One day, during a meeting on journalistic legal policies, a very sincere attorney suggested that, instead of calling someone “a racist,” it was better to refer to the person’s actions as racist. Even though I still adhere to that policy, it made no sense to me. If I am allowed to refer to a person who farms as “a farmer” and a person who kills someone as “a killer,” then why should racism be any different? The lawyer could only respond that farmers don’t sue people for being called farmers, which left me unsatisfied, but I guess I don’t want to be sued either so I’m not saying Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is racist but…
He is the only person to call for less criminal justice reform and more incarceration, arguing that systemic racism does not exist. Before the Senate passed the First Step Act, Tom Cotton warned his fellow diet white nationalist Tucker Carlson that “it’s almost certain that they’re going to commit terrible crimes.” He once called Jesse Jackson a “race-hustling charlatan” because he thinks we need to stop talking about racism. He questioned Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser’s ability to govern because, according to Cotton, Bowsers’ constituency doesn’t deserve representation and isn’t like the much smaller but much whiter Wyoming, which he called a “well-rounded, working-class state.”
Tom Cotton is the Rand Paul of Steve Kings.
On Tuesday’s episode of Fox & Friends (sponsored by Goya Beans...probably) Cotton pulled out the wrong racist whistle. Cotton, who would definitely order a pair of Confederate flag Underoos if he could get some on Amazon Prime, compared the protests in Portland, Ore., to the Battle of Fort Sumter when white supremacist traitor P.G.T. Beauregard ordered the bombing of a U.S. Army fort in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor, officially starting the bloodiest conflict in American history, which would become known as the Civil War. Beauregard would later be known for advocating for the Confederate battle flag. (Full disclosure: My ancestors, the Bradleys, arrived in America at Charleston Harbor before the human traffickers eventually sold them to a man who owned the Brookland Plantation in—you guessed it—Sumter County, S.C.)
“The federal government cannot allow anarchists and insurrectionists to destroy federal buildings or other federal property,” explained King/Cotton. These insurrectionists are little different from the insurrectionists who seceded from the Union in 1861 and tried to take over Fort Sumter. And just like President Lincoln could not stand for that, the federal government today cannot stand for the vandalism, the firebombing or any attacks on federal property.”
Yeah, Tom. Painting graffiti on plywood is just like firing cannonballs at an army fort. Cotton, who graduated from Harvard with a degree in government, apparently believes the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery; it was all about vandalism. Or maybe Arkansas schools taught Cotton that the North emerged victorious because Union soldiers stopped the Confederate Army from throwing rocks and breaking windows.
Tom’s been waiting all his life to use that analogy.
Cotton is a racism farmer. He plants it, waters it, cultivates it, harvests it and then sells it on the racism market. Even his name evokes sensations of white supremacy. “Thomas Bryant Cotton” sounds like someone who penned an 18th-century text on buck-breaking and during his writing breaks, he would stare wistfully out of his plantation shutters contemplating improvements on slave-whipping technology. Instead of playing cowboys and Indians as a child, I bet he played slave hunters and runaways. I bet he only became a senator to enact his secret plan to repeal the 13th Amendment.
Of course, there’s no apt analogy for cops who would rather protect a building more than black lives. If only there was a story that included federal police officers, a riot and black lives. I’m sure Cotton would have used that one instead of conjuring up images of slavery.
Hmmm, well, there’s this:
On May 4, 1927, a white woman said a black man named John Carter “assaulted” her and her daughter. So, a mob of angry white men that included the police, hunted Carter down and hung him from a telephone pole in the middle of town. Then they shot him more than 200 times. Then they dragged his body through the middle of the black section of town.
By this time, between 2,000 and 5,000 white people had arrived in the black part of town to take part in the act of terrorism. They pulled the doors off churches and buildings, set them on fire and burned John Carter’s body until the governor sent in the National Guard. When they arrived, they discovered a white man directing traffic…
With John Carter’s charred, dismembered arm.
When the police discovered what was going on, they spring into action. They hustled to town, gathered their tear gas and five men guarded the police station.
The rest played cards.
No one was ever convicted of a crime, but when the mayor gave his report at the end of the year, the mayor praised the police saying: “The officers and men are high type citizens and are honored and respected as such by the people of the city.”
Of course, there’s no way a senator who represents Arkansas could have known this more apt analogy even existed, except for one small detail:
All this happened in Little Rock, Ark.
Tom Cotton be racism-ing his ass off.