CNN: No room for redemption
But could [President Lyndon] Johnson even survive as a leader today?
In the church of the modern-day media, there is no room for redemption. We have a zero-tolerance policy against anyone caught being a racist. They can apologize profusely without any denials or rationalizations, but they will most likely be banished from public life.
And no doubt this policy is good. We can't return to the days when politicians freely used the N-word in public. But I think we lose something when we don't allow any politicians to grow past their mistakes.
One of the reasons Johnson was such an effective champion for blacks is that he understood the Southern mind better than most. He was fighting against the same demons that he grappled with. He knew what buttons to push against the racist politicians who stood in his way.
Yet there is not much room for a politician to evolve in today's environment. There is a "rage industrial complex" that fixates on the latest racial flashpoint: an outrageous video, remark or image that's passed around social media like a viral grenade.
Meanwhile those banal acts of racism that don't get caught in a photo or a tweet go by unremarked.
Here's when I know there's genuine racial progress.
It's not when a white politician is caught being racist and people demand his or her head. It's when people show the same amount of public outrage over the everyday acts of racism -- voter suppression, racial profiling, redlining -- that define so much of our everyday lives.
Now that would be shocking.
There's quite a bit more in the article. One of the main points is how polarized the "rage industrial complex" makes this nation today, how a civil rights leader would be destroyed by things in their past and never given the opportunity to do right. A "you must have been with us from birth" standard is drawing a line in the sand. It creates a rather small tent. Elections are not won by eating your own. Allies are not gained.
Others know if they have sinned. They surely calculate the risk of joining the Democrats or not. And see what is done to others who were not always so. Who were not perfect kids in their youth. Many in such a position would not risk such destruction. Open arms is an important thing in welcoming others unto the fold. In expanding your horizons and allowing a nation to evolve. To be accepting of where others come from, and judge them not for their birth but for the content of their character.
What sort of extremism drives us, when banal acts of racism are mistaken and/or treated like the real thing? When a Democrat Government is run out of town over an ill photo from collage? Did he support voter suppression, racial profiling? Did he oppose #BLM? How was the Governor not fit? Why would you destroy this man?