Unclean hands.
I lay blame for the horrendous events in Charlottesville at the door of Donald J. Trump.
No, he wasn’t there and didn’t carry a sign of hate, but he has long been an essential enabler. His deploring, “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” transparently suggests a moral equivalency where none exists, not to mention a shocking disregard for what was afoot. Did he not hear the chants, “Heil Trump”? A man who has claimed to be “the least racist person you will ever meet” began his mendacity in 2011 with the words, “I’m starting to think that he was not born here”. What followed was a relentless campaign of lie-telling, questioning the birth status of our first African American president. Today, the assertion and promotion of falsehoods have become his trademark. But Trump’s championing the birtherism was more than promoting a lie, it was sending a clear message about “the other” insinuating that Obama and people like him were not a true Americans. His early and continued championing of America First, code words for a certain kind of America, a white Christian America, rings loud and clear. Rather than denouncing white supremacists throughout his presidential campaign, Trump (whose father Fred was arrested at a 1927 KKK rally) courted their support. His focus on immigrants, also the object of their hate, is just one piece of the same pie.
A president is not merely the chief executive, but plays the role of America’s father. Part of parental leadership is to console when people are hurting, to be a moral standard-bearer and to bring the citizenry together, not tear them asunder. From the first days of his campaign, through his divisive inaugural, to his remarks in the wake of the bloody day in Charlottesville, Trump has been a promoter and enabler of discord, a divider. Among his closest and highest advisors is a mouthpiece for the alt-right. His campaign rallies often had a tone of mob incitement. He has continues them into his presidency, spewing disdain and hatred for, among others, his vanquished female opponent, encouraging not disowning chants of “lock her up”. His obsessive undisciplined and inflammatory tweets are not only potentially dangerous (Korea), but they encourage divisiveness and vitriol in the land. I firmly believe that Charlottesville could not have happened without what Trump set in motion.
Given the brutal context, the tone-deaf president incredulously declared, “We have to come together as Americans with love for our nation and true affection — really, I say this so strongly, true affection for each other.” Is this what he saw being expressed on that very hate-filled bloody Saturday? Truly astounding, but it was only a setup for another chance for one of his egotistical non-sequiturs, “Our country”, he went on, “is doing very well in so many ways. We have record — just absolute record employment. We have unemployment the lowest it’s been in almost 17 years. We have companies pouring into our country, Foxconn and car companies and so many others. They’re coming back to our country. We’re renegotiating trade deals to make them great for our country and great for the American worker.” And to justify this ill-timed self-congratulation he went on, “We have so many incredible things happening in our country, so when I watch Charlottesville, to me it’s very, very sad.” The man given to exaggeration and hyperbole as exponent of gross understatement. Remarkable. So very sad indeed, so pathetically sad and inept he is.
This wasn’t the first time that white supremacists took to the streets spewing their hate, certainly for people of color and people like me, but they have now been given a permission that we have not seen in some time. Racial and religious intolerance has played largely behind closed doors and metaphorically in the dark, ever more so since 2008. It has cast a shadow in the minds of more people, including some in high places, than we would like to think or admit. It doesn’t represent a majority view, but nonetheless remains what John Dean famously attributed to Watergate, a cancer on our presidency and also our country. Some voices of condemnation from Republicans have been heard in face of Trump’s inept, and I think insidious, statement. That’s mildly encouraging, but still not the needed wakeup call. What we’ve witnessed in Virginia didn’t come out of thin air. They and other leaders ignore its larger context at all of our peril.