8/4/19: Sunday, shock and anger turn to outrage. Americans wake to the news that there has been a second bloody slaughter, this time in Dayton, Ohio. Nine dead. Twenty-seven wounded.
The shooter manages to inflict this damage in thirty-two seconds. Fortunately, nearby police on patrol arrive and shoot him dead. The killer is using a drum magazine, holding 100 rounds.
He’s carrying an assault-style rifle, of course. We learn later that he’s wearing a mask, body armor and hearing protection. His attack, like the attack in El Paso, has been carefully planned.
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Trump never talks about white guy mass murderers. Doesn't fit his narrative. |
Are video games the problem?
Numbed by the news, I rub sleep from my eyes and turn to Fox News to see how the story is covered. Rep. Kevin McCarthy is guest on Maria Bartiromo’s show. If you watch much Fox, you can predict what she’s going to ask – and if you’ve ever listened to McCarthy, you know his answer.
Bartiromo wonders if McCarthy believes video games are the problem. “Is this mental?” she adds.
(Fuck,
I mutter under my breathe.)
McCarthy refers to the killers as “monsters,” but utters not a syllable about how we can keep automatic weapons out of monsters’ hands.
Bartiromo talks about anger on social media. “Words matter,” she says.
(Yes,
we know.)
We can predict, again, that they won’t bring up the fact Trump recently complained about crime in Baltimore but failed to offer help. He mocked the city and its mostly African American political leadership (the “other” in the eyes of his predominantly white base), using the homicide rate to score political points. It should have been a vomit-inducing moment for anyone possessed of normal human emotions. It was no surprise coming from Trump.
The Baltimore Sun provided an outraged summary of events:
Minutes into his Thursday night campaign rally in Cincinnati, President Donald Trump continued his nearly weeklong bashing of
the city of Baltimore.
Early in his speech, the Republican president railed against
cities led by Democrats.
“The Democrat record is one of neglect and corruption and decay,
total decay,” Trump said to applause.
He then turned to Baltimore.
“The homicide rate in Baltimore is significantly higher than El
Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala,” Trump told his supporters. He paused.
“Gimme a place that you think is pretty bad. Gimme a place,” Trump
said, adopting the intonation of a stand-up comic and motioning to someone in
the crowd. “The guy says, ‘Afghanistan.’ I believe it’s higher than
Afghanistan. In our country. Think of that.”
Trump’s voice turned sarcastic.
“If we’re wrong, they’ll tell us tomorrow. It’ll be headlines:
‘Trump exaggerated.’ I do believe the rate is higher than Afghanistan,” the
president said.
Trump doesn’t really care about the blood and the gore. Trump is scoring points with his base by instilling fear of the “other.” The African Americans in a crime-ridden city. The Muslim mayor and the Muslim immigrant in London.
“Stab-city.”
The “other,” in Trump’s telling, those people with menacing,
darker faces. “Cockroaches,” one might start to believe. (See: 8/3/19.)
*
I SOON GIVE UP on Fox News and begin switching between channels and go online for information.
First, we can start with Trump’s tone-deaf comments about Baltimore and his misplaced concern. It’s a city of 610,000 and suffered 318 murders last year. The president turns this bloody mess into a point of mockery. He’s not going to visit Baltimore or any of the other cities that have worse murder rates, not even crime-ridden cities in the reddest of states. He’s going to stick to private golf clubs every weekend instead. Statistics vary slightly, but in 2018, Baltimore was the seventh most deadly city in the U.S., with .52 murders for every 10,000 residents. East St. Louis was worst with 1.0 murders per 10,000. Lakeworth, Florida rounded out the “Top 30,” with .26.
What about London, where a Muslim mayor runs the show and Muslim immigrants run amok with machetes in their hands?
The city of 8,100,000 had 119 homicides as of November 13 last year, putting it on pace for 140 for the year.
That rate would be .02 homicides per 10,000.
Stabbings and all.
*
We’ve seen this gory scene play out before.
A SUNDAY AFTERNOON spent channel surfing proves grim. We’ve seen this gory scene play out before. What were the killer’s motives? Pundits offer theories. Police describe the armament employed. Politicians agree that lessons must be learned. A trauma surgeon in El Paso stands before the cameras and updates us on the condition of the wounded. Shaken survivors in Dayton describe what they saw in the dark hours Sunday morning. Then they weep. Even law enforcement authorities weep. Experts appear on every cable channel and describe the warning signs if you think someone you know, or know of, might have violent intent. Journalists look glum.
Jake Tapper on CNN seems unusually stony-faced. Words matter, of course. He wonders if Trump’s words have fueled the hate. In May, for example, this exchange at a Trump rally occurred. Tapper plays a clip. Trump asks the crowd for ideas to block migrants trying to cross the border:
“How do you stop these people?”
he asks.
“Shoot them!” a man in the
audience shouts.
The crowd laughs and Trump
smiles. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” he
says. “Only in the Panhandle.”
So, the killer in El Paso does just that. He drives down to
the border and opens fire, just like the man at the rally said.
*
THIS MUCH WAS OBVIOUS from the start. Trump is a hater of the worst kind. We had our first warning when Trump claimed for six years that President Obama (the “other” in right-wing land) wasn’t a U.S. citizen. Candidate Trump relented in a nine-word statement in 2016, only because campaign advisers warned his perceived racism was hurting his chances of winning.
Like Hitler and every other demagogue, Trump stirs crowds to hate for his own ends. Hate and fear Obama. Hate Mexicans, those dark-skinned “others,” those “murderers” and “rapists” that he talked about on the day he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower, hoping terrified Americans would soon vote for him. Like any demagogue, Trump set out to foster fear.
Since taking office, he has lashed out in all directions as only a skilled hater can. N.F.L. players who protested police brutality and protested the president’s policies, were “sons of bitches.” That is: You had a U.S. president labeling the mothers of African American football players “bitches.”
And maybe, he added, those players “shouldn’t be in this country” at all.
No other president has ever hated more Americans.
Is the president a racist? Trump hates so many groups and so many individuals, it’s hard to tell. Hitler had his “untermenschen” or “under men.” The Jews were “vermin” who must be extirpated. Trump retweets Katie Hopkins, with her “cockroach” comparisons and complains about “lowlifes” again and again. Andy McCabe, Ted Cruz, Elizabeth Warren and Omarosa – who he hired to work at the White House – are lowlifes. Omarosa is also a “dog.” Criminals are rabid “animals” in Trump’s mind. As such, they can be shot on sight. Muslims, as a group, are a terrorist threat. By the thousands, Trump claimed, they cheered in New Jersey on 9/11 when the Twin Towers fell. That hate-based claim won him a “Pants on Fire” rating from political fact-checking sites; but the seeds of hate took root, exactly as he hoped.
Trump hates so many people, it’s difficult to keep track of all whom he despises. He hated and still hates Obama. He hates Alec Baldwin and the producers of Saturday Night Live. He hates Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro. He hated John McCain most of all. He hates Jeff Bezos and Peggy Noonan and Don Lemon and LeBron James. He hates Rosie O’Donnell and calls her a “fat pig,” and Stormy Daniels, the porn star with whom he had sex, who he refers to as “horseface” now.
Dehumanization is
Trump’s stock in trade.
Stoke hate. Stoke fear. That’s what this president does. Race can be Trump’s fuel. Religion can be his fuel. Hate of the “other” can be his fuel. Fear that America is being destroyed by “liberals” can be his fuel. “I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our country,” he says recently, stirring the anger and hate, referring to four female Democratic lawmakers. It’s “our country,” he wants supporters to believe. It’s not their country. The four may be American citizens. No matter. They are “other.” Two are Muslim American. All four have brown skin. But they are “weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation.”
“Our great Nation.”
Not the nation of those “others.”
In tweet after tweet, Trump employs the word “destroy” to provoke irrational fear. Obama, he claimed, was out to destroy the “American dream.” Obama didn’t love this country. According to Trump, his enemies never do. “If @BarackObama really loved this country, he wouldn’t be destroying it.” Obama destroyed our children’s futures. He destroyed the middle class. “Obama is destroying the U.S.,” Trump once howled.
Trump’s world is crammed with enemies. Paranoia is a guiding light. When five police in Dallas were gunned down by a black man in 2016 – a heinous act without doubt – Trump stoked the fear of “others” again, this time the “criminal” blacks. “Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation,” he warned at the Republican National Convention that July. “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life [emphasis added].”
The killer of those officers was a hater, too. All haters are fundamentally alike. Some hate the Jews. Some hate the police. Some hate reporters who question what they say and do.
Trump does not rail about these shootings.
You might have thought, after these most recent killings, that Trump would be fired up about all the white mass murderers, who have done even worse damage than the Dallas murderer. These attackers are home-grown white men. These are haters who shot up Santa Fe, Texas (10 students and teachers killed), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (11 cut down at the Tree of Life synagogue), Thousand Oaks, California (12 killed in a bar), Parkland, Florida (17 students and teachers riddled with bullets), Sutherland Springs, Texas (26 slaughtered at prayer), and Las Vegas, Nevada (58 massacred with music in their ears). Trump does not rail about these shootings because the shooters are not “other.” He cannot use them to stir the hate of his base.
No American president has ever hated more Americans. He hates “liberals” and Democrats. Special Counsel Robert Mueller headed up a “gang of Democratic thugs.” The Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia planned to “destroy a great state.” Reporters who criticize the president are “crazed lunatics.” They are, in his view, “enemies of the people,” a line that echoes Herr Hitler in 1933. People who investigated his campaign and its many contacts with Russians were guilty of “TREASON.” Democrats who don’t support his border wall are “treasonous,” too.
Trump is master of the hater’s game – and his hateful words matter a great deal. Patrick Crusius, the suspect in the El Paso shooting, says in a 2,300-word “manifesto” that he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”
“My country,” he says.
Trump’s words echo
loud.
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