Month: March 2016

Imagine a US president is elected in one of the most racially cast elections in history; Imagine a beautiful and intelligent First Lady of the United States, who has posed in the nude at least once before for a fashion magazine, but the nation is willing to give her a pass, because we live in a new era; Imagine a new era where criticizing a woman for  how she looks or chooses to show her body is just shameful and we all just need to get over it.

Now I want you to imagine that we are talking about a black president and first lady.

In the same circumstances would the public and especially the Taliban wing of the GOP be so forgiving of an African-American potential first lady who had posed in the nude (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

We already know the answer to that, and it’s “No.”

Look at the record of how the GOP and their supporters have body and fashion shamed Michelle Obama who has never posed in the nude for a fashion magazine. She has been compared to Chewbacca and various other animals—and—the very fit first lady has been called fat by some people who should never talk, including a certain cigar smoking conservative sexist bigot.

What it’s really about are the efforts to delegitimize Michelle Obama as First Lady, and assist in the concurrent effort to delegitimize President Obama.

Michelle Obama is a model of health, beauty and fitness. So she is big-boned—give a sister a break already!

The timing couldn’t be more obvious: When Donald Trump needed to knock out his main rival in the Republican primaries after losing  in Utah, his friends put out a story of Cruz infidelity to The National Enquirer. This followed after days of personal accusations and schoolyard taunts between the two, starting when Trump incorrectly claimed Cruz was behind a meme styled Anti-Trump ad that showed a photo of his current wife when she posed nude for GQ magazine.

The Facebook ads were placed by the PAC Make America Awesome. Cruz for his part never denounced the anti-Trump ad calculated to turn Mormon Trump supporters to Ted Cruz in the Utah primary.

In retaliation Trump threatened to “spill the beans on” Heidi Cruz, then a couple of days later the Enquirer story hits the news. Even if Trump was not behind the story, the timing and appearance that Trump is executing a list of political hits, should earn him the responsibility for it.

Why did Trump react so strongly? What do he or Melania have to be ashamed of? This nation should be far past the point of shaming a presidential candidate or his wife because she was doing her job as a model—oh, wait—unless you are an African-American first lady, you can never do anything right even if you never posed in the nude. Anyway, maybe Trump just can’t let a personal attack on him or his wife go? His over the top response to a perceived slight may yet again be a “Stillson Moment” that finally collapses the image of his popular support.

You may remember a time when every bad thing that happened, a murder, a rape, or corruption scandal—the GOP was always happy to blame it on the moral vacuity of president Clinton. What will they say now that their front runner in the primaries has lowered the bar of political discourse to re-Tweeting unflattering pictures of opponents wives? If you are waiting for the GOP to expel Donald Trump, don’t hold your breath.

With the top Republican primary candidates locked in a mortal battle, the GOP is imploding in painful slow motion. This may delight or dismay you, depending on your political persuasion.

In ways it seemed predictable that Donald Trump would start to show his fangs when he was baited and attacked. Trump has a hard time letting personal attacks and insults go. Marco Rubio brilliantly egged Trump on to brag about the size of his junk when he said Donald has small hands. Hillary Clinton repeated the taunt when she criticized Donald Trump’s temperament saying our country needs “steady hands” at the helm. Trump took took the bait once more and defended his hands perhaps trying to remind us again what a huge package he has.

Ted Cruz seems just as easy to bait, jumping into full battle mode when Trump threatened to make Cruz’s wife an issue. Cruz has protested Trump’s threats to attack his wife, but is Cruz capable of a response that will capitalize on the backlash to Trump? What if the cheating accusations have any truth?

A cheating scandal would be a non-story in Europe, and it should be  a private matter between the involved parties—except if a candidate crusades as a religious moralizer—and shows himself as a hypocrite.

After the veracity of the cheating accusations, and who did what first are forgotten, what will linger in the American consciousness is the ugliness of the 2016 Cruz/Trump rivalry.

 

More violence at a Trump rally and finally, police immediately arrest a Trump supporter for beating on an Anti-Trump protester—but wait, hold on—It was a black man who was arrested.

Recall the story of Rakeem Jones, a young African-American protester at a North Carolina Trump rally who was sucker punched by an older white man while being led out out. Police did not arrest his attacker John McGraw at the time of the incident, claiming they were afraid of the crowd of Trump supporters turning on them.

Here is the video of the latest incident where a Trump Supporter brutally  beat and stomped on a protester:

OK, now here’s the video of a white man sucker punching a black man at a Trump rally:

There is a striking difference between the two videos, and the comparison raises more questions than it answers. Is this representative of institutionalized racism that accounts for the difference between treatment of black Americans versus white? Is it specific to the locations where the rallies took place, Arizona and North Carolina? It could just be an unfortunate coincidence that both incidents seem to favor whites versus blacks in similar situations.

When it doesn’t look like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, the Trump campaign might be a circus show with Trump as the Barker, MC and The Show all wrapped in one. Looking closer, the current mainstreaming of racial intolerance and the specter of violence raised by the cancerous Trump Campaign only increases the tensions and racial resentments simmering in the American psyche.

Donald Trump is the most openly anti-ethnic presidential candidate in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of the Ku Klux Klan is back, and he has expanded the Republican’s reach to other white supremacists and hate groups.  Trump, the supposed brilliant businessman has debt in the billions as opposed to any actual net worth. With no real specifics on any of his policies, CNS News  summarizes Trump’s pitch as “Trust Me.”

The Don’s statements on violence are so contradictory that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from Feb. 1, 2016 on The West De Moines Patch’s website: Donald Trump To Crowd: “Beat Up Tomato-Throwers, I’ll Pay Legal Fees.” Did you read that correctly? You did. Trump supports the beating of protesters, and has repeatedly said he will foot the legal bill. Across the country now, with Trump’s encouragement, dozens of attacks have been perpetrated against, Latinos, Jews, African-Americans and other ethnic and religious minorities. After trump promised to pay his violent supporter’s legal fees, he feigned ignorance of the statement when asked by the press if he was going to pay up. When it comes to violence and racial bigotry Trump is playing a dangerous game of double-speak.

Theories abound to explain Trump’s goals and actions. Critics in the civil rights community–including some Trump supporters who now have buyer’s remorse–tend to focus on two main themes. The first is that Trump is tone deaf about racism. The second is that Trump is an actual racist–not an out-and-out KKK man, but something of a European-style racist, with a penchant for spewing populist statements that endear him to the xenophobic right.

These theories aren’t wrong so much as they are inadequate. Even if they could account for Trump’s hateful rhetoric about immigrants and Muslims, they cannot explain his thinking. The real problem with Trump is worse–much worse. But we have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Trump’s own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years–learning from and assisting his father with his business. The lesson young Donald Trump learned was how to systematically disenfranchise minorities from housing opportunities while at the same time becoming rich.

A good way to discern what motivates Trump is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Fred Trump’s dream? Or is it the KKK’s dream?

What then is Trump’s motivation? We don’t have to speculate because Trump tells us himself in his books that his values are very like his father’s: Fred Trump was a real estate developer who pinched pennies; Donald Trump is a real estate developer who spends millions on bathroom fixtures. Fred Trump tried to keep minorities out of his housing developments; Donald Trump seeks to keep the same people out of the country completely. Trump’s dreams are his fathers, but amplified to a gargantuan scale and gilded in gold.

So who was Fred Trump? Like Donald Trump’s mother, his father was also a German immigrant, thus making Donald an anchor baby. Fred Trump started his working life as a carpenter and soon began building houses. As happened with his son Donald, Fred Trump was often sued for his business practices, and came under fire for discriminatory housing policies.  Sympathetic to  the KKK, Fred Trump was even arrested after a KKK battle with police in New York City.

This 2016 election season, immigration is a hotly contested and complex issue. Expressed in the xenophobic language of Donald Trump we need to keep out the Mexicans, Muslims and other undesirables. However, with an ever shrinking labor pool, the US’s popularity as an immigrant destination could be a real asset for our future economy. If America is going to remain on top, we have to be ready to embrace immigrants as  a future source of wealth creation.

But instead of readying us for the challenge, Donald Trump is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, should Donald Trump become  president, the U.S. would be ruled according to the dreams of a German KKK sympathizing real estate developer. This mixed philosophy of white supremacism and amoral capitalism, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The Don wants to make it happen and live out his father’s dreams, but in gold plated splendor. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. If Donald Trump ever becomes president, America will be governed by the ghost of Fred Trump.

This article is a satire based on Dinesh “Douche-na” D’Souza’s article “How Obama Thinks.”

 

In yet another call to his supporters for violence, Donald Trump has said if he doesn’t get the Republican nomination, “I think you’d have riots.”

As anyone who is paying attention knows, Trump only has to mention a violent idea, and the Thug Wing of his supporters  will make it happen.  As usual Trump will deny any knowledge or culpability when the violence does break out.  The excuses he will offer are predictable, “I didn’t tell them to riot, my supporters just have a lot of passion and love for their country.”

Now, in response to the increasing hateful rhetoric  and violence at Trump’s rallies (map of Trump violence),  a group of forty Rabbis plans to boycott his appearance at AIPAC, a pro-Isreal lobby group. One of the group’s organizers, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin wrote on a blog post,

We have been urging rabbis to simply not attend the Trump speech — to let our absence be felt and noted.

Rabbi Salkin’s chosen method of protest, simply not attending the AIPAC event, and protesting outside, is a thoughtful measured response to the confrontation and vitriol the Trump  cult feeds on.

Rabbi Salkin also says in the post, “This is someone who has no qualms speaking crudely about women, Mexicans, Muslims, the handicapped, and immigrants; does anyone really want to add “rabbis” to his verbal hit list?”

Many observers, including this author, believe  Trump dog-whistled his approval of antisemitism yet again when he blamed the cancellation of a rally in Chicago on “Bernie’s people.” Donald Trump never had to say anything else, his most regressive supporters, already steeped in racial bigotry, heard the telegraphed call to rally against this weeks “those people”.

The Rabbis will be joined by hundreds of other individual and organized protesters, all following their own plans. Trump the man who can let no challenge to his authoritarian vision go unanswered, will surely react to the protests, no doubt in his trademark—violent rhetoric turned reality—Reality TV Show way.

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, their supporters, all should be prepared for Trump supporters to disrupt their rallies.

If anyone didn’t hear about Donald Trump telegraphing his wishes for his followers to disrupt Sanders events, here is what he tweeted Sunday morning after cancelling his own rally in Chicago the Friday before:

Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren’t told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!

Of course Trump can say he didn’t explicitly tell his supporters to go and disrupt Bernie Sanders’ events, that’s all part of his craft: Donald Trump is a master manipulator. We should never underestimate him or think he is stupid—crazy as a shit-house rat, yes—but not stupid.

Trump’s well documented pattern of inciting violence and then denying any responsibility should be proof enough of what Sanders and Clinton should expect to see in the coming weeks.

Knowing that Trump disruptors may try to sabotage upcoming rallies, his targets can avoid falling into Trump’s trap. It’s right and necessary to speak out against Donald Trump, but the more confrontational and violent the protests and disruptions become, the more it fulfills Trump’s divisive vision and the more it rallies his followers.

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Martin Sheen plays Greg Stillson, the fictional senator and presidential candidate in the movie The Dead Zone (see The Trump Dead Zone). Popular and charismatic, Stillson is on his way to becoming president of the US until he shields himself with a baby after the hero of the story tries to shoot him.

Will the failed Trump rally in Chicago and then Trump lashing out in anger be remembered as Trump’s “Stillson” Moment? Was it a tidal shift in support for Donald Trump?

After a Chicago rally was cancelled and it devolved into chaos and near riots, most of the world, save for Donald Trump’s supporters, rightfully condemned his increasingly violent rhetoric turned reality–Reality TV Show.

Rather than regretting his inciteful language, Trump is doubling and tripling down on past statements where he longed for the “old days” when protestors would “be carried out on a stretcher, folks.” He blames everybody else when violence breaks out, “Bernie’s people,” “professional agitators” and claims the media has been “unfair” to him, though to be “really, really” fair, Trump has always seen any kind of accountability as unfair.

Trump pretends to not make a connection between a statement like, “OK, just knock the hell, I promise you I will pay for the legal fees” and when one of his supporters actually does sucker punch a protester. It’s a ridiculous “who me?” routine by a man who claims to be “very, very smart”. Of course now Trump can’t remember promising to pay the legal defense of his violent supporters either, but even if he doesn’t reward his supporters for acts of violence, I imagine it’s only a matter of time till the victim of the sucker punch, or another person hurt in a Trump Rally sues Donald Trump.

With an increasingly violent and menacing tone, the Trump campaign is taking on an ugliness that leads us to ask: If this is what a Trump campaign is like, what will a Trump presidency be like? Violent attacks inspired by Trump are already on the increase (Six times people were attacked at Trump Rallies, Men cite Trump after beating homeless man,) and even schoolkids are taunting classmates of color calling them Trump deportees.

In the movie The Dead Zone,  the shooter, Johnny Smith, played by Christopher Walken is another of Stephen King’s wonderfully flawed and conflicted figures dying for our sins, but no one should have to die for our current polital climate. The events before the mid-March 2016 primaries may indeed be a “Stillson” moment for the US: The time when we finally saw Donald Trump for what he is not—presidential material.