This is a message to everyone who works with Donald Trump.
How much more of this are you prepared to take?
How much longer will you stand at the side of a President who
watches anti-Nazi protesters resist neo-Nazi and white supremacist thugs in Charlottesville, Virginia, and says
'There are two sides to this'?
How much longer are you prepared to give your support to a man
who says there were 'many very fine people' among the neo-Nazis and white
supremacists?
Was one of those very fine people the man who organised the
protest, Jason Kessler, 'to show that folks can stand up for white people'? Who
a local Republican congressman, Rep. Tom Garrett, called a 'racist ideologue'?
Was he one of the 'many very fine people'?
Jared Kushner. Ivanka Trump. How long will you stand at the side
of a man who defends racists shouting anti-Jewish slogans?
General John Kelly. General James Mattis. General H.R. McMaster.
How long will you serve a commander-in-chief who sees no difference between
Nazis and anti-Nazis, between racists and anti-racists, bigots and anti-bigots?
America's former presidents. Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush,
Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama. How long will it take for you to
publish a joint statement, signed by each one of you, denouncing the bigotry of
your successor?
America's archbishops, cardinals, rabbis, imams -- how long will
it take for you to denounce, together, with one powerful voice, a President who
espouses causes that run counter to everything you believe in?
All US presidents pledge at their inauguration to 'preserve,
protect and defend the constitution of the United States.' How long will it
take for you to acknowledge that this President is doing none of those things?
That this President neither respects nor understands the US constitution.
That he is leading your country towards the abyss, both at home and overseas.
And that you are standing by. Watching.
The accounts I've read of Trump suggest, apart from his father, his greatest political influence was Roy Cohn. Cohn was an architect of McCarthyism, and, like McCarthy, was cast from "society" as society denounced the practice of McCarthyism. Though, despite the denouncements, in reality, society continued its slightly more subtle practice of McCarthyism for decades after. It's easy enough to imagine a current development whereby Trump is cast as a horrid aberration (not a piece of a pattern within a trajectory) and vociferously denounced, while racism serves as a cover and tool of a divide and conquer form of class warfare even if slightly more subtly practiced by those 'good, responsible, centrist' society voices that denounce Trump for years to come. Maybe a historian will come to call it ironic.
ReplyDeleteI should add, I do think Trump's a horror, but I'm less than certain that he's that much of a complete aberration. Just as I'm unsure that his castigation will bring about the end of what he seems to represent.
(Response to Tinkersdamn above)
ReplyDeleteI see Trump as being more of an abhoration than an aberration. I think that's how history will note him, too, though I doubt if he'll be remembered for very long.