By Clay Claiborne. First published by Linux Beach.

The largely white Greens just don’t get the race question in this election which really turns of the question of the role of white supremacy in our federal government. Many Greens are arguing that now with Trump so far down in the polls, it’s okay to vote your conscience (i.e. vote for someone with absolutely no chance of winning) because Clinton will win anyway. In this Huffington Post piece, H. A. Goodman takes it a step further, saying it’s okay to cast a symbolic vote for what many feel is the “greater good” even if it puts Trump in the White House because Congress will block the worst of his policies.

Vote Your Conscience And Vote Dr. Jill Stein.
Congress Would Block Donald Trump’s Policies
On war and Wall Street, Clinton and Trump have similar policies.
By H. A. Goodman
14 August 2016

Jill Stein’s platform and value system correlate directly to the ideals Bernie Sanders championed in 2016. For Americans who refuse to abide by the political “extortion” of voting for Clinton because Trump is frightening (even though Bill Clinton likely urged Trump to run), Ajamu Baraka and Dr. Stein represent a viable option. Regardless of Bernie’s endorsement, a great many progressives around the country feel the Democratic Primary was rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton.
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Will Donald Trump’s major policies get 60 votes in the Senate? Will a border wall, mass deportations, or a ban on Muslim immigrants get any votes from Democratic Senators, or even the votes needed from every Republican Senator?

Of course not.

There’s a greater likelihood of Debbie Wasserman Shultz leaving her current job working for Hillary Clinton and joining Jill Stein on the campaign trail.

None of Donald Trump’s major policy objectives­, at least the ones that frighten progressives the most, will get passed the Senate, even if they possibly get through (and even this is a stretch) the House of Representatives. More…

The subtitle already makes clear the foundation of his argument. He is saying there really isn’t that much difference between the two candidates that actually have a path to the White House and he has such faith in the system that he believes that it will curb Trump’s excesses, so no worries, feel free to use your vote to feel good about yourself.

Curiously, he points only to war and Wall Street in his subtitle, but those haven’t been the main themes of the Trump campaign, white supremacy has. Starting with his call for a wall on the Mexican bolder to keep out  “criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.,” the ban on Muslim immigrates, his call out to  “my African-American,” his attacks on the judge, his attacks on the Khan family, Black Lives Matters — do I really have to go through the list? Apparently for Goodman’s sake I do. These are the themes that have rallied his troops. His events are mainly attended by poorer working-class whites and they come to hear him bash people of color as much as they come to hear him talk about war and Wall St. Since those last two topics interest Black voters as much as white voters, there must be another reason why Trump is expected to get between 0%-1% of the Black vote, one the Green Party doesn’t have much to say about.

There is a reason why Donald Trump refuses to disavow Klu Klux Klan (KKK) support and is building his own militias that take much from Nazi symbolism. The Donald Trump campaign has taken white supremacy as a central theme in a way no other Republican or Democratic presidential campaign has since World War Two.

TrumpKlan

The Green Party would have you believe that this election isn’t very different from the last time they asked you to vote for Jill Stein in 2012. They want you to think of Donald Trump as just another Mitt Romney, the last GOP nominee. Black voters don’t agree. They gave Romney 6% of their vote. Trump is expected to get less than 1% of the Black vote. Mitt Romney strongly disagrees. In what was probably the best speech of his long career, Romney said:

Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants, he calls for the use of torture and for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit first amendment freedom of the press. This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.

Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.

The last Republican presidential candidate showed the courage to warn that electing Trump would lead to “trickle-down racism,” but the Green Party is helping him with that “free ride to the White House” by papering over the virulent racism of the Trump campaign so they can pretend it’s no big deal if he wins.

Certainly the Clinton campaign has some racist elements. The Democrats, Republicans, and KKK all practice white supremacy in their own way, but who can’t see that they have very different practices? While Goodman may not have noticed, people of color are already bearing an uptick in slights and abuses as the avowed white racists among us feel more embolden by his campaign. The Green Party can try to paint the two major campaigns as two peas in a pod but only one of these campaigns has seen Black people run out of its events by racists.

Sometimes this goes a bit further that slights and abuses. On Friday, Khalid Jabara, 37, an Arab-American was murdered by his 61-year-old white neighbor, Vernon Major. The Lebanese Christian family has been subjected to growing racial abuse in the past year from Major including running over Khalid’s mother with his car. In her request for a restraining order, she said “he is very racist towards foreigners and blacks” and “often called us ‘dirty Arabs,’ ‘filthy Lebanese,’ ‘Aye-rabs,’ and ‘Mooslems.’ ” Now her son has a funeral and the man who called him a “dirty Arab” has a trial.

No one is connecting this to the Trump campaign but everyone knows that the Trump campaign has encouraged a climate of race hatred that makes these incidents more likely. The Green Party may not have noticed this change in the weather, but people of color most certainly have.

If Donald Trump wins the election we will have an openly racist commander-in-chief put there almost exclusively by white voters who came out to support the most white chauvinist campaign in living memory. Goodman — like many Jill Stein supporters — is either blind to the intense racism of the Trump campaign or he really does not care. After all, it’s not his problem, at least not directly, and Congress will curb Trump’s excesses anyway.

So if you think the Green Party’s lousy politics are limited to Syria, think again…