August 3, 2019: Trump Is a Master at Using Dehumanizing Language

 

8/3/19: Saturday morning, Orange Leader’s Twitter feed reveals again, how dangerous his rhetoric can be.

 

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“Language is the soil of thought.” 

James Russell Lowell

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Dehumanizing language is essential to stirring hatred. 

 

Just hours before the massacre in El Paso, President Trump is retweeting a post from Katie Hopkins, a Brit, who has compared migrants and refugees to cockroaches. This morning, Hopkins happens to be focused on a Syrian immigrant (dog whistle: “Muslim”) who used a machete to hack to death some poor fellow (dog whistle: white gentleman, eating a crumpet) on a London street. 

She is stirring as much visceral fear as she can. Trump decides it would be great to magnify the reach of her hate. 

The morning is young. Trump retweets Hopkins again. This time the hate (and hate’s handmaiden: fear) is directed at London’s mayor, which makes you wonder why the president is concerned. Hopkins has referred to the mayor, who is short of stature and a Muslim as, “The nipple-height Mayor of Londonistan [who] has NEVER been so unpopular. He has MINUS approval ratings because we are stab-city [emphasis added, unless otherwise  noted].…”

 

“An Anglo man came here to kill Hispanics.” 

It’s the ultimate, bloody irony. Trump, on Saturday morning, is focused on the crime problems of London, where a noticeable uptick in stabbing attacks has occurred. Suddenly, gunfire erupts in El Paso, Texas. “An Anglo man came here to kill Hispanics,” a local sheriff will say. Heavily armed, carrying military-style weaponry, he kills and wounds 46 human beings. 

Consider the similarities in the language of the hater with the gun and the hater in the White House. “You look at what is marching up, that is an invasion!” Trump told fans at a recent rally, warning against migrants approaching our southern border. 

“Language,” James Russell Lowell once said, “is the soil of thought.” 

Trump plants noxious weeds and claims innocence when they take root and flourish. In a Trump 2020 campaign add on Facebook, we hear him shout: “We have an INVASION! It’s CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION!” And with that, the soil for slaughter in El Paso is seeded. 

“This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” the killer claims in a manifesto of sorts. The soil of thought. 

The massacre is the harvest.

 

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PREDICTABLY, before the smoke stops curling from the barrel of the killer’s automatic weapon, hypocrites begin offering up hollow response. In El Paso, 20 are dead, 26 wounded. Many victims have been hit multiple times. Sen. Majority Leader McConnell says the victims are in his and his wife’s thoughts and prayers. 

(The N.R.A., however, is in his pockets.)

 

At that moment, by cosmic mischance, “Massacre Mitch” is sitting on a bill, passed by the House of Representatives, to require universal background checks before anyone can purchase a gun. McConnell has refused to allow the bill to come to the floor for debate. In fact, GOP senators are terrified that if they address the problem of gun violence, the N.R.A. will turn against them. The American people, generally, agree that action is long overdue. A recent Harvard University study found that 83 percent of gun owners approved of expanded background checks. 

Fox News reports that 91 percent of all Americans favor universal background checks, 84 percent favor mental health checks on gun buyers and 72 percent support raising the age to purchase a gun to 21. Six in ten would ban the sale of assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. (See: 8/4/19.)