Six Degrees of Segregation

The people pushing anti-trans legislation now are the same people (often literally) who fought for American apartheid back then.

Photo by Pascal van de Vendel on Unsplash

I was talking to my friend Alexa the other night. She is a trans woman and we were discussing the wave of anti-trans legislation extremist Republican lawmakers have introduced, and passed, in gerrymandered red states across the country, including our home state of Indiana. Thankfully, she lives in progressive Oregon these days and is somewhat insulated from the legislative impact - though it must be emotionally exhausting to have one’s humanity debated constantly. This conversation will appear on the HoosLeft podcast in the coming days. During our exchange, we briefly touched upon the wealthy individuals and families who have funded the conservative movement, and their attempts to keep the racist, homophobic, transphobic evangelical base angry and engaged for the last 75 years.

Now, I hate to sound like a deranged conspiracy theorist, suggesting some vast right-wing plot to take over the country and subvert the will of the people. However, there is a complex system of think tanks, foundations, and nonprofits - each dedicated to their own unique causes - with an overlapping network of ultra-rich individuals funding the entire operation. The right-wing conspiracy might not be vast in terms of numbers, but it is certainly vast in terms of dollars and influence. Don’t take it from me. Brilliant, critically-acclaimed authors like Nancy Maclean, Jane Mayer, and Kurt Anderson have published well-researched books on the topic in just the last six years. The anti-trans legislative avalanche of the 2020’s is new, but the playbook - and so many of the players it can’t be coincidental - are the same. I’d like to give you the short version - a straight line from the religious extremists fighting against LGBTQ rights now, to the segregationists fighting on Jim Crow’s behalf in the 1950’s.

Having read the aforementioned authors, as well as the detailed blow-by-blow dismantling of people power that David Pepper gives in Laboratories of Autocracy, and David Daley details in Ratf**ked, I recognize the handiwork of ALEC. The American Legislative Exchange Council is a “bill mill” wherein corporate lawyers draft model legislation for state lawmakers to introduce in their respective assemblies. According to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the “biggest donors are the foundations of the Bradley ($3.9 million), Koch ($2.7 million), Searle ($1.7 million), Thomas W. Smith ($625,000), and Coors ($325,000) families, [who, together account for] 60% of the known donations to ALEC” from the period of 2014-19. A series of nearly-identical bills in Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Utah and beyond certainly fits their modus operandi. Now, after a corporate donor exodus about ten years ago, ALEC claims to have abandoned social issues in favor of strictly economic concerns; but the incestuous, intertwined, tangled nature of these right-wing special interest organizations means many of its members are also involved with additional lobbying groups that often share these same funding sources. A list of Hoosier ALEC members can be found here.

One of ALEC’s sister organizations is the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. CMD counts half of NACL’s state chairpersons as ALEC members. Arkansas State Senator and proud Christian nationalist Jason Rapert, the group’s founder, an ALEC member himself, describes NACL as “ALEC from a Biblical worldview,” stating, “it allows us to deal with those issues that [are] not the direct mission [of ALEC].” These are the folks responsible for Texas’ “bounty hunter abortion ban,” Arkansas’ anti-trans school bathroom bill, and the “trigger laws” used to outlaw abortion in thirteen states in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. The National Board of Advisors for NACL includes former Arkansas Governor, father of current Arkansas Governor, and notorious grifter Mike Huckabee as well as cartoonishly evil Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. State Senator Travis Holdman (Fascist - Ossian) is the NACL Indiana State Chair.

So, we have a pretty damn good idea how these bills get around. But where do they originate? Your average Republican state legislator is not writing the text of these bills. Frankly, your average Republican state lawmaker is an empty puppet with a billionaire donor’s hand up their ass. They are merely a cash-stuffed vessel for bills originating with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). ADF is described by Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as

“a legal advocacy and training group that has supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia; and claims that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society.”

Given these positions, SPLC lists ADF among its designated hate groups, alongside such company as the Aryan Brotherhood, the Proud Boys, and various chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. Such illustrious company! Many prominent and vociferous members of the Christian right have been linked to this organization, including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett (longtime Hoosier), Mike Pence (disgraced former Indiana Governor), Bill Barr (Iran-Contra treason fixer), Jeff Sessions (Jefferson Beauregard Sessions - a fucking confederate cartoon name), and Josh Hawley (Senator from ‘running like a bitch’). Perhaps even more pernicious, some the founders and longtime leaders of ADF maintain ties to an even more suspicious group.

ADF founders Alan Sears and James Dobson (Focus on the Family, Family Research Council - another SPLC-designated hate group), along with former president Michael Farris, as well as the previously-mentioned Rapert, have all belonged to the Council for National Policy (CNP). Those bigots and extremists are joined in this group by the elite of the elite, the cream of the crop, the Lifestyles of the Rich and Zealous All-Star team. CNP was described by the New York Times as "a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country” and by author Anne Nelson as the confluence of "the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives.” Combined, the members of this organization are almost entirely responsible for the hard right turn taken by the Republican party since the Reagan administration, and their roster represents a veritable who’s-who of the very worst people in the country over the last 40 years. Highly secretive, members are told not to discuss the group, its discussions, or even their membership status. In fact, their rolls were kept entirely secret for decades until independent journalists were able finally get a leaked roster in 2014. Further membership lists have since been uncovered. Here are just some interesting individuals who have been CNP associates over the years:

• Indiana Connections:

  • Former Governor and Vice President Mike Pence

  • Former IN-2 Congressman and Club for Growth President David McIntosh

  • Mister Ice of Indianapolis owner/president William G. Schneider

  • Mason jar heir William H. Ball, Jr.

  • Former Indiana KKK state secretary Richard Shoff

  • Terre Haute Attorney, Citizens United mastermind, and lead counsel for National Right to Life Committee James Bopp

• Trump Administration and January 6 Coup Plotters:

  • Pence

  • Strategist Steve Bannon - perhaps the single most dangerous man in America

  • Communications Director (and Crypt Keeper) Kellyanne Conway

  • Disgraced Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn

  • Jay Sekulow - attorney and media personality; chief counsel, American Center for Law and Justice; election disinformation spreader; lead counsel for Trump’s first impeachment trial.

  • Gini Thomas - wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas; conservative activist; perpetrator of Trump’s Big Lie; possible January 6 organizer

  • Election attorney Cleta Mitchell

  • Attorney, pundit, and election denier Jenna Ellis

  • “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander

  • Women for Trump (Jan 6 rally organizers) co-founder Caroline Wetherington

  • Amy Kremer of Women for America First, Women for Trump, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots

  • Jenny Beth Martin - 2020 CNP Secretary, Tea Party Patriots, Conservative Action Project

  • Barry Loudermilk - Congressman from Georgia; gave tours of the Capitol to insurrectionists January 5, 2021.

  • Turning Point USA Founder and tiny-faced weenie Charlie Kirk

  • President of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles Ed Martin

• The Founders

  • Tim LaHaye - evangelical preacher, author of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction; John Birch Society member; wife Beverly LaHaye was also a CNP member and co-founder of Concerned Women for America; co-founded Moral Majority with…

  • Jerry Falwell - preacher, segregationist, televangelist, founder of Liberty University, victim of a classic trolling campaign by pornographer Larry Flynt.

  • Phyllis Schlafly - attorney, author, activist, anti-feminist; founder of Eagle Forum; secret member, John Birch Society; leader of anti-ERA campaign, subject of Hulu’s Mrs. America.

  • Nelson Bunker Hunt - billionaire, son of oil billionaire H.L. Hunt, brother of Kansas City Chiefs and AFL founder Lamar Hunt, major sponsor of the John Birch Society.

  • Cullen Davis - another billionaire nepo baby, son of oil tycoon Kenneth Davis, probably got away with killing a couple people and paralyzing another BEFORE he co-founded CNP.

  • William H. Cies - another wealthy billionaire who must keep an EXTREMEMLY low profile. Also tied to John Birch Society. Not a lot out there on him.

  • Joseph Coors - beer magnate, another John Birch Society funder, also co-founded Heritage Foundation and the anti-environment Mountain States Legal Foundation

  • Howard Phillips - founder of the Conservative Caucus and the Constitution Party, disciple of Christian Reconstructionist forefather R.J. Rushdoony, a CNP member himself.

  • Richard Viguerie - pioneer of direct mail marketing, veteran of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign and George Wallace’s 1968, ‘72, and ‘76 runs.

  • Morton Blackwell - founder of the Leadership Institute, Goldwater campaign delegate, Republican Party rules specialist.

  • Paul Weyrich - also co-founded the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and Moral Majority; ran the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress with Laszlo Pasztor, a Hungarian Nazi collaborator; pre-Vatican II Catholic traditionalist; long-time associate of the John Birch Society; perhaps the single most important political operative of the past 50 years, and the guy who said this:

• But wait, there’s more. That was just the founders:

  • Jack Abramoff - lobbyist, businessman, film producer, felon convicted for being at the center of huge corruption scheme

  • Philip Anschutz - billionaire son of Colorado oilman; has massive holdings in energy, railroads, real estate, sports, and entertainment; co-founder of Major League Soccer; stakeholder in LA Kings, LA Lakers, Staples Center, O2 London, and Coachella Festival, and Walden Media

  • John Ashcroft - former Missouri Governor and Senator, GW Bush Attorney General, big fan of torture.

  • David Barton - a HUGE deal in these circles; Barton is a revisionist pseudo-historian who distributes books, pamphlets, audio & video recordings and other materials “proving” the founders intended the United States to be a fundamentalist Christian nation; founder of Wallbuilders; Project Blitz

  • Linda L. Bean - L.L. Bean heiress

  • Ken Blackwell- former Cincinnati mayor (not long after Jerry Springer), state of Ohio Treasurer and Secretary of State; probably stole Ohio, and thus the election, for GW Bush in 2004; Conservative Action Project

  • John Bolton - Former National Security Advisor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; notorious warmonger; owner of a great walrus mustache

  • Pat Boone - yes, that Pat Boone

  • Richard “Dick” Bott and Richard “Rich” Bott, Jr. - Bott Radio Network owns 120 Christian radio stations; National Religious Broadcasters Association.

  • Lt.Gen. Jerry Boykin - former Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence; Conservative Action Project; Executive VP, Family Research Council (an SPLC-designated hate group)

  • L. Brent Bozell, III - founder of Media Research Center and Parents Television Council; Conservative Action Project; Barry Goldwater’s ghostwriter; nephew of conservative giant William F. Buckley; daddy of January 6 rioter Brent Bozell, IV.

  • Bill Bright - evangelist; author; film producer; founder of Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru); founder of Bright Media Foundation; wife Vonette Bright was also a CNP member; son Brad Bright and his wife Kathy are both CNP members and now run Cru and Bright Media.

  • Jerome Corsi - author and conspiracy theorist; Obama birther; responsible for the swiftboating of John Kerry in 2004; conduit for Roger Stone to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange in 2016; compatriot of Alex Jones and early Qanon peddler

  • Jim DeMint - Chairman, Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI); former president, The Heritage Foundation; Former Congressman (SC-4);
    Conservative Action Project

  • Richard DeVos - billionaire founder of pyramid-scheme lookalike Amway; former CNP president; former Orlando Magic owner; wife Helen was also a CNP member; father-in-law to Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos

  • Stuart Epperson - co-founder and chairman of Christian broadcaster Salem Media Group, the fifth-largest U.S. radio owner; board of directors, National Religious Broadcasters Association; wife Nancy is a CNP member; son Stuart, Jr. is a CNP member and president of Truth Broadcasting Corporation.

  • Tom Fitton - 2022 CNP President; Judicial Watch president; purveyor of election disinformation; Conservative Action Project; small shirt enthusiast;

  • Steve Forbes - publisher; editor-in-chief of eponymous business magazine; flat tax advocate; twice-unsuccessful presidential candidate;

  • Foster Friess - wealthy investment manager, Brandywine Fund; early Daily Caller investor; cowboy cosplayer; Rick Santorum’s 2012 sugar daddy; son Stephen is an CNP member and oversees the Family Foundation

  • Clifford S. Heinz - condiment heir

  • Jesse Helms - former U.S. Senator and notorious bigot

  • Bob Jones III - former president of famously segregationist Bob Jones University

  • Jack Kemp - former Buffalo Bills QB turned Congressman; Bob Dole’s 1996 running mate; the guy who introduced neoliberalism (Reaganomics) to the Republican Party

  • Wayne LaPierre - Executive VP and CEO, National Rifle Association

  • Leonard Leo - “The most powerful man you’ve never heard of”; Executive Vice President and Co-chair, The Federalist Society; Rule of Law Trust; Marble Freedom Trust; architect of the conservative takeover of the Supreme Court; fundamentalist Catholic extremist; the reason 67% of the Court is Catholic in a 20% Catholic country.

  • Edwin Meese - attorney; law professor; former U.S. Attorney General; former CNP president; Fellow Emeritus at Heritage Foundation; Board of Directors at Federalist Society; Reagan lackey back to the California gubernatorial days.

  • Roy Moore - President Emeritus, Foundation for Moral Law; Former Chief Justice, Alabama Supreme Court; Senate candidate so toxic he lost to a Democrat, IN ALABAMA; that guy who got banned from the mall for trawling for dates with teen girls when he was in his 30’s.

  • Grover Norquist - founder and president, Americans for Tax Reform; the guy responsible for the Taxpayer Protection Pledge; co-author of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America.

  • Lt.Col. Oliver North - Vietnam veteran; former member, National Security Council; fall guy for the Iran-Contra scandal; failed Senate candidate; Fox News personality; former NRA president.

  • Paige Patterson - fundamentalist preacher; former president, Southern Baptist Convention (SBC); co-leader of the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC; sexual abuse coverup artist, repeat offender.

  • Tony Perkins - pastor; former CNP President; former Louisiana Congressman; Conservative Action Project; President, Family Research Council (an SPLC-designated hate group); does business with former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.

  • Michael Peroutka - co-founder, Institute on the Constitution; 9/11 truther; former member, League of the South (an SPLC-designated hate group); still mad Maryland didn’t secede during the Civil War.

  • Paul Pressler - former Texas Appeals Court judge; former CNP president; co-leader of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention; credibly-accused child molester; son Paul Pressler IV is also a CNP member.

  • Elsa Prince - widow of auto parts manufacturer and Family Research Council co-founder Edgar Prince; board member, FRC; anti-LGBTQ crusader; mother of Betsy DeVos and…

  • Erik Prince - wealthy investor; former Navy SEAL; founder of mercenary group Blackwater; ties to authoritarians worldwide.

  • Ralph Reed - founder, Faith & Freedom Strategies; founder and CEO, Century Strategies; former Bush/Cheney advisor; implicated in Jack Abramoff scandal; first Executive Director of Christian Coalition, which was started by…

  • Pat Robertson - former Southern Baptist minister and 1988 Presidential candidate; son of a U.S. Senator; chairman, Christian Broadcasting Network; host, The 700 Club; founder, chancellor and CEO, Regent University; founder, American Center for Law and Justice; former CNP President; one of the preeminent bigots of the last 40 years:

  • Maj. Gen. John Singlaub - highly-decorated intelligence officer; served in the OSS and was a founding CIA member; single-minded anti-communist; co-founded World Anti-Communist League; founded Western Goals Foundation, a private spy company that funneled American billionaire money to Contras in Nicaragua and Mujahedeen in Afghanistan; the Forrest Gump of U.S. covert operations during the cold War.

  • Mat Staver - Founder & Chairman, Liberty Counsel (SPLC-designated hate group); Founder & Chairman, Covenant Journey; Chairman, Christians in Defense of Israel; Liberty Relief International, National Hispanic Leadership Conference, Timothy Plan

  • Robert Stoddard - former chairman and president, Wyman-Gordon Company; newspaper publisher; staunch segregationist; anti-unionist; National Association of Manufacturers; founding member, John Birch Society.

  • Scott Walker - former Wisconsin governor and Presidential candidate; union-buster; wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.

  • Robert Welch - candy industry tycoon; maker of Sugar Daddies, Sugar Babies, and Junior Mints; virulent anti-communist and conspiracy theorist; counselor, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Board of Directors; National Association of Manufacturing; supporter, America First Committee; founder and longtime leader, John Birch Society.

  • ALL OF THESE, AND MANY MORE!!!

These are just the prominent names. Countless other continue to fly below the radar. The Council for National Policy was founded in 1981. I am 44 years old. These people have spent MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE covertly influencing every aspect of American political life. It is truly an unparalleled act of evil genius: wealthy free-market property-rights fundamentalists using their fortunes to assemble a cadre of political operatives with an army of religious extremists - evangelical Protestant, traditionalist Catholic, and ultra-Orthodox Jewish, at their disposal. The playbook, as drawn up by soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell in his infamous 1971 memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been executed to perfection.

But Powell did not exist in a vacuum. He was a “well-connected partner in the Richmond-based law firm of Hutton, Williams, Gay, Powell and Gibson and sat on the boards of 11 major corporations, including the tobacco giant Philip Morris.” The major worry of conservative executive-types at this time was social disorder - civil rights, feminism, the student movement - and they saw creeping communism as the root of it all. Paranoid businessmen afraid Karl Marx is waiting around every corner? Hey, that sounds just like the John Birch Society!

Founded in Indianapolis in 1958 by wealthy retired candy executive Robert Welch, the John Birch Society opposed any form of collectivism as un-American. Early members like Welch and Stoddard were primarily wealthy business executives, and included:

• Fred Koch - chemical engineer, inventor, founder of Koch Industries; father of the infamous Koch Brothers, also father of the Soviet oil industry and builder of Nazi oil refineries;

• Harry Lynde Bradley - co-founder of Allen-Bradley Company, manufacturer of factory automation equipment; vehement anti-communist; established the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, one of the most prolific funders of right wing causes since 1986; daughter Jane married into the Uihlein family, heirs to the Schlitz brewing fortune. Bradley/Uihlein are the Prince/DeVos of Wisconsin.

• T. Coleman Andrews - accountant; former head of the IRS; 1956 presidential candidate for the State’s Rights Party; father of a rabid segregationist participant in the “Massive Resistance” to Brown v. Board in Virginia; grandfather of a Bain Capital co-founder.

• Col. Laurence Bunker - Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s aide-de-camp during the occupation of Japan and Korean War.

• William Grede - iron and steel magnate; raging anti-unionist; former President, National Association of Manufacturers;

• William Benton McMillan - Chairman, Hussmann Refrigerator Company; National Association of Manufacturers.

• Revilo Oliver - professor, University of Illinois; co-founder, National Review; virulent anti-Semite and white nationalist; mentor to multiple neo-Nazis.

• Louis Ruthenberg - President, Servel Incorporated of Evansville, IN (another Hoosier sighting!); National Metal Trades Association; National Labor-Management Foundation; another anti-union firebrand.

• Ernest Swigart - son of the founder of ESCO (Electric Steel Foundry); founded Hyster Company; former President, National Association of Manufacturers

The Society distributed flyers and pamphlets, published books and magazines, and planted local chapters nationwide. They were anti-democratic, anti-union, anti-United Nations, pro-states rights, socially conservative, and vehemently against racial integration:

“For the civil rights movement in the United States, with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps towards the appearance of a civil war, has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you now frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years."

• 1965 John Birch Society flyer titled, “What’s Wrong with Civil Rights?”

These are the loony old conspiracy theorists your dad or granddad talked about, the ones who thought fluoridated water was a Soviet mind-control plot. Welch accused President Dwight Eisenhower of being a secret communist because he was not a rabid anti-New Dealer like Joe McCarty or Robert Taft. They were disavowed by mainstream conservative thought leaders like William F. Buckley. Bob Dylan even performed a song mocking the Birchers. If you’ve ever come across a conspiracy theory involving the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, or the Bilderberg Group, it’s likely these guys had something to do with it. These conspiracy theories were largely repurposed versions of older antisemitic works like Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 represented the heyday of their influence - their hardline anti-communism, hawkish foreign policy, and libertarian economic vision forming the backbone of his campaign. And Goldwater got whooped, routed, blown out by LBJ. It turns out paranoid right-wing extremism isn’t super popular with the electorate. Founding member Fred Koch’s son David (the lesser Koch brother) also learned this during a terribly unsuccessful 1980 vice presidential run. Rightfully rejected as a deranged fringe group by the populace, the Birchers needed numbers if their ideas were to be electorally viable.

Before Roe vs. Wade in 1973, the only real organized opposition to abortion rights came from the Catholic Church. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops founded the National Right to Life Committee in 1968. Abortion was not a motivating factor for evangelical Protestants at that time. Largely based in the South, they were still fighting tooth-and-nail against desegregation. Evangelical activists were super pissed when the Carter administration’s IRS sought to revoke the tax-exempt status of segregated religious institutions, including one run by Jerry Falwell. Jimmy Carter was the first “born-again” President, and they felt betrayed. Paul Weyrich - a Catholic traditionalist, John Birch Society associate, and Republican operative - who I highlighted above, had the epiphany to exploit the abortion issue after it influenced a few races in the 1978 midterms. With their organization, Moral Majority, Weyrich and Falwell brought the abortion issue to the fore of Republican politics, a “respectable” substitute for overtly-racist politicking, a wedge issue to divide the population and whip up the base. Here, Republican strategist Lee Atwater talks about gaining the racist vote while still sounding respectable (caution: repeated use of the n-word):

This is how Dixiecrats, white Southern Democrats who had supported the New Deal but opposed racial integration, became Reagan Democrats. This is Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” updated for a new generation. This is how industrial plutocratic billionaire property supremacists who had all been John Birch Society patrons (Welch, Koch, Bradley, Coors, Hunt, Stoddard) came together with evangelical Christian nationalists (Falwell, Robertson, LaHaye, Rushdoony, Bright, Dobson, Perkins) and Catholic traditionalists (Schlafly, Weyrich, Leo, Bannon) to comprise the modern Republican coalition. The wedge issues have changed as society has become more and more accepting - civil rights, the student movement, feminism, abortion, gay rights, marriage equality, critical race theory, trans rights - but the rich and powerful have been using the wild-eyed and zealous as their mercenaries this whole time. The billionaires get to keep democracy away from their money for a modest investment, and religious conservatives get to keep social progress at bay. It’s a win-win situation… for everybody but the rest of us.

And here’s the thing: that’s just a slice of how far back and how deep this thing goes. I always considered myself well-versed in history. I knew about the John Birch Society. I’ve seen the bumper stickers. I knew about the Southern Strategy, the Moral Majority, and Koch network. Just doing the research for this piece, I came across an article from Dave Troy in the Washington Spectator. I urge everyone to read it. He ties the National Association of Manufacturers, which produced many of the original Birchers, to a coup attempt on FDR. The fight over taxation, the gold standard, and the future of the energy industry feature as recurring themes. It ties into the current Russian war on Ukraine. Frankly, I’ve fallen down a bit of a rabbit-hole catching up on his podcast series, which I just discovered.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but conspiracies ARE real. The wealthy benefactors who have bankrolled every roadblock to true, multiracial, inclusive democracy every step of the way since at least the 1950’s 1930’s have conspired with extremist elements to maintain their status. Their paranoid worldview, which sees a communist plot around every corner, must surely compel them to act secretively in response. Let us act openly, transparently, unapologetically, in opposition to their machinations. Let us illuminate their misdeeds and expose them to disinfecting sunlight. Let us show our misled brothers and sisters how we have been made to fight each other for the benefit of our masters. As society increasingly becomes more and more accepting, the plutocrats are running out of scapegoats. Cornered, they are acting out more aggressively than at any point in my lifetime. Let us have the strength to put this tantrummy toddler to bed.