Jun 18, 2021
Hey, if I don’t see you, happy Juneteenth tomorrow! Happy Juneteenth today, too! David Waldman gets us all in the celebratory mood with today’s KITM lead-in to our first national Juneteenth weekend.
Darwin H.M., @Darwin_Darko on Twitter, has been celebrating since the Senate passed the bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday, and recorded some of his jubilation to share on today’s show.
Of course, we all need to thank Donald Trump. The abject ignorance and arrogance of the Trump administration “made Juneteenth very famous”, to uhm, well, people like me, who were only dimly aware of its important history. More enlightened activists fought for decades to bring awareness to Juneteenth, state by state, and a few, like Opal Lee, survived to see it happen! Certainly, there is more work to do. Many knew creating a national holiday was the least they can do, and were always interested in doing the least they can do. A few Republicans wonder if Black people would be able to tell the difference between Juneteenth and other holidays. Confusing holidays does seem to be quite the problem... Ralph Norman sees a slippery slope toward respecting Native Americans. Matt Rosendale just wants everyone to “call an ace an ace”… which is odd that he used the new woke version of the term, isn’t it?
Anyhow, Bibi Netanyahu is holed up in the PM headquarters in Israel, and they’re thinking of cutting off his Diet Coke… Sadly, back in the US things just aren’t handled that way. The Republican party itself has become an anti-democratic force and an acute threat to American democracy. Arizona voting data has been slipped across state lines to a cabin in remote Montana so that the Cyber-Kaczynskis can put the finishing touches on their manifesto before its release.
Remember that COVID-19 lab leak theory? It doesn’t hold up.