4/2/19: There are ample reasons to
fear the president and the damage he’s doing to the country. You can start with
his cozy relationship with Russians. His sustained attacks on the rule of law should
terrify anyone who has read the U.S. Constitution or even studied the Cliff
Notes.
____________________
Encouraging 43 Americans out of every 100 to hate
the rest.
____________________
The overarching problem is clear. Trump has devoted the first half of his presidency to encouraging 43 Americans out of every 100 to hate the rest.
A recent recording of Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and Trump’s nutjob pal, brings the point clearly to life. In a clip that lasts more than four minutes, Jones is accosted by a group of young people at a fried chicken joint. Apparently, they have been mocking him for his Infowars rants.
Jones validates their disdain by erupting in a tirade. He
waves his hand at other patrons, seated round the room. He shouts at his
tormenters that these other customers are sick of their “shit.” “They’re
Americans,” he barks, “not traitors and scum like you.” At one point he appears
to challenge someone off camera to a fight, balling a fist, and leaning forward
in burly menace. He calls the hecklers “shit.” “You ain’t American, you’re a
slob,” he says, singling out one. “You’re the one running your fat, libtard
mouth.” We wouldn’t have our freedoms, he continues, if it were up to people
like these.
This is ironic, of course, because Jones – like his hero,
Donald J. Trump – has never seen the need to don the uniform and defend his
freedom, or anyone else’s, other than with spittle from big mouth.
“If you libtards don’t like free speech America,” he seethes,
“that’s good.” There’s nothing in the film clip to indicate the young people
don’t. They seem to be infuriating Jones simply by exercising that right. “Go
listen to your NPR,” he shouts.
He calls them “scum” again.
When one good-size young man looks like he’s had enough and
he’s ready to duke it out, Jones keeps filming with his phone instead and calls
him “a coward.”
That’s what’s scary about Jones and many on the far-right,
and what’s ultimately most frightening about Trump. He and they deal in the
kind of dehumanizing language Hitler and his henchmen employed. They hate many
of the same groups. During a twelve-year reign of terror, the Nazis were happy
to gas gays, lesbians, socialists, Jews, and critics of their regime. Hitler
referred to enemies as “vermin,” “parasites” and “untermenschen” or “under
men.”
You hear the same kind of rhetoric from Jones, as well as the
President of the United States. We on the other side saw it coming, even as he
ran for office. We’ve seen it endlessly on display since. As a candidate, Trump
swore he saw a video of thousands of Muslim-Americans celebrating on 9/11 when
the Twin Towers fell. No one has seen the same video since. Yet the toxin of
hate had been introduced into the national bloodstream. He implied that all
Muslims were terrorists. He came into office promising to bar all members of
the faith from entering the U.S. As a hater’s bonus he and half the pundits on
Fox News – and Jones – convinced gullible rubes that Barack Hussein Obama was a
Muslim too. They stirred hate against Muslims the way Nazis stirred hate
against Jews.
Winning
means winning for himself.
We know, after watching President Trump for half a term, that
he is bent on winning at any cost. And winning means winning for himself.
Whatever weird psychology is at play, this means he is happy
to stir hate so long as it stirs his base. He got traction as a candidate
by warning that “rapists” and “murderers” were pouring across the border,
ironic now that we have learned how many undocumented workers wash up at his private clubs
and find employ. They don’t kill the patrons. They groom the fairways, prepare
the omelets, and plump the beds. But you can’t stir visceral fear by focusing
on groundskeepers, short order cooks and maids. (See: 4/5/19.)
So “rapists” and “murderers” (and more recently, “MS-13”) it
is!
You could have a sensible debate about what to do on the
border. In fact, this country needs a sensible debate.
Unfortunately, you can’t. Not with Trump. In the president’s vituperative
lexicon, those he hates and those he wants supporters to hate are never human.
Recently, he made that clear, insisting the illegal immigrants being deported are
“animals.” True: Some of those who have been deported are despicable criminals.
But Trump repeatedly employed the term “animals” to make a point he’s used before. He doesn’t deal in nuance. He wants
others to hate and fear and react accordingly. “Animals,” he once tweeted,
“killed that lawyer in a mall parking lot.” “Two deranged animals” killed two
young Mississippi cops. “DEATH PENALTY,” Trump added to hammer home a point. In
October 2016, when someone set fire to a campaign office in North Carolina,
Trump howled: “Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina”
were on the loose. More recently, the president has called the London
terrorists and MS-13 gang members “animals,” while repeatedly implying that the
people showing up at our southern border are all MS-13 types – with Middle
Eastern terrorists mixed in.
Democrats are evil, too. “DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13
THUGS!” he tweeted last May. “Democrats are the problem,” he insisted last
June. “They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how
bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13.”
As Hitler realized, it was easier to consider gassing Jews if
they were “vermin” and sub-human – and an infestation.
Trump, with his warnings about “animals,” and Jones with his
“scum,” play the same twisted game.
The president’s targets are many and varied. When combined,
they represent more than half the U.S. population. Democrats are the “Party of
Crime.” They are the party that doesn’t care to stop the “animals.” Liberals
want to take away all guns and all cars and make sure America is never great
again. Transgender individuals are unworthy to serve in the nation’s military,
even if they are willing – unlike all Trumps, so far – to do their part. In
fact, “great Americans” – it is another trick of Trump to label his supporters
“great Americans,” implying those who oppose him are not – must live in fear
because transgenders want to sneak into public restrooms and molest their
children. Gays and lesbians are another staple of right-wing hate, what with
their demands to marry whomever they please.
Again, the Nazis would understand. Jews got yellow stars to
wear in death camps. Gays got pink triangles.
This president doesn’t have political opponents. Those who
launched the Russia probe are “evil.” Democrats, Trump added last week, are “sick, sick people.” He
denigrated Rep. Adam Schiff, calling him “pencil-neck,” the same kind of
juvenile dehumanization that makes cruelty in any middle school easier for kids
who take immature pleasure in hating their peers.
Like any school bully, Trump knows what he’s doing when he
stokes hate. The label “sick” is a favorite in speeches and tweets. You
have the “sicko” school shooters and “sick” terrorists. And it’s no coincidence
he also labels President Obama and James Comey “sick.” Sen. John Tester he
called “very dishonest and sick” when he ran for reelection in 2018. Megyn
Kelly was “sick” when she criticized Candidate Trump. All the reporters at The New York Times: “These people are
sick.”
“Sick” people – as in deranged school shooters – are often a
threat. When the president lambasts sick opponents, he wants his fans to feel
the same stomach-churning fear they might if a psychopath was loose in their
town and had kidnapped a toddler at the nearest park.
Trump’s
Orange Fuhrer-alter ego.
Trump’s Orange Fuhrer-alter ego is increasingly on display.
When he said recently that Rep. Schiff should be “forced to resign” from Congress,
it was probably the first time any chief executive has ever made such a demand.
One is reminded of Nazis purging the Reichstag of representatives who were deemed
unsuitably loyal to Hitler and the Third Reich. Trump has called those
who launched the Russian investigation “treasonous” when the punishment for
such a crime is death. When reporters call him out for policy blunders, for an
endless stream of lies, for bizarre behavior related to the Russia probe, they
are not doing what the free press has always done best, holding the powerful to
account. In Trump’s world only hate can suffice. Those who fail to spew the
kind of propaganda he likes are “the enemies of the people.”
It’s the language of Adolf Hitler, c. 1933, and it’s sad to see Trump’s 43% don’t understand how dangerous he is.
POSTSCRIPT: For purposes of comparison, see: “I Read Mein Kampf, So
You Don’t Have To.”
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Trump isn't Hitler; but he uses the same kind of language. |
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