Opinions Archives - The Truth Seekers Journal

Lindsey Halligan should have re-read the Constitution before going after Letitia James

By Ray Brescia | October 13, 2025

In the same jurisdiction in which the Trump Justice Department indicted former FBI Director James Comey more than a week ago, the same prosecutor who brought that case has now gone after another Trump enemy: New York Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James. (Disclosure: I worked as a volunteer member of James’ transition team after her election in 2018.)

The reason for the indictment? James is accused of having falsified a mortgage application on a property purchased in Virginia. The extent of the harm she is alleged to have caused? About $18,000.

Whether the prosecution will ultimately be able to prove the case against James remains to be seen. What seems more likely is that James will be able to get the case dismissed, because it could be classified as an unconstitutional selective prosecution.

James is charged with having engaged in mortgage fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The case appears to rest on flimsy and conflicting evidence at best, has been brought on grounds that are rarely prosecuted and was filed over the objection of career lawyers within the Justice Department who did not think there was probable cause to bring the case.

What the government will have to prove in establishing the charges before a jury is that James knowingly lied when she claimed that she intended to use the home as a secondary residence at the time of the application. That is something the prosecution will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Other evidence that James appears to be able to present will likely contradict that case. It will be up to the jury to decide if the prosecution can meet that burden. But there is a good chance a jury will never hear this case.

Donald Trump has railed against and threatened to prosecute James once he retook power, after she brought a civil action against him for … mortgage fraud. James won that case in New York and secured a nearly $500 million judgment against Trump, several members of his family and some of his businesses. That damages award has been overturned on appeal, and what damages should be paid is an issue that is pending final resolution. The underlying verdict that Trump committed fraud still stands, however.

While James has professed her innocence, she has another potential response to this indictment: that the prosecution itself violates the constitutional prohibition against what is known as selective prosecution.

The concept of selective prosecution is one recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court. It occurs when a prosecution is brought for an improper purpose and an improper discriminatory effect. Courts generally recognize that prosecutors have wide discretion to prosecute cases as they see fit — but that discretion is not without limits. Still, establishing a claim of selective enforcement requires the defendant to meet a fairly high bar. From the publicly available information about her case and others, James would appear to be able to make out a good case that this action against her qualifies as a selective — and therefore unconstitutional — prosecution.

According to the Supreme Court, a selective prosecution claim is available to someone who says that the prosecution “had a discriminatory effect” and “was motivated by a discriminatory purpose.” For example, that the prosecution was brought based on the defendant’s race or gender, or as a form of punishment for asserting a protected constitutional right.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that James is being prosecuted simply because, in carrying out her functions as a state attorney general, she enforced the law against the person who is currently president.

A prosecution of a state official for doing their job in enforcing federal law would fly in the face of critical free speech and federalism principles — in violation of the 1st and 10th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Again, a claim of selective prosecution is hard to establish. Still, the evidence for James to try to make out this claim is in plain sight, but even that evidence may be but the tip of the iceberg. In September, the president took to Truth Social to implore Attorney General Pam Bondi to commence prosecutions against several of his enemies. (It seems quite possible that this message was not meant to be a public communication.)

Are there more communications like that that were not made public? What was the scope of the investigation into mortgage fraud by James and others? Why were these investigations even commenced? Was it simply a case of presenting a list of individuals to the Justice Department with the directive to find a crime, any crime? What steps has the administration taken to investigate the allegations that others in the administration engaged in similar conduct?

If James can present some initial evidence that the case against her constitutes an unconstitutional selective prosecution, she will then be able to explore some of these other factual questions.

From publicly reported information, the criminal case against James appears to rely on a somewhat flimsy evidentiary basis. At the same time, what we do know already from publicly available information, with some of it containing the public statements and missives of the president himself, the evidence that this was a selective prosecution may be overwhelming.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com

The Tyranny of White Racism and Rage: Why America Will Never Be Great

America’s greatness is a myth built on racism, slavery, and genocide. From MAGA chants to Stone Mountain, white rage ensures the nation will never be truly great.

By Lola Renegade | September 24, 2025

“Make America Great Again” is not a mere slogan. It is an ancestral curse and love song to racism, a requiem to hate, a demon spirit disguised as patriotism, shouted by the faithful of racism, bankrolled by millionaires and billionaires, paraded by politicians, and stitched into the very skin of those who cannot imagine a world where whiteness does not reign supreme. It is a sales pitch—proof that in America, hate is not merely ideology, it is merchandise. It is a brand stamped on cheap red hats and t-shirts made in China, a bumper-sticker lie sold to the willfully ignorant, and the hateful alike.

But strip away the slogans and the pageantry, and the truth is unavoidable: America will never be great. It has entertained moments of unsustainable greatness. It was never designed to be fully great. Racists and misogynists will make certain it never will be.

Even before the moment America declared independence, it strangled its own promise. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison names are etched in marble, their faces carved into mountains. But their hands were never clean. They owned men, women, and children as property. Jefferson could pen the words “all men are created equal” with one hand while raping Sally Hemings with the other, keeping her and the children born of his rape enslaved. Washington could lead a revolution for liberty and then unleash dogs and bounty hunters to drag back those who sought their own freedom. Yet, he was marketed as never telling a lie. All of them were mythologized into saints and branded as paragons of virtue.

Twelve U.S. presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives, with eight of them being slave owners while in office. Some had children by their enslaves and became the first absentee “fathers” of Black children.

The idea of America’s exceptionalism and the phrase “shining city on a hill” was drenched in murders, sweat, blood, and the cries of enslaved Africans. The greatness they preached was always greatness and wealth for the few, built upon the backs of the many. Before slavery’s chains, there was another crime written in rivers of blood: the genocide of Native peoples. The continent’s first nations were starved, massacred, and driven onto barren reservations. Andrew Jackson—the man Donald Trump idolizes—did not merely sign the Indian Removal Act; he enforced it with satanic smiles, watching families stagger down the Trail of Tears. Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, broken treaties, poisoned water. It is today’s caging of “immigrant” families and separating children from their parents.

The list of America’s atrocities is endless. Its landscape has been ruined and littered from its inception until now with racist, narcissistic, power-drunk psychopathic and sociopathic white men, the women who support them, and their colored allies.

This is never any great nation’s destiny. It was the extermination of anyone not like them, waged with rifles in one hand and the Bible in the other, baptized in the counterfeit holiness of patriotic Christianity. The soil beneath our feet is still stolen, crying out with the blood of those who first walked it. And yet, the very thieves who built their empire on genocide and chains dare to demonically sneer, “Go back to your country.” What arrogance! The irony rolls across centuries, and we must never be lulled into silence, never forget the truth written in the earth itself: the trespassers are the ones shouting at others to leave.

Fast-forward to January 6, 2021, when the Confederate flag once again marched proudly into battle—this time through the U.S. Capitol. Donald Trump, the barely literate reality-TV demagogue turned tyrant-in-chief, summoned his followers to overthrow democracy. He told them to fight like hell, and they obeyed. Windows shattered, police were beaten and killed, and elected officials fled for their lives. The Republican Party—the self-proclaimed party of law and order—stood by in silent complicity.

That day did not just globally disgrace America—it unmasked and revealed it. A felon, a twice-impeached president, a self-professed sexual predator, a tax cheat, a fraud who built his empire on lies, bankruptcies, and racism—Donald Trump carried every scandal like badges of honor. And still, racist white America crowned him president not once, but twice. Twice, they chose corruption over character. Twice, they elevated a man who bragged about assaulting women, who caged children, who mocked the disabled, who praised dictators, who desecrated democracy itself.

The insurrection was not an aberration. It was not a crack in the system. It was the system laid bare. The Confederate flag flying through the Capitol was not a symbol of the past—it was the present, a banner of white rage and entitlement, carried by racists who refuse to loosen their grip on power. The mob was not a departure from the American project; it was the American project in its purest form: whiteness armed, enraged, and unwilling to yield.

And now we witness the grotesque theater of the absurd, the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. Kirk, a man who spewed venom about immigrants, women, and Black people, was gunned down by another white man. Yet his death is being blamed on “the left,” polished into sainthood, marketed as if he were some fallen soldier fighting for freedom. America loves nothing more than to crown its hatemongers with halos once they are gone. A racist in life becomes a “patriot” in death, his ideology sanitized and packaged for sale.

Here’s Kirk, the community college dropout in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative (aka racists) media.

On race, he said:

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023

If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024

Kirk truly believed that his whiteness alone placed him on the same level as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—a Harvard University and Harvard Law School graduate—and Michelle Obama, who excelled and graduated from both Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Joy Reid was also a Harvard graduate. Sheila Jackson Lee was a graduate of Yale University and University of Virginia School of Law. In his twisted worldview, their brilliance could only be explained away as “DEI hires,” stealing opportunities that rightfully belonged to mediocre white men like him.

His rise had nothing to do with either education or merit; it was bankrolled by racist millionaires and billionaires eager to underwrite his racism, misogyny, and hate. Strip away their money and his privilege, and Kirk was exposed for what he was—so shallow in intellect that even college freshmen routinely outmatched him in debates. Now the U.S. ( p)Resident felon-in-thief, Donald Trump, squatting at the white house, will posthumously bestow the presidential medal of freedom on Kirk (yes, I am aware some words are not capitalized, both the office and medal are so degraded, elevation is not deserved). Trump also gave another devout racist, Rush Limbaugh, the same medal. Hate speech is lauded as courage, ignorance is achievement, and bigotry is given a standing ovation.

What is America’s true genius? It is not freedom, nor democracy, nor justice. It is advertising. America knows how to brand lies so well that even those poor whites crushed beneath its boot have decided they are better than all people of color. It sells genocide as destiny. It sells slavery as heritage. It sells Trump as a savior. It sells Charlie Kirk as a martyr. It sells racism as conservative. And it sells “greatness” as though it were ever more than a fairy tale written by white supremacists. In a land ruled by lies, hatred is dressed as virtue, and racist traitors are crowned with medals of freedom they never earned.

Greatness requires truth, but America thrives on delusion. Greatness requires justice, but America builds prisons instead and populates them with people of color while white insurrectionists go free. Greatness requires healing, but America only knows how to wound. From plantations to reservations, from lynching trees to prison cells, from drowning and destroying Black thriving cities, from the Oval Office to the riot on the Capitol steps, America has chosen violence as its signature and hypocrisy as its creed.

If you need proof that America prefers its lies monumental, look to Georgia’s Stone Mountain. There, blasted into granite, loom the figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson—Confederate traitors carved larger than life. It is not history. It is propaganda. Built during Jim Crow and unveiled during the Civil Rights Movement, Stone Mountain is a permanent sneer, a towering reminder to Black America that white supremacy still writes the story.

And so the monument stands: a mountain of lies, visible from miles away, impossible to ignore. America carries that mountain on its back every day, dragging it forward, whistling the song, Dixie, while insisting it is free.

“I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times they are not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.”

Until this wretched country tears down not only the stone but the systems of structural racism it symbolizes, America will remain what it has always been—powerful, yes. Ruthless, yes. But great? Nah. Never.

America’s systems protect white male violence and terrorism at all costs

Got to love America, or should we?

By Lola Renegade | September 15, 2025

Note: Let me be clear—it is not every white person I am naming, but it is the majority. The majority who remain silent, complicit, comfortable, the majority who benefit, the majority who uphold the systems that crush people of color and other marginalized groups. If this does not apply to you, you already know it. But if it unsettles you, then perhaps it does.

Even before the details emerged about the murder of the venomous, wrong-wing racist and misogynist Charlie Kirk, most of us in Black America already knew the trigger had been pulled by another white man. This is their story etched into the blood of this nation: violence as their signature, destruction as their inheritance. Since America’s barbaric founding, violence has been the white race’s unchecked birthright. That is their profile, their rite of passage, their playbook. Violence is the heirloom they polish and pass down—every day, generation to generation.

On September 10, 2025, Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University, a PWI (predominately white institution). Shot in the neck in front of nearly 3,000 people, he died onstage. The alleged shooter, Tyler James Robinson, a 22-year-old white man, was quickly taken into custody. His case is a chilling reminder that white male violence is so normalized in America that it now eats its own prophets. And yet the system will still bend toward verbal dancing, searching for mental health explanations, lone-wolf excuses, anything but naming it what it is—domestic terror. It is a label they are too eager and willing to put on people of color in America and around the world. Their cults’ response to Kirk’s murder was to call HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and threaten violence and terrorism. Several had to request their students and faculty either shelter in place and/or cancel classes.

America refuses to stop rehearsing this script—white men killing, white men destroying, white men writing tragedy into our lives, not only in America but across the globe. Mass destruction is in their DNA, passed down through their misplaced and deranged obsessions with guns, distorted Bible scriptures, and sports—the only semblance of acceptance of Black existence as long as they win them championship rings. Violence is poured into the very marrow of their bones. America was built on this truth, and America protects this truth. White men kill, and the system shields them. White men destroy, and the culture excuses them. White men riot, and they are pardoned. That is why January 6th became a stage for their rage and, somehow, a ticket back to power for their DEI (Dangerous, Entitled and Ignorant), authoritarian leader, Donald Trump.

In Georgia, fake elector Burt Jones—rather than facing prison for election interference—became lieutenant governor and now campaigns for governor. He is cut from the same cloth as U.S. Representative Preston Brooks, who on May 22, 1856, nearly beat Senator Charles Sumner to death on the Senate floor for daring to speak against slavery. Brooks was not punished; he was celebrated, showered with gifts of canes—the very weapon he wielded—sent from admirers across the country. This is America’s pattern: criminals exalted, violence rewarded. The more the years turn, the more the story stays the same.

The cycle is not accidental—it is curated, defended, and enshrined in law and politics. What happened to Charlie Kirk is not an aberration; it is the continuation of a bloody pattern that America refuses to break.

From its bloody birth to its turbulent present, America has been defined by one constant: the protection of white male violence and terrorism at all costs. The nation was built on it, enshrined in law, excused in culture, and perpetuated in politics. It explains and justifies how millions of people of color were slaughtered, enslaved, and terrorized with near-total impunity for white perpetrators. It explains why unarmed Black people are killed for existing while white men who commit mass shootings, lynchings, insurrections—even political assassinations—are shielded with sympathy, excuses, or outright celebration.

It is evident why white America wants and needs to erase our history. America’s origin story is soaked in bloody violence. Indigenous nations were massacred under the banner of “manifest destiny.” Africans were kidnapped, enslaved, and subjected to brutalization and death; our entire lives treated as property. Even after emancipation, lynching became a national pastime. Thousands of Black men, women, and children were tortured and murdered while white communities packed meals and gathered to watch, laugh, take photographs to put on postcards and mail across the country. Never was a white perpetrator held accountable. This impunity was never accidental; it was the system working exactly as designed.

Courts have always stood at the center of America’s protection of white violence. The Dred Scott decision declared that Black people had no rights white people were bound to respect. Jim Crow laws legalized racial terror and called it order. And today, a majority of Supreme Court justices have draped the blood-soaked American flag and the crippled bald eagle in Donald Trump’s hands—the worst president in history. And that says a lot, given the long parade of slave-owning, genocidal, racist presidents before him. These justices have fortified stand-your-ground statutes to shield white men who kill us, while Black men who defend themselves are caged for life. The double standard is staggering: Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black boy with a toy gun, was executed in seconds by police, while white mass shooters are escorted calmly into custody, treated to fast food on the way to jail, and described as ‘troubled’ instead of terrorists.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, upon being newly re-elected, did the unthinkable: on his very first day back in office, he signed a proclamation granting blanket pardons to more than 1,200 individuals convicted for their roles in the January 6th insurrection. Leaders of violent extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers saw their prison sentences vanish overnight. Even those who assaulted and killed police officers and threatened members of Congress walked free. Once again, America’s justice system bent itself to shield white male violence in its most brazen, anti-democratic form. To add insult to injury, the Trump administration agreed to pay nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt—the white woman killed while storming the Capitol—transforming her into a martyr rather than an insurrectionist.

Kyle Howard Rittenhouse is not simply an American white male who gained national attention at 17 for killing two people and wounding another during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020. He is the inevitable product of a nation that nurtures white male violence, wraps it in the language of self-defense, and parades it as patriotism. Rittenhouse carried an AR-15 into the night with impunity, because America has long trained its white sons to believe that Black protest is a threat, that white vigilantism is justice, and that their guns are an extension of their manhood.

His acquittal was not surprising—it was a prophecy fulfilled. From the slave patrols of the 18th century to the police brutality of today, America has built a system where white violence is forgiven, even celebrated, while Black existence is policed, punished, and pathologized. Kyle Rittenhouse did not write this story—he simply stepped into the role America has been casting for white men since its founding.

Yet, John “Grand Master Jay” Johnson, the leader of the Not Fu*king Around Coalition (NFAC), a Black man, is in federal prison. He is serving a sentence of seven years and two months for brandishing a firearm at federal task force officers during a 2020 George Floyd protest in Louisville, Kentucky. Trump did not pardon him. Look up the cases of three Black women, Pamela Mason, Crystal Mason, and Pamela Moses who were convicted of illegal voting and sentenced to prison, even though their full right to vote should have been restored. Of the three, Moses was wrongly convicted of voter fraud and briefly imprisoned in 2022. Every American should be able to vote if they have served their time and are back in their community. Whatever happened to the American Revolution’s battle cry of taxation without representation is unacceptable?

Got to love America, or should we?

And so, a convicted felon, insurrectionist, racist, self-professed sexual predator, misogynist, fraudster, and psycho-sociopath once again occupies the Oval Office as president of the (un)United States. America has made itself the world’s punchline, stripped of credibility to lecture any other nation about democracy being superior to communism, fascism, or any other system it claims to despise.

Compare this with Brazil, where former President Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup against his government. Brazil, a so-called “developing nation,” has shown more accountability for political violence than the United States, where convicted felon Donald Trump who incited an insurrection not only escaped punishment but reclaimed the presidency and has more than doubled his net worth. America has slipped below the ranks of the so-called Third World; it has entered the new low territory of a fourth-world country, where corruption and lawlessness wear the mask of democracy while shielding violence for those with white faces.

The system is upheld not just by men but also by white women who weaponize their proximity to white male power. Carolyn Bryant’s lie about Emmett Till sparked his lynching. Today’s “Carolyns” (I never embraced the word “Karens” as identifying dangerous, lying white women) deploy police against Black people for existing in public spaces. Their actions ignite the machinery of white male violence while hiding behind fake tears and claims of fragility. Trump and his followers are present-day Roy Bryants and J. W. Milams, the murderers of Till. They abducted, tortured, and shot the 14-year-old Black boy in Mississippi in 1955 after Carolyn Bryant, Roy’s needy, desperate, and dangerous wife, falsely accused him of harassment.

Protecting white male violence comes at a catastrophic price. It has stolen millions of Black, Brown, and Indigenous lives, shattered families, and destabilized entire communities. It has siphoned billions into prisons and police instead of schools, health care, and housing. It has conditioned generation after generation to accept the lie that white violence is excusable while Black existence itself is criminal. It corrodes democracy, producing a two-tiered system of justice where punishment is not determined by the act committed but by the color of the perpetrator’s skin.

We cannot reform, nor cure, a sickness that America refuses to name. This is not random—it is systemic. And yet, no system of oppression endures without collaborators. Standing guard at the gates of white power—and hell itself—are the Clarence Thomases, the Candace Owenses, the Tim Scotts, the Byron Donalds, the Wesley Hunts, the John Jameses, the Burgess Owenses, the Michael Langleys, and others. They cloak themselves in the language of uplift while fortifying the very forces that strangle their own people. They are not anomalies but willing instruments, preserving white violence with a smile. Hand them a racist white partner and the illusion of inclusion into white circles, and they will dance the jig every time.

Film historian Donald Bogle, in his classic Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks, exposed how Hollywood trapped Black performers in caricatures: the buffoonish “coon,” the hypersexual “buck,” the servile “tom.” These roles entertained white audiences while ensuring Black visibility never translated into Black power. Today, those old scripts are simply repackaged, performed not only on the silver screen but on the political stage—where Black faces are cast to uphold white supremacy.

This is no accident of history. From the first lash of the whip on enslaved Africans, to the stealing and burning of Native lands, to the lynching trees of the South, America has codified white violence as both natural and necessary. The Fugitive Slave Act, Jim Crow laws, and today’s mass incarceration all function as extensions of the same truth: white violence is forgiven, even rewarded, while Black resistance is punished with the full weight of the state and nation.

White male violence has always been America’s most protected tradition. From lynchings to mass shootings to political assassinations, the shield rarely breaks. Kirk’s killing shows that even those who champion violent ideologies can be swallowed up by them. Trump’s mass pardons prove that America’s government will excuse and empower insurrectionists when they are white. Bolsonaro’s sentencing in Brazil underscores how far the U.S. has fallen in comparison. Perhaps America can learn a thing or two from Brazil.

Until America confronts this ugly truth—its loyalty to protecting white male violence and terrorism above all else—it will remain a country in decline and collapse, a democracy in name only, sliding further into the ranks even lower than the third world and building its own fourth world.

Got to love America, or should we?

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Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should: The Trappings of Dark Royalty’s Financial Excess in Black America

By Lola Renegade

“Blacks who claim respectability and allow that mirage to keep them quiet and from being actors in the necessary drama needed to change an oppressive society are instruments of continued oppression.” Black Robes White Justice: Why Our Legal System Doesn’t Work for Blacks by Former New York Supreme Court Justice Bruce Wright.

America has always been a land of contradictions. Mansions rise beside tent cities. Private jets glide over food deserts. Wall Street celebrates record profits while Main Street collapses under debt.

And increasingly, that contradiction lives within Black America itself. While millions of African Americans still struggle to make ends meet—sometimes working two jobs, juggling rent and medicine, fighting to keep the lights on—others, especially our most visible athletes and entertainers, flaunt a level of excess that mimics the worst of a greedy and corrupt white America.

They strut their buffoonery before the cameras, dancing the modern jig for applause. They make it rain in strip clubs while their communities drown in poverty. They drape themselves in overpriced designer clothing spun by the descendants of colonizers, flaunt accessories stitched by exploited hands in foreign sweatshops, and fasten diamond chains around their necks that echo the very iron shackles our ancestors wore during more than four hundred years of bondage.

These are not signs of liberation. They are the trappings of dark royalty—crowns of vanity instead of crowns of vision, thrones built on ego instead of service, castles built for self instead of community.

This obsession with excess did not happen in a vacuum. As film historian Donald Bogle outlined in his classic book Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks, Hollywood long confined Black performers to degrading roles: the buffoonish “coon,” the hypersexual “buck,” the docile “tom.” These caricatures entertained white audiences while ensuring that Black visibility never translated into Black power.

Fast-forward a century, and the stage has changed—but the performance often looks familiar. Today, far too many rappers, ballplayers, and influencers don’t need burnt cork or minstrel makeup. They willingly step into roles of spectacle, celebrating reckless spending, self-destruction, and bringing shame to the sacrifices and spilled blood of our ancestors.

At the root of it is their illusion of inclusion in white America. Too many believe that sitting at the table with whiteness, wearing their brands, copying their excess, and basking in their temporary approval means we’ve “made it.” But this is not freedom. It is a dependency dressed up in designer labels. It is a desperate chase for white acceptance in a system that has never truly accepted us. It is Black America still allowing whites to define what is beautiful and acceptable.

Yes, athletes earn their contracts. Yes, entertainers reap their royalties. But let’s speak the truth: just because you can purchase in excess doesn’t mean you should.

Because while someone spends $50,000 spraying dollar bills on a nightclub floor, children in their hometowns go to bed hungry. While one star throws a multi-million-dollar birthday party or destination wedding to enrich the colonizers even more, elders in their former cities and towns choose between prescriptions and groceries. While another flaunts cars worth more than houses, entire blocks in our neighborhoods sit boarded up, waiting for investment that never comes until whites decide to move in.

These are not crowns of liberation; they are crowns of mimicry. They replicate the greed of those who once enslaved us and mock the dignity of those still struggling to survive. They leave us stuck in the illusion—confusing visibility with power, mistaking consumption for progress, believing that validation from white America is the same as freedom.

Our ancestors did not fight and die through slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and gentrification so we could step back into caricatured roles in designer labels and gold-plated chains. They dreamed of freedom, justice, and self-determination. We are the beneficiaries of their suffering and are neck-deep in their sacrifices and the blood they spilled for us.

The real crown is investing in schools that educate, not prisons that incarcerate.
The real throne is leadership rooted in service, not ego.
The real castle is a community where no child goes hungry, no elder is forgotten, and no youth is left without opportunity.

We already have examples of what that kind of royalty looks like.

Madam C.J. Walker, the first Black woman millionaire in America, didn’t just build an empire for herself—she created jobs and training programs for thousands of Black women. Berry Gordy used Motown not just to make music but to build pride, dignity, and opportunity for generations of Black artists. Now, many in the rap world glorify violence, misogyny, and pure ignorance through their lyrics.

NBA star LeBron James opened the “I Promise” School in Akron, Ohio, proving that true legacy is measured in students, not sneakers.

And billionaire investor Robert F. Smith stunned the world at Morehouse College in 2019 when he pledged to pay off the entire student debt of the graduating class—some 400 young Black men. The price tag? Roughly $34 million. But the value? Priceless. With one act, Smith erased years of financial bondage, freeing those graduates to pursue careers and dreams without the crushing weight of debt. That gift was more than charity—it was liberation.

And here’s the challenge: if one man could liberate 400 young men with $34 million, imagine what 100 rappers, athletes, and entertainers—each earning millions a year—could do if they pooled just 10% of their earnings. They could wipe out debt for entire generations. They could rebuild neighborhoods, create hospitals, fund Black-owned schools, and guarantee scholarships for thousands. Instead of “making it rain” in strip clubs, they could make it reign—in justice, opportunity, and legacy.

History will not remember what you wore, who iced out their neck the most or who spent the most in a nightclub. History will remember who built legacies that lasted. Who turned their blessings into bridges. Who broke the chains of excess instead of buying them.

Dr. King once said, “Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”

That is true royalty. That is the measure of a people who have overcome.

Because the truest royalty is not in what you wear, but in what you build.

And let us never forget – just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

I Pledge Allegiance – Not!

At Atlanta City Council, reflection on the Pledge of Allegiance revealed America’s unfulfilled promises of liberty and justice, systemic racism, and enduring struggles for Black equality

By Richard Rose | August 20, 2025

I attended a recent Atlanta City Council recognition of a community organizing colleague. The custom is the delivery of the invocation and recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. The protocol is to stand, face the flag, and place one’s right hand over the heart. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

As I stood, I reflected on today’s America and how it currently tends toward yesterday’s America. I could not recite the pledge, although the words echoed in my mind. There is no liberty and justice for all in America. There was no justice for all in 1942 when the pledge was adopted. At that time, Black citizens across America were denied the right to vote, especially in the states of the short-lived yet ever-present Confederate States of America.

The systems of American society have limited access to its benefits for descendants of African enslavement in America that continues today. Then, as now, there were two flags. Southern states proudly flew versions of both the Confederate battle flag and that of the Confederate States of America, and in doing so proclaimed, and still proclaims, white supremacy and its evil progeny, racism.

It would be another 6 years before the American military was desegregated by executive order of Democrat President Harry Truman, and 12 years before the Supreme Court ruled that the concept of “separate but equal” is a cruel myth, ushering in Federal troop protection of six-year-old schoolgirls and boys past screaming white adults and teenagers.

Still today, there are obstacles to voting designed to suppress Black votes, some of which rely on the generational economic and educational barriers of racism.

I wish that the “pledge” truly reflected the realities of America and not just the aspirations of equality. I wish that Federal, state, county, and city governments would immediately abolish all systems and policies that promote and maintain racism and all forms of bigotry. I wish that the statues and monuments that promote and teach racism would be removed from public property. I wish that the state of Georgia would repeal its statutes that protect and fund the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world at Stone Mountain Park. I wish that Black politicians would recognize the neo-colonialism in their service that maintains the barriers to liberty and justice for all. I wish that the words I learned in my segregated Tennessee elementary school, sitting at pockmarked desks supplied with 15-year-old books with missing pages, really meant something for me and the next generations.

Until then, I cannot, will not, and should not recite America’s pledge of allegiance.

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Can We Go to the Zoo One Weekend?

By Richard Rose | July 1, 2025

In the 1950s and 60s in Memphis, Black residents still aspired to participate in city, county, and state leadership. Jim Crow rules were in place. Black consumers patronized the Black-owned Tri-State Bank of Memphis and Universal Life Insurance Company whole life policies provided cash for burials by Memphis Black-owned funeral homes. Memphis’ city owned zoo was open six days a week for white families and one day, Thursdays, for Black patrons. Attractions at the fairgrounds included a roller coaster, merry-go-round and bumper cars, also open for business seven days per week, but Tuesdays were reserved for “Negroes.” There was an exclusive gated community in the center city with an adjacent golf course where only Black men and women in domestic uniforms were tolerated.

I write this because there is a relatively young Black man in Atlanta who proclaims himself a “conservative Republican” who professed to not know of these circumstances, although he also is a Memphis native. As a nine-year-old, it was my request to my mother to go to the zoo ‘one weekend” that revealed to me the depths of white supremacist laws, policies, and practices. As I related my reaction as my mother explained the injustice, his facial expression helped me understand his allegiance to the GOP. He claimed to be unaware of the rules of American apartheid. He has no clue about the depths of white supremacist view of non-whites. He claimed not to know that Memphis Mayor Loeb closed city pools and golf courses in the 60s rather than allow public access for all. He actually believes that in 1957, racism was no longer a barrier in America. My guess is that he has company.

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Felons, Fascists, and False Prophets—Oh My!

“Felons, fascists, and false prophets—oh my! America staggers toward collapse, haunted by cowardice, corruption, and moral decay. This isn’t Oz—it’s our reckoning. Fight or perish.”

By Lola Renegade | June 16, 2025

As a child in the Jim and Jane Crow South, I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz every year. In the movie, the iconic chant—”lions and tigers and bears—oh my!”—is more than a child’s (Dorothy) fearful rhyme. It’s a lyrical lament whispered in a dark forest of uncertainty, a rising drumbeat of dread as Dorothy and her companions inch through the unknown. That moment, filled with imaginative terror and looming shadows, mirrors the emotional climate of America today. There’s the Tin Man in search of a heart so that he could have the capacity for love, compassion, and empathy. The scarecrow who wanted a brain to have intelligence, and the Lion was seeking courage. And Dorothy, she just wanted to go home. The forest is ours now—dense with hate of people of color, misinformation, domestic terrorists’ extremism, and institutional decay—and we, too, chant through clenched teeth: “Felons, fascists, and false prophets—oh my!”

Like Dorothy, we wander a fractured path, seeking wisdom, justice, and courage, only to find that the monsters we defy aren’t imagined—they’re elected, emboldened, and televised – the Southern Strategy on steroids. And the Cowardly Lion? He lives within too many of America’s citizens, paralyzed by fear of a degenerate president – Donald Trump – yet aching to act, hoping someone else will lead the charge toward truth. This isn’t Oz—it’s America. And the yellow brick road leads straight through a nation’s reckoning.

The American experiment is on life support, wheezing, coughing, and sputtering under the weight of moral rot, civic amnesia, and weaponized delusion. Once heralded as a beacon of democracy and the greatest country in the world, America now lurches forward like a drunkard sailor at a wake—disoriented, belligerent, and refusing to admit the death in the room – democracy. The stench? It’s not just decay. It’s felons, fascists, and false prophets—oh my.

We’ve entered an era where being indicted and incompetence are no longer disqualifying—it’s branding, a badge of honor, and a shoo-in for an election win. It’s beige (white) America’s own DEI – Demonic, Egregious, and Incompetent and WEI – White, Entitled, and Inept (Aswad Walker). White-collar criminals and political con men wear their mugshots like medals, fundraising off felony charges and calling themselves martyrs. The rule of law is now a revolving door for the powerful and a steel trap for the poor. America’s prisons overflow with Black and brown bodies—children of poverty, trauma, and systemic neglect—while high-ranking officials with rap sheets longer than confessionals run for re-election with full support of their party’s machinery, unlimited funding, and become president of the (un)United States of America as well as congresspeople.

This is not justice. This is sanctioned injustice. A nation that invests $217,517 annually to incarcerate one child in Georgia, but balks at paying its citizens, especially teachers a living wage, is not broken. It is working exactly as designed. God’s rejects of crude, rude, dangerous, and socially unacceptable beings elected Burt Jones to the post of Lt. Governor in Georgia – someone who was a criminal fake elector.

The fascists don’t wear red and white plaid shirts anymore—they wear flag pins and carry pocket Constitutions they’ve never read. The Confederate states are not known for literacy. They chant “freedom” while legislating repression. They claim to protect children while banning books, criminalizing truth, and whitewashing history. From statehouses to school boards, authoritarianism is on the march, wrapped in red, white, and blue and baptized in hate.

They traffic in coded language: “states’ rights,” “election integrity,” “traditional values.” But the translation is clear: racists, voter suppression, anti-Blackness and others of color, anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry, and fear-driven control. The very foundations of democracy—free press, peaceful protest, public education—are under siege, and far too many Americans are either cheering it on or scrolling past it with a want-to-be king – Donald Trump and his cult of assassins – killing everything positive at its helm. Please hold my hair back as I puke.

And then there are the false prophets—slick-haired, greasy, gold-ringed, Bible-toting, scripture-quoting hustlers peddling nationalism as gospel. They’ve traded Christ for Caesar, compassion for control, and truth for tithes. These prophets don’t feed the hungry or clothe the poor. They platform mentally incompetent presidents, bless billionaires, and call it holy. In their world, Jesus votes Republican, wears an AR-15, sanctions unjust wars, and supports tax cuts for the rich. It is clear they don’t believe in the Bible that they so often quote. Their scholarships to hell await them.

But let’s be clear: the Jesus who flipped tables in the temple would flip the entire political-industrial-evangelical complex on its head. These preachers are not defenders of faith—they are CEOs of manipulation, conmen in clerical drag, wolves howling “Hallelujah” with blood on their hands and the smell of Trump’s flabby ass on their breath.

We are not just living through a political crisis—we are in the grip of a moral collapse. Our institutions are cracking under cowardice. Our courts are bleeding justice. Our communities—especially those long trampled under racism, poverty, and systemic neglect—are being sacrificed on altars of power, profit, and piety.

But America cannot be healed by denial. It must be fully exorcised. This is the moment to name the demons: Felons. Fascists. False Prophets. And then we must fight—with truth, with courage, with solidarity, and with a memory longer than the news cycle.

History is watching. The whole world is watching. The ancestors are watching. And the children we claim to love are waiting to see what kind of country we leave behind as their inheritance.

Oh my, indeed.

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The Devil’s Proxies: How the Reincarnation of Racist Governor George Wallace Rules America Again Through the Presidency of Donald Trump and His Cult

In 2025, Trump’s return—fueled by voter suppression, disinformation, and GOP corruption—echoes Wallace’s legacy. Weaponized hate, authoritarianism, and moral decay now define America’s unraveling

By Lola Renegade | June 10, 2025

In 2017, the political spirit of George Wallace slithered into the Oval Office in the person of Donald J. Trump. And in 2025, thanks to voter suppression, disinformation, and a morally bankrupt Republican Party, it has returned. A cadre of predators from every sphere—an unlimited number of felons, misogynists, and undeniable dolts—has joined him again, eager to wield power, undermine democracy, and profit from America’s unraveling.

Trump is the literal and figurative reincarnation of Wallace in every meaningful way—rhetorically, ideologically, and strategically—he is Wallace’s heir. The Devil’s proxies now rule America once more, their mission unchanged: to sow division, weaponize hate, and derail this nation’s fragile pursuit of justice and democracy.

Trump has always been the monosyllabic turd in the punch bowl of American democracy. The stench is unmistakable. The rot is plain to see. And yet, the Republican Party—with eyes wide open—keeps ladling out another cup to drink and insisting the rest of us should do the same.

America is not the greatest country in the world. It can’t be. Their demonic actions have dragged America backward—not merely into a third-world state, but a fourth-world nation, where truth is mutilated, justice is auctioned off, cruelty is exalted as virtue, and the White House is for sale to anyone who will line Trump’s pockets.

Under Trump’s rule, his acolytes have sunk so low they could walk under a snake’s belly without touching it. And they do so proudly—grinning, gaslighting, and daring anyone to call it what it is: the moral collapse of a political movement, and a dangerous infection in the embryonic soul of America.

When George Wallace stood on the steps of the Alabama Capitol in 1963 and bellowed, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” he became the face of white resistance to progress—a slick-talking, anti-intellectual, and violence-stoking avatar of American apartheid.

For decades, many Americans comforted themselves that Wallace and his kind had been consigned to history’s dustbin. But history, it turns out, is no graveyard. It is a recycling bin for America’s degenerates and never-ending syndicated horror shows.

Wallace built his career by stoking white resentment amid the victories of the civil rights movement. Trump surfs a similar tide, fueled by the demographic shifts of the 21st century and white backlash to the Obama presidency.

Where Wallace denounced “pointy-headed intellectuals who can’t park their bicycles straight,” Trump demonizes scientists, historians, and anyone with the courage to speak truth. Where Wallace called federal judges “tyrants in robes,” Trump demands a judiciary that bends only to his will.

This strain of anti-intellectualism is no accident. It is a core strategy of authoritarians: inflame the passions of the mob, vilify expertise, and dumb down the electorate so lies can thrive.

Wallace’s rallies were notorious for violence against civil rights protesters. Trump’s rallies are their modern-day equivalent—sites of hate and intimidation. When Trump told his crowds “Knock the crap out of them, I’ll pay the legal fees,” the echo of Wallace’s era was unmistakable.

Both men understood the power of cruelty as spectacle. Their movements are not about governance but about grievance. Not about policy but about punishing the vulnerable and dissenting voices.

Let us speak plainly: Trump is an incompetent, dangerous idiot. His first term left a trail of mismanagement, from the botched COVID-19 response to countless assaults on basic governance. But in Trump’s America, competence is not a prerequisite for higher offices. Obedience and cruelty are their currencies of power.

Incompetence becomes a weapon when government agencies are gutted, expertise is driven out, and public trust is corroded. Wallace pioneered this playbook in Alabama. Trump has brought it to Washington on steroids.

And let us not forget the other enablers. Many of the women in Trump’s orbit are today’s Carolyn Bryants—the lying, preening enablers of racist violence. It was Bryant’s false accusations that led to the brutal lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Today, women in MAGA hats, racist media personalities, and political spouses perform the same role: lying, gaslighting, and seeking the approval of Satan’s spawns—their husbands, their political masters, their toxic movement.

Their lies fuel an ecosystem of conspiracy, cruelty, and chaos. And they do it with performative piety and crocodile tears, as if history has taught nothing.

This is not leadership. It is surrender to the darkest impulses of our national character.

This is no ordinary presidency. It is a test of whether America’s democratic experiment can survive its most brazen modern threat.

George Wallace ultimately expressed regret for his sins. Trump boasts of his—and vows to commit more.

But this is bigger than Trump alone. It is about an American political tradition we thought we had buried. Instead, we find it resurgent, emboldened, and sitting once again in the seat of power.

The Devil’s proxies now strut openly through our government, our media, and our public life. The question is whether the American people, in their multiracial, moral majority, will rise with greater resolve than ever before.

Our democracy—and the sacred memory of every child like Emmett Till—demands nothing less.

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Why Shedeur Sanders Dropped in the 2025 NFL Draft — And Why It Makes Sense

Despite his talent, Shedeur Sanders fell to the fifth round of the NFL Draft—because leadership, humility, and team chemistry matter more than hype.

By George Gentry | April 29, 2025

As the dust settles on the 2025 NFL Draft, analysts and fans alike are scratching their heads over one name that remained on the board far longer than expected: Shedeur Sanders. Once projected as a potential Day 2 selection, Sanders fell to the fifth round—a surprising development for a quarterback with strong statistics and a recognizable name. But to me, the real surprise is that anyone expected otherwise.

I’m not a die-hard college football fan, nor did I follow the Colorado Buffaloes closely last season. But over the past four days, I’ve been inundated with hours of draft coverage and punditry. One thing has become clear: NFL teams didn’t just pass on Sanders because of his performance. They passed because they saw warning signs of something more damaging than inconsistent play—they saw a potentially toxic presence.

In that same four-day window, I heard no more than 90 seconds combined of Shedeur Sanders and his father, Deion Sanders, speaking. Yet, in that brief time, both made it clear that humility is in short supply. The elder Sanders declared publicly that there were certain teams he wouldn’t “allow” his son to play for—an audacious statement in a league where no player, especially a rookie, gets to make such demands. Meanwhile, Shedeur’s own remarks suggested he was used to being singled out, subtly positioning himself above the scrutiny that every other draft prospect faces.

That alone raises red flags. Football is not an individual sport; it thrives on leadership, selflessness, and unity. A successful quarterback doesn’t just complete passes—they inspire belief in the locker room, command respect in the huddle, and own their mistakes when things go wrong. Yet the public persona of Shedeur Sanders, with his designer cars and performative flash, suggests a man more interested in optics than accountability.

Let’s call this what it is: classic signs of a toxic potential employee.

Toxic employees aren’t always obvious at first glance. Sometimes they’re talented, even charismatic. But beneath the surface, their actions can poison a culture. In any workplace—including an NFL franchise—these individuals exhibit behaviors that hurt morale, sabotage progress, or create rifts among teams. They may bully teammates, dodge responsibility, or take credit for others’ efforts. They’re often overly competitive, insensitively brash, or blind to their own egos.

Is that Shedeur Sanders? That remains to be seen—but NFL scouts and executives are trained to spot those red flags. They look not just at arm strength and accuracy, but at attitude, composure, and fit. If they believed Sanders projected the warning signs of a toxic presence—overconfidence, entitlement, insensitivity—then dropping him down the draft board wasn’t a mistake. It was strategy.

And let’s not ignore the role of his father, Deion Sanders. A generational talent and now a high-profile coach, Deion has shown little interest in letting his son develop a public image separate from his own. Instead, he’s wrapped Shedeur in his shadow, defending him, controlling narratives, and framing adversity as conspiracy. But there’s a fine line between support and interference—and in this case, Deion may have taught his son all the wrong lessons about leadership.

The NFL doesn’t just want talent—it demands maturity. If a player walks in acting like the CEO before they’ve proven themselves on the field, they alienate teammates, challenge authority, and distract from the goal of winning.

Some may argue that Shedeur Sanders is simply misunderstood, that confidence is being mistaken for arrogance. But leadership is not about how you shine alone—it’s about how you elevate others. And humility, not hype, is what builds a winning culture.

So why did Shedeur Sanders fall to the fifth round? Because NFL teams weren’t just picking a quarterback. They were protecting their locker rooms.

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USA Today Columnist, Nicole Russell, said: “I’m Tired of Being Mocked and Hated Because I’m a Conservative Woman.” My Response: Try Being a Black Woman in America. I damn double dog dare you! | Opinion

Black woman’s response to conservative victimhood highlights systemic racism, historical injustice, and the enduring struggle for equality in America, from Jim Crow to MAGA.

Atlanta, GA | April 3, 2025

Nicole Russell,

Spare me and other Black women your entitled whining and tears. As the saying goes, “When you are accustomed to privilege, equality (for others) feels like oppression.”

So, you’re “tired” of being mocked and hated because you are a conservative woman? As an African American woman, I, too, am tired – tired of being oppressed, objectified and rendered invisible. I was born in 1957, into an America that did not even pretend to value my humanity—and in many ways, still does not. That same year, staunch segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond stood alone in the well of the U.S. Senate, filibustering for 24 hours and 18 minutes to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957—legislation meant to ensure Black Americans the basic right to vote. I cannot count the number of times my parents went to vote and would be met with resistance, not knowing whether or not their votes were counted, the polling places moved without notice, or another cross burned on the gravel road where we lived during Jim Crow in rural Mississippi.

On Tuesday, April 1st, African American Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) made history and broke Thurmond’s 68-year record of hate and exclusion by speaking for 25 hours straight—not to deny justice, but to call this nation to its better angels. His words were a plea against the cruelty and ineptitude of President Donald Trump’s administration—a moment of moral clarity in contrast to a legacy of chaos, corruption, obstruction, and moral failure.

Nicole, you represent the very policies I’ve spent my life resisting—policies that harm the vulnerable and protect the powerful. But that doesn’t mean I hate you. Hate would give you too much space in my spirit. Aside from the fact that we’re both women and mothers, we likely share nothing else. Our values, our visions, and the roads we walk could not be further apart.

Growing up, I did not have the luxury of sharing “highs and lows” around the dinner table. I grew up in an unjust, unequal America, struggling just to survive. My mother cleaned the homes of racist, hateful, disrespectful white folks in the Mississippi Delta and came home bone-tired, barely paid for her long days of hard work and dared not to speak up for fear of losing her life. My father labored with his bare hands until they were calloused and cracked —working for neo-confederates on America’s stolen land. We did not sit around discussing the Bill of Rights—we were too busy fighting for our human rights that we were supposedly guaranteed after the Civil War. A war that, truth be told, has never ended—not for angry white people, and certainly not for Black people.

It was not a war about heritage, it was about hate and maintaining slavery. As “conservatives” attempt to erase and rewrite African American History, I have some readings I strongly recommend. Suggested reading: Cornerstone Speech by Alexander Hamilton Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, who is very clear about the purpose of the war.

I live in Georgia—a state burdened with the disgrace of hosting the world’s largest monument to white supremacy. Towering over Stone Mountain Park, located at 1000 Robert E. Lee Boulevard, Stone Mountain, Georgia, the mountain’s granite face bears the likenesses of Confederate leaders who fought to uphold slavery and white domination. Marketed as a family-friendly attraction, this monument is, in truth, a state-funded altar to treason—a monument to domestic terrorists who waged war against the United States to preserve a racial hierarchy. It stands atop land violently stolen from the Muscogee Creek Nation, layered with the blood of colonization, murder, and forced displacement. And Georgia doesn’t just tolerate it—it subsidizes it, pouring tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into maintaining this shrine to hate. I live in a state where shame is scarce and humanity even scarcer—a reality shared by far too many Americans.

For generations, this mountain has been used to intimidate Black people, glorify traitors, and whitewash the truth. It looms not just over Georgia’s landscape, but over its lack of a conscience—casting a long, dark shadow of hatred, fear, and domination. So no, it’s no mystery why you and your cadre of Trump supporters feel a fierce urgency to stand with Trump in his efforts to erase America’s true history. Because if this country ever fully reckons with its past, monuments like Stone Mountain would fall—and so would the lies they were built to uphold.

Tomorrow, April 4^th, I will turn 68. And still, after all these years, no birthday stands out more than my 11th. It was April 4, 1968—the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. That day didn’t just violently steal a man’s life and our decided leader from us—it tried to bury a movement. I knew—even then—that Dr. King’s murder was a message: that the hopes and dignity of my people were meant to die with him. It was to invoke fear. The same fear that marched under white hoods and sheets. The same fear that lit crosses, burned and bombed Black churches, turned fire hoses and dogs on children. The same fear that put ropes around Black necks and called all of it justice, with no accountability.

And now, you and your “conservatives” scream Make America Great Again (MAGA)!—as if we’re too blind to see the past you’re pining for. Every time I hear that chant; I don’t just shake my head in disgust—I want America to vomit. Vomit up the centuries of systemic and structural racism this country has tried to hide under flags and slogans. Vomit up the kakistocracy—rule by the cruelest and most incompetent. Vomit up the misogyny, the white supremacy, the seething hatred for anyone who doesn’t look, pray, or love like you do.

If you were a pure patriot, you would want America to heal its wounds by understanding our long-suffering pain in this country. I seriously doubt that you do, but by chance there lies a slight semblance of humanity and consideration for others not like you, start by reading Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Frederick Douglass’ ” What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” But don’t just read them. Sit with it. Let the truth shame you. Let the words stretch you. Let them reveal to you that true patriotism is not about protecting your comfort and convenience – it is about fighting for someone else’s humanity.

I am not a “woke” liberal, not by any stretch of the imagination. To sleep on people like you, especially so-called “conservative” white women, would be at my peril. You prove time and again that you cannot be trusted to consistently do the right thing. To me the word “conservative” that you all so freely throw around and call yourselves is simply an interchangeable euphemism for racist. I would be willing to proclaim I am more conservative in its purest form of the word than all of you combined.

And here you are—you and your chorus of Trump-devoted women—the modern echo of centuries-old delusion, dragging the hard-won rights of women back toward the stone age, still peddling the same worn-out persecution narrative, now dressed in lipstick, pearls, and Sunday-morning sanctimony masquerading as faith. And let’s not forget in 2016 and 2024, more than 50 percent of white “conservative” women sent a resounding message to their daughters and little girls everywhere—you can only become president of the United States if you play one on TV or in the movies.

In the 2018 episode of television series, Elementary, titled “Once You’ve Ruled Out God,” Sherlock Holmes, played by Jonny Lee Miller, and Dr. Joan Watson, portrayed by Lucy Liu, reflect on the absurdity of a white supremacist rising to power. Watson wonders aloud how someone with most of his life a rap sheet ends up in charge of anything. Holmes responds:
“Well, you only have to be the brightest bulb of a dim lot. Racist ideology mostly attracts failures and reprobates. It gives them a sense of elevation they cannot otherwise justify.”

That line? It defines the Trump Era in a nutshell. A government fueled by grievance, staffed by opportunists, and propped up by those who see cruelty as strength and wear ignorance as a badge of honor. This is not about greatness—it’s about entitlement. It is not about faith—it is about fear. And no amount of makeup, scripture quotes, or MAGA slogans can mask the moral rot at its core. It feels as though every day America is living in a never-ending episode of Law & Order: SVU (Special Victims Unit) – with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and 1 East Capitol Street in Washington, D.C. are the ongoing crime scenes, and the American people as the victims.

Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t an anomaly—it’s the culmination of a brutal legacy. It’s George Wallace’s segregationist stump speeches rewritten with an orange spray tan and social media accounts. It’s Bull Connor’s fire hoses and attack dogs reincarnated as border walls and riot gear. It’s the racist playbook of the Jim Crow South, dusted off and broadcast in HD. Trump didn’t invent your America—he just gave your ilk amplified permission to stop pretending. He is the spiritual successor to a long line of white supremacist demagogues: George Wallace, who stood in the schoolhouse door to block Black children from entering. Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor, who unleashed violence on peaceful protesters in Birmingham. Strom Thurmond, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act for over 24 hours and 18 minutes to denounce the Civil Rights Act in an effort to preserve segregation, but had no problem impregnating a 16-year old Black girl who worked as a domestic at his home. Lester Maddox, who chased Black customers out of his restaurant with an axe handle and was later rewarded with the Georgia governor’s mansion. Jesse Helms, who spent decades trying to silence Black voters and fought against honoring Dr. King with a holiday.

These men didn’t disappear. They morphed. They traded white robes for red hats. They swapped burning crosses for voter suppression laws. They no longer shout, “segregation now, segregation forever”—now they speak about “election integrity,” “law and order,” and “taking our country back” and, presenting themselves as fake electors in 2020 to overturn our presidential election, without going to prison. In fact, fake elector, Burt Jones, became Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. Trump is not the start of something new—he’s the manifestation of something very old. And African Americans have seen this movie before, it’s been in syndication since 1619.

I have both seen, heard, and met white women like you all my life. For me, you all represent: America’s Carolyn Bryants—who lied on Emmett Till and got him murdered to receive attention from psychopathic husbands, white women spitting on little Black and Brown children as they integrated white public schools, the ones who packed picnic lunches for the family to go watch Black people lynched by domestic terrorists in the town square like it was regular Sunday entertainment, the ones who lied about being raped so their husbands could go out and slaughter poor Black men to defend an honor most of you never possessed. You are the women who could live with and bring life into the world by racist policemen who kill unarmed Black men, women and children, the Eva Brauns who could lie next to a murderous Adolph Hitler while he committed genocide on the Jews. Suggested reading: Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters, Edited by Andrew Carroll.

In the words of Aibileen Clark (played by Viola Davis) in the movie, The Help, to Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), the racist white woman she worked for, “All you do is scare and lie to try and get what you want. You are a godless woman. Ain’t you tired, Miss Hilly, ain’t you tired?” These lines capture not just Aibileen’s weariness, but the soul-deep exhaustion of Black women in the Jim Crow South and the New Jim Crow today—women who bore and still bears the weight of white cruelty with unbroken spirits, enduring daily indignities in a world built to deny our humanity.

And now? You and yours won’t stop—trying to steal my vote here in Fulton County, Georgia. Trying to erase my voice. You’re coming after our duly elected district attorney, Fani Willis, because she had the courage to hold your beloved criminal and felon-in-chief, Donald Trump, accountable. And now with Georgia Senate Bill 244, domestic terrorists at the Georgia Capitol have the gall to try to make my county pay Trump’s legal bills? He is as guilty as Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Benjamin Atkins, John Wayne Gacy and others. He checks many pages in the DSM – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And you all are his accomplices. That is not just shameless. This is pure evil dressed up in your god and politics. When I disagree with your politics, I don’t want to kill you. I protest. When your band of MAGA converts and convicts disagree with people who espouse different “progressive” beliefs, they want us dead. Suggested reading: The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump by Brandy Lee, M.D., M.Div.

On the one hand, “Christian conservatives” love to preach that there is only one God and we are all God’s children. But your actions speak otherwise. Your “love” is selective. Your compassion has a color code. And your idea of justice always seems to come with loopholes—made up just for you to benefit. Perhaps you can revisit the Beatitudes, especially the one that says, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

You say you’re mocked and hated for being a conservative? Let me be clear: Black people—especially Black women—are exhausted from surviving the damage your brand of conservatism has inflicted for generations. You’re not despised because you call yourself “conservative.” You’re despised because of your soulless actions—because you champion policies that dehumanize, exclude, and silence in the name of tradition and making America great, again. Let’s ask the millions of Africans who were kidnapped, brutalized and brought to this country in chains to be your slaves, the Native Americans you massacred and broke every treaty with as you stole their land, the Japanese who were put in internment camps, as well as the Jews and many other non-whites. If I were you I would try to erase this history, too.

This year, 2025, marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Yet somehow, you and your MAGA loyalists still see no shame in the fact that in America we’re still beginning sentences with “the first woman,” “the first African American,” “the first Native American” to be appointed to pivotal positions. You embrace this all while boasting and participating in sing-alongs that America is the greatest country in the world.

That is why you’re mocked. That is why you are sometimes despised. Not for your label—But for your legacy.

I suggest that when white women “conservatives” are in doubt, ask WWJSAD—What Would Jesus Say and Do? The real Christ. And make an effort of being genuine and humane, if possible. And while you’re at it, go back and reread the First Psalm—especially the part about not walking in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful. You say you are a Christian, then prove it. It is more than sitting at your kitchen table telling your children about Christ. Would Jesus lock up children in cages and separate them from their parents? That is akin to the slavery my people endured in America. Would He mock the disabled, brag about sexually assaulting women, or call white supremacists “very fine people?” Would He incite an insurrection, steal from the U.S. Treasury, or prop up billionaires while the poor starve? Would He sexually assault women and pay off a porn star? Will you be able to say to your children you supported such an ungodly administration?

In the King James 2000 Bible, Jesus doesn’t mince words when it comes to the mistreatment of children. And notice He did not say this is just for little white children. Matthew 18:6 says: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him (her) that a millstone were hanged about his (her) neck, and that he (she) were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Let me put it plain: Make way, whales—there’s a wave of so-called conservative Christians who have earned their spot at the bottom of the sea.

My personal truth: in nearly 68 years of living, I can count the number of white women I’ve considered true friends on one hand—and I still have fingers left over. Because too many times, when it mattered most, you all chose your whiteness over sisterhood. Power over people. Silence over solidarity, and the transactional ability to go shopping rather than protest injustice.

Women like you are exhausting and drain the soul. And though every bone in my body aches to hate you, I cannot—because I really do believe in a loving God, who loves without conditions. My faith forbids it and will not allow me to sink to that space. So instead of hatred, I offer you something colder: pity. The gap between your professed faith and your embraced actions is wider than any ocean. You quote Scripture—I live it. I could never accept harm done to any man, woman, or child, regardless of their race or birthplace. But you’re fine with an administration that uproots families and rips children from their parents’ arms. That tells me everything I need to know about you. My guiding principle has always been simple: if it’s not good enough for my child, it’s not good enough for any child. Would I want someone to take my child? Never. Yet your ancestors stole this land and kidnapped my people—and now you have the audacity to tell others – always people of color, to “go back to their country.” Why don’t you all go back to the places your ancestors hailed from? I am more than certain you are not Native Americans.

You’re not tired, Nicole. You’re just complicit and entitled and that is not the same thing. Again, you are not mocked and hated because you claim to be a conservative, it is because you are void of a moral compass and you are for sale for 15 minutes of fame for center stage and less than 30 pieces of silver to keep the Civil War and domestic terrorism alive.

I am a daughter of the Mississippi Delta—born of red clay, raised in resistance. I’ve walked through fire that tried to consume me, I’ve endured suffocating poverty, deep-rooted racism, dehumanizing sexism, and grief so heavy it threatened to silence my soul. I’ve buried loved ones far too soon. Still, I am not broken. I rise with purpose, with power, with a love for my people that refuses to quit.

Justice and equality for all isn’t just a dream—it’s my endgame. My focus is unwavering, cut from the same cloth as fellow Mississippians and freedom fighters Ida B. Wells and Fannie Lou Hamer. And like Fannie, I, too, am “sick and tired of being sick and tired” of your pretense as a patriot and deserving of outrage. Recommended reading and listening: Fannie Lou Hamer Testimony before the Credentials Committee at the Democratic National Convention, August 1964. This happened in my lifetime, not a century ago.

So no, Nicole, I will not be silent while you paint yourself as a victim of your own choices as the Republican party keeps reenacting the Civil War at the expense of my people. I won’t let you weaponize your whiteness and your womanhood to both erase and rewrite our truth.

Bring it, game on!

A Black woman who has had enough – Justice-bred. Still standing. Still fighting. Still wide awake, not woke.

Editor’s Note:
The author of this piece is identified “A Black woman who has had enough” to protect their privacy. Due to the sensitive nature of the subject and potential personal or professional repercussions, we have agreed to withhold their full name. The views expressed are their own and reflect firsthand experience and insight.

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