Trump's Rhetoric Goes to a New and More Dangerous Level
'Migrants aren't people,' and if he loses, 'it will be a blood bath'
In Russia, millions are expressing how Russian democracy is superior to Western-style democracy. Undistracted by the silliness of choice, citizens fulfill their “civil duty” by heading to polls to cast their votes for “the one.” As they pridefully say, “If not Putin, then who?” Russian democracy is so tidy, and except for the acts of a few bad apples, it really is something to be envied.
(Hand to the mouth, I fake a cough): Bullshit.
Yes, what I wrote in the first paragraph is nonsense, but this is what most Russians feel. In fact, democracy is sloppy, messy, and unsightly and reveals all the cuts, bruises, blemishes, and belly rolls of a shirt that fits just a bit too snugly. America’s version of democracy is under attack by the right. It is under attack by Republicans because they are pushing extremist, racist, and oppressive political ideas that the majority of Americans don’t accept. They are passing laws to suppress the vote. SCOTUS, since 2012, has supported the limitations on voting and democracy hobbled and retreating in many states, in fact, it becomes fitter as muscles that had not been in use get stretched and worked. This, too, is happening in the United States.
As January 6th, however, demonstrated, there is a large swath of stupid in our country that struggles to filter the rhetoric of right-wing politicians and most prominently, Donald Trump. These people react to the emotional rantings and lies of Trump in the way the more sane among us react to calls for action by public health authorities and, say, neighborhood watch committees. On January 6th, Trump was taken aback by the fact that people had stormed the Capitol in the way they had — “My people would never do that. They had to be Antifa.” He just couldn’t get over the idea that, somehow, his words had driven his people to be so violent and ugly.
Trump is a dumbass, and it takes a genuinely insane or ignorant person to believe that as president, his words for many are not similar to direct orders from God himself. Donald Trump, four years later, understands the power of his words. He understands that they have the effect of being divine calls to action.
If he did not win this year’s presidential election, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”
Mr. Trump also stoked fears about the influx of migrants coming into the United States at the southern border. As he did during his successful campaign in 2016, Mr. Trump used incendiary and dehumanizing language to cast many migrants as threats to American citizens.
He asserted, without evidence, that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals (Migrants Are Not People).”
In the same fantastic way that Putin sells to Russians that he is the embodiment of Russia’s democratic soul, so too Trump now suggests— and I am sure most in attendance believe him — that if he loses in November, Democrats will kill democracy once and for all. In the same way that every problem in Russia is the fault of foreigners — and most Russians believe this — so too, Trump has successfully indoctrinated MAGidiots to think undocumented immigrants cause every problem in the U.S.. 98 percent of crimes in the U.S. daily are crimes Americans commit against each other. The most violent states in the U.S. are the ones with the most liberal gun laws — immigrants? No. (Raise your hand to your mouth and fake a cough: Bullshit.)
Trump is using language that not even Putin has yet used. Putin doesn’t need Russians taking the law into their own hands. Vigilantism is civil society, and this is something Russia never wants. Hitler, though, wanted Germans to help with the removal of Jews from German society. He wanted God-fearing Germans to accept that Jews were rat-like and carried diseases — “If you don’t kill them, they will infect you and your families, and you instead will die.” Patriotic duty demanded that good Germans — and good MAGidiots — violently oppose Jews (immigrants).
Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden a “stupid president” several times and at one point referred to him as a “dumb son of a — ” before trailing off. He also compared Ms. Willis’s first name to a vulgarity, called Mr. Newsom “Gavin New-scum” and took jabs at Mr. Pritzker’s physical appearance (Migrants Are Not People).
Trump is more off the rails today than he has ever been. He realizes that if — and hopefully when — he loses, age and his declining mental health will quickly exile him to bumbling irrelevance. He understands that the next eight months may be the last of his life spent publically worshipping himself. The rallies of the stupid will come to an end, and Donald Trump will creep back into the shadows of dangerous, racist ignorance and slowly rot. This is a moment many people pray for, and it will happen sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, Trump’s “calls to action” will inspire a lot of stupid people out there, and so regrettably, there will be violence. There is a good chance our democracy will not just survive but will come out of this fitter than before, but if look at the faces of the dummies clapping as they listen to Trump’s sermons of hate, you realize how hard it is to figure out who is the friend and who is foe in our hobbled democracy.
