I generally write about the science and pseudoscience of parenting, but it’s hard to feel that has much importance at the moment, when our country faces an unprecedented threat to its existence as a beacon of freedom and justice.
Yes, I can hear you saying: What’s the big deal? Another day another outrageous statement from Donald Trump. But yesterday August 9 was not just another day. It was the day that Donald Trump made it clear that he views violence as a political tool. And anyone who thinks he wouldn’t expand upon its use when president is not paying attention.
Yesterday, Trump didn’t merely threaten Hillary Clinton, he threatened all of us.
What did Trump say?
According to the HuffPo piece Donald Trump Suggests Shooting Hillary Clinton, Her Supreme Court Picks, Or Both:
Donald Trump on Tuesday warned his supporters that if Hillary Clinton is elected president and appoints judges to the Supreme Court, there is nothing anyone can do about it. But then he added that, given the Second Amendment, maybe there is.
“If she gets to pick her judges ― nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said with a shrug at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. “Although, the Second Amendment people. Maybe there is. I don’t know.”
In other words, Trump was issuing incitement to violence.
His supporters, parroting his campaign, insist that it was misunderstood or it was a joke.
Guess what? That doesn’t change anything.
No one who loves America should ever incite violence against rivals even as a joke, as a mistake, or in any other possible way. If Trump were truly so inarticulate or clueless, he has disqualified himself for dog-catcher, let alone president.
Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-Un and other tyrants and he’s made no secret of the fact that what he finds most attractive is their ability to suppress, punish and kill their enemies. Trump has repeatedly condoned violence, not merely in general, but within the same room where he is actually speaking. He has repeatedly encouraged his followers to beat up dissenters within rallies and offered to pay their legal fees when arrested.
In regard to Hillary Clinton he has suggested that she should be shot and at a minimum, she should be jailed. That’s what dictators do with they gain power; they arrest their rivals and kill them. That’s certainly what Trump’s buddy Putin does; that’s certainly what Saddam Hussein did and apparently it’s what Trump admires most about the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.
As he explained in January of this year:
And all of a sudden — and you know it’s pretty amazing when you think of it — how does he do that? Even though it is a culture and it’s a cultural thing, he goes in, he takes over, and he’s the boss,” Trump recalled. “It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one. I mean, this guy doesn’t play games. And we can’t play games with him. Because he really does have missiles. And he really does have nukes.”
He’s inciting violence when he’s on his “best behavior” as a candidate and has no power. What will he do if he’s given access to power? He will inaugurate a reign of terror against his political and business rivals. He’ll start by locking up Hillary Clinton but that will be just the beginning. He will attempt to punish anyone who has ever opposed him.
Consider the case of a reporter who wrote about him unfavorably As hedge fund manager Neil Barsky recently revealed in a chilling piece in The NYTimes:
Weeks later, after I wrote a tough article [in The Wall Street Journal] about Mr. Trump’s finances, his public relations representative called The New York Post’s Page Six and said, as I was told later by a senior Post reporter, “How would you like to destroy the career of a Wall Street Journal reporter?” The story that resulted made a series of wild and bogus accusations, saying I had extorted the tickets, asked for a suite at the Taj, and that out of anger that I hadn’t received more favors, had written negative articles about him.
Years later when Trump met Barsky socially, Trump did not deny the effort to smear Barsky:
“You hit me, then I hit you,” he said, with the wistful air of a nostalgic boxer. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re even.”
Electing Trump to the presidency would massively increase his power to threaten, to imprison, to encourage and to countenance violence.
Anyone who thinks that would be restricted to Hillary Clinton, Democrats and racial minorities has not been paying attention. Ted Cruz would be ruined or imprisoned on false charges or both. And if Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell think that endorsing Trump would offer them protection, they’re breathtakingly naive.
Next up would be Trump’s business rivals and journalists who criticized him in any way. Trump views the presidency as a way to build his brand and increase his currently meager fortune. There would be no way to compete with the Trump family in any marketplace.
Anyone who doesn’t realize that is a fool.
But the biggest fools of all are Trump supporters. For some reason they seem to believe that he will help them despite the massive amount of evidence that he has never given a damn about them and doesn’t give a damn about them now. He is the personification of their economic troubles, a business leader who imports foreign labor and produces his products in other countries, thereby depriving American blue collar workers of desperately needed jobs.
He will do NOTHING to improve the lot of the angry, poor white men who flock to him and if they complain, he’ll punish them with whatever methods he has at his disposal.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the political classes of Europe believed the American experiment was doomed. Violence was and had always been the best way to deal with political rivals and it was believed impossible that power would be handed over based on the will of the people. The presidential election of 1800, Adams vs. Jefferson, was a watershed in American and possibly even world history. The two candidates hated each other bitterly, but when Adams lost the election, there was no violence. That fact is part of what makes America the greatest country in the history of the world.
Donald Trump has signaled in every way possible that he would inaugurate an American reign of terror. He has incited and countenanced violence at his rallies, has trumpeted his admiration for dictators and has threatened violence to his political rivals.
Most people understand this already. That’s why Trump has lost the support of establishment Republicans and why many are calling for him to be removed from the ticket. But Trump’s supporters still think, in spite of all the evidence, that by electing him they will help themselves. Donald Trump has never lifted a finger to help blue collar workers and he isn’t going to start now. Their naïveté might be charming in other circumstances, but not in this one. And when they finally figure out that he has betrayed them, there won’t be a damned thing they can do about it.
Everyone knows that Trump is an inveterate liar, a cheat, and a person who never pays for what he can steal … and those are his good qualities. But that pales into insignificance beside the biggest threat of all, political violence.
Donald Trump is the greatest threat to America today, even greater than foreign terrorism. The terrorist threat of violence comes from outside and can easily be withstood by a country as powerful and united against terror as ours. Trump portends the evil of domestic terrorism, a wholesale takeover of the machinery of government so it can be directed at punishing those who threaten his interests.
Yesterday, Trump didn’t merely threaten Clinton, he threatened all of us.
We would be fools to ignore it.
