayers of Fremont County a lot of money. But I hope it inspires the citizenry to demand accountability from law enforcement — otherwise, it’s coming out of their pockets.”
A jury initially awarded O’Neal $3.6 million last year in her wrongful arrest lawsuit against the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, but the amount was later reduced by a federal judge to roughly $2.1 million, prompting appeals from both sides, the Denver Post reported.
County officials later agreed to drop their appeal and settle with O’Neal for $2.4 million, Lane told the newspaper.
Charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest that O’Neal had faced were previously dismissed by a judge. Deputies have since admitted that she should have been taken to a hospital rather than a jail, KDVR reported.
“The police were called by management, her mother was dying, she was depressed and she made some offhand statement about ‘things are going so great, I feel like I should drive my car off a cliff,’” Lane recalled O’Neal saying prior to her arrest.
O’Neal suffers from PTSD and other mental health issues, O’Neal told KDVR.
“Philanthropy is an exercise in power …. In a democratic society, wherever we see the exercise of power in a public setting, the first response it deserves isn’t gratitude but scrutiny.”
But defunding of both higher education and health has occurred, in the form of direct cuts and indirectly through stagnant budgets in the face of rising costs and yearly inflation starting in the ‘90s onwards. This defunding has presented institutional administrators with significant financial challenges.
In post-secondary institutions, part of the solution has been to seek and secure private donations from wealthy individuals or corporations.
The root cause for this pervasive and insidious practice is the lack of adequate government funding.
The practice should be challenged for many reasons, including the transparency and democracy of public institutions, institutional independence and equity in education and health-care delivery.
Even according to the logic of business and shareholders, how is it that the smaller contributor/donor (minor shareholder) gets their name on the front door?
How is it that such important decisions are made without transparent or wide consultation with the people that are the soul of these institutions and that make them what they are?
Here, I mean the nurses, physicians, allied health providers and communities of patients in the case of hospitals or faculty members, students and alumni in the case of universities. Where is institutional transparency when deals are announced as fait accompli after they’ve been signed behind closed doors?
Institutional independence
Not uncommonly, large donated funds are earmarked for specific educational, research or health-care services, as requested by the donor, and potentially set priorities for the recipient university or hospital.
In a publicly funded institution, such priorities should be set independently by the institution itself, informed by societal and community needs.
When a rich family’s name is on a faculty building and new medical students see this as they arrive on campus — especially those who already experience wealth inequities or other structural barriers such as racism — what kind of message do they receive about exactly who’s in power and what their place may be?
Until adequate funding for medical education and health care is restored, public universities and hospitals will continue to struggle financially.
Meanwhile, if we accept that large private and corporate funding is essential to the very sustenance of these institutions, they must ensure contributions are universal, transparent and regulated.
I propose a number of measures to minimize the detrimental impact of large private and corporate donations:
Ideally, donations would be anonymous (and no, this does not make large donations impossible), so that brand advancement is not a given with philanthropy. Where this is perceived as impossible, a name on a plaque with the prohibition of any naming of whole institutions or part should suffice.
Donors should strictly deal with the institution’s foundation department. Any direct contact between faculty, deans and physician leaders should be prohibited.
Agreements regarding major donations should be made public and presented for binding consultation with institutional stakeholders named above.
There should be a transparent process of vetting the business practices of major donors on an ethical basis (for example, as related to fair labour practices or how they engage with Indigenous land rights).
There should be a truly independent body to investigate complaints exposing influence and coercion and to protect whistleblowers.
Scrutiny and strict regulation of corporate funding of public universities and hospitals is essential for maintaining institutional independence and equitable provision of education and health care. Such regulation must be coupled with demands for increased government funding.
Monday, 14 December 2020 23:57 Written by dailypost
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Monday won the state-by-state Electoral College vote that formally confirmed his victory in the 3 November election and ended Donald Trump’s floundering campaign to steal it.
Biden: Electoral College confirms his November 3 victory
California, the most populous state, delivered its 55 electoral votes to Biden on Monday afternoon, officially putting the former vice president over the 270 votes needed to secure the White House.
Based on November’s results, Biden earned 306 Electoral College votes to the Republican Trump’s 232.
Earlier in the day, electors in several major battleground states where Trump has unsuccessfully sought to reverse the outcome – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – also voted for Biden, who is set to take office on Jan. 20 alongside running mate Kamala Harris.
Traditionally a formality, the Electoral College vote – set for Monday by federal law – assumed outsized significance because of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud.
Biden planned a prime-time address at 7:30 p.m. ET on Monday (0030 GMT on Tuesday) to mark the occasion and call on Americans to “turn the page” on the Trump era.
“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago,” he was expected to say, according to excerpts released by his transition team. “And we now know that nothing — not even a pandemic — or an abuse of power — can extinguish that flame.
“In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed.”
There was next to no chance that Monday’s voting would negate Biden’s victory and, with Trump’s legal campaign to reverse the results failing, the president’s dim hopes of clinging to power rest with persuading Congress not to accept Monday’s electoral vote during a Jan. 6 special session – an effort that is virtually certain to fail.
Once in office, Biden faces the challenging task of fighting the coronavirus pandemic, reviving the U.S. economy and rebuilding relations frayed with U.S. allies abroad by Trump’s “America First” policies.
Did the COVID-19 pandemic doom Donald Trump’s re-election? Our study examining the effect of COVID-19 cases on county-level voting in the United States shows that the pandemic led to Trump’s defeat on Nov. 3.
Our analysis suggests that, all things being equal, Trump would likely have won re-election if COVID-19 cases had been between five and 10 per cent lower. In particular, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — which President-elect Joe Biden won by a slim margin — would have remained red if cases had been five per cent lower.
Trump would have also added Michigan to this list if cases had been 10 per cent lower.
This finding is at odds with some initial news analyses that indicated regions with the worst COVID-19 outbreaks voted for Trump.
In fact, national polls and academic studies suggest that Trump’s voters are significantly less likely to wear masks and comply with social distancing, which in turn increase the probability of outbreaks. So Trump voters in Trump-friendly jurisdictions, due to their aversion to wearing masks, had more dramatic COVID-19 outbreaks leading up to the election.
The COVID-19 effect
We estimated the effect of COVID-19 cases and deaths on the change in Trump’s county-level share of votes between 2016 and 2020.
To account for potential alternative explanations, we included a large number of pandemic-related controls, including measures of social distancing, that captured differences in virus containment measures that might have affected cases and had an impact on Trump support.
In an attempt to measure the causal relationship between COVID-19 cases and votes for Trump, we used the share of workers employed in meat-processing factories associated with COVID-19 outbreaks as a source of external variations in COVID-19 cases. Doing so mitigated the risk of a spurious correlation between the incidence of the pandemic and Trump support.
We found that voters living in counties with a high number of COVID-19 cases were less likely to vote for Trump. This effect appears strongest in urban areas and in swing states. The strong results in cities are likely driven by suburban areas, where Trump performed much better in 2016 than he did in 2020.
These results suggest that some Trump voters may have switched to Biden because of the pandemic. In addition, we found no evidence that counties with a large increase in unemployment compared to the pre-pandemic period were more likely to switch from Trump to Biden. This last result seems to indicate that health concerns trumped — pardon the pun — economic conditions.
Retrospective voting
Now that we have an answer to our initial question, how can we explain these results? There are two possible explanations as to why the pandemic decided the 2020 presidential election.
On the one hand, voters may have electorally sanctioned Trump for how he handled the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, the U.S. economy was performing well, and Trump, while extremely polarizing, enjoyed strong support among Republican voters.
The virus changed the narrative, and Trump’s response was widely criticized. He consistently downplayed the risks of the disease, refused to embrace basic health precautions such as masks and repeatedly criticized epidemiologists and scientists, including those advising him.
His response, in contrast to leaders in other developed democracies, was profoundly unsuccessful, as the recent dramatic surge of cases has demonstrated once more.
This explanation is in line with a well-established theory in political science: retrospective voting. In a nutshell, that’s when citizens evaluate and vote based on their perceptions of the incumbent’s performance. If incumbents are perceived as incompetent, citizens vote them out of office.
While intuitive, this theory has not been always empirically true. However, it does seem to have some value in explaining the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Economic fears, need of social safety net
On the other hand, some voters may have switched to Biden from Trump due to the pandemic-fuelled recession. A severe public health threat and major economic losses may have shifted preferences in favour of an expansion of the social safety net, including health care and unemployment insurance programs.
Since the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate are more likely to champion these policies, Biden reaped the electoral benefits of this switch in voters’ preferences.
This explanation is in line with studies that suggest political preferences are shaped by personal experience. The same studies show this switch in political preferences is often long-lasting.
For instance, there is evidence that people growing up in a recession are more likely to favour state intervention and large social welfare programs.
This second explanation would be good news for the Democratic Party even in subsequent elections, when, hopefully, the pandemic will not dictate the narrative of the campaign but may still be fresh in the memories of voters.
Saturday, 05 December 2020 14:24 Written by OASESNEWS
The Donald Trump administration had in 2019 imposed the reciprocity fee for all approved non-immigrant visa applications by Nigerians.
The government of the United States of America has removed all visa reciprocity fees for Nigerians seeking visas to the US, a report by The PUNCH has shown.
The removal is with effect from December 3, according to the Federal Government..
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs disclosed on Saturday that the development was sequel to the removal of excess visa application, processing and biometric fees for American citizens applying for Nigerian visas.
The Donald Trump administration had in 2019 imposed the reciprocity fee for all approved non-immigrant visa applications by Nigerians.
The fee was charged in addition to visa application fees for only applicants who are issued visas.
The additional reciprocity fees which ranged from $80 to $303 depending on the class of visa, took effect from August 29 last year.
The US Embassy in Nigeria said the reciprocity fees were in response to unsuccessful talks with Nigeria to adjust the fees it charges American applicants.
It argued that the total cost for a US citizen to obtain a visa to Nigeria was higher than the total cost for a Nigerian to obtain a comparable visa to the United States.
The Mission insisted that the reciprocity fee was meant to eliminate the cost difference as required by US laws.
Announcing the removal of the reciprocity fee in a statement, the MFA spokesman, Ferdinand Nwonye, said, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs wishes to inform that the United States Government has removed all visa reciprocity fees for Nigerian citizens seeking visas to the United States.
“The positive development is in line with the removal of excess visa application, processing and biometric fees for United States citizens applying for Nigerian visas by the Nigerian Government.
“The United States Government has, therefore, eliminated reciprocity fees for Nigerian citizens with effect from December 3, 2020.”
The statement titled, ‘Update on removal of visa fees for Nigerian citizens by the US Government,’ advised prospective travellers to the US to visit www.travel.state.gov for details.”
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