You may not know this, but when it came to counting up all the little circles in hell, Dante got it wrong: he missed one. It’s a little known circle located between No. 8 (the home of frauds) and No. 9 (the home of traitors). Let’s call it 8.5 and it was created solely for historical revisionists.
Sadly, it looks as if our very own Tim Scott just might make it there.
As you may know, Sen. Scott is honorary co-chairman of this weekend’s event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma protest march known as Bloody Sunday.
On that day in 1965, white law enforcement officers attacked a crowd of 600 black protesters with billy clubs and the like. The protestors were marching because the white establishment there in racist-as-fuck Alabama actively prevented African-Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote. Sometimes the white folk were simply content to enforce so-called Jim Crow laws, while other times they took matters into their own hands and those hands often held guns and rope.
But while most folks understand that voting rights and Selma are explicitly linked, Tim Scott doesn’t see it that way.
The McClatchy news service reports:
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., an honorary co-chairman of the Selma trip and the only African-American Republican in the Senate, said voting rights and the commemoration of Selma should be “de-coupled.”
“The issue of voting rights legislation and the issue of Selma, we ought to have an experience that brings people together and not make it into a political conversation,” Scott said.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Tim Scott is at best a sufferer of Stockholm Syndrome and at worst a coward. When it comes to racial matters, Scott simply refuses to say anything that might anger the I’m-Not-Racists that make up a large portion of the Southern Republican Party voting bloc. If there’s a position that disenfranchises the black voter or hurts the African-American community in any way, you can guarantee that the senator will support it.
On second thought, maybe the eighth-and-a-half circle of Hell ain’t right for Tim Scott after all. The ninth looks more to his liking.
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