(I posted the following on Feb 28th, 2017, six weeks into Donald Trump's term. The original title was, "Hate Trumps Civility". In light of yesterday's assassination attempt, it was eerily prescient.)
- He is: 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.
- If he is elected we will: leave the country, secede, refuse to follow federal laws.
- He should: be assassinated, be impeached, be removed, go to hell.
- His way of speaking and writing is: silly, slip-shod, loose-jointed, lacking in the simplest rules of syntax, coarse, devoid of grace, filled with glittering generalities.
- He and his entire cabinet are not equal to the occasion and are full of incapacity and rottenness.
Notably absent from the above lists are two of the most frequent slurs against Donald Trump: “He’s Hitler!”, and “He’s a fascist!”. That’s because those words were not available in the 1860s. You see, those were all direct quotes about Abraham Lincoln!
That's right; the Republican who freed the slaves and defeated the confederacy, who has a big memorial on the mall in D.C., and who is on the penny and the five dollar bill, was, prior to being assassinated, the most hated president in American history. Until Donald Trump, that is.
I'm not implying some equivalence between Donald Trump and the now revered Honest Abe. I am however asserting some striking similarities between what's happening with Trump and what happened with Lincoln. In many significant and ominous ways we are reliving the disastrous 1860s. That should concern everyone.
Democrats hated Lincoln for the same reason they hate Trump - both threatened "entitlements". By entitlement, I'm referring to anything that benefits one group at the expense of another.
Slavery was such an entitlement. It benefitted slave owners at the expense of the slaves. Lincoln was the first president to be seriously unsympathetic to that entitlement. You may not have learned this in school, but Republicans didn't own slaves. Slavery was a Democrat institution.
Today’s Democrats have several entitlements perceived to be under threat by Donald Trump: the teacher's union monopoly entitlement, the government bureaucrat power entitlement, the various Obamacare and medical entitlements, the government permanent union job entitlement, the cheap labor illegal immigrant entitlement, the Muslim refugee entitlement, the illegal voting entitlement, the congressional unlimited tax and spend entitlement, the subsidized mortgage entitlement, the 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 more.
And that list doesn’t include the traditional transfer payment entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Food Stamps, etc. Even Donald Trump’s just released budget doesn’t dare touch those entrenched goodies. But it matters little whether or not a politician explicitly threatens to take the candy away. The only requirement for drawing Democrat vitriol is the perception that an entitlement is under threat.
Thus, pretty much every Republican since the Progressive Era has been Hitler or equivalent. Most recently, Reagan was Hitler, Bush was Hitler, McCain was Hitler. Even Mitt Romney, a decent man by politician standards and a bishop in his church, was Hitler. Romney also wanted to bring back slavery, keep women in binders, and was a notorious abuser of puppies.
There is 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. This is a deliberate tactic to dehumanize an opponent and open the door to violence. All tactics, including violence, are appropriate when dealing with evil. It must be stopped at all costs.
In both Lincoln's and Trump's cases, Democrat civil disobedience began immediately after the election. Southern Democrat states began seceding in 1860 right after Lincoln won the election. Similarly, Democrats were in the streets protesting and being violent immediately following Trump's 2016 victory.
Most recently, several Democrat state and local governments have announced plans to "secede" by refusing to enforce certain federal laws. In response, Donald Trump has promised to withhold federal funds. This type of standoff is exactly what led to the battle of Fort Sumter, the first battle of the Civil War. Fort Sumter took place six weeks after Lincoln took office. Donald Trump has been in office six weeks as of today.
If you think I'm exaggerating the danger posed by hateful rhetoric and demonization, consider that Betsy DeVos, the new Secretary of Education, vilified and threatened by Democrats and the teacher's union, has been placed under the protection of federal marshals. The only other cabinet member ever needing federal marshals was a drug czar in danger of being murdered by violent drug cartels!
Entertainers have also expressed a particularly virulent strain of hatred towards Donald Trump. Thus, the Golden Globes and Oscars spent an inordinate amount of time hating the new President. Saturday Night Live is pretty much full time Trump hatred, and you can’t attend a play or concert without the actors and musicians lecturing on the evils of Trump.
Abraham Lincoln faced a similar situation from Democrat entertainers in his day. An actor named John Wilkes Booth, whom Lincoln had seen perform only a week before, was the man who infamously shot him in the head while attending another play. As Booth jumped onto the stage immediately after shooting Lincoln he shouted, “Sic Semper Tyrannis!”, thus always to tyrants! Donald Trump has already survived at least one bumbling assassination attempt during his campaign.
Dissent is a necessary part of democracy, but hatred is a necessary part of dissolution and civil war. Once Democrats convince themselves that half the country is made-up of deplorable fascist Hitler supporters, don’t they 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 unintentionally paint impressionable minds into a dangerous corner with no peaceful way out. We know what that led to in the 1860s.
