Tag: Ku Klux Klan

TRUMP ECLIPSES THE SUN & MOON IN SEARCH OF NAZI LOVE

Forget the eclipse. The biggest astronomical event of the past 10 days has been nothing short of a spectacular, once-in-a-lifetime sighting of presidential time travel. Some 72 years after this country and its allies defeated Hitler’s fascism, Donald Trump saddled up to the neo-Nazis. And, 152 years after Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army surrendered at the Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the Civil War, our president embraced and saluted those who fought to preserve slavery – past and present.

For us aging boomers, this has been a time warp from hell. We grew up with daily news of murdered civil rights workers and KKK lynchings, of frightened black children escorted by armed troops into previously all-white schools. We remember the pain, the fear, the hate. We also remember the powerful forces for change: Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Very slowly, things got better. Bigotry never disappeared, but it seemed to move off center stage, and into the fringes and dark reaches of a netherworld most of us rarely saw.

Yet, there they were, more than a half century later, hundreds of them, all white and mostly male, marching through the streets of Charlottesville, waving Confederate flags and Swastikas, shouting vile chants against Jews, blacks, gays and immigrants. It was a convention of wickedness: the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, the so-called “alt-right” and white nationalists, all united in a common bond of white supremacy. Once confined to whispering their bigoted messages through code words and dog whistles, Trump’s election unleashed these hate mongers from their caves and ushered them into the daylight of a world unprepared for a relitigation of basic human rights, dignity and decency.

It was a rare moment of totally unambiguous moral clarity. The bigots represent an evil world view, long ago dismissed as despicable by decent people everywhere. A high school student council president could have easily delivered that message. Donald Trump, however, neither could, would, nor did. Those marchers are part of his cherished base, and he spent days entangled in linguistic gymnastics, trying desperately not to lose the love of those who hate.

It was a huge turning point in this presidency. Trump has always been obsessed with branding, from luxurious high-rise condos, to wine, steaks, neck ties and bottled water. Let the history books note, with unequivocal clarity, that the Trump brand now stands for neo-Nazism, the KKK and white supremacy. Unlike all of the other political issues he has botched with his utter incompetence, petulance and arrogance, this one has legs. The president’s post-Charlottesville moment called for a simple, clear-cut, binary, which-side-are-you-on choice. Trump picked the wrong side. He will forever be the president who brought the Nazis, the Confederacy, and the KKK back from the dustbin of history. He will spend the rest of his life paying for that decision. Rest assured, it will be part of his obituary.

In fact, the ramifications of the president’s moral weakness and waffling have been mounting daily. For example:

• News magazines – in the U.S. and Europe – produced covers showing Trump in either a Nazi salute or some version of a KKK hood.

• Republican officials at every level have repudiated the President’s handling of the Charlottesville march, including at least 23 members of Congress and eight current or former GOP governors.

• So many major business leaders resigned from two presidential commissions over Trump’s remarks that he was forced to abolish both groups.

• All 16 members of the President’s Committee of the Arts and Humanities resigned, telling him: “Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville.”

• More than 15 large charities have canceled scheduled fundraising events at Trump’s Mar-a-Largo Club in Florida, all concerned with losing major donors as a result of Trump’s embrace of the hate groups.

• For the first time since the Kennedy Center Honors program started in 1978, neither the president nor first lady will attend, nor will there be a pre-show reception at the White House. That move was made after some of the honorees talked of boycotting the event because of Trump’s recent comments.

Of course, the country has been sharply divided over Trump since election day. Some saw him as the only hope for a very sick system. Others saw him as an emblem that went to the very heart of that sickness. Both sides made credible points. Workers and the middle class have been losing ground for decades, and their needs have been ignored by too many politicians – from both parties. One view had it that only an outsider like Trump could turn that around. The counterpoint: Trump was way too self-absorbed, inexperienced and rich to successfully navigate a meaningful redistribution of wealth. Or so the arguments went.

Charlottesville totally changed the game board. It removed all of the gray, leaving behind only black and white. As the late, great Pete Seeger sang, “Which Side Are You On?” There are no nice Nazis, vintage or neo. There are no good Ku Klux Klansmen. White supremacists spewing hatred toward Jews, blacks, gays and immigrants are worthy of nothing but our deepest scorn. What they represent is, simply and purely, evil. That’s one side. The other side, filled with olive branches for hateful hooligans bearing Swastikas, is the one that Donald Trump chose. That choice tarnished the White House so badly that repair can only come from a new occupant. Until that happens, more than a century of human rights’ gains hangs in the balance. Seeger’s question has never been so easy to answer. Choosing a side right now means moving forward or backward. It’s the difference between right and wrong.

FUELING FIRE & FURY: HOW TRUMP SPENT HIS SUMMER VACATION

It’s too early to tell for sure, but a former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard might have seriously messed with Donald Trump’s concept of what it means to win. More on that later, after a recap of the president’s winning ways of threatening nuclear annihilation.

A few days ago, I suggested in this space that President Trump, as a result of his inability to grasp the difference between a strategy and a tactic, had become the embodiment of what losing looks like. So, why doesn’t he do a course correction, or, in the parlance of organizational change, order a reset? The answer is simple: he is absolutely convinced that he is winning. A win to the Donald is any day that he can see himself as the most important and powerful man in the universe, the only person capable of solving the world’s problems through the sheer force of his strength and will. That, and the adulation of his base through constant public attention, is what winning is all about to this president.

Take nuclear war, for example, which Trump has latched onto like an obsessed teen with a new video game. Military expert Herman Kahn introduced us to the treacherous and dystopian world of nuclear bombast with a 1962 book called “Thinking about the Unthinkable”. Every U.S. president since then has spoken of nuclear devastation in measured and carefully chosen words. Not Trump. Nothing unthinkable to him about the prospect of obliterating millions of people.

With almost manic glee, he warned that North Korea will be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Two days later, he became the first world leader to threaten war on Twitter, warning North Korea that the U.S. is now “locked and loaded”. Predictably, most sober-thinking adults in Congress were stunned and chagrined by the presidential war mongering. So were most heads of state, including our allies. North Korea responded with a threat to fire missiles at the U.S. territory of Guam, saying, “Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason (Trump) and only absolute force can work on him.”

As Armageddon anxiety set in, Trump basked in his own glory. He was, after all, winning. At least in his own head, the only venue that matters to him. He argued that millions of Americans are cheering him for his tough North Korea talk. “It’s about time that somebody stuck up for the people of this country,” he told reporters last week.

While North Korea readies its rockets for Guam’s shoreline, the island’s governor, Eddie Baza Calvo, used the right passwords to secure a soulful telephone exchange with Trump. “Mr. President, . . .” Calvo said in opening Saturday’s phone chat, “I have never felt more safe or so confident, with you at the helm.” It was another winning moment for the commander in chief, who quickly agreed with the governor. “You seem like a hell of a guy,” Trump said. “They should have had me (as president) eight years ago.” Despite the fact that that Guam’s existential fate rests in the hands of two would-be nuclear bombers, who together lack anything resembling a full deck, Trump had good news for the governor: “Eddie,” he said, “I have to tell you, you’ve become extremely famous. All over the world, they’re talking about Guam . . . your tourism, you’re going to go up like tenfold with the expenditure of no money. I congratulate you.”

That pretty much captures Donald J. Trump’s life story: get the name out there any way you can, build the brand, then monetize it. To our president, nuclear war is just another profit center. His tough talk is drawing attention, and that keeps his juices flowing. Trump reportedly spends hours a day glued to television news. For an attention addict, cable news is the fix that never ends. According to the Washington Post, the three top cable news networks rarely cover any subject other than Trump during prime-time hours. For this president, Trump-All-The-Time is winning.

But wait, David Duke and his fellow neo-Nazis may have inadvertently punctured the contours of the Donald’s delusional winning loop. Duke, the former KKK wizard, and hundreds of angry white supremacists violently took to the streets in Charlottesville, VA on Saturday. Remember those poor forgotten white guys Trump championed on the way to the White House? The Charlottesville disaster was all about them. One person was killed and 19 others were injured. While political leaders of every stripe immediately decried the protest’s bigotry and racism, Trump, the Twitter insult king, was at a loss for words to describe the repugnant evil of white power nuts, many wearing Trump’s Make-America-Great-Again caps, staging a violent rampage on Virginia streets.

For the first time in his life, Trump tweeted with delicately selected words. He condemned violence generally, but avoided specific criticism of his own supporters, that shrinking base that keeps him “winning” by cheering his tough rhetoric. Even his stilted messaging drew this Twitter response from former Imperial Wizard Duke: “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency. . .” One neo-Nazi web site praised the president for his reaction to the Charlottesville riot: “Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. . .No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good.”

This must leave the president highly confused. He rains down insults on his own party’s congressional leaders. He uses graphic imagery to threaten a nuclear holocaust. And he believes he is winning because his base cheers his toughness. But now, part of that base – sheet-wearing bigots and red-caped goons – have slithered out from behind their rocks in answering Trump’s clarion call to make America white again. A stunned and saddened nation looks at pictures of Charlottesville’s death and destruction, waiting for their president to renounce these domestic terrorists. But how does a man renounce part of himself, part of what he created? If he does, who will cheer for his madness? And without their cheers, what becomes of his winning? Forget nuclear war. For Donald Trump, this is the new “Thinking about the Unthinkable”.