The Republican National Convention and Typhoid Meet 'n Greet’s move to Jacksonville, Florida, after Donald Trump had a very public meltdown over North Carolina wanting to enforce basic health measures during our ongoing pandemic even now, weeks after the idiot manchild became bored with the whole premise, was going to be a sketchy affair to begin with. But as The Washington Post points out, there perhaps is another reason for the fascist leader's plan to address his remaining minions on Aug. 27, 2020 in that particular city, over the various other cities in contention.
That date is the 60th anniversary of one of the most notorious incidents of the civil rights era. On Aug. 27, 1960 in Jacksonville, a mob of white rioters organized by the Ku Klux Klan chased and attacked civil rights demonstrators with ax handles and baseball bats, an attack now known as Ax Handle Saturday. Coincidence? The Trump White House has long sailed past the boundaries of what could charitably be labeled coincidence.
Indeed, we're getting a clear pattern from the openly white nationalist White House. Trump's first large pandemic-era rally, Trump announced at the White House, would be in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of the 1921 massacre of Black Americans and the burning of Black Wall Street, and would take place on Juneteeth, the date the last former slaves were told of their freedom after the Civil War.
Trump will accept the nomination of his corrupt and fascist party in Jacksonville, Florida, on the 60th anniversary of another famous attack by white racists on Black Americans. And while a great many cities have seen Klan-rallied mobs make such attacks, you have to try to manage to hit so many "coincidences" of time and place at once.
This, coupled with the news that white nationalist adviser Stephen Miller is the one tasked with writing Trump's alleged upcoming speech on "race," makes it blazingly clear where the White House stands and what they intend to signal. They could back out of any of these moves, if they wanted to. They don't want to. This is part of Trump's all-out assault on Black Americans, on protesters, and on the very notion of America becoming anything other than a white nationalist state.
Even Senate Republicans are coming around to the notion that military bases shouldn't be honoring a host of the worst traitors this nation has ever produced, men who murdered their countrymen in large numbers to preserve slavery as an institution. Not Trump. Trump is making public announcements that he's behind Team Confederacy and will do whatever it takes to protect it.
Even as Republican lawmakers scramble to decide which concessions might be necessary or whether the military should be called in to simply put everyone back in their place, the national Republican Party intends to make absolutely certain that their white racist and conspiracy-obsessed base knows where Trump stands, and intends to keep goading them into violence—with the eager help of Fox News hosts, of course—against protesters.
What will actually happen in Jacksonville is uncertain. The convention was already going to be the target of major protests; for Trump to accept the nomination on the site and 60th anniversary of a Klan attack on civil rights protesters seems intended as ... what? A dare?
An overt threat?