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William F. Buckley, Jr., Conservative Party candidate running for the office of Mayor of New York City, is shown outside the Overseas Press Club on Oct. 20, 1965. Buckley and his National Review magazine helped shape conservatives' self-conception of their racial positions.

Conservatives’ self-delusion on race

By Commentaries/Opinions

How the right created the illusion of colorblindness. By Joshua Tait, The Washingtion Post — Americans are at an impasse in their understanding of racism today. The activist slogan “Black Lives Matter” is met by the rejoinder “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter.” Colin Kaepernick’s NFL protest about racial injustice is perceived only as an anti-American blast. President Trump tells reporters he is “the least racist person” they will…

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Voting

Pay Attention: They Are Trying to Keep You From Voting

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Monique Judge, The Root — Are you registered to vote? Have you confirmed that your voter registration is valid and ready to go for Election Day? Even if you think you are positively sure everything is OK with your registration, double-check it again—it’s imperative that you do. According to a report by Salon, voters in Georgia stand a 1 in 10 chance of having been purged from the voting rolls.…

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Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh

Taught to rule: Why elite men like Brett Kavanaugh lie and cheat without consequences

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By Chauncey Devega — Brett Kavanaugh is now a Supreme Court justice. The FBI’s limited investigation of the sexual assault accusations against him was clearly inadequate. Numerous leads were ignored and dozens of potentially important witnesses were not interviewed. Moving beyond a political cover-up to a level of gross malfeasance, the FBI — at the direction of Donald Trump’s White House — did not interview either Christine Blasey Ford or Julie Swetnick, two of Kavanaugh’s three…

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Time to Abolish Columbus Day

Time to Abolish Columbus Day

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By Bill Bigelow, Zinn Ed Project — Once again this year many schools will pause to commemorate Christopher Columbus. Given everything we know about who Columbus was and what he launched in the Americas, this needs to stop. Columbus initiated the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in early February 1494, first sending several dozen enslaved Taínos to Spain. Columbus described those he enslaved as “well made and of very good intelligence,” and recommended…

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Democrats Didn’t Do Enough to Stop Kavanaugh — They Melted Before His White Rage

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Yes, Democrats are preferable to this. But they’re still spineless. By Jim Sleeper, Salon — Although I’ll vote for any Democrat in November to keep Donald Trump’s Republican vassals from finishing off the American republic at his bidding, what I saw in the performance of most Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee last week reminded me that any victory by that terminally pusillanimous, corrupt, suppurating party, which is only a…

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Bolsonaro's supporters at a rally in Såo Paulo.

Bolsonaro Hopes to Win Brazil’s Election By Channeling Trump

By Commentaries/Opinions

At a moment when few Brazilians trust their government, the controversial, ultra-conservative Jair Bolsonaro looks poised to win. By Chayenne Polimédio, The Atlantic — Tomorrow, Brazilians head to the polls for the first round of presidential elections. Running on the Social Liberal Party slate is Jair Messias Bolsonaro, an ultra-conservative military officer-turned-politician and likely top finisher. If he’s one of the top two vote-getters, he’ll be the favorite in the…

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Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was found guilty of 2nd-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery.

‘This Is Historic’: Why the Van Dyke Guilty Verdict Is a Victory For the Movement For Black Lives

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Miles Kampf-Lassin, In These Times — “We are far from done. This is the beginning and we should use this momentum to keep going forward.” Chicago has long been a city on the brink. Decades of racial stratification, disinvestment, segregation and endemic poverty have left large swaths of the population struggling to survive, while new development has disproportionately favored wealthier residents. The communities left behind by this process are…

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Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

A leading Holocaust historian just seriously compared the US to Nazi Germany

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“If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.” By Zack Beauchamp, Vox — Usually, comparisons between Donald Trump’s America and Nazi Germany come from cranks and internet trolls. But a new essay in the New York Review of Books pointing out “troubling similarities” between the 1930s and today is different: It’s written by Christopher Browning, one of America’s most…

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Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro poses for picture at the National Congress in Brasília, Brazil, in September.

A Brazilian Far-Right Populist and the Women Who Like Him

By Commentaries/Opinions

New polling data show that Jair Bolsonaro’s social conservatism, law-and-order positions, and anti-corruption stance appear to be trumping his history of sexism. By Shannon Sims, The Atlantic — In Brazil, there’s a video that just won’t go away.It shows a young male congressman, dressed in a suit and tie, sparring with a female congresswoman as photographers and journalists encircle them.The subject of the argument has been lost over the 15 years since…

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Black women in Brazil protest presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro, who is known for his disparaging remarks about women, on Sept. 29, 2018.

Sexism, racism drive more black women to run for office in both Brazil and US

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Kia Lilly Caldwell, The Conversation — Motivated in part by President Donald Trump’s disparaging remarks about women and the numerous claims that he committed sexual assault, American women are running for state and national office in historic numbers. At least 255 women are on the ballot as major party congressional candidates in the November general election. The surge includes a record number of women of color, many of whom say their candidacies reflect a personal…

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