This is disgusting, but the fact that the headline is no surprise at all should tell us something deeply profound and scary about the direction of this country.

According to The Independent:

The Ku Klux Klan has grown faster since Donald Trump’s inauguration than any time in recent memory, a Klan leader has claimed.“I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and I haven’t seen the Klan grow at the pace it’s growing now,” Chris Barker, an Imperial Wizard of the KKK, told The Independent. “I mean, it’s even hard to keep track of the numbers you’ve got ’cause there’s so many coming in.”

One gets the feeling that this man has a hard time keeping track of numbers generally. We are not at all making light about this problem or any aspect of it, but we are noting that stupidity seems directly related to racism – or at least lack of education inflames racism – though we admit that racism can be found up and down society’s strata.

Mr Barker contacted The Independent about a previous article, from which he had gained notoriety for calling a Univision journalist a “n*****” and threatening to burn her out of the country. The Klan leader claimed he had meant this as a threat to immigrants in general, not the journalist in particular.

Barker is backtracking because he likely knows that threatening a specific person is not protected by the First Amendment and can be either a crime or the basis of a civil suit, or both. So as his statement gained notoriety he likely wanted to quickly defuse the statement by … applying it to an entire group.

“When Obama became President, that’s when [membership] just skyrocketed,” he said. “And now that Trump is President, it seems like it’s getting even better, because more whites are starting to be more proud.” His comments should be taken with a pinch of salt – Mr Barker also claimed that the brains of black people are less developed compared to white people, and that the Bible warns against breaking bread with immigrants.

His words should be called out and highlighted as a warning to people, not taken with a grain of salt. He may be stupid, but he wouldn’t be advertising his views in the paper if he believed their numbers and cause was dwindling. But he feels emboldened, and that’s the problem. Because he has his reasons.

Disgusting human being.

****

Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom