My wife and I watched most of Donald Trump’s speech in South Carolina last night when it came on MSNBC, and it was truly frightening. His attacks on reporters as “scum”, the mob chanting down the protesters from Black Lives Matters. And of course the candidate’s repeated demonization of Muslims as an alien force in the American political body, seeking to impose sharia law on our women– in an effort to justify his proposals for a ban on any Muslims entering the United States, as well as for surveillance of mosques.
We should be grateful today for the brave protesters who took risks to disrupt this hateful message, for the statement from CAIR last night that Trump sounds more like the leader of a lynch mob than the leader of a great nation. Also to Jeb Bush for stepping up to call Trump “unhinged” and calmly dismissing his policy ideas as “unserious.” And the Anti Defamation League for stating: “Mr. Trump’s plan to bar people from entry to the United States based on their religion is unacceptable and antithetical to American values.”
My wife announced this morning that she will break her vow and work for Hillary Clinton if Trump is the Republican nominee. She isn’t the only person who worries that our country is vulnerable, that people could vote for a fascist in frightening times. She says his Islamophobia echoes anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Today the Philadelphia Daily News makes the Hitler comparison. Mark Peterson did the Fuhrer shot last week.
I believe that the U.S. is a lot better than Trump, that he’s a flash in the pan. But I said that months ago; and Trump has only gone up in the polls and now sanctifies his entrance into the race down an elevator in Trump Tower last June as a turning point in American history. It’s disturbing to see the connection he makes with angry people. “We have a noisy majority. They used to call it the quiet majority,” Trump said last night. That is the definition of demagoguery: Trump sacrifices any idea of independent leadership to the mood of the crowd, only promising strength to back them up. The New York Times has done an analysis of Trump’s output for a week to demonstrate the “dark power” of his language to “stoke… the fears and grievances of Americans.”
That article does not include the word “scum,” which Trump used at least three times last night before I turned him off:
Some of the media’s terrific, but most of it, 70 percent 75 percent is absolute dishonest– absolute scum. Remember that, Scum, scum. They’re totally dishonest people.
No he didn’t call Muslims scum, but the feeling came through when he proudly read his anti-Muslim proposals.
He also sounded the misogyny when he baited NBC’s Katy Tur over a report that he had left an appearance early because of interruptions, which the thin-skinned candidate said was a lie. “She’s back there. Little Katy. She’s back there. What a lie it was. Katy Tur… It was a total lie. Third rate reporter.” Vilified in such a personal way, I wondered how fearful Tur was.
I still think Trump is going away: that there is too much intelligence in American public opinion and Iowa and New Hampshire voters to license his racism and megalomania. There will be many opportunities to stop him in the next year, but now is the best one. Now’s the time for good people to speak up and reject his message, and wear a yellow star, too– say, Muslims are our brothers and sisters.
I agree, Trump will not be the candidate. But he has so dumbed down political discourse, dunked it so deep in poisoned mud, that his rivals could easily be mistaken for moderates. It was supposed that he would destroy the right wing by becoming its reductio ad nauseum. He may turn out to be its rescuer.
Philip
You are a believer and I wish your hope of the american intelligence comes true, however I see a very black cloud on our horizon. Trump is an idiot, however this will not be the first time ignorant and uneducated people elect a clown to be their leader. 82 years ago another great nation, much better educated than ours, also chose a clown with terrifying consequences.
The masters of this nation did not want a well educated and informed people who might question certain political processes, so we were told that in a gathering or party do not talk politics or religion, because it may lead to disagreements, so the average american have very little idea of politics and world affairs. Newspapers are no help, they never print the truth, you find more about baseball games than world affairs. You can forget about most of the schools, a great number of high school graduates can hardly read their diplomes, and even colleges turn out graduates without much brain. Similar to “keep them in the kitchen, barefooted and pregnant” of the past thinking about women.
The greatest number of the voters always elect the same party candidate, women may change if the other candidate is cute. We need a revolution without blood letting to shake up this nation. Having said above, Trump has a very good chance to be the candidate of the Republicans and unless he makes a terrible mistake, our next president. He is aggressive, ignorant and stupid, very much liked by our similar citizens, and there are many of them.
On the other hand I am not much in favour of having Hillary as our Commander in Chief or any other candidate of the republicans.
My wife announced this morning that she will break her vow and work for Hillary Clinton if Trump is the Republican nominee.
i read several tweets copied in the msm (i think it was a wapo article) citing trump’s anti muslim rhetoric as being, primarily, a gift for clinton. i so wish she wouldn’t get the dem nomination. i won’t be able to vote for her. i would stand down.
So far, Trump is the only candidate who appears likely to introduce an independent view of Israel into the election. He’s pandering to the right-wing mob right now, but, if he wins the Republican nomination, if he’s serious about gaining power (I think he is), he will re-discover various issues that made him a Democrat for much of his life – pro-choice, e.g., And he’s already stood up and told the Republican Jewish Coalition that I know you’re not going to support me, you want a candidate you can control with your money, I understand that because I respect people who know how to make deals, and I’m not hear to be bought, [like these other candidates], and, “I don’t know that Israel wants peace.”
Half the Democratic party believes the US should use its support for Israel as a lever to force change in Israeli policy toward settlements, the floor at the Democratic convention booed Obama’s force-thru of the Jerusalem-as-Israel’s-capital plank, all representing Democratic votes that Trump can go after, once he’s focused on getting out in front of and demagoguing the whole mob, not just the right-wingers. So Mondoweiss should reflect on the old adage: be careful what you wish for (a wide open debate on Israel in the 2016 election), because Trump bashing Rubio and then Hillary for being bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby may be what we get, bragging that only he can cut a deal in the Middle East because only he is prepared and capable of negotiating with “the Big Jews” who back Israel and own Congress, because only he isn’t taking their money, isn’t even asking for it.
The Elite Establishment isn’t prepared for a fully open discussion about Israel, and Trump can channel both right and left wing frustration over that fact to change the conversation. Phil like David Brooks has predicted Trump’s demise over and over, but the frustration over the lack of accountability within the elite establishment is very widespread – only the elite establishment are immune to it because they’re willfully blind to it – and Trump is the only candidate who’s prepared to talk truth to the power-base funding the elite establishment. That entire elite establishment is now united in bashing Trump – Hitler-like picture of Trump at the RJC just an example, so far to little effect – and his elite enemies may just be his super-power.
Wait till he’s got the Republican Party nomination, if he gets it, and his anti-immigrant pitch can be expanded to go after both white blue collar workers and the African-American voters, many of whom deeply resent undocumented workers taking low-wage work, and legal immigrants climbing the economic ladder above them. His anti-Jihadist/anti-Muslim pitch can be expanded to go after Neocons and messianic Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, who crave a clash of civilizations – why would we buy a clash of civilizations? I don’t want a clash of civilizations, that would be “stupid” as Obama also said [don’t do stupid stuff]. I still think his thousands of Muslims cheering in New Jersey remark, coupled with his claim to have the best memory in the world, was tied to a specific broadcast that I think was on Fox and that coupled images of thousands of Palestinians cheering in the Middle East, with the story of the five Israelis cheering in New Jersey. Those four broadcasts have now been “disappeared,” but here’s Justin Raimondo’s discussion of them way back when on Antiwar.com: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j100402.html
Annie,
you wrote, regarding Hillary, “i won’t be able to vote for her. i would stand down.”
Me too.