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| President Donald J. Trump 2 March 2019, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, MD; official White House photo by Tia Dufour, at Wikimedia Commons |
Heather Cox Richardson, "Letters from an American: December 3, 2002":
The leader of the Republican Party has just called for the overthrow of our fundamental law and the installation of a dictator.
Joyce Vance, "Are the Frogs Boiled?":
Trump is calling for a coup. Again. He’s calling for the end of American democracy.
It is, of course, nothing new from him. But it is done here in a precise manner. It is not open to a benign interpretation. His intent is clear. It’s in print.
So the real question today is for elected officials in the Republican party. Do you still support Trump? We’re entitled to know.
Mark Sumner, "Trump calls for a 'termination of all rules … even the Constitution' to install him as dictator":
There’s a huge danger in dismissing any of this as "oh, that’s just Trump. Ignore him." Because no one has done more to normalize racism, misogyny, xenophobia, anti-science, anti-journalism, anti-facts language than Trump. Every time he speaks like this and it doesn’t generate a powerful backlash, Trump has succeeded in moving the line for 'political speech' a little further toward having 'Kill them all, let God sort them out' as the platform of the Republican Party.
As Steven Beschloss, "When the Danger is Plain to See," writes, dismissing what either Donald Trump or Kanye West says by shrugging and saying they're mentally unwell is highly dangerous: both men know exactly what they're doing and what they intend to do with their inflammatory words.
It's far too easy — and irresponsible — to laugh and shrug and say, "Well, what can you expect from people who are unhinged?" We let them and also ourselves off the hook when we do this, since what they are saying and doing requires pushback from us, not laughter and shrugs.
The top editors at the NY Times and Washington Post don't think a former president's (and very possible next president) attack on America's political system this week is all that noteworthy. Oh they covered it, in "Nothing to see here, move along" fashion.
Democracy got a reprieve in November, but Big Journalism remains relentlessly unwilling to defend it. Understand: This is not going to change.
Ronald Brownstein, "The GOP Can't Hide from Extremism":
Robert P. Jones, the president and founder of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute and the author of White Too Long, a history of Christian nationalism, … believes Christian-nationalist beliefs are spreading more widely among Trump’s followers because they believe "they are at a kind of 'last stand' moment" for their vision of a white-Christian-dominated America.'The unwillingness of party leaders, time and time again, to denounce Trump for giving these voices support and cover has allowed them to move into the center of the GOP today," Jones wrote to me in an email. "I would be surprised if we didn’t see increasing numbers of GOP party leaders openly associating with these voices in the future, particularly leading up to the 2024 presidential election."
Aaron Rupar and David Lurie, "How Bannon and Trump normalized antisemitic bigotry":
Even if Trump recedes from the political stage, the GOP is all but certain to remain poisoned by bigotries that Trump introduced into the mainstream of Republican ideology for the foreseeable future. The normalization of antisemitism within the Grand Old Party is a particularly noxious case in point.
Peter Beinart, "Antisemitism is Rising because Bigotry is Rising":
I’m a little concerned that the conversation about antisemitism has had a tendency to exceptionalize antisemitism and disassociate it from other questions of bigotry against other people. ...
I think the central lesson that we need to understand from the major incidents of antisemitism that have taken place in recent years in the United States is that most of the time antisemitism comes as part of a package of bigotry, a package of hatred, a package of fundamental worldview that denies the basic humanity and equality of different groups. ...
Antisemitism arises as part of a larger stew of bigotries based on a fundamental disrespect for the humanity and equality of a whole range of groups that are seen as threatening White male Christian straight dominance. It’s always been that way.
The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words.
Genocides do not start with mass murder. That's where they end up.
Genocides & other mass atrocity crimes begin with words - specifically, with powerful people dehumanizing a minority.
Once they are seen as less than human, anything is possible, even mass murder.
👉 You can speak out loudly today for the rights of others, or you can stay silent & wait for tomorrow, when your rights will be taken away too.
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