What He Says<\/p>\n
Since the first day of the Trump campaign there have been outrageous statements.\u00a0 From Mexican \u201crapists and criminals at the border\u201d to \u201cbleeding from whatever\u201d to \u201cbanning Muslims,\u201d President Trump has found a way to encourage his base and inflame his opponents.\u00a0 The energy, anxiety, and outrage these statements produced took a whole lot of time and resources from \u00a0Trump\u2019s opposition, such that \u201cwiser heads\u201d\u00a0(such as Rachel Maddow on MSNBC) began to say:\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t listen to what he says, watch what he does.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the \u201cdoing\u201d that was changing the country:\u00a0 trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act; giving vast tax cuts to the wealthiest (and vastly enlarging the National Debt;) packing the Federal Courts with appointees, some of whom were rated \u201cnot qualified\u201d by the American Bar Association; tearing children from their parents at the border.\u00a0 Those actions required energy enough, without the constant irritation of the Tweets and the Fox interviews.<\/p>\n
But what we have seen in the past two weeks is that what \u201che\u201d says has had more impact than we realized.\u00a0The old adage, \u201cwords have consequences\u201d is ultimately being applied to Donald Trump as well. What he has said, more perhaps than what he has done, has inflamed the political and cultural divides of America.\u00a0 That inferno of rhetoric has pushed many Americans to the edges of their political views; and to those who are already deranged, pushed them into the abyss of violence and hate.<\/p>\n
Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little Abolitionist lady of Cincinnati, was driven by the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act to write a novel, Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin.\u00a0 <\/em>It was the story of slaves in the South, beaten, killed, willing to do anything to escape their bondage.\u00a0 Eliza, a mother of a five-year-old boy, carries him from ice chunk to ice chunk across the near-frozen Ohio River to reach freedom.\u00a0 Uncle Tom, the kind elder slave of the story, is beaten to death by his master.<\/p>\n In the North the story inflamed passions, giving energy to the growing Abolitionist movement.\u00a0 While only a small minority of people in the free states were Abolitionists, they had a strong voice in newspapers read throughout the nation, and with the publication of Stowe\u2019s book, found even greater power.<\/p>\n In the South the book was read as well, as an outrageous \u201ccreation\u201d of a Northerner\u2019s mind.\u00a0 It was used to convince slave owners that the Federal government would never allow slavery to continue, and was held up for ridicule by slave owners who didn\u2019t treat their slaves with such brutality.<\/p>\n During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe.\u00a0 \u201cSo you\u2019re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war\u201d he supposedly said.\u00a0 He recognized the role that \u201cwhat she said\u201d had in pushing the nation to extremes, leaving no middle ground left for political compromise.\u00a0 The compromisers, Stephen Douglas who offered to let states vote slave or free, and John Bell who hoped to focus US attention away from slavery, both were left in electoral defeat.\u00a0 The extremes, Lincoln restricting slavery\u2019s expansion, and Breckenridge calling for total slavery, were all that was left.<\/p>\n While I do not think America today is heading to a Civil War, the point to be made is that words in fact \u201cdo matter.\u201d\u00a0 What is said contributes to forcing each side farther apart.\u00a0 Add that to the political forces that already encourage polarization:\u00a0the huge amounts of money contributed by a few ideological billionaires, the division of our media into left and right, the divisive impact of the structural changes made in gerrymandering, and the increasing income inequality in America; and we have a divided country.<\/p>\n And in that division, the extremes go even farther to the edge.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s bombs in the mail, shooters at the Synagogue, or a black child shot at for knocking on the front door; the deranged find it easier to act.<\/p>\n Thousands of people have left their homeland looking for safety and security.\u00a0 They are carrying their children through a harrowing thousand-mile march in the hot Central American sun.\u00a0 They sleep in the street at night; they take what generosity the local townspeople can give.\u00a0 They are doing what many immigrants to America have done:\u00a0 they have decided to risk the dangers of travel, to give their families an opportunity to grow in peace.\u00a0 They have risked all to leave the gangs and the death and the poverty behind.<\/p>\n But the \u201cwords\u201d of the President are those of hate:\u00a0 invasion, infection, a \u201chorde\u201d coming to attack.\u00a0 And those words are serving the purpose:\u00a0 Americans who normally would have sympathy for the refugee\u2019s plight, are now convinced we are facing a siege .\u00a0 Troops are being sent to the border (even though they cannot, by law, actually police the border.)<\/p>\n