When I woke up and turned on the TV and saw a chyron saying “two mass shootings in 24 hours”, I shook my head in a double take right out of vaudeville or Saturday morning cartoons, sure I must have misread it because of not being fully awake.
Took a moment to realize no, it’s real. The shooting in El Paso, Texas, was followed by a shooting in Dayton, Ohio.
This is how we live now.
The weaksauce tweets from the man in the White House are no better than I expected from the likes of him.
But I am furious with the mainstream media, all of whom have long since lost the right to act surprised. What’s with all this disingenuous handwringing: Why is this HAPPENING? Why can’t we DO something about this? What IS it about young white men that is fueling these kinds of attacks all of a sudden???!!1!one!!1???
It’s happening because there is a demographic that feels cheated because they do not have the advantages their grandfathers had, and they have listened to their grandfathers, fathers, brothers, uncles complaining about it for decades now. They have no concept of the world beyond themselves. It’s all about what they want, what they feel entitled to, and gut-rending anxiety that the power they were led to believe was theirs by birthright is slipping away forever. Inclusive justice? The enemy! Multiculturalism? Make America White Again! What the rest of us see as societal progress terrifies their zerosum minds—what others get means they can’t have it, and they used to have EVERYTHING.
When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
But that’s been true for a while, you say. Why is this kind of violence stepping up NOW?
That’s easy. Now they have reason to believe it will be easier to get away with it. They know, with certainty, that the man at the top of the governmental pyramid feels the same way. He identifies with them. He approves of what they do. He himself has managed to arrange a life that is above the law, where he can do and say whatever he wants and treat people as horribly as he wants without taking responsibility for the damage he leaves in his wake. Without being held accountable. Without facing any punishment or negative consequences that mean anything to him.
The Peter Principle kept him “failing up” until now he finds himself in the Presidency, and even that’s not enough for him with his glib talk of running again in 2024 and 2028. Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king, and a king ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything.
So even though DJT has everything he thinks he wants, he still feels like one of them. It’s not what he has in his life, it’s the society as a whole that bothers him. Rights for women and blacks and immigrants and gays and non-Christians. A WASP who is free white and 21 used to rule the world. Now he has to share it.
He never learned how to share. He never had to. If he hasn’t learned it in 73 years he’s not going to learn it now.
DJT hates the baby blimp because somewhere deep down he knows he’s stuck in that pre-toddler stage where MINE is the most frequently used word in a child’s vocabulary, unfair means I didn’t get the biggest piece, and the best outcome of all is when I get everything and you get nothing.
In his soul he relates to them. He has been one of them all his life. Every single day he fans the flames of their hatred and incites their rage because it is his own hatred and rage he is displaying. White supremacists, white nationalists, and racists of all kinds look at him and like what they see. Game recognize game.
When he is backed into a corner and forced to “condemn” them, reading words off a teleprompter did not write and barely understands, they know from his flat affect that it’s just a wink and a nod. The Rcon equivalent of whattayagonnado?
Furthermore, his minions look at him in the White House and see their greatest fantasy come to life. They want to ogle women and grab them and exploit them and rape them and get away with it. They want to make money and spend money without regard to anyone but themselves (wait until they find out he is broke). They want to say and do racist xenophobic transphobic homophobic sexist things and keep their jobs. He is everything they want to do and be. He made the White House white again!
Here is a simple thought experiment anyone can do that easily proves DJT and the Republicon party as a whole don’t think white supremacist terrorism is a problem worth addressing.
Suppose a man had posted a screed on the internet about hating America in general and hating wypipo, quoting words and phrases from speeches given by some radical left-wing personality.
Then, while wearing a turban, keffiyeh, shamagh, or some other style of Middle Eastern headdress, he drove nine hours to an upper middle class suburban shopping mall during a back to school sale and opened fire, killing 20 white people and wounding dozens more.
Just take one moment to contemplate all of the obvious ways the DJT administration response would be different. I’ll wait.
Off the top of my head I can think of the following. I’m sure in the comments we will all come up with more:
By now we would have had a whole series of redfaced bug-eyed tirades on television, by DJT himself and everyone else with any claim to leadership in the Republicon party.
There would be wall to wall coverage of the shooting on #FakesNewsChannel so that all those people, and the usual suspects in the GOPropaganda punditry class, would have a camera to stand in front of and make those remarks. Just for grins and giggles, I unblocked FNC for a hot moment to see what they had on. Right now the host is talking about DJT being “back on offense” against Morning Joe, and reading a tweet where DJT called Mika Brzezinski “Psycho”. Interestingly, the host also said DJT was responding to recent criticism of him “for what they call racist comments”… emphasis mine, just in case anyone missed the tell. Don’t give me a hard time for using the term grins and giggles. I have to laugh to keep from crying. The beginning of this paragraph was written when I started writing this hours ago, so I unblocked again (twice in one day!) and what they have on now is Peter Navarro (again?) carrying water for DJT’s ridiculous idea that China is bearing the burden of the cost of U.S. tariffs instead of US consumers.
We would hear outraged declarations about the need to crack down on “those people” and an endless recounting of every related attack in the last few years, using the most general criteria to lump in as many similar crimes as possible. (Does anyone know how many of these mass shootings have been linked to white supremacy since 2016? My gut tells me almost all of them?)
Rcon talking heads would have a sheaf of talking points, repeated ad nauseum, until we could all recite from memory a long list of reasons the shooter is a symbol of a larger social problem, connected to every social advancement of the last 75 years.
Corporate media, even the “so-called liberal media” would be demanding that the people quoted in his screed denounce and renounce the shooter and his remarks, and even progressive politicians who weren’t quoted would be asked “do you support so-and-so’s denunciation of the suburban shooter’s manifesto???!1!?”
DJT would be the one shouting ENOUGH IS ENOUGH the loudest! Promising action! Promising systemic change! An executive order right away! Proposals for an effton of new legislation aimed specifically at getting “those people” off the internet, doing everything possible to discourage the spread of their hate, and preventing them from getting access to light infantry weapons. The legislation would fly through the Senate and pressure on the House would be immense.
Needless to say, none of this is going to happen.
And we all know why.
Thought experiment over. Well, not really. We’re still living in this nightmare.
Worst episode of Black Mirror EVER.
DJT can’t deny anything I have written here. No one with access to him would even bother to ask him to deny it.
His sycophants will be asked about it, and they will sputter and clutch their pearls and act insulted and well I *NEVER* and go full-tilt into AYCMAR mode. Then they will change the subject, pivot to their talking points and hope no one notices they didn’t answer the question.
Sadly, the biggest tell of all is DJT won’t even know he needs to deny it. He won’t feel any pressure whatsoever to deny it.
That man, in his heart, approves of this.
That’s not reading between the lines, that’s reading the lines.
That’s reading everything he has done and said since his presidential candidacy began, and a lot of things he did and said in his private life before this, including birtherism and his jonesing to get the death penalty for the Central Park Five.
That man is a racist who approves of white nationalism and white separatist terrorism.
That is the only conclusion any reasonable person can come to by comparing his milquetoast response today with his red-faced outrage when responding to events he *does* define as terrorism. When his personal button is pushed, that’s the only time DJT comes close to showing authentic emotional energy and passion.
Look objectively at his relatively bland reaction to the El Paso shooting, the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the Chabad of Poway shooting, the New Zealand mosque shooting, the Parkland school shooting, the violence in Charlottesville, the Mother Emanuel church shooting, etc. etc. etc. add your own incidents in the comments. He will never condemn white supremacist violence unequivocally in word and/or deed.
His lack of response is the dog that didn’t bark—the undeniable signal to white nationalists and white supremacist terrorists that he understands them, and shares in their frustration, and plans to look the other way when they bring their 8chan fantasies to life with real world bombs and bullets.
Maybe it all boils down to the limitations of the deplorable mind. They only react on an emotional level when events affect them directly. Since they aren’t black, or Muslim, or Latinx, or Jewish, those incidents listed above go in one ear and out the other, if they get in the first ear at all, because they don’t notice what they don’t feel threatened by.
They feel threatened by black men holding toy guns in the local park or in the WalMart. They feel threatened by women who walk hundreds of miles with children in tow to get away from drugs, murder, and rape in their home countries. They feel threatened by workers who will do physically demanding jobs for very little money so they can go to the box store and buy cheap food and cheap clothes.
That’s what opens their eyes and ears and wallets. That’s how RWNJ wackos stay on the speaking circuit. That’s how Regnery Press sells books. That’s how the gun show loophole sells guns. That’s what gives jobs to hosts on their hateradio broadcasts and their GOPropaganda TV channels. That’s what gives Republicons a viselike grip on minority rule.
Lust and fear are the two easiest emotional buttons to push—the two easiest emotions for a screenwriter, or a demagogue, to stimulate. If you want to control the masses, those are the most reliable ways to do it. The nauseating pecksniffery of folks who worship in the “Hateful Church of Jesusless Christians” (h/t John Pavlovitz) means they can’t use lust (well, not openly anyway). Ginning up fear is all they have left to make their money and hold on to power. And when they feel the long arc of the universe bending inexorably toward justice, and feel all their traditional foundations of power crumbling away, they are terrified and desperate.
That’s why the fight we are in now has turned so vicious. Deplorables feel like ravenous cornered animals fighting for their survival, the survival of their children, the survival of white majority culture. They believe they are fighting for their lives and the future of “their” country. They want respect for the legacy of privilege that always ensured there was someone beneath them to exploit. They quake in terror because of an assumption that if “the others” take power, then they will be treated as they once treated “the others”.
I understand them well. They live with a ridiculous level of fear.
The Republicon party has lived off of white anger for more than 50 years, and expect it to be an endlessly renewable resource.
We live in a world where one of the most decent, thoughtful, intelligent presidents we ever had (and all the people who support him) got hounded for years with the charge “why won’t he say the words Radical Islamic Terrorism”? (Happy Birthday, Mr. President!)
So this is when I’ll know we are getting somewhere: when reporters and pundits give similar harassment to DJT, GOPropaganda pundits, and all the Republicons who support them (which is all of them now since anyone still wearing the R label at this point is making a statement of support for DJT—that’s how he gets 90% approval rating among Republicons).
These incidents are going to keep happening. So every time one of these mass killings occurs, wherever they go and every time they get in front of a microphone, I want them ALL hounded with questions like these:
“When will you clearly demonstrate you are opposed to these domestic terrorist groups with actions rather than empty words?”
“When will you beef up the staffing, funding and authority of the Interagency Task Force on Countering Violent Extremism?”
“When will the “Justice” Department apply current anti-terrorism standards against domestic terrorism, and push Congress to make domestic terrorism a crime?”
“When will you admit the connection between these shooters and the clear demonstrations of support for racist ideology throughout your administration?”
When will you say the words white supremacist terrorism?”
It is completely beyond any shadow of a doubt that if DJT did not approve of this movement and its full array of violent actions, he would have behaved very differently in the past, and would be behaving VERY differently this morning.
Q.E. frakking D.
full disclosure, I *love* the original version of this song. always felt it was a protest anthem.
white supremacists obviously get a different message from this video than i get from the recording.