Last week, I wrote an examination on the nature of pure evil within American politics following the Donald Trump’s accusations that Democrats were “evil” in how they handled and responded to sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In that post I went over the last few years where we’ve had violent right-wing and racist attacks ranging from the gun massacre at Las Vegas, to the assault on Charlottesville, the Sikh Temple attack, the Planned Parenthood shooting, the attempted assault on the ACLU and Tides Foundation, an attack on the Holocaust Museum which had targeted David Axelrod, a mass murder at the Knoxville Unitarian Church, the massacre at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, and last week’s violent Proud Boys attack in Manhattan, all of which are part of a pattern of increasingly dangerous right-wing terrorism.
Recently we’ve had the violent gun attack on the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, and the butchering of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by people linked to our great “ally” and Jared Kushner’s very good friend, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
I then argued that all of this is considerably worse than anything Justice Brett Kavanaugh may have endured on his way to his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.
This week saw a series of pipe-bomb terrorist attacks attempted simultaneously against Secretary Hillary Clinton, former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan (through the New York offices of CNN), Rep. Maxine Waters, Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris and against financier George Soros, all with a return address of the offices of former DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. We’ve also had a shooter who had attempted to enter an African-American church kill two black people at the nearby Kroger, and also 11 people massacred at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a genocidal anti-semite who had been fueled by Right-Wing conspiracy theories about George Soros funding the Honduran migrant caravan.
Some have argued that there is no place for this in America, that “America is better than this.” But no, it's not better than this and it never has been—although it should have been by now. I would argue that this has been the dark face of America for decades and even centuries, from the anthrax attack on Democrats who opposed the Patriot Act, to the church bombing in Birmingham Alabama, the lynching and murder of thousands of Americans by the terrorist KKK in the wake of the Civil War which killed more Americans than anything else in history, to the first nations of Native Americans massacred before and during the Trial of Tears. Red-lining, segregation, job discrimination, voter suppression, the poverty-to-prison pipeline, the internment of Japanese-American citizens, the Tuskegee experiment, and the ongoing mass incarceration and summary execution of unarmed innocent black and brown children (whether native-born or immigrants seeking asylum)—it’s all political violence. What many won’t admit is that the American Revolution was also an act of political violence, as were the Whiskey Rebellion, the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party.
This country wouldn’t exist without political violence. Political violence has always been a part of who we are, and it always will be unless we finally admit that basic truth and start to make changes. It’s always been part of us—but it doesn’t have to always be that way.
None of this is new.
This brutal callousness has been growing for years. As much as we hear the GOP complain about being targeted for violence in the wake of Rep. Steve Scalise being shot in an act of political violence, they continue to ignore that Rep. Gabby Giffords and other Democrats were specifically targeted by former Gov. Sarah Palin weeks before Giffords was shot in the head by a deranged individual, and that it was Giffords herself who had called Palin out about it.
When Palin was linked to this violence she turned around and called such an allegation “blood libel," which completely deflected from the point that she actually did place targets on the offices of multiple Democrats which were vandalized.
Democratic offices in at least three states have reported instances of vandalism that party members say possibly were tied to Sunday's historic vote on health care reform.
Early Monday morning, a glass panel at the Tucson office of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, was shattered, spokesman C.J. Karamargin said. It wasn't clear how the window was shattered, but visitors have to go through a gated courtyard to enter the office, and staffers suspect someone may have shot a pellet gun at the glass, he said.
It was fair for Palin to say she probably didn't specifically inspire Giffords’ shooter, but she did likely inspire the vandals. She and the tea party directed them and aimed them.
Then again I might be a bit more sympathetic to Palin’s complaint about being unfairly linked to this violence if she hadn’t spent most of her failed campaign for vice president claiming that her opponent Barack Obama was “palling around with terrorists” who at that point were just some old hippie college professors who had already paid their debt to society and never actually killed anyone, other than some of their own people when one of their bombs went off prematurely.
Also, that wasn’t Palin “going rogue” when she said that: it was part of the campaign strategy that had been championed by then-McCain advisor Nicolle Wallace.
Whose idea was it for Gov. Sarah Palin to attack Barack Obama as a guy who "pals around with terrorists?" Palin's camp has always insisted that the McCain high command endorsed the stratagem, while folks close to McCain have accused Palin of going "rogue" and pointed to the "pals around" attack as an example of how Palin simply could not be controlled. The idea that Palin was hard to manage as a candidate and ignored the advice and wishes of McCain's senior advisers is explicated in some detail by Todd Purdum.
But on the subject of linking Obama to ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers, it turns out that Palin hadn't gone rogue. Balz and Johnson answer this question pretty definitively. They've obtained an e-mail from campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace sent to Palin on the morning of October 4rd, with an attached New York Times article about Obama's relationship with Ayers.
Turns out that the McCain campaign was a week away from running an ad linking Obama to Ayers. The e-mail from Wallace, according to Balz and Johnson, reads as follows: "Governor and Team: rick [Davis], Steve [Schmidt] and I suggest the following attack from the new york times. If you are comfortable, please deliver the attack as written. Please do not make any changes to the below without approval from steve or myself because precision is crucial in our ability to introduce this."
McCain HQ had suggested the following line: "This is not a man who sees American as you and I do -- as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."
That attack wasn't “radical.” It was standard GOP operating strategy. It’s how they've been rolling since Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. Trump isn't really new, he's just a bit more raw. And of course, we’ve never heard Palin or her ilk criticize other types of right-wing political violence like, for example, Kent State or COINTELPRO.
Nor did they say much of anything critical when members of the tea party spit on Democrats in 2010.
Then there were the 2010 protests outside of the Capitol. Republicans whined about being yelled at by their constituents. When Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus walked out of the U.S. Capitol, tea party members spit on them.
As Republicans reduce the number of town hall meetings they do for constituents, their voters have become desperate in efforts to reach their elected representative. Some have argued that desperate citizens are approaching officials in public simply because they don’t have any recourse other than sending an email that gets a “form letter” response.
They like to pretend that all the invective and violence only comes from the left, but that is merely a convenient lie.
Similarly, it’s clearly unfair to say that Trump may have personally inspired the recent attempted terrorist attacks on Democrats and the media, but he certainly hasn’t helped with his general attacks and demonization of them. On top of his birtherism, Trump has claimed that Obama’s first best-selling book Dreams from my Father was really written by Bill Ayers. Trump demanded copies of Obama’s college transcripts to prove he never deserved to go to Harvard, even when he wouldn’t reveal his own college records or tax returns. He’s called the media the “enemy of the people” and celebrated a violent assault by convicted Rep. Greg. Gianforte on a reporter from the Guardian. He’s called Democrats “the mob” and he's called them “evil people” and “traitorous.” And we recently had someone commit sexual assault on a plane and claim that it’s fine because "Trump said it was ok.”
A Florida man accused of groping a passenger on Southwest Airlines told an FBI agent after his arrest that the "President of the United States says it's OK to grab women by their private parts," according to a criminal complaint.
Bruce Michael Alexander, 49, a Tampa resident, was in federal custody after being charged federally on Sunday with abusive sexual contact on a female passenger during a flight from Houston to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the complaint said.
After noting that both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had recently faced angry citizens, Fox News host Melissa Francis said Trump’s “language has not been great” one this issue. “Far from it,” she remarked.
Fox News guest Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under George W. Bush, agreed.
“The fact of the president is a fighter is a good thing. But you have to know how hard and went to fight,” he said.
“All leaders have to make that judgment. Frankly, when the president in the 2016 campaign at his rallies said he’d pay people’s legal bills if they took people out, when he just recently praised a congressman who body slammed a reporter… these are signals sent from the highest office.”
Meanwhile, we’ve already seen a set of claims that the recent terrorist attacks on Democrats were simply a false flag and merely an attempt to bolster Democratic turn out for the midterms.
Over at /R/The_Donald, the top pro-Trump forum on Reddit, many Trump supporters are claiming that the bombs sent to prominent enemies of President Donald Trump are part of an elaborate plot to shift the 2018 midterm elections.
In fact, one Trump fan even went so far as to accuse Soros of trying to bomb himself to distract America from the migrant caravan that he believes Soros is funding
“ALL BULLSH*T,” they wrote. “SOROS, HILLARY AND OBAMA MAILED THEMSELVES PACKAGES TO 1) GET IN MEDIA 2) NOW MSM CAN TARGET TRUMP SUPPORTERS 3) GET SYMPATHY 4) MISDIRECT FROM CARAVAN TIES.”
We can ignore the fever swamps of Reddit, but then we got pretty much the same kind of ridiculous idea from Fox News.
“We’re already seeing a little bit of a pattern,” Swecker said. “They’re going to be looking at this as a potential terrorist motive, whether it’s on one side or the other.”
“And as you correctly pointed out earlier,” he told Faulkner. “This doesn’t necessarily mean someone is espousing some sort of conservative ideology and targeting Democrats. It could be someone who is trying to get the Democratic vote out and incur sympathy.”
“That’s interesting,” Faulkner agreed.
“It could go either way,” Swecker added.
Notorious Islamaphobe Frank Gaffney, who is an ally of national security adviser John Bolton, said it too.
I may be going out on a limb here, but the person who addressed these packages misspelled “Brennan,” "Schultz," and "FLORIDA” which screams “tea party."
They fucking misspelled Florida! Does that level of willful ignorance remind you of anyone on the left, seriously? [As this goes to print it’s now obvious that I was exactly correct with this presumption when I originally wrote this on Wednesday, but also that False Flag theories continue to abound.]
I’m sorry but the level of rancor and incivility and political violence—even if you include everything done by so-called "mobs," Antifa, and Black Lives Matter—are simply not close to equal. Right-wing violence and terrorist attacks are far more prevalent not just compared to violence from the left, but also compared to violence by Islamic domestic terrorists as was documented by David Neiwert of the Investigative Fund and the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017.
- From January 2008 to the end of 2016, we identified 63 cases of Islamist domestic terrorism, meaning incidents motivated by a theocratic political ideology espoused by such groups as the Islamic State. The vast majority of these (76 percent) were foiled plots, meaning no attack took place.
- During the same period, we found that right-wing extremists were behind nearly twice as many incidents: 115. Just over a third of these incidents (35 percent) were foiled plots. The majority were acts of terrorist violence that involved deaths, injuries or damaged property.
- Right-wing extremist terrorism was more often deadly: Nearly a third of incidents involved fatalities, for a total of 79 deaths, while 13 percent of Islamist cases caused fatalities. (The total deaths associated with Islamist incidents were higher, however, reaching 90, largely due to the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas.)
- Incidents related to left-wing ideologies, including ecoterrorism and animal rights, were comparatively rare, with 19 incidents causing seven fatalities – making the shooting attack on Republican members of Congress earlier this month somewhat of an anomaly.
- Nearly half (48 percent) of Islamist incidents in our database were sting operations, more than four times the rate for far-right (12 percent) or far-left (10.5 percent) incidents.
For various reasons, most acts of domestic terrorism by right-wing actors aren’t treated as federal crimes, the primary reason being that “Domestic Terrorism” itself is not actually a crime. Instead, they are usually prosecuted locally as assault or murder, but not as what they really are: terrorism.
In my attempted examination of evil last week, I talked in detail about how the policy choices of Trump and the GOP are demonstrably causing direct harm and damage to this planet and its people.
Trump has pulled us out of the Iran nuclear deal, the Russian INF treaty, and the Paris Climate Accords. The IPCC has stated that climate change is rapidly approaching a tipping point in the next 12 years, which may contribute to the increasing rate of global disasters that have already displaced 22.5 million people and may ultimately kill and endanger thousands through floods, wildfires, super storms, and famine.
Studies indicate that increasing pollution due to weakened EPA regulations may soon contribute to the deaths of thousands and respiratory disease for more than 1 million Americans.
We continue to have literally tens of thousands of people die from guns every year, mostly as a result of suicides, before we even get to gun violence and murders—and yet we can’t seem to do even the slightest thing about any of it.
Under Trump, 4.5 million Americans have lost their health care, which will likely contribute to the preventable deaths of at least 4,800 Americans per year, and could increase to as many as 25,000 per year if the Affordable Care Act is further sabotaged.
Trump has revoked the Temporary Protected Status for nearly 500,000 Haitian, Honduran, and Salvadoran immigrants who legally came to America as a result of disasters and tragedies in their homelands, which are still ongoing. He has wrongfully arrested thousands of legitimate asylum seekers and placed 13,000 immigrant children in cages and internment camps. He’s also allowed thousands of Americans to die from neglect and lack of access to electricity and clean water in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
Our politics are part of an ongoing series of battles over all these issues and many others. Our governmental choices and decisions have a direct impact on the lives of thousands, of millions.
Part of the problem is that many of our fellow Americans have absolutely no problem with any of the above negative consequences. They see all of this as necessary to protect American jobs, to bolster the U.S. economy, and to help the "forgotten man” whom Trump repeatedly claims he's fighting for.
To them, this is just collateral damage.
Everything is a zero-sum game to them. What you give to one person is based on something taken away from someone else—therefore if immigrants have to suffer for the benefit of American citizens, so be it. If some people have to lose health care because they have pre-existing conditions which are expensive to treat and it drives up costs for everyone else, so be it. If we need to pollute and poison our own environment in order to help bolster corporate profits, so be it. If some Americans or immigrants have to die in order to benefit others, then so be it.
“Better them than us.”
The irony is that doing all of this damage to others in order to advance their own agenda isn’t really working out for them all that well, economically speaking.
Just 38 percent say their personal financial situation has improved since Republicans took control of the White House and the U.S. Congress, according to a new survey by Bankrate.com.
They were outnumbered by the 45 percent who say their finances are about the same since the 2016 election, while 17 percent of Americans say they are worse off than before.
The poll was conducted Sept. 25-30 by research firm SSRS, using a national sample of 1,001 people, and its findings were similar to another recent survey by investment advising company Stash — which found 44 percent of Americans said their financial situation was unchanged and 20 percent were worse off.
A staggering 78 percent of Americans earning less than $30,000 a year say their financial situation has not improved under GOP governance, while 27 percent say their situation had gotten worse.
And as much as Trump likes to tout their great economics numbers GDP just dropped back down to 3.5% for the 3rd Quarter of 2018 after peaking at 4.2% during the second quarter indicating that the temporary bump caused by panicked soybean and steel selloffs in preparation for Trump’s tariff war, have worn off.
So basically, many Trump supporters have essentially sold out their fellow Americans and are selling vulnerable immigrants down the river for the promise of a few bits of silver and gold that they still aren’t really receiving, and they probably aren’t going ever to receive them. They’ve been scammed, but they’re never going to realize it, or admit it.
Still, there are those who will continue to support and excuse the violent, hateful rhetoric that Trump espouses, including chants of “CNN SUCKS”—or any dangerous policy, no matter what it is.
“It doesn’t really matter what he says, we’ll support it,” one Trump supporter told Right Side Broadcasting, a right wing network created to live-stream every one of Trump’s rallies.
A reporter for Right Side Broadcasting (RSBN) asks one of the gathered Trump supporters what she’s hoping the president will talk about later that evening.
“The caravan,” she blurts out, with no hesitation. “I would like to know a little bit more about what he’s going to do, ’cause that’s an invasion of our country.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has also said that Democrats are somehow responsible for these bombs, which is frankly nuts.
“The media always focuses on the president,” Cruz said. “There are too many Democratic politicians that are actively encouraging this.”
He then cited California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ statements about protesting Republicans who support Trump — without mentioning that she was also sent a suspicious package on Wednesday that was intercepted by the Congressional mail screening facility.
Peaceful protest in a public place, even if it’s loud, is, in fact, a constitutional right under the First Amendment’s clause to “redress grievances with the government.” It’s not a call to violence. Former Attorney General Eric Holder, when he said you should “kick them,” was talking about fighting back rhetorically, not physically. Likewise, Hillary Clinton wasn't suggesting anything violent when she questioned how civil you could be with someone who wants to destroy you. Sometimes defending yourself requires being strident.
Yet when the first pipe bomb package was found at George Soros’ home, some Republicans basically celebrated.
After Fox News reported the discovery of the explosive device on its Twitter account, many Fox followers replied with howls of glee that someone was seemingly trying to kill the 88-year-old financier, who was not at home at the time that the device was discovered.
After all this we then had the synagogue attack in Pittsburgh where the final spark before the crime was apparently rumors about Soros.
People have argued that this person didn’t like Trump because he felt he was a “puppet” of too many Jews like Cohen, Mnuchin and his son-in-law Kushner. Yes, some of Trump’s best grandchildren are Jewish, so that takes care of that, right? On the other hand his campaign also once posted an obvious Star of David in a “corruption” ad against Hillary Clinton. In 2016 Hillary noted the rise in antisemitism and called out for Trump to stand against it.
He didn’t.
Just as he flubbed his chance to denounce David Duke, and said that people chanting “Jews Will not replace us” were “very fine people.” Or last week when Trump said he was a “Nationalist” and not a “Globalist” like the people his campaign said were hurting America aka Soros, Fed Chair Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs head Lloyd Blankfein.
Guess what they all have in common?
Not everyone feels like the hardcore Soros critics, even among the deepest of the resentful red state right-wing. Not everyone within any particular faction agrees on everything, nor should they. Going beyond what may or may not happen during the midterms, we might be seeing a slow sea change among those who no longer consider themselves to be Republicans, as more of them seem to be leaving the GOP and becoming independents.
During a focus group discussion on Trump’s presidency, independent voter Sydney Cohan begged America to forgive her for voting for Trump two years ago even as she swore to make amends for her decision.
“I just want to say to every American that’s having trouble with this — I am sorry I voted for him,” she said. “I regret it with all my heart. I feel like I’ve enabled this monster to destroy democracy, destroy everything that is good in this country.”
Cohan went on to detail the actions she’s taking to earn redemption for picking Trump in 2016.
“I’m definitely voting Democrat,” she said. “I’ve been knocking on doors, I’ve got a clipboard… I am canvassing for a Democrat in Wyoming.”
And this isn’t just an isolated effect. It seems to be taking hold writ large, as noted by the Washington Post.
Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, made an interesting observation over the weekend: The number of Americans who identify as Republican dropped in 2017, and the group that benefited appears to be independents.
[...]
Over the past 15 years, the number of independents has risen in the United States It’s now the biggest partisan group in the country by a wide margin. In Gallup’s most recent data — the dots farthest to the right on the chart below — 44 percent of respondents identify as independent, while 32 percent identify as Democrat and 22 percent as Republicans. (The solid lines are the trends.)
[...]
In January 2017, about 156 million people approved of Trump on average, more than half of them — 81.2 million — Republican. (For each month, we averaged the available values.) That’s out of about 91.2 million Republicans overall.
By December, about 125 million people approved of Trump, with more than half again coming from the Republican Party. There were about as many Republicans in total in December as approved of Trump in January 2017.
Republicans are becoming the third largest party, behind independents and Democrats. In the end, the ultimate “Trump effect” may be to split and bifurcate not just the nation, but the Republican Party against itself, causing more of them to become independents disgusted with his behavior and agenda who won’t vote based on party, but instead based on the issue. We may not be able to change or reach Trump fans, but we may be able to form common cause in unity with ex-Republicans who can’t stand Trump or what he represents. Trump just might be “uniting” the nation after all, but only against him.
I believe and hope that America is approaching a crucible, a crossroads, an inflection point where we begin to think differently and act differently. Where “civility” isn’t just used as a cudgel to shout down the voices of opposition and resistance, but instead actually means something instead of when the same person making that demand also happens to label anyone who dares to speak up part of “the mob.” Where going around and praising violence against the media and reporters is seen for what it really is. Where personal attacks on those we disagree with are not just someone defying “political correctness,” but actually a representation of the mutual respect we are all due in the public space.
We could come to realize that there is no real difference between racial bias, gender bias, religious bias, and partisan political bias. Demonizing a group of individuals who may have one trait in common is, by its very definition, bigotry. And bigotry is a problem because it short-circuits critical thinking. Rather than addressing an individual as an individual, we treat them as a “mob,” a great big mass of bad, evil people who are our enemy.
And of course, our enemies are only deserving of our scorn and hatred. They deserve violence and ultimate destruction.
Or we could learn something from this.
We could learn to respect each other more, not automatically assume bad faith and recognize that we all, in the end, want the same thing—even if we don't agree on every detail of how to achieve that common goal.
Unfortunately, we're not going to learn that from Trump and his people. While CNN was evacuating their offices, Lara Trump was sending an email bashing them.
“It felt like we weren’t in America anymore…”
That’s what CNN said about being at a Trump rally in Florida.
I have some breaking news for CNN… That is the real America that exists outside of the liberal bubble.
It’s time for us to give the media another wake-up call from the American people.
When Trump had his rally later that night in Wisconsin, he did argue in his prepared teleprompter remarks that we shouldn't have political violence and we shouldn't have hot political rhetoric.
“I want to begin tonight by addressing the suspicious devices and packages that were mailed to current and former high-ranking government officials,” he began taking the stage. “My highest duty as president is to keep America safe, that is what we talked about. That is what we do. The federal government is conducting in an aggressive investigation and we will find those responsible and we will bring them to justice, hopefully very soon.”
“We want all sides to come together in peace and harmony. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. It will happen. More broadly there is much we can do to bring our nation together,” Trump said.
But then he went on to attack the “mobs" of the left and the media for their criticism, claiming that the media are the ones inciting violence, not him.
“The language of moral condemnation and destructive routine, these are arguments and disagreements that have to stop, no one should carelessly compare political opponents to historical villains,” he said. “Which is done often, it is done all the time, it has got to stop. We should not mob people in public spaces or destroying public property. There is one way to settle the disagreements, it is called peacefully at the ballot box. That is what we want. As part of a larger national effort to bridge the divide and bring people together, the media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative in and often times false attacks and stories. They have to do it. They have to do it. They have got to stop. Bring people together. We are just 13 days away from a very, very important election, it is an election of monumental.
He didn't mention that a bomb was sent to the CNN building. He didn't even mention former Presidents Clinton or Obama by name, because he can’t afford to grant either of them the benefit of their basic humanity.
Then he tweeted this:
I may be wrong, but this comes off at a direct threat. This sounds more like he was egging on the #MagaBomber rather than opposing him, that he was actually using him as an extortionist making a demand for protection money would use his bully boys.
Yeah, that’s a nice set of anchors and staff you got there in the Time Warner Building, it would be a pity of something happened to them.
Then he went on to attack Democrats with the false allegation that they are releasing violent MS-13 gang members in American communities.
Just after the 60-minute mark since taking the stage, Trump accused Democrats of releasing violent gang members and members of MS-13 into American communities. The hyperbole is not only factually inaccurate, but it also violated the call he made less than an hour earlier.
“Democrats even support sanctuary cities that release violent gang members,” he said. “You see predators. I use that; some people don’t like it when I use that name.”
He went on to herald ICE for breaking up “nests of gangs.” Saying they “go into these nests like it’s a day at the office.”
Hey Donny, we’ll make a deal with you: if you stop being a deluded liar who spouts bigoted conspiracy theories, then the rest of us and the media just might stop documenting that you’re a deluded liar who spouts bigoted conspiracy theories. Is that a deal?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
All of this pretty much enraged CNN’s Don Lemon, who went off on a truly monumental, epic rant.
.
“I’m pissed,” Lemon said. “And I hate that word.”
“But that’s how I feel today,” he continued. “I could have been mourning you. You could have been mourning me.”
“And this person who calls himself the President of the United States does not have the testicular fortitude to own his part in all of this,” Lemon continued.
“And ‘Im so sick and tired of people coming on television and equating a First Amendment right of protest to a potential act of terrorism. they are not equivalent, and we shouldn’t them get away with it, because it’s not the same thing,” he continued. “Someone delivering a bomb to your place of business that can potentially kill you and your co-workers, that’s a horse of another color and the two should not be equated.”
Trump learned nothing from this whole debacle. He may mouth the word “unity" but he doesn't mean it. He doesn't know what that is because his entire political existence is based on sowing the seeds of hatred, resentment, and division. When he says “America should come together” he means we should all just sit back and accept his agenda without a word of complaint, criticism, or a hint of resistance.
And he’s not alone, as his staff is taking largely the same “we didn't do it” stance that Sarah Palin took in 2010.
“Our colleague, Pamela Brown is reporting that White House officials said ‘we’re not to blame,'” [CNN’s Gloria Borger] said. “He should not be blamed for crazy things that violent people want to do. A senior official told Pam that ‘we’re not a doormat.'”
She added, “The president tonight said leaders must stop threatening opponents as if they’re morally defective. [I remember] when the president said that the opponents of Kavanaugh were evil. He used that word, evil. Is that morally defective? I would think so.”
Trump didn’t personally cause all of this, but he’ll never stop pouring gasoline and gunpowder into the fire for his own personal benefit. He’s trying to use this to silence the media and the left while continuing to stoke the further paranoia and resentment of the white right. One of the first things we have to do is recognize Trump as the political arsonist that he is.
He didn’t start the fire, he brought the extra lighter fluid and the smores.
We all want America to be better and stronger than it has been, perhaps better than it even deserves to be if we are honest about its full history. However, It won't get there unless the majority agree that we have indeed failed many times and made many mistakes. It won't truly improve until some of us stop seeing those sad facts and our violent history as some type of political, personal, or racial attack, or some type of "card" for undeserved sympathy to be played, but instead as lessons that we should learn from. It won't get better until we finally begin to fully reject repeating those mistakes, and falling for or making excuses and rationalizations for Trump’s grievance and fear politics. America won’t improve unless most of us are willing to realize how much it still needs to grow and start living up to its ideals—not just in financial terms, but in terms of the human heart, in terms of compassion and the need to preserve the human rights and dignity of each person, even when financial profit is an issue. Sometimes we have to invest in humanity.
A great economy is nothing if it is built on the broken backs of the weak, if it only stands by inflicting even more suffering on the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable, as if some can benefit only from the pain of others. The net result of that agenda is zero improvement, zero progress. When we deem parts of the populace "expendable," we continue to fall short of our most ambitious ideals. We fail at liberty and justice for all, and only provide it for some. We fall short of the reality that we are better and stronger together rather than when we are separate and tearing each other apart.
We just might have a chance to admit all our past and current flaws in order to help chart a brighter future. We don't all agree on everything and we shouldn’t have to, but we all do live here—on the same rock, circling the same sun. We just might finally figure that out and go a different direction.
Or we might not.