Look At You, South Carolina
All 2,319 texts between Mark Meadows and 34 Republican members of Congress, seditious lawyers, and various other conspiracists that were made between election night and the inauguration are now all public. Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina sent texts 3 days before the inauguration asking Trump to use weapons of war against the public by calling out the military to keep him in power.
Ralph Norman was just reelected by a 2 to 1 margin. As a former slave state whose plantation roots have never been touched it’s easy to see why he would be reelected. Joe Wilson is another white male Republican representative from South Carolina who keeps getting reelected. He’s the guy who made history for yelling out, “YOU LIE!” while the first Black president was making his state of the union speech.
South Carolina was the first state to vote to secede from the union in 1860. Its motto is “While I breathe, I hope.” While who breathes?
5 South Carolina Republicans were among the 126 Republicans in Congress who signed on to Ken Paxton’s demand to overturn the presidential election; Jeff Duncan, William Timmons, Tom Rice, Joe Wilson, and Ralph Norman.
Some interesting South Carolina Civil War history that most people are unaware of because it’s not taught in schools:
· After the war ended, South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana had more black people than white people, which made them POTENTIALLY more powerful. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had passed which made it illegal to deny any person the rights of citizenship on the basis of their race or color. It also gave them equal protection under the law. Civil War or no Civil War, white people were not going to see black people as equal. The Supreme Court fixed it by declaring the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional. It would be another century before another Civil Rights Act got passed after much discrimination, violence and bloodshed.
· The Hamburg Massacre took place in 1876 in Hamburg, South Carolina. Freed slaves had built their own community and were minding their own business when white supremacists got jealous of their success and robbed and killed them. They made a coordinated attack against the residents of Hamburg and the black townspeople lost even though they had their own militia. They were outnumbered (40 to 100), the whites had a cannon, and law enforcement was on the white side. They captured and executed 6 members of the black militia to send a message to the rest of the community — try this again and we’ll kill you all. A big monument was erected at the battle site commemorating the only white man who died. According to the inscription on the giant phallic marker, he gladly gave up his life to protect the freedoms for his children. No monuments were erected for the 6 black men who were killed. The leader of the white domestic terrorist group, Wade Hampton, a plantation owner and an ex-confederate general, went on to become the governor of South Carolina where he ended Reconstruction. After that he moved on to the US Senate. Lindsey Graham holds that seat now.
· Before the war, the Planters Horse Racetrack in Charleston was a slave market. During the war, the confederates used it to jail members of the Union army after they were captured. They buried 260 prisoners in a mass grave. After the war, freed slaves held a special ceremony on the track to honor the 260 Union soldiers. They had dug them up and reburied them in proper graves, then built a fence around them with a sign “Martyrs of the Race Course.” 10,000 people participated in a parade that marched around the racetrack led by black children, then women, then black men, then union vets. They are the real founders of Memorial Day. Others claimed that they invented Memorial Day, but they didn’t. This event has been erased from history. The old racetrack is still there in Hampton Park, but there is no marker.
· The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) was started in 1817 in Charleston, South Carolina. A year later white people shut it down because they didn’t want black people getting together and realizing that their lot in life wasn’t pre-ordained. In 2015, a white supremacist entered the AME Church in South Carolina and shot and killed 9 black people as they were praying.
· In 1963, African Americans fought again for another Civil Rights Act. They marched on Washington where MLK made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. 2 weeks before the march, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina rose on the floor of the Senate to say that the organizer of the march, Bayard Rustin, was a draft dodging gay communist so any march that Rustin organized had to be un-American. Strom Thurmond was a famous, powerful racist who served in the military and was once a judge and the governor of South Carolina before becoming a US Senator. He was also a huge hypocrite for he had had an affair with a black woman who bore his child who was kept a big secret. His daughter knew who her father was and had to listen to him filibuster the Voting Rights Act when she was 32 years old. He decided not to run again at the age of 100 so Lindsey Graham ran for his seat.
The two senators from South Carolina are Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott. Both of them are Republicans. Tim Scott is the first Black Republican representative in South Carolina since 1897. He grew up poor with a single mom. Even though he has firsthand experience of what it’s like to live in poverty, he worked with Trump and the Republicans to pass the tax plan that screwed single moms and their kids. He’s anti-union. He introduced a bill which denied food stamps to families that had a family member who participated in a labor strike. He gets pulled over from time to time for driving while black, just like all black people do, and is well aware of police brutality within his own community but he hangs low in the Senate. He doesn’t use his power to improve life for African Americans. He wants to be white. He praised Trump for how much he did to improve conditions for black people.
Lindsey Graham says that there isn’t any racism in South Carolina. Campaigning for Herschel Walker proves it. He once said that “if you’re a young African American, you can go anywhere in this state, you just need to be conservative and not liberal.”
The right-wing nut who texted Mark Meadows about the coup, Ralph Norman, believes that a cabal led by Barack Obama and former attorney general Eric Holder is secretly running the country. He once went to a “coffee with constituents” meeting carrying a loaded gun. He pulled it out and placed it on a table in front of everyone to make the point: We’re all safe because I’m packing. “I’m not going to be a Gabby Giffords,” he told reporters. Gabby Giffords was the Democratic congresswoman who was shot in the head while meeting with constituents at a grocery store parking lot in Tucson, Arizona in 2011. “I’m tired of these liberals jumping on the guns themselves as if they are the cause of the problem. Guns are not the problem.” Right. Right-wing, white supremacist lunatics who have guns are the problem.
The South Carolina GOP censured Tom Rice for voting to impeach Trump. He regretted signing on to Ken Paxton’s demand to deny Joe Biden’s win. As a result, he lost his primary race in 2022.
South Carolina became the 5th state to legally kill death row prisoners via firing squad. After it became legal, Trump’s attorney, Lin Wood (one of the many who have appeared before the Fulton County grand jury), said at a MAGA rally in South Carolina that he wanted to “get the firing squad ready” for Mike Pence during the Capitol attack because “I thought Mike Pence was a traitor. The government still uses firing squads for traitors.” If he still believes that, well then, he could get shot.
