Abraham Trump

Consider the words:

• He's: a tyrant, a despot, a racist, a bigot, a dictator, a liar, a demagogue, grossly unqualified, lacking in character, ugly, an idiot, a braggart, a buffoon, a monster, foul tongued, indecent, disrespectful to women, vulgar, intellectually lazy, a white supremacist, deranged from syphilis, disrespectful of freedom of the press.

• His way of speaking is: silly, slip-shod, loose-jointed, lacking in the simplest rules of syntax, coarse, devoid of grace, filled with glittering generalities.

• He should: be impeached, be removed, go to hell, be assassinated.

 

Except, these verbatim quotes are about Abraham Lincoln, not Donald Trump! The rhetoric is  identical. In the end, Lincoln was assassinated.  After all, that was the only rational way to deal with a president IMAGINED to be the person described above.

The thing is, there's a big difference between dissent and hate. Dissenters will assert that the other side is wrong. Haters will assert that the other side is evil. When Democrats employ the vitriolic rhetoric they used against Lincoln, they are labeling Trump and his supporters evil.  Once a person is identified as evil, all tactics to eliminate them, including violence, are not only allowed but required.  It's worked against Jesus, Jews, Lincoln, Infidels, and countless others throughout history.          

In both Lincoln's and Trump's case, Democrat civil disobedience and violence began immediately after the election. Southern Democrat states began seceding the moment Lincoln was elected.  Immediately following Trump's win, Democrats were in the streets violently protesting.  In the ensuing months, the rhetoric has only gotten more hysterical, and predictably the violence has metastasized too.   

Ominously, Democrats hate Trump for the same reason they hated Lincoln; they are afraid of losing entitlements. By entitlements, I'm referring to any policy that benefits one group at the expense of another which has become entrenched.   

Slavery was such an entitlement.  It benefited Democrats (no Republican in history ever owned a slave!), came at the expense of Africans, and had been going on unabated for hundreds of years.  Along came Abraham Lincoln, a Northerner, the first Republican President, a vocal opponent of slavery, and the Democrats lost their collective minds.  Sound familiar?       

Today’s Democrats and political establishment have several entitlements under threat by Donald Trump.  Among them are the the cheap labor illegal immigrant entitlement, the open borders & new Democrat voters entitlement, the teacher's union monopoly entitlement, the government workers union entitlement, the Muslim refugee entitlement, the congressional unlimited tax and spend entitlement, the subsidized mortgages entitlement, the pop media power entitlement, the lopsided trade agreement entitlement, the EPA unlimited power entitlement, the radical LGBTQ federal rights entitlement, the federally funded late term abortion entitlement, and many, many, more including the obvious ones like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Welfare, Obamacare, etc.  

After all, Democrats are the party of entitlement and unlimited government.  Republicans are the party of limited government.  Thus, pretty much every Republican since the Progressive Era has been labeled evil. Most recently, Reagan was Hitler, Bush was Hitler, McCain was Hitler. Even Mitt Romney, perhaps the most decent man in America, was Hitler. All were portrayed as evil.  

Now it is getting dangerous. You can’t go to a play, a concert, a restaurant, or any public space and wear a hat that says "Make America Great Again" (like that's a controversial goal!).  If you do you'll be assaulted verbally and/or physically.  At this point, Trump's entire cabinet needs Secret Service escorts just to go out in public.  The only other cabinet member in history needing that level of protection was a Drug Czar under threat from the cartels! 

Look, dissent is a necessary part of democracy. Hatred, on the other hand, is a necessary part of dissolution and civil war. Once Democrats convince themselves that half the country is made-up of deplorable, fascist, evil, Hitlers bent on treason, don’t they then have an obligation to eliminate them? If you are convinced that any Trump supporter you know is evil, where does that logically lead? Hateful rhetoric disguised as dissent can paint impressionable minds into a dangerous corner with no peaceful way out. We know what that led to in the 1860s.

Tragically, we’ve seen the play before, and seem to be rooting for a sequel.


Sources:

The Anti Lincoln Tradition


How Lincoln Was Dissed In His Day