Last week, a Trump supporter from Florida named Cesar Sayoc sent explosive devices to CNN and several prominent Democrats. Many of Sayoc’s intended targets, all of whom or which have been attacked relentlessly by the president, are depicted in crosshairs on the side of Sayoc’s van. One portion of the van’s collage of decals reads “DISHONEST MEDIA,” a familiar refrain of Trump’s, alongside “CNN SUCKS.” The morning after the bomb scare forced CNN to evacuate its New York headquarters, Trump singled out the “Fake News” as being responsible for “the Anger we see today in our society.” He blamed the media again at a rally that night, minutes after preaching the need for unity. When asked the next day whether he would tone down his rhetoric, Trump pushed back. “I could really tone it up,” he said.
He wasn’t kidding. On Sunday night, the president echoed the side of Sayoc’s van in tweeting about how the “dishonest” media is to blame for the division in America. “The Fake News is doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country,” he wrote. “Actually, it is their Fake & Dishonest reporting which is causing problems far greater than they understand!”
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On Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence said that “everyone has their own style” and that “people on both sides of the aisle use strong language” in response to a question about Trump’s language. Paul Ryan wanly managed that “sometimes” Trump’s words can cause division. Others like McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul broadly condemned violence. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed that the bomber was a lone “nut job” who has nothing to do with the president. Still more, like Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), pointed the finger at Democrats. On Sunday, he tried to trick people into thinking House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was threatening Republicans by tweeting one of her quotes about the economic impact of denying climate change.
Not even two years into Trump’s tenure in office, attempts to bomb two former presidents, a host of other current and former political officials and prominent philanthropists and, of course, mass shootings, are subject to the cheapest attempt at his political spin. All that matters is absolving the president of any culpability.
Anti-Semitism is a disease without a cure and, seemingly, without end. It persists from generation to generation and society to society. People like Bowers have always been part of an ugly American fringe. Social media simply provides a powerful new mechanism for transmitting such long-standing venom and amplifying preexisting hatreds in an age of increasing tribalism.
Which brings us to our president. “It looks definitely like it’s an anti-Semitic crime. That is something you wouldn’t believe could still be going on,” President Trump said Saturday in Indiana. You wouldn’t? Only if you were willfully blind to what has been going on, from Nazi protesters in Charlottesville https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/14/jews-will-not-replace-us-why-white-supremacists-go-after-jews/?utm_term=.f2ce2aab1606 (chanting) “Jews will not replace us” to ugly memes of Jewish reporters with Stars of David being thrust into ovens.
Just the day before Saturday’s massacre, Trump, at a White House event, attacked “globalists” — code-word alert — and chuckled as audience members called out “George Soros!”—code-word alert — and shouted “Lock him up” about the Hungarian-born Jewish financier. If Trump is not deliberately flirting with anti-Semitism and anti-Semites, he is regrettably oblivious to their presence.
But his administration’s animus toward refugees, exemplified by Trump’s own incendiary rhetoric, seems most directly linked to Bowers’s alarm about “hostile invaders” who “kill our people.” If there is not cause and effect between Trump’s language and Bowers’s alleged actions, there is moral culpability for creating this overheated climate of fear. From the supposed Mexican rapists of his campaign launch to his https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/23/mystery-unknown-middle-easterners-who-is-really-migrant-caravan/?utm_term=.f3154e41e5d9 (unsupported claims) that the migrant caravan includes “very tough criminal elements” and “unknown Middle Easterners,” Trump has stoked the fears of the Bowerses among us.
“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100/Methuselah's Children
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