The Undeniable Power Of White Privilege…

Does any­body remem­ber this guy?
If you don’t, let me refresh your mem­o­ry a bit.
This is Greg Gianforte, a Trump-lov­ing, Trump-sup­port­ing Republican for­mer con­gress­man and now Governor of Montana.
This guy was elect­ed Governor of his state in November of last year, but before we get to that, here was Greg Gianforte attack­ing a reporter in this youtube video below.

After the WWF-type encounter in which he bodys­lammed the Guardian’s Ben Jacobs to the ground and shout­ed “Get the hell out of here” at him.
Gianfore was charged with mis­de­meanor assault.
Gianforte was con­vict­ed of assault in state court in June 2017 stem­ming from his elec­tion-eve body-slam­ming attack on The Guardian polit­i­cal reporter Ben Jacobs in May 2017.  He was fined and sen­tenced to com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and anger man­age­ment therapy.
Despite this vio­lent attack on a mem­ber of the Press, a vio­lent attack which would have land­ed any­one, not a Republican polit­i­cal thug or a cop in prison, this thug was vot­ed into the state’s high­est office after receiv­ing a slap on the wrist.
But this was not his first brush with the law; in 2000, Gianforte ille­gal­ly killed an elk and was issued a $70 tick­et by Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.
Again anoth­er tap on the wrist; the ques­tion is, what oth­er crimes has this moron com­mit­ted that has been swept under the carpet?
The Republican Party seems to be a haven for crim­i­nals of all stripes, from the very top to the dog-catch­ers. Yet, these frauds are the very first to demo­nize oth­ers for mak­ing mistakes…

But that is not all; Greg Gianforte is back in the news, and why not?
Since he sits atop the food chain and there are no real penal­ties for the crimes he com­mits, why would he care about fol­low­ing the state’s laws?
According to the Associated Press, Gianforte vio­lat­ed a state hunt­ing require­ment last month when he trapped and killed a wolf near Yellowstone National Park with­out first tak­ing a man­dat­ed trap­per edu­ca­tion course, state offi­cials said Tuesday.
Gianforte, who has a license to hunt wolves, received a writ­ten warn­ing for the vio­la­tion, accord­ing to Greg Lemon, a spokesper­son for Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. “We’ve treat­ed this as we would any­body” in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion, he said.
Ya!!!
“It’s impor­tant to us the integri­ty of our process, no mat­ter who we’re deal­ing with, is main­tained.” Gianforte trapped and shot an adult black wolf on Feb. 15 near Yellowstone National Park, Boise State Public Radio report­ed Tuesday. Morgan Warthin, a spokesper­son for Yellowstone National Park, said the wolf, No. 1155, was born in the park, was esti­mat­ed to be 6 or 7 years old, and was col­lared by park biol­o­gists in 2018.

Deeper than this, punk’s arro­gance runs the famil­iar thread that char­ac­ter­izes most white men; ‘they own the plan­et, it is theirs to plun­der. What use­ful pur­pose is served by killing wolves liv­ing in the deep woods? They do not both­er anyone.
Why are these ene­mies of the plan­et issued licens­es to slaugh­ter rare ani­mals that threat­en the plan­et’s del­i­cate bal­ance to sat­is­fy their frag­ile egos?
Gianforte ran his Gubernatorial cam­paign argu­ing, “Trapping is part of our Montana way of life,” Gianforte said at the time, News Talk KGVO report­ed. “Make no mis­take; the effort to stop trap­ping in Montana is an attack on our her­itage.”
Ha, so there is that word, “Heritage,” a word that pops up when­ev­er white men want to lay claim to all they sur­vey and took.
Heritage is the buzz­word that comes up when they seek to jus­ti­fy the atroc­i­ties they thus far got away with for hun­dreds of years.
Heritage makes it okay to fly the racist con­fed­er­ate bat­tle flag; it makes it okay for the stat­ues of Confederate trai­tors who waged war against America to stay in our faces in pub­lic spaces.
Heritage makes it a‑okay for the likes of Greg Gianforte to slaugh­ter the plan­et’s rarest crea­tures chang­ing the plan­et for the worse for gen­er­a­tions yet unborn.
Those are the ben­e­fits of white skin added to mon­ey and polit­i­cal pow­er. Welcome to the land of the free, home of the brave.
Oh, for you Black dri­vers, please, for the love of God, do not make a turn with­out first indi­cat­ing from the des­ig­nat­ed dis­tance away, for that [you] will get mur­dered by a cop.
Rest in peace, Sandra Bland.

.

.

.

.

.Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.