Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Trump Rally Chants "Send Her Back"
Greenville, North Carolina, is probably a decent little town full of warm-hearted people who want the best for their neighbors. Last night at the rally Donald Trump held there, one would be hard put to see that. It was a hateful, off-brand Nuremberg rally where the president stirred up the crowd against Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, a citizen who came to the US at the age of 12 as a refugee from Somalia. For five minutes, he ranted against her, and the crowd responded by chanting "Send her back." It's only a matter of time before someone turns violent.
Mr. Trump had scheduled this event almost immediately after Robert Mueller was scheduled to testify before Congress. The idea was to provide Fox News and other propaganda outlets with footage they could run to undermine the character of the Marine veteran and former FBI Director. Since that testimony won't take place for another week, the rally went ahead without a purpose. So, Mr. Trump decided to attack Congresswoman Omar because he has nothing else to talk about.
One has long given up on Mr. Trump's ability to improve his behavior. He has been a lost cause for decades. What one had hoped was that American citizens were, at heart, better than he. Clearly, some are not.
According to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, "ethnic slurs and other verbal or physical conduct because of nationality are illegal if they are severe or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment, interfere with work performance, or negatively affect job opportunities.
"Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person's foreign accent or comments like, 'Go back to where you came from,' whether made by supervisors or by co-workers," it adds.
In other words, had Mr. Trump or any of the chanting oiks used the exact same words in their businesses or places of employment, they would face legal action. Free speech in a place of business is more circumscribed than at a political rally and rightly so. However, the fact that the sanctions are less for such speech at a rally doesn't change the character or quality of the speech itself. It remains evil.
There are individuals in American society (in all societies for that matter) who are unstable and easily swayed to act violently. Lee Harvey Oswald, the Manson Family, John Hinkley, Jr., and Mark David Chapman are just a few examples. Mr. Trump and an overwhelming majority of his followers may not have it in them to engage in violence; Mr. Trump, after all, dodged the draft because of cowardice. But it only takes one individual who has no compunction about violence to act.
Should something violent occur, one hopes that it will be an isolated incident, but as any police officer worth his or her pay knows, copycat crimes are a danger. At the same time, retaliation is equally possible and unpalatable. The Founders of the Republic were careful to create mechanisms that allowed for political disputes to be resolved short of violence, off-ramps as it were. Yet the key to making the constitutional machinery work is wanting it to work.
The Trump re-election campaign has no desire to address problems nor to bring new Trump voters on board. The strategy is to continue the grievance propaganda to keep his base energized. He believes that his 40-45% support can be an electoral college majority if they turn up in sufficient numbers, and that gets done by stoking their rage.
Most analysts believe that the election of 2020 will be decided in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Milwaukee. The formerly blue states that backed President Trump by very narrow margins are going to prove decisive, and the suburban districts that voted in large numbers for Mr. Trump will be the battle ground. The people who live there are largely white, reasonably well-off and fairly comfortable. They may well harbor racial animus or even enmity, but they don't want to be called racists. The women there may not like abortion, but they don't want some male politician telling them what they can and cannot do with their bodies.
The re-election bid is running against that, and Mr. Trump may be in for a surprise if the tone continues. One can only hope.
© Copyright 2019 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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