Dahlia Lithwick writes in Slate about where the responsibility lies for the horrendous hate crimes of the past week.
We have been told over and over that we are not to take this President literally, or seriously, or jokingly, or truthfully, even though he daily shows his supporters who he is, and they not only believe in him, they quite literally believe him. For too long we have been trapped in a cycle of figuring out how to talk about a president who is neither truthful nor presidential, who cheerfully labels Democrats as “evil” and gleefully leads chants about locking up the very people who were the recipients of bombs at their homes. How does one even begin to explain to one’s children what it means that the president denounces violence and division as he foments both, on an hourly basis? Perhaps we can look to Florida for a tip. Last week the state’s gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum said that because Neo Nazis and white supremacists were supporting and campaigning for and contributing to his opponent Ron DeSantis, perhaps it was time to stop talking about causation entirely. “I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist,” he said. “I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”
The formulation is useful because it reframes a pointless debate about what leaders’ dog whistles really mean into a debate about what their followers end up believing. If what is said no longer matters, we can perhaps still evaluate what is heard. In the current ontological meltdown, there is no point in debating what leaders actually mean—they are affirmatively telling us that they lie constantly—but what we can and should focus on is what kind of people they ask their followers to be. Do they ask their adherents and admirers to see the best in others? Do they ask them to find common ground?
In the last week we have encountered two actual killers and one aspiring killer who believed their president when he said that caravans of murderous foreigners are approaching, and who believed that what their president wants is to have those caravans halted by force. They believed their president when he said that the media is hurting America and they believe their president wants to stop the media from doing that journalism by physical force. In the last week, we have seen that when the president makes or amplifies false claims about George Soros and globalists and refugees, people want to act on those claims. It doesn’t matter whether the president is being truthful or arch or ironic or funny or even if he admits moments later that he was just lying for sport. It does matter that millions of Americans believe this president wants them to rise up if the election is stolen by way of “vote fraud,” and that this president wants them to physically assault journalists who report bad things about him. That is what they hear every day, and that is what we need to worry about.
Perhaps instead of wasting another day on the pointless cycle of whether people who tweet racist, anti-semitic, anti-immigrant and anti minority statements actually cause anti-Semitic, anti immigrant and anti minority attacks or just stoke what was there to begin with, we should content ourselves with the accepting that this is actually beside the point. The point is that people who hate Jews and immigrants and minorities believe that when they commit violence against these people, they are behaving as the followers their president wants them to be. Do all or most of the President’s fans believe this? Certainly not. But we have we seen far too many of them performing on the words the president puts out there. And it doesn’t matter who is “responsible” because he accepts no responsibility no matter what. It does matter what we do next.
Hate existed before Trump. Bigotry and racism existed before Trump. But admit it: Trump incites bigotry and racism and gives permission to haters to come out of the shadows. It has been a long time since we have had political leaders who openly welcomed white nationalists as part of his base. And they are celebrating their new-found acceptance into the Trump mainstream. We must quarantine them in the next election. Their virus is dangerous, deadly, and puts us all at risk. Vote on November 6. Get your neighbors and friends to vote. Stop the virus.
The fish stinks from the head
exactly
“The greatest president ever’ encourages hatred and fear. However, his followers don’t see that even when one of their own tries to kill.
Bomb suspect described as ‘loner’ with long arrest record
BY MICHAEL BIESECKER AND STEPHEN BRAUN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
The Florida man charged with sending more than a dozen package bombs to Democratic political figures is described as a troubled loner who showed little interest in politics before the rise of President Donald Trump…
A Twitter account that appears to belong to Sayoc, @hardrock2016, includes memes denouncing Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, including a photo of Soros made to look like he’s holding a puppet that resembles Gillum.
Other posts called Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg “fake phony.” He posted memes repeatedly attacking Hogg in July. He also called Gov. Rick Scott “greatest Governor Ever” in a posting that shows the Republican governor alongside Trump.
In June, he praised Trump in a birthday message saying: “Happy Birthday President Donald J. Trump the greatest result President ever.”…
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article220692100.html#storylink=cpy
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article220692100.html
A few years ago Trump called into the Alex Jones Show to have a friendly chat, earlier this year Trump gave tours of the White House to Michael Savage and Lionel Lebron (separately), all far right wing conspiracy theorists and foaming at the mouth nut jobs. That’s a definite nod to the right wingers, racists, bigots and conspiracy nuts. Not to mention how he makes luke warm diluted condemnations of his more rabid supporters, waffles and flip-flops all over the place.
“Trump incites bigotry and racism and gives permission to haters to come out of the shadows. It has been a long time since we have had political leaders who openly welcomed white nationalists as part of his base.”
1,000 percent correct
But risk your physical and even mental health to attempt to start a discussion with an Always-Trump supporters. These deplorable, repugnant haters are so entrenched in their beliefs that even attempting to get them to listen to reason could get you physically injured or dead. They are that far gone to the dark side of Trump mania.
If you are not an Always-Trumper and you run into one, do not make eye contact. Do not attempt to reason with them. If they are wearing their MAGA uniform, don’t look at them. Treat them as if they are not there.
If this was Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and you were Jewish or a homosexual or a friend of Jews and homosexuals, would you try to reason with one of Hitler’s brown shirts wearing the swastika armband as they were shouting hate and spewing spit on the faces of those they hate and want to destroy?
Make no mistake. we live in the Trump era and it is no different than the era when Adolf Hitler was gaining the power to implement the Final Solution. Trump isn’t there yet but he is working on his base to be ready for that moment and then Trump will recruit from his base the people who will man the extermination camps and collect anyone Trump thinks should be erased.
Hitler started his rise to power in Germany in September 1919, and it took him about 14 years to achieve that power in 1933 because no one stopped him. Some tried and they all failed.
‘The origin of the “Final Solution,” the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people, remains uncertain. What is clear is that the genocide of the Jews was the culmination of a decade of Nazi policy, under the rule of Adolf Hitler. The “Final Solution” was implemented in stages. After the Nazi party rise to power, state-enforced racism resulted in anti-Jewish legislation, boycotts, “Aryanization,” and finally the “Night of Broken Glass” pogrom, all of which aimed to remove the Jews from German society. After the beginning of World War II, anti-Jewish policy evolved into a comprehensive plan to concentrate and eventually annihilate European Jewry.’
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-final-solution
And Trump is now responsible for the return of the global nuclear arms race while he works hard to destroy America’s relationships with all of its allies.
This is exactly what I think. And what I thought during the 2016 election. It was hard to listen to people who insisted there was absolutely no difference between what Trump was doing during the campaign and even the most conservative Democrat (which Hillary Clinton was not). I get it — there are LOTS of problems with the Democrats. But that is nothing on the people who willingly were closing their eyes to the pure hate and neo-Nazism that Trump’s entire campaign was built on. Even his so-called economic message — which was as phony as a $3 bill — represented that thinking. Too many people normalized it by saying Trump was no different than the Democrats
Too many people were willing to normalize the hate that was the centerpiece of the entire Trump campaign by saying it made absolutely no difference whether Trump gained power. I don’t care if they ever admit they were conned — I just hope they stop pretending that electing Democrats who can put some limits on Trump is not the ONLY thing that matters this election day.
I was at a teachers’ conference at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in July 2016. As historian Christopher Browning, one of the major Holocaust historian in the U.S., led us through Hitler’s rise to power, we all looked uncomfortably at each other. We saw it then. We Holocaust educators see it now, and it’s terrifying. History is truly repeating itself, in what should be the most just and most welcoming country on earth.
So, your recipe for opposition is . . . ?
Vote out the GOP and cripple DT as president with a Democratic majority in Congress.
If that doesn’t happen, I think a bloody Civil War is inevitable.
One important prelude to the final solution wad the Meji Meji rebellion in German East Africa. Rebellious workers on cotton plantations began to tear up cotton plants in protest of treatment. The German occupation went on a campaign of genocide. So many Africans were killed that the animals returned to the region. The idea I get is that the Germans decided that if they were unable to get the inhabitants to grow their cotton, they would just kill them.
The imperialistic disregard of human life in East Africa was by no means restricted to The Germans. Still the way they seemed to regard the idea of genocide as a solution to the problem of not getting what they wanted seems to me as foreshadowing the Nazi movement and the final solution.
I agree, Lloyd. Trump is patiently laying the groundwork for full-blown Nazism in America. I pray that the Democrats have the smarts to counteract his schemes. I worry that weak teaching and poor curriculum in schools and colleges has failed to give enough of us a visceral grasp of the horrors that could really befall us. Too many seem to think we live in Disneyland or a sitcom –nothing truly nightmarish could possibly befall us in the USA. You, with your knowledge of Chinese history, have this visceral grasp.
I do feel very much that ‘weak teaching’ has left us without hard thinking processes enough to make a decent judgment of Mr. Trump before the election. Yet, there are Republicans who have, willingly it seems, gone along with him and never offering much resistance. They bear some responsibility also. We are left to vote against the republicans in the upcoming elections in order to diminish the influence of this person and finally to vote him out when the presidential elections come along. I do think Americans have done an excellent job of resisting and keeping the democracy alive in a difficult time.
“weak teaching” is not universal across the country. There are strong leaders in public school districts that support strong teaching and not the Common Core scripted crap linked to high stakes, rank and punish tests.
Diane has mentioned several of these public school district leaders on her Blog.
And even in districts with poor district leadership, we find strong principals running their schools and supporting strong teaching while rejecting weak teaching.
For instance, I have a friend who told me once that classroom door is closed, he ignores the scripts his week high school administration wants the teachers to sue and does what he knows is right by using professional teaching methods.
And I did the same thing when I was teaching. The district and school administration pressured teachers to teach one way while most of us ignored them and managed our classrooms and taught our students the way we were trained. In fact, I had a couple of run ins with a few of those weak, cloned administrators and actually got them to back off and leave me alone. It was probably the look in my eyes as they were yelling at me in their office after school, and I was staring at the jugular vein in their neck thinking about tearing it open with my teeth that convinced them to back off.
I was only thinking of doing it. There is no law that says we can’t think about it, is there?
Ponderosa Thank you for saying that. I have thought for a long time that the legitimate critique of education in American (public or not) is the absence of teaching for political awareness and the appreciation of what we have politically. This is especially notable when you think of the watershed of experience we have as lenses, even just since the beginning of WWII, to teach political awareness through. I don’t know any high school student who wouldn’t be mesmerized (horrified) by the manifestations of Nazism and communism since then.
Was it Jefferson who said, in democracies, we have to experience a political revolution each generation? Well, . . . I think we can lay the absence of that revolution at the door of education such as it has been over the last 70 years. Trump followers who are “deplorable” for their ignorance. Otherwise nice people who cannot know what they are doing, or they wouldn’t do it. CBK
Yes, Jefferson said the tree of liberty must be nourished by the blood of tyrants and patriots from time to time. Not his exact words but close enough.
I think we are close to one of those times.
More important than teaching students political awareness is teaching them to think critically and to solve problems in addition to turning them into life-long learners who actually enjoy reading.
Someone who thinks critically is going to question what is going on in politics and be more aware of what is happening.
On that note, I learned last week from the League of Women Voters Home Page that there is another site to help us look at the facts when making decisions on who and what to vote for.
Voter’s Edge
All you have to do is put in your zip code and start comparing candidates. Great tool.
https://votersedge.org/ca
And that weak teaching and poor curriculum has happened because of organizations like TFA and autocratic billionaires like Bill Gates, Betsy DeVos, and Eli Broad that push on-line learning and scripted lessons.
But there is hope.
TFA’s assembly line of college students with high GPA’s that are willing to volunteer to become a TFA public education busting stooge does not produce enough of these ignorant highly educated storm troopers to place them en every public school district or school in the country.
And, don’t hold your breath because we can’t hold our breaths that long, but if Tuck losses in California and Thurmond wins, that will also be a blow to the small clique of destory public education for profit and to control what children are taught.
“$43 million and attack ads. It’s the race for California schools chief — and it’s between two Democrats.” Really, I don’t think so. They are not two democrats. One is a real Democrat endorsed by the Democratic Party and the other one is a Fake Democrat who has been endorsed by the GOP. But I digress.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/
The billionaire oligarchs are gambling that if they outspend Thrumond’s campaign they will win since studies show that 80-percent of candidates that win elections spend the most money.
“Marshall Tuck’s Dirty Secret: How Right-Wing Money Infiltrates Democratic Politics”
“the hope of Tuck’s supporters is that perhaps no one will notice. Maybe, they think, the big money will push him over the finish line this time despite the sleazy right-wing connections that would seem an anathema to voters here on the Left Coast. We can only trust that the vast majority California’s Democratic voters will join those Democrats at the state convention last week who rejected Tuck’s second bid to open California schools to the kinds of right-wing privatization schemes that have wreaked havoc elsewhere in the country.”
https://sandiegofreepress.org/2018/03/marshall-tucks-dirty-secret-how-right-wing-money-infiltrates-democratic-politics/#.W9c7hTNReUk
Diane The two incidents this week were perpetrated by self-identified members of Trump’s base:
Trump’s only two choices:
(1) He is actively and consciously complicit in inflaming his violence-prone base, OR
(2) Trump is so naive and ignorant–even stupid–as to be unfit for office–because he doesn’t understand leadership, the presidency, democracy, the rule of law, the essential place of the press in a democracy, or even the history of the word: Nationalist.
Every day, I cringe because I am so embarrassed by his and his followers’ presence both at rallies and on the world scene. He and them have made a laughing stock out of the United States. (We thought Bush was bad.)
I used to forgive his followers for their just not paying attention. But now I think Hillary was right:
They deserve the title: Deplorables, and they are killing our nation like a slow-motion wreck,
only, after this week, not so slow anymore. I was wondering when the fascist violence would start. CBK
Hillary’s “deplorable” comment was taken out of context and the fake Bernie “trolls” got some gullible people to repeat it and other fake attacks on Hillary Clinton.
Hillary’s comment about “deplorables” was to specifically SEPARATE the Trump supporters who were drawn to his vision of hate and scapegoating and “George Soros” is evil and dog whistle calls (and outright calls) from the Trump supporters who were fooled by his phony economic populism message because they had been left out of the economic recovery. She made that comment because she wanted to do something for the Trump voters who were left out of the recovery — the ones who Trump offered nothing but fake promises to. Hillary knew that the Trump supporters who loved his racism and xenophobia and anti-semitism were never going to vote for a Democrat since no Democrat was racist enough for them.
Those are the deplorables who have committed these crimes and marched at Charlottesville and beat up anyone who isn’t sufficiently pro-Trump or dares to point out that Trump’s lies are lies.
It’s a shame that the supposedly “liberal” media and the entire progressive movement did not stop that attack in its track. Instead, like they did to Al Gore, they used a phony argument to get people who should have been smart enough to know they were being played for fools to buy into it.
NYC public school parent My point: I used to separate Trump supporters from those who I think are deplorables–but no more. If you still don’t understand, then I have to ask rhetorically: What good reason could anyone support that horrible man? CBK
Catherine King,
Yes, I absolutely agree with you. I am not interested in whether someone made the mistake in the past of voting for Trump or posting non-stop that there was absolutely no difference between Trump and Hillary and there was no good reason at all to prevent Trump from winning. They were misled.
But now, if you are not voting for Democrat for every single national office because you STILL claim that Democrats are flawed and imperfect, then you are enabling fascism. And that is the only thing that this election is about: Do you enable fascism or not.
According to Trump he is the least anti-Semitic person you’ve ever seen in your life and the least racist person. Read the transcript or view the video. Trump is the insulting one.
………………………………..
Video: President Trump Responds Strongly To An Orthodox Jewish Reporter
Politics Wire
Published on Feb 19, 2017
President Donald Trump in his press conference from the East Room of the White House got what he thought was an insulting question from an Orthodox Jewish Reporter Jake Turx, a reporter for Ami Magazine and he told him to sit down and responded (Listen in): Here is the Whitehouse.Gov transcript:
THE PRESIDENT: Wait, let’s see, who’s — I want to find a friendly reporter. Are you a friendly reporter? Watch how friendly he is. Wait, wait — watch how friendly he is. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Q So, first of all, my name is (inaudible) from (inaudible) Magazine. And (inaudible). I haven’t seen anybody in my community accuse either yourself or any of the — anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic. We have an understanding of (inaudible).
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
Q However, what we are concerned about, and what we haven’t really heard be addressed is an uptick in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it. There have been reports out that 48 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of weeks. There are people who are committing anti-Semitic acts or threatening to —
THE PRESIDENT: You see, he said he was going to ask a very simple, easy question. And it’s not. It’s not. Not a simple question, not a fair question. Okay, sit down. I understand the rest of your question.
So here’s the story, folks. Number one, I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism — the least racist person. In fact, we did very well relative to other people running as a Republican.
Q (Inaudible.)
THE PRESIDENT: Quiet, quiet, quiet. See, he lied about — he was going to get up and ask a very straight, simple question. So you know, welcome to the world of the media. But let me just tell you something — that I hate the charge. I find it repulsive. I hate even the question because people that know me — and you heard the Prime Minister, you heard Netanyahu yesterday — did you hear him, Bibi? He said, I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time, and then he said, forget it.
So you should take that, instead of having to get up and ask a very insulting question like that.
Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.
There is only one fact to remember. Trump is a serial liar. He tells lies everyday. He has told thousands of lies since he has been elected, but his lying didn’t start in 2017. He has been a liar all of his life. He even lied about the bone spurs that kept him out of Vietnam.
I think you will miss a lot of the insult from Trump unless you LISTEN to the video, not just read the text.
Trump’s paranoia and hatred are spreading, and those most vulnerable and gullible are the outsiders that exist in the fringe of society. These people are the most easily influenced by demagogues, and they have so little to lose.
Mr. Lofthouse wrote above:
But risk your physical and even mental health to attempt to start a discussion with an Always-Trump supporters. These deplorable, repugnant haters are so entrenched in their beliefs that even attempting to get them to listen to reason could get you physically injured or dead. They are that far gone to the dark side of Trump mania.”
CONGRESS and GOP candidates are also “Always-Trump supporters.” And, they annoint federal judges and Supreme Court Justices, they vote to deregulate Civil Rights protections, and more without thinking or flinching.
They may not be “deplorable, repugnated haters” (although some proudly spew the same disgust). They’re WORSE – they are SILENT when he spews. They validate his messages across their districts and states.
I used to watch Lou Dobbs on CNN International. What has gone wrong with him? It’s amazing that even when a far R man whose van is plastered with Trump and Pence decals and anti-CNN ones, there are all sorts of reasons why these bombs were not made by a Trump supporter. This is an attempt to make hatred acceptable. It is covered up by lies.
……………………
Mail-Bomber “False Flag” Theories Overwhelm Right-Wing Discourse
David Neiwert, Southern Poverty Law Center
PUBLISHED
October 28, 2018
It might be interesting to start your stopwatches the moment an act of terrorism or mass killing is first reported and note how long it will be until someone on the internet chimes in about how the violence is a “false flag” operation or another nefarious conspiracy of some kind.
In the case of the recent spate of explosive devices mailed to leading liberal political figures and CNN, the stopwatch would have run only a few minutes. Almost immediately, conspiracist websites were posting theories about the “fake bombs.” Some people learned about the bombs by reading the “false flag” theories first…
Even after Friday’s arrest of a Florida man with an apparent background in right-wing activism on charges of, among others, transporting and mailing illegal explosives, the most dogged among these theorizers have clung to their belief that it was all a scheme by nefarious forces to make Trump supporters look bad…
Ostensibly mainstream conservative pundits joined in the skepticism, including Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs, who tweeted: “Fake News—Fake Bombs; Who could possibly benefit by so much fakery?” He deleted it later, and replaced it with a tweet saying: “Fake News had just successfully changed the narrative from the onslaught of illegal immigrants and broken border security to ‘suspicious packages.’ ”…
Check out this article: https://truthout.org/articles/mail-bomber-false-flag-theories-overwhelm-right-wing-discourse/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=mashshare&utm_campaign=mashshare
Hate posts when they aren’t on the 4 and 8 Chan social media sites are on Gab which was referenced in a prior Ravitch post because the Tree of Life murderer posted at Gab.
“Ricky Vaughn”, a pseudonym for a poster of White nationalism messages, was exposed 7 mos. ago. Prior to that, MIT Media described him as one of the 150 most influential people in the 2016 election, ahead of NBC News and the Drudge Report. “Vaughn” had been relegated to Gab, after being blocked from other sites. The young man’s father is a lobbyist and former legislative aide to a Republican Senator. “Vaughn’s” family said they were surprised and saddened by the views he held. Appears like an average guy but, isn’t.
To me it boils down to that spine chilling attack on his primary opponent John McCaim because he doesn’t like losers- he the ones who didn’t get captured.
I assume he rejects Christ for same reason—“loser!”
No more need be said.
Sent from my iPhone
>
Great point, Deb.
Whenever you think that Trump has plumbed the deepest moral darkness, he manages to find new depths to sink to. Your characterization of his comment about McCain being a loser because he was captured is spot on. This comment was, indeed, “spine chilling.”
Jesus Christ was a loser
Jesus Christ was a loser
Winners don’t get caught
Should have been an abuser
That’s what Pontius taught
it is not that just doesn’t like losers, he is really paranoid about being labelled a loser, or crooked, or low iQ, or less than the “greatest ever.” If he is not commanding the news everyday he will find something to get attention, aided by his discerning and at the ready loyalists, including the phrase- maker Steve Miller.
He is a master of projection. Whatever he calls someone else to insult them is a fear about himself.
Loser.
Low IQ.
Liar.
In one of the debates, Hillary said he would be Putin’s Puppet, and he interjected, “you’re the puppet.” And said it again and again, like a baby.
Now we know.
He is Putin’s puppet.
This is psych 101
He’s desparate to be liked by anyone all the time regardless of the issue. He wants to control everything because someone he knows somewhere will say “good job, young man, i’m proud of you.”
In the midst of international and national tragedies and crises, murders, hate crimes…. he criticizes the manager of a baseball team. That’s textbook. Why? Somewhere he heard someone criticize the manager and he can chalk up another devotee.
And my (actually distinguished multi-term respected) Republican Senator is silent with all the others. Not embarrassed. Not critical. silent.
The card carrying gop have sold their souls to the devil.
He stopped his emotional development at about age 8.
I sent a text to the radio station I was listening to today, 94.9 FM serving Connecticut and Eastern Long Island. Somehow affiliated with CBS. Rightwing talk show. I complained about the guy being interviewed who said every prominent Democrat is a Marxist or a Communist. Some guy from The Program tweeted tonight to inform me that I am a Marxist. Geez.
McCarthyism is alive and well in America in 2018. GOP TV political ads accuse the Democrats of being socialists, even the centrist Democrats; the right wing media, especially hate wing radio and the blogosphere, call Democrats commies, Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, etc. Another nutty thing that right wingers do is to defame Democrats or liberals as being Nazis. The stupid reasoning follows thus: the Nazis were socialists (National Socialism) ergo the Nazis were liberal. It’s such a bogus argument as to be stupefyingly absurd. The Nazis were socialist in name only and they were as far from being liberal as Rush Limbaugh. When you point out to the right winger that the Nazis were really fascists, then they say that the fascists were liberals, too!! You cannot have a sane discussion with these maniacs.
Joe: “You cannot have a sane discussion with these maniacs.”
I totally agree. I sent out an article entitled ‘The Cult of Trump’. To me, it completely describes Trump and his followers who don’t think but believe and follow. There is absolutely no reasoning with them. How can a sane person listen to his hatred and vile names for others and not be concerned?
Adam Serwer at The Atlantic put it like this:
“ordinarily, politicians don’t praise supporters who have mercilessly beaten a Latino man, as ‘very passionate.’ Ordinarily, they don’t offer to pay supporters’ legal bills if they assault protesters on the other side. They don’t praise acts of violence against the media. They don’t defend neo-Nazi rioters as ‘fine people.’ They don’t justify sending bombs to their critics by blaming the media for airing criticism…Trump did everything he could to fan the flames, and nothing to restrain those who might take him at his word…The spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election. There is no political gesture, no public statement, and no alteration in rhetoric or behavior that will change this fact…As for those who aided Trump in his propaganda campaign, who enabled him to prey on racist fears to fabricate a national emergency, every single one of them bears some responsibility for what followed…Their thoughts and prayers are worthless. Their condolences are irrelevant. They can never undo what they have done, and what they have done will never be forgotten.”
The Washington Post documented all of this:
There have been over the past several days in the U.S. “the killings of two African Americans in a grocery store outside Louisville, a series of mail bombs targeting a dozen high-profile Democrats allegedly sent by a Trump supporter, and a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue have left the nation on edge…The common thread among them appears to be the targeting of specific groups based on race, religion or political persuasion…”
“George Soros has become a major focus of Republican attack ads ahead of the midterms, even after a bomb was found in his mailbox last week. Trump has accused Soros, without evidence, of paying for protesters at his rallies…Since early in his 2016 campaign, when he denounced immigrants from Mexico as criminals and rapists, Trump has employed language that appeals to the nativist impulses of the electorate — to the point that he was endorsed by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke…Last year, Trump drew far-reaching condemnation for suggesting, in the aftermath of a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville during which a counterprotester was killed, that there were ‘good people on both sides.’…”
“This past summer, Trump repeated, in a tweet, a white-nationalist conspiracy theory, which he appeared to have heard on Fox News, that white farmers were facing mass killings in South Africa. Chants of ‘lock her up’ about Clinton and other prominent Democrats and ‘build the wall’ to keep out immigrants have been a staple of his campaign rallies for years…[Trump] has suggested, without offering evidence, that criminals and Middle Eastern terrorists are among the migrants. He and other Republicans, floated a conspiracy theory that Soros helped fund the caravan…studies have shown a rise of white-supremacist-related deadly attacks in the United States…”
As Republican radio host Charlie Sykes said, “the greatest danger we face is not a caravan 1000 miles away. It’s already here.”
Trump and the Republican party are clear and present dangers to the American republic. There’s just no escaping that. Anyone still voting for a Republican is complicit in undermining the core values of the country. This is who they now are.
By any standard I am prepared to recognize, Trump owns all of this.
I’ve read a number of postings by Trump followers. This article seems to describe them perfectly. There is no reasoning and facts never matter. Trump knows it all and nobody should disagree.
……………………………..
‘The Cult of Trump’
Chris Hedges…columnist for truthdig
Cult leaders arise from decayed communities and societies in which people have been shorn of political, social and economic power. The disempowered, infantilized by a world they cannot control, gravitate to cult leaders who appear omnipotent and promise a return to a mythical golden age. The cult leaders vow to crush the forces, embodied in demonized groups and individuals, that are blamed for their misery. The more outrageous the cult leaders become, the more they flout law and social conventions, the more they gain in popularity. Cult leaders are immune to the norms of established society. This is their appeal. Cult leaders demand a God-like power. Those who follow them grant them this power in the hope that the cult leaders will save them.
Donald Trump has transformed the decayed carcass of the Republican Party into a cult…
Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious fawning and total obedience. They prize loyalty above competence. They wield absolute control. They do not tolerate criticism. They are deeply insecure, a trait they attempt to cover up with bombastic grandiosity. They are amoral and emotionally and physically abusive. They see those around them as objects to be manipulated for their own empowerment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment. All those outside the cult are branded as forces of evil, prompting an epic battle whose natural expression is violence.
“A cult is a mirror of what is inside the cult leader,” Margaret Thaler Singer wrote in “Cults in Our Midst.” “He has no restraints on him. He can make his fantasies and desires come alive in the world he creates around him. He can lead people to do his bidding. He can make the surrounding world really hisworld. What most cult leaders achieve is akin to the fantasies of a child at play, creating a world with toys and utensils. In that play world, the child feels omnipotent and creates a realm of his own for a few minutes or a few hours. He moves the toy dolls about. They do his bidding. They speak his words back to him. He punishes them any way he wants. He is all-powerful and makes his fantasy come alive. When I see the sand tables and the collections of toys some child therapists have in their offices, I think that a cult leader must look about and place people in his created world much as a child creates on the sand table a world that reflects his or her desires and fantasies. The difference is that the cult leader has actual humans doing his bidding as he makes a world around him that springs from inside his own head.”…
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-cult-of-trump-2/
Chris Hedges is brilliant and really nails it. He’s also against charter schools, vouchers and school privatization. I just have a quibble with him about voting for Jill Stein in 2016, a wasted vote in my opinion. He’s right that the GOP is a cult that has gone off the rails into crazy land.
Blame to go around –
Franklin Graham and Jay Sekulow as models of the Christian community
Paul Singer, Dan Loeb and Adelson as models of the Jewish community
Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh as models of the fourth estate
Eva Moskowitz, Jeb Bush and John Podesta, destroyers of the common good
Bill Gates, John Arnold and Charles and David Koch, destroyers of democracy
Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter, women’s betrayers
Rex Sinquefield and Pete Peterson, humanity’s betrayers
…
How about some not-so-funny humor. Here are some quotes from Donald J. Trump:
When people wrong you, go after those people, because it is a good feeling and
because other people will see you doing it. I always get even.
—Donald Trump
Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest – and you all know it! Please
don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.
—Donald Trump
“I’m also honored to have the greatest temperament that anybody has.” —Donald Trump (November 3, 2016)
“Let me tell you, I’m a really smart guy. I was a really good student at the best school in the country. The reason I have a little doubt, just a little, is because he grew up and nobody knew him.”
—on why he thought President Obama wasn’t born in the United States
Why do I have to repent, why do I have to ask for forgiveness if [I’m] not making mistakes?
—Donald Trump
I apologize when I’m wrong.
—Donald Trump
When I drink my little wine…and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form for
forgiveness.
—Donald Trump
I fully think apologizing is a great thing. But you have to be WRONG… I will
absolutely apologize sometime in the hopefully distant future if I’m ever wrong.
—Donald Trump
Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.
—Donald Trump
I actually don’t have a bad hairline.
—Donald Trump
I judge people based on their capability, honesty, and merit.
—Donald Trump
I’ve always said, “If you need Viargra, you’re probably with the wrong girl.”
—Donald Trump
“I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.”
—Donald Trump
“I’ve had a beautiful, I’ve had a flawless campaign. You’ll be writing books about this campaign.” –Donald Trump, July 29, 2016
“You know, it really doesn’t matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
—Donald Trump
“Women: You have to treat them like s**t.” “A person who is very flat chested is very hard to be a 10.”
—Donald Trump
“My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well been documented, are various other parts of my body.”
—Donald Trump
All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. that’s to be expected.
—Donald Trump
People love me. And you know what, I have been very successful. Everybody loves me.
—Donald Trump
You know the funny thing, I don’t get along with rich people. I get along with the middle class and the poor people better than I get along with the rich people.
—Donald Trump
“We should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump.” –Donald Trump, speaking at a rally in Toledo Ohio, Oct. 27, 2016
I wouldn’t mind a little bow. In Japan, they bow. I love it. Only thing I love about Japan.
—Donald Trump
“Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?” –Donald Trump, reportedly asking a foreign policy adviser three times during a meeting why the U.S. couldn’t use its nuclear weapons stockpile, according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough
“[Vladimir Putin} is not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not gonna go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down.” –Donald Trump, apparently unaware that Russia had already annexed Crimea in a 2014 intrusion into Ukraine that left thousands dead (July 31, 2016)
“Anchor babies” is when all the racist riots started. Im guessing it was anchor babies.