Why recent political Events feel so familiar to many

Let me tell you a story about times gone by where actions taken by a few kept a nation locked into the past.  It’s a story which seems to be repeating itself today and a clear reason why so many of us pray for clarity soon.

“The beginnings of the Ku Klux Klan in 1865, after the Civil War, some white people in the South decided to form a group to protect themselves and to terrorize black people. Black people, who had been slaves before and during the war, became free after the war. Some white people, who previously had all the power and wealth, resented their losses and feared retaliation by the newly freed blacks. The Klan appealed to people who believed that their beliefs were superior to the beliefs of immigrants, Catholics, Jews or “colored people.” The Klan supported what they called “clean living” and attacked “dope, bootlegging, graft, night clubs and road houses, violation of the Sabbath, unfair business dealings, sex, marital 'goings-on,' and scandalous behavior."  In 1924, they influenced many elections across the country, helped the campaigns of many school board members, succeeding in electing representatives of their point of view.  There were many other ways that the Klan upset people. One was to stride silently in uniform into a church, and deposit money at the altar. In Sioux City in northwest Iowa, some white officials proposed constructing a cemetery solely for colored people. It reorganized in 1946 and continued to operate against blacks, mainly in the South, until the 1970s. Klan members wanted to intimidate blacks to prevent them from voting or gaining power. Another resurgence of the Klan came in the 1980s, protesting affirmative action programs that tried to create a better balance of white and black students in colleges and black and white employees in government.”

This is our history, whether we like it or not and while we can not say that those attempting the same actions today are the KKK, we can say that they are pursuing the very same policies.  We all know that this was a very dark time in our history and many of us do not what to be reminded of it but if we are just going to sit around and allow these same policies to be rehashed, then we stand just as guilty as those attempting to perpetrate them.  We have big money influencing our elections from school board to presidential politics, we have a group of individuals willing to see this nation fail in order to have things their way, and we have a group of money-hungry parasites on Wall Street who cares not about anything or anyone except their golfing buddies.  We have ALEC and others pushing voter ID bills, abortion bills, funky immigration bills and shoot-first-ask-questions-later bills.  There’s an old adage which says that if you do not learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.  Time for some to go back to school.