The Box is Open
I am sitting here, 2:46 pm on Saturday afternoon, August 11th. I watch my computer and my television, and see the white supremacists in Charlottesville, and the protestors countering their views. A car plows into the counter-protestors, several are injured, perhaps killed. The box is open.
The box is open – the box of hate and violence. Our President has brought into the White House advisors who have pandered to this view. They have changed the language of the movement, “metropolitan bias” has replaced “Commie Jews.” But the Breitbart alumni, Miller and Bannon and Gorka, have made this terrible undercurrent of America acceptable again.
Some will say that this in no different than Black Lives Matter and President Obama. But of course that’s not true: Obama recognized why Black Lives Matter was important; he never justified violence. And of course, Black Lives Matter does have a point, that it does seem like their lives don’t have the same value to society as others.
The two movements are different because Black Lives Matter was not a movement of hate, but of respect. The White Supremacist movement, with the neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan doctrines that serves as its foundation, is based on hatred of those that are different.
The box is open. The President has used this hate to help fuel his campaign, and election. He allows Bannon, Miller and Gorka to continue to represent him, and through him, the authority of the United States.
We don’t know who was driving the car that crashed into those folks, yet. We don’t know that it was a “white terrorist” attack. It really doesn’t matter. Trump opened up “the box” of racial hatred, and we are now reaping the whirlwind.
The President is about to speak. He didn’t say a word about a mosque attacked in Minnesota last week, and he has “tweeted” that this is “sad.” I expect his words will be “sad” too.
I’ll add more later…
The President is speaking. It’s all about him. “Children should be able to play” and “we are doing so well.” My administration is “restoring the sacred bonds of loyalty.” Sacred bonds of loyalty – a term that harkens back to the basis of the “alt-right” philosophy of tribal loyalty, not particularly accepting of a multi-cultural society (1).
I know I long for President Obama to make sense of the senseless actions we have seen today. I know – but I wish the current President would be a leader instead of a follower of those who he works for, oops, works for him.
Just a quick update (Monday 8/14). It was Bannon and Miller writing Trump’s comments on Saturday – and those comments still stand