Sessions of the Old South is Poster Boy for the New Slavery

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is a buggy whip in an age of self-driving cars. 

While Sessions’ mentality is circa 1843, he strangely exists in the 21^st century and is the poster boy for the New Slavery. 

Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions

While we don’t exactly have Old South slavery for which Sessions clearly pines, we have a New Slavery in which there are shrinking opportunities for advancement, the dismantling of the public education system and mass incarcerations as a trade for corporate profits and political donations.  

Like with slavery, Americans are stuck and cannot get out.

Meanwhile, the High and Mighty are rolling over the Poor and Meek. Democracy cannot save us from ourselves as it has been hulled out and rendered impotent and unworkable.

As wealth trickles up with more and more in the hands of fewer and fewer people, everybody else, middle class down to persons who can’t rightly feed kids, are losing ground.  A middle class person, who has a bachelor’s degree and who has done everything society told him to do, does not have much of a chance at getting a job without an inside connection.  Being “over-educated,” this person cannot even get an hourly job asking, “You want fries with that?”  

The so-called working poor are wage slaves as is anyone working by the hour.  Working by the hour means the employers can pull you in and out at their convenience, and heaven help you if you don’t come in when the night manager calls you at the last minute.  You clock out to take a mandated 30-minute break, but you stay at work and buy their hamburger or taco, because you don't have time to go anywhere.  If you are sick or have to take care of some business, you don't get paid -- unlike someone in a salaried position.  

Large employers seek part-timers who don’t trigger a requirement to provide benefits.  Thus, those costs are off-loaded onto taxpayers in the form of subsidized health care and childhood feeding programs, which are both on the Trump-Sessions chopping block.

If you are a person of color, the table tilts even more against your chances at a level playing field.

It is no fluke that the secretary of education is bent on dismantling public education and the attorney general has called for more severe sentences for minor drug offenders.  While reversing Obama administration policies, Sessions also goes against bi-partisan initiatives at more common-sense approaches to criminal justice.  It is no coincidence that dissent in the Trump era is under attack as many states, including Tennessee, have passed or entertained laws to limit free speech and “protesting.”

It is no happenstance that this administration seeks tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of health care, the arts, public education, the environment – you know, the things that would serve all Americans in common and which would make for a stronger society by bringing more citizens to the party. That democratic idea died Dec. 12, 2000, when five individuals, including one who said she was ready to retire but not with a Democrat in the White House, elected a President.

Ironically, while Trump wants to build a wall to keep out Mexicans, his policies and those of radical right Republicans are turning the U.S. into Mexico.   In Mexico, there are the rich and there are the poor.  There is virtually no middle class.  You are either making it or you are struggling to survive in poverty.  

Fake Christians have been wrangled to play along with this charade which doesn’t read much like the Jesus of “do it for the least of them.”  Denying health care and reproductive services for women creates more population, when we clearly do not have enough real jobs to go around.  By forcing this population increase along with keeping kids hungry and whole segments of society “down on the farm,” the supply of cheap labor pits citizens against one another and holds down wages. 

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker of all people recently said the Trump administration is in a “downward spiral.”  But, a down-spiral is commonplace for many regular Americans. For instance, if a person cannot pay a traffic ticket, then gets her license suspended, then can’t show up for work or job interviews. Or, he needs one more shift before payroll cutoff at Speedy Spuds so he can keep utilities from getting cut off; he shows up to work, and Speedy Spuds and everything for a mile is dark and closed because of a storm; and on and on. 

Memphis Mayor Strickland Gives Us the Side-Eye

When Sessions shows up in Memphis on Thursday, May 25, citizens who see the horrors of Trumpism and Sessions’ Old South will urge Mayor Jim Strickland, Police Director Mike Rallings and other elected and appointed officials to boycott Sessions’ remarks, scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Federal Office Building, 167 N. Main.  However, Strickland, Rallings and more will show up hat in hand and seeking whatever misguided favors or surplus tanks they think Sessions could toss their way.  Sessions in a recent speech already targeted Memphis as an example of high crime.  This is someone Memphis is supposed to welcome?

The high crime is that Sessions is bringing his Old South to our town and that it is regular citizens, not our elected officials, who have the nerve to call him out.  The only thing that could save Strickland is if he publicly disavows Sessions and his politics.  

Except, he won’t.