When I started writing on politics and society in the age of Trump, I chose the quote from Voltaire as my masthead. As Trump began his campaign with the string of lies he has been known for his entire life, and the cult of followers began to form, Voltaire’s words set in me. It felt like we were closer to this being true on a mass scale in America than since McCarthy.
This week feels like it is no longer a theoretical possibility in the near future, but a reality that has arrived, that we all now live in.
While enough independent voters asked what he wanted them to ask – “What’s the worst that could happen?” – I feared the worst, knowing full well what it could be. We are seeing it happen now in rapid succession in 2019:
As Trump constantly speaks and Tweets and runs social media ads about the “invasion” of “rapists and drug dealers,” those who he spent the first two years turning into sycophants via Fox News and an obedient GOP, believed these absurdities.
The fact is that immigration, illegal and legal, is well within the norms of this country for decades. His repeated claims are, on their face, absurd. Easily dis-proven. And yet, his propaganda arm in right-wing media, his paid media campaigns, the party he has now completely taken over, have made many easily believe those absurdities…
… and repeat them as they commit atrocities.
New Zealand mass-murderer wrote of the “invasion of non-whites.”
The el Paso mass-murderer as well.
The man who threw a 13 year old on the ground for not taking his hat off during the pledge of allegiance said Trump’s words made him think it was OK.
The MAGA Bomber who sent pipe bombs to news outlets like CNN while quoting Trump about the mainstream media being “the enemy of the people.”
The high-school kids on “Team Mitch” who publicly groped and choked a cut-out of AOC, and then bragged about it on social media, clearly thinking there was nothing wrong with such behavior.
All committing atrocities, large and small, and all directly using Trump and the GOP’s absurdities and lies as justification or motivation. All of them thinking it is not only OK to do, but their duty to do.
We’re here now. People are dying. People are afraid. This isn’t hyperbole.
Each of us has to now ask, what are we going to do about it.
It has to be stopped.
(417 words)
Patrick On Politics 