Normalizing Hate

How our political system has completely broken down — and is ruining our relationships

I can’t have civil conversations with dozens of people in my life anymore, and it’s all because of Donald Trump.

I’m appalled at how many people have sacrificed principles to vote for someone who embodies none of them. Evangelicals who ignore their teachings or twist them to fit their earthly motives, conservatives who throw in with someone who is trying to tear down our democratic foundations, and then the “deplorables,” people who hold covert or overtly racist views and have not been afraid to share them via coded language or directly through patently offensive slurs.

There has been no candidate since George Wallace in 1968 who openly attracted and welcomed white supremacists. There has been no candidate since Spiro Agnew as Nixon’s running mate in 1968 & 1972 who so openly attacked the media. There has been no candidate, ever, who has blatantly worked to undermine the rule of law and the sanctity of our electoral process. Donald Trump has done all of this. The violence around his campaign has led to protestors and reporters being assaulted, riots breaking out, and threats severe enough that female reporters have had to be protected by the Secret Service. Trump has repeatedly threatened that, if elected, he would lock up his opponent, Hillary Clinton, because he believes she committed a crime, even though the FBI ruled she did not. He has discussed using nuclear weapons against our enemies, because “what’s the point of having them if you don’t use them?” He has slandered minorities of all colors and religions, he has bragged of sexual assault, and he has shown an alarming looseness with the truth, becoming Politifact’s least honest politician in history. In a tawdry, sleazy, disgusting sideshow, he hosted a “press conference” with women who have accused former President Clinton of rape, and then proceeded to say the same about Clinton during the debate. He waved off his own bragging about sexual assault as being “locker room talk,” as if us men just go about our days, boasting of how we treated women as property, groping and fondling them as we wish.

It has sickened me that people I know and love, including many women, defend this man, because “Hillary is the most evil person ever,” and “He’ll appoint the right type of Supreme Court justices.” The first is hyperbole, the second is conjecture. We have no idea what kind of justices Trump would nominate, other than his words, which he’s hardly shown any fealty to. We do know, however, that his idea of a justice system is one where police have immunity, where the President can do as they wish, and where political opponents are jailed. Is this America or Argentina?

Trump has repeatedly appealed to the dark side of the conservative base, the one that questioned our President’s birthplace, that impugned his character, that insisted his name meant he was a secret Muslim (which is offensive on multiple levels), and that passed racist Voter ID laws (the words of the court, mind you, not just me) that were designed to disenfranchise and intimidate black voters. It was thinly veiled punishment for the first black president in history, to strike at his heritage, to crush the uppity black people who dared break the white male monopoly, and make them inferior once more under the law.

The venom over the past eight years directed at President Obama, who has actually governed far more as a centrist than a liberal, is astonishing in its force. I never knew there were so many people still harboring some degree of racist views until his administration. The very first Tea Party rallies were filled with white people, holding signs that were blatantly racist, and any thought that they were a fringe evaporated when the Republican party decided to bear hug all of them and embrace them as their future. It only grew worse from there. Now, literal KKK members and neo-Nazis have felt so emboldened as to campaign for Trump, to work in his offices, to spout their hate on camera and wear it on their shirts and jackets. He hasn’t disavowed it, walked away from it, anything. When pressed hard by journalists, he’ll give a mealy-mouthed answer to appease them, then returns to the warm embrace of hate.

The scariest thing is that this is considered acceptable. The latest meme, seen sadly on the social media accounts of people I’ve been friends with, lists all of Hillary’s supposed “crimes” and under Trump’s name, simply reads “Says mean things.” That is the most reductive, absurd thing I can possibly think of. It’s not “mean things.” It is attacks on our democracy. It is attacks against people of different faiths and colors, promising to ban them from even visiting America. It is attacks on the media, going beyond the usual spinning that politicians do, because Trump actually incites violence against them, making it impossible for them to do their jobs correctly without fearing for their lives. It is strongman behavior, that only he can fix America, that his political opponent will end up in jail under him, that other nations will fear us. He aspires to be Caesar, which is an apt comparison, for the position was adopted by the Roman Senate as a way to deal with times of war expeditiously, whereupon democracy would return to power. That didn’t work out so well, as Caesar usurped their authority and controlled the weapons. Democracy fell, and emperors reigned for centuries after.

For over two centuries, our nation has prided itself on the peaceful transition of power. That is threatened by Donald Trump, and Trump’s power comes from people who have been duped and deceived, who lapped up years of talk radio and email chains that played to their biases and fears. Those fears are so great, the desire so strong, that even the educated amongst them have happily nuzzled up next to violent bigots just so they can stick it to a President who has conducted himself with dignity befitting the office.

Claims of a president acting like Hitler have been applied rather dubiously in recent history, and maybe that’s why people have blown off the more obvious comparisons that exist now with Donald Trump. It should be noted, however, that when he rose to Chancellor, the exact same things were said about him that Trump’s supporters say:

• “He’ll have people around him to control his worst impulses.”
• “President [Paul von] Hindenburg will be a good influence on him.”
• “The Reichstag will still have to approve most of his decisions.”

Sound familiar? German officials and high society said those things about Hitler in 1933, and within a couple of years, he had complete and total control of his nation. He railed against the Jews, Trump rails against the Mexicans. Hitler constantly said that France and Britain had humiliated Germany after World War II, Trump says that the Chinese have humiliated us. Hitler cozied up to Mussolini, who’d taken power first; Trump cozies up to Vladimir Putin, who has done the same. I could go on all day with the comparative points, but there’s a strong case to be made that Trump follows the same blueprint as Adolf Hitler (which is not surprising, given that he reportedly kept a book of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside).

We ignore the menace at our peril, and we should not forget those who enabled his form of evil. We will not allow them to burn America down to save it, and we must ensure they do not hold any public trust ever again. What they have done is disgraceful and should be treated as such.