Here’s a riddle: if two people happened to share the exact same ethnicity, and they both knew they were born in the same country, if one were to say to the other ‘Go back to where you came from’, this would be racist.
What will the GOP talking-point for today be, pretending to be deaf?
As I keep trying to make the point to Republicans, this President does not care about the Constitution, or the law, he does not care about politics, he does not care about democracy. He is an unrestrained, and racist, demagogue. Any person who chooses to disagree with him, even Justin Amash, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, or a handful of other former Congressional Republicans who had chosen to resign from the Republican Party – or in John McCain’s case, pass away – during Trump’s time as President, no matter what the person’s political leaning all end up being told good riddance.
Politics can have a way of making smart people sound ridiculous (unless, one generally already is). And to review the talking-points so far: “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” – bones happen to be white, too. But, seriously, “frustrated” is how we excuse children for when they misbehave. And to that point, the worst of these, leaders above all in this country should never claim that others who vehemently disagree with us (as has become the norm with this President) on policy “hate” us. Representative Mark “we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is” Meadows is not one to defend Trump on this matter. When answering to reporters, yesterday, Senator Kennedy whined about being tired of this whole matter. Join the club!
President Trump has doubled-down, tripled-down on this particular instance of racism since those initial Sunday, July 14 tweets. And it certainly appears he is steering for the center of the Sun on a re-election campaign upon what he has rebranded the Republican Party to be, the anti-immigration/white-nationalist party. He claimed to reporters after those Sunday tweets that he still didn’t know where the four Congresswomen were from, even though that information is still being widely revealed everywhere those initial tweets are being reported. He even claimed during his last rally that he doesn’t have time to remember her full name, and so just calls her “Cortez”?
It is atrocious, inhuman, to insinuate let alone flat-out claim that these four duly elected American citizens of color to Congress “hate” America. Neither do they (whether it is all four, or still just one, depending on the impulse) hate Israel, or Jewish people in general. They do not hate anyone. The four made this all very clear in their joint press conference the day after the President's initial tweets. Yet that word, “hate”, continues to be incessantly applied to them – particularly, by other Republicans joining in the chorus over the past few days. When the President talks like this, and his enablers deny or defend it, as his base hears it anyone who disagrees with him is perceived as anti-American. When Donald Trump obviously dodged the Vietnam War draft, and then crapped on an ex-U.S. P.O.W. during the last Presidential campaign, were either of these actions done out of love of country?
A Democratic Congresswoman was referring to the influence of money in politics when she spoke out against a pro-Israel lobbying group, AIPAC, a group which also happens to have Zionist intentions. Being of Palestinian descent, elected in her district to fight corruptive influence of all powerful lobbying groups, in normal times the reaction to her ‘all about the Benji’s’ comment might have been more reasonably understood. (Trump is supposedly an anti-establishment leader. But since when has that mattered?) But we are in the xenophobic, Islamophobic, as well as the uptick in anti-Semitism time of Trump. She could have chosen her words more carefully, more specifically, and less sensationally. She apologized for that. But far be it for the right-wing media and right-wing politicians to hold back from opportunistically rehashing, misinforming and disinforming with their own dangerous recklessness. Let’s not hold the President of the United States’ truly inflammatory rhetoric at all – at all – accountable. Let’s ignore the amount of death-threats this Somali-born Representative keeps receiving as a result of the knowing misrepresentations. After all, you have re-election campaigns to win.
Trump constantly complained about America over our previous President’s time in office. He also constantly made stuff up, over-dramatized, sensationalized (“American carnage”?) and of course pervasively peddled the racist birther conspiracy in post-9/11 America. Since 9/11, it is no surprise to anyone that when it comes to acts of terrorism committed in this country more people have been killed by white, homegrown terrorism than by any other extremist group either based within our borders or from abroad. As we speak, a generation of teenagers here continue to be susceptible to empowered white-supremacists promoting their propaganda and radicalizing them with their agenda.
And despite claiming to disagree with the “Send her back!” chant at his latest campaign-rally, which included children, he in fact did absolutely nothing to stop it. He did, in fact, in true Trump fashion, stoke it by falsely claiming Rep. Omar is an al Queda-sympathizer, and – once again – that she hates Jewish people.
I understand the GOP’s political intentions of trying to paint the left as ‘extreme’ with one broad stroke, as if we need further proof the majority of the Party is living in an alternative reality. I cannot imagine what it is like politically coming of age in the era of Trump. It’s enough for any rational person to keep the blood from shooting from their ears whenever hearing him speak. Given the obvious, increasing extremism of the Republican Party, as well as the fiscal irresponsibility of this administration, the Party is operating in an alternative reality. You have lost all claim to refer to anyone but yourselves as extreme. Their current policies – not just with what’s happening along the southern border, but with the tax cuts and military spending being the main drivers now of our increasing debt, the sheer disregard towards our human-caused climate-crisis, the threat of repealing the A.C.A. through the court in vague hopes to replace it with something that does not nearly provide as good amount of coverage – makes moderate Republicans or true libertarians look left-wing.
I have heard the term ‘Cold Civil War’ applied to the current level of divisiveness in this country. Down here on the ground that sounds about accurate. And, looking at the view above, frightening. Some would argue the division now in this country is already unsustainable. What could the thought of four more years of Trump bring? Is the reason established Congressional Republicans choose not to be unified against Trump because you don’t want your modus operandi at the behest of wealthy donors exposed?
Anti-intellect, amoral, duplicitously corrupt, and racist is no way for one half of our two-party system to conduct itself.
It is undeniable now. What were/are you thinking?
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it.” – Senator Lindsey Graham: May, 2016.