Vitriolic Politics and National Security

President trump is sucking the air out of decency and the greatness of diversity by his direct and unsupported attacks upon ideas and people. These unprovoked attacks have no place in the form of democracy practiced in the United States. They have had, in turn, a profound and direct effect upon our national security. That is a fact, not an opinion, not a political statement.

A functioning democracy does not require that we all love each other. That would be utopia and not reality. Reality requires that if we do not agree with the position of our opposition – to any degree—there is, at the least, respect in the discourse. However intense, extreme or passionate. That is how a democracy works, that is how it has worked up until the present. We live in a dangerous time and it has become more dangerous not of necessity. Let me explain.

From Election Day, November 2016 to the 19 November 2016, hate crimes in the U.S. spiked– the “civil rights group, the Southern Poverty Law Center alleges that there have been at least 700 cases of hateful harassment or intimidation since the election. It ranges from swastikas at a baseball field and a playground to Pennsylvania high school students shouting “white power” in the hallway. It is a vivid throwback to the days of segregation at a high school bathroom in Northern California.” That wasn’t all. In the immediate aftermath of Election Day, a wave of hate crimes and lesser hate incidents swept the country — 1,094 bias incidents in the first 34 days. By far the most dramatic change was the enormous leap in anti-Muslim hate groups. And there are identifiable groups being terrorized just seven miles from the White House who aren’t eager to talk about it. Not only do they fear the potential violence, but they also fear being deported because a goodly number are undocumented.

Muslims are among the groups President Donald Trump has repeatedly singled out and targeted. He ran on a campaign promise to ban them and continues to share controversial anti-Muslim videos on social media. That incites individuals and groups to take the law—unlawfully—into their own hands to execute judgement as they seem fit.

The President has claimed that blacks killed 81% of white homicide victims. You can say that this claim is false. You can also say the President lied to inflame a segment of the white community—his voting base. The most glaring inaccuracies have to do with white homicide victims. Trump cast blacks as the primary killers of whites, but the exact opposite is true. That is Fact. By overwhelming percentages, whites tend to kill other whites. Similarly, blacks tend to kill other blacks. These trends have been detected, noted and written about for decades.

How the extreme right viewed the Trump election and how it would carry that victory forward was captured in the following quoted encapsulation:

“The reaction to Trump’s victory by the radical right was ecstatic. ‘Our Glorious Leader           has ascended to God Emperor,” wrote Andrew Anglin, who runs the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website. “Make no mistake about it: we did this. If it were not for us, it wouldn’t have been possible.” Jared Taylor, a white nationalist who edits a racist journal, said that “overwhelmingly white Americans” had shown they were not “obedient zombies” by choosing to vote “for America as a distinct nation with a distinct people who deserve a government devoted to that people.” Richard Spencer, who leads a racist “think tank” called the National Policy Institute, exulted that “Trump’s victory was, at its root, a victory of identity politics.” Trump’s election, as startling to extremists as it was to the political establishment, was followed by his selection of appointees with anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT and white nationalist sympathies. To lead his domestic transition team, he chose Kenneth Blackwell, an official of the virulently anti-LGBT Family Research Council. As national security adviser, he selected retired Gen. Mike Flynn, who has described Islam as a “malignant cancer” and tweeted that “[f]ear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” His designated CIA director was U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), who is close to some of the country’s most rabid anti-Muslim extremists.”

     This makes Muslim-Americans, blacks and other minorities that much more vulnerable and exposed to not merely discrimination but violence in the Trump era. Trump inspired violence by words and deeds. Despite the rights of equality and free speech guaranteed by the Constitution, the minority see their own lives as being threatened in the streets of their own towns, American cities, and the universities and colleges they attend.

From the New York Times we learn: “There are fliers depicting men in camouflage, wielding guns and an American flag, appearing in men’s restrooms throughout Texas State University: ‘Now that our man Trump is elected,’ they said, ‘It is time to organize tar and feather vigilante squads and go arrest and torture those deviant university leaders spouting off that diversity garbage.’ ”

What compounds the entire topic was underscored by a senior counterterrorism officer who sees casualties being escalated by our nation’s polices on weapons: “because our population of violent extremists has no difficulty gaining access to weapon that are quite lethal” said Nicholas Rasmussen, as he ended his five-year run at the National Counterterrorism Center, three of them as its director.

When we have domestic attacks on our own citizens or those who are peacefully in our country because of their ethnicity, country of origin, the color of their skin, the religion they might or might not adhere to, then you place in jeopardy all of us, because there is then a general collapse in the foundations that support our democratic fundamentals, traditions and civil rights. This applies to all of us. This type of violence is a direct attack on our national, domestic security. Terrorism is not limited to an attack by ISIS against our interests in some foreign city or country. Our security is in danger not merely from foreign forces from abroad attacking our national interest far from our national borders. But here, right at home. Americans –attacking other Americans—listening to the words and deeds of the President.

Richard Allan,
The Editor

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