Photo credit: Natalie Allison

The old Klansman appears to be in good shape. He’s clean cut, looking like any other 80-something retiree. He participates in senior games and seems to enjoy his family. They’re all big Trumpers and faithful evangelical Christians. One son is even a preacher. 

The Klansman who supposedly bombed property owned by members of the school board that desegregated our schools died last year. The outpouring of grief on Facebook was impressive. Fifty years after his deeds, he was a respected member of his community and loyal member of his church. 

His brother, who was arrested for shooting and wounding two African American men following a Klan rally in 1965, died a few years back. The charges against him were dropped because the men he shot wouldn’t talk to the police. He probably wouldn’t have been convicted anyway. Nobody was held accountable.

I grew up with their kids and I’ve followed their lives over Facebook. Everyone knew who they were, but by the time I was playing Little League with their children, they were just parents in the crowd. Nobody held them accountable for their views or their actions. They were largely ignored and some even became stalwarts of the Republican Party. The past was better not discussed and let bygones be bygones. 

But they were wrong, because, as Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” That maxim was on full display at the Trump rally this weekend. One man had a banner that showed a hand pulling up an American flag and under it was the battle flag of the Confederacy. That’s who the Trumpers really are. 

The driving forces behind Trump are racism and xenophobia. It’s the belief that America is a White, Christian nation that’s being undermined and overrun by foreign forces. And those forces are ideas and beliefs. The Trumpers sound just like the John Birchers of 1950s who believed Communists, Negroes, and Jews were taking over America. And the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Bugaloo bois are playing the role of Ku Klux Klan.

We’re suffering today because nobody was ever held accountable for the sins of slavery or Jim Crow. While the Civil Rights Movement won a significant battle, we now know that it did not win the war. The racism that drove working class Americans to join the Ku Klux Klan just went underground. Trump brought it to the surface and the Republican Party has harnessed it as an electoral force. 

Mitch McConnell spoke volumes in an interview with Jonathan Swan last week. When Swan pressed him on how he could say that Trump is a threat to America and then still say that he would support Trump if he were the GOP nominee, McConnell made clear that he would always put party before country. That’s the antithesis of patriotism.

A country that believes in freedom must have consequences for those who would deny it to others. It must have accountability for those who would undermine the authority of our government. The GOP is unwilling to do either. It’s allowed an anti-democratic cancer based on racism and loyalty to a vengeful God, not the United States, to grow within it. 

The old Klansmen who are living out their final days have lived long enough to see their ideas gain favor again. This time, they have a champion more savvy than Joseph McCarthy or George Wallace. This time, they’re watching the values and beliefs that were rejected more than 50 years ago take root in one of the country’s major parties. And nobody is going to hold anybody accountable again.