fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Trump Summons Demons

'Send her back!' the crowd chants, in Twenty-Second Hate against Ilhan Omar
Screen Shot 2019-07-17 at 8.46.03 PM

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oiJKO9vrf0]

Tonight at a rally in North Carolina, the President of the United States criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar, which he is certainly entitled to do. But listen to the crowd: “Send her back! Send her back!” Did he try to stop them? Of course not.

Where does he think this is all going to go? This is horrifying. Republican members of Congress need to stand up right now and say that this is unacceptable behavior in a president, whipping up a mob like this.

This is why I say that there’s no telling who’s going to win in 2020. Trump is unhinged. Omar and the Squad deserve strong criticism, but Trump can’t restrain himself from going too far. I have said for some time now that as bad as Trump is, I believe that putting Democrats in power would be worse, solely because of what it would mean for laws and policies that are important to me. But this degrading demagogic behavior is exactly the kind of thing that would flip me to the other side. There are things worse than a president who is radically pro-abortion, opposed to religious liberty, and favoring open borders. It’s having a president who recklessly endangers the lives of people for the sake of winding up a mob.

The truly psychotic thing about Trump is that he doesn’t have to do this! It’s easy to fight the radicals of the Squad without resorting to this kind of thing. In fact, he is winning on the politics of Omar & Co. But that’s not enough for him. You’ve got to wonder if he’s some kind of sadist.

Where does this cycle stop? I don’t see how it fails to end in violence. Or rather, let me revise that: not end in violence, but cross the threshold into retributive violence. Antifa has been pushing for that on the Left. And now, on the right, we have the man with the biggest megaphone in the country leading a mob in chanting for the expulsion of a political opponent — a US citizen! — from the country. I reject most everything that Ilhan Omar stands for, but this is degrading, disgraceful behavior from an American president. This is Two-Minute Hate stuff. From Orwell’s 1984:

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

That’s not what this rally’s audience was like. But give it time. Trump is summoning demons.

We are not soon going to recover from this man.

UPDATE: I endorse:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

UPDATE.2: Reader KyleW:

A populist with a shred of self-control, humility, or human sympathy would wipe the floor with these wild-eyed pseudo-Marxists so hard the Ben-Op would have a generation to find its feet before it had to worry about a hostile state again. Instead, we get dime-store Benito Mussolini. Who, by the way, fuels the pseudo-Marxists rush to ever greater extremes with this nonsense, thus ensuring that anybody to the right of Pol Pot reaps the whirlwind as soon as Democrats are back in office. Lord, remember us and turn aside Your hand of judgment.

Advertisement