Has the Republican Party passed the point of no return?

As mentioned previously, it is going to be very difficult to confront—let alone stop—gun violence and domestic terrorism when you have right-wing politicians and commentators with a warped sense of “logic” in full denial mode. Take for instance Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who on Tuesday told those millions of viewers consumed with racial animus exactly what they wanted to hear: that the existence of white supremacists in this country is a “hoax,” assuring his fans that they should not feel “guilty” about harboring what most would call racist attitudes in spite of what happened in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend. 

But more obviously Carlson was defending himself against his own daily racist screeds, and this of course points to the problem of the failure of a great many people in this country—and not just those on the right, but any paranoid person who sees, say, a Hispanic male walking by and suddenly wondering if they had remembered to lock their car door—to engage in self-examination or even empathy after a clearly racially-motivated massacre as occurred in El Paso. They’d rather engage in what John Oliver called the “whataboutism” syndrome, in which the “sufferer” would rather point to someone else rather than answer for their own doings. According to Socrates (as told by Plato) “The unexamined life is not worth living,” for if “I know one thing, that is that I know nothing.” Incorrigible bigots like Carlson think they have all the “answers,” when in fact they have none worth expressing in a society that calls itself “civilized.” 

It didn’t have to be this way. The Republican Party that Sen. Robert Dole described in his 1996 presidential nomination acceptance speech today sounds completely unrecognizable:

And to those who believe that I live and breathe compromise, I say that in politics honorable compromise is no sin. It is what protects us from absolutism and intolerance.

The Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents -- The Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents many streams of opinion and many points of view. 

But if there's anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you, tonight this hall belongs to the Party of Lincoln. And the exits which are clearly marked are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.

Yet even then Dole’s vision of the Republican Party was crumbling into dust; the 1994 midterm elections saw  Newt Gingrich’s strategy of hyper-partisanship to motivate people with far-right extremist views to vote — with the prime target that year, “strangely” enough, the Clinton healthcare reform bill—succeed beyond the wildest of dreams, and Republicans would control both houses of Congress for the next 12 years; the Clintons actually “worked” with the far-right radicals in Congress to pass various “reform” bills that would lead to consequences antithetical to Democratic principles, something that perhaps some voters would recall in 2016. 

George Conway, despite being the husband of Trump’s “counselor,” has been a frequent and eloquent critic of Trump. In a recent op-ed he laid bare Republican hypocrisy and refusal to confront the radicalism that has taken control of their party:  “What’s just as bad, though, is the virtual silence from Republican leaders and officeholders. They’re silent not because they agree with Trump. Surely they know better. They’re silent because, knowing that he’s incorrigible, they have inured themselves to his wild statements; because, knowing that he’s a fool, they don’t really take his words seriously and pretend that others shouldn’t, either; because, knowing how damaging Trump’s words are, the Republicans don’t want to give succor to their political enemies; because, knowing how vindictive, stubborn and obtusely self-destructive Trump is, they fear his wrath.” For evidence of this you only have to look at the 180 degree turn that Sen. Lindsey Graham  has taken to completely undermine his credibility when—finding that “moderation” and “compromise” did not work because of Trump’s adherence to the demands of extremists—he did the next “natural” thing: he joined the “party.” 

I would, however, disagree with Conway on one thing; the Republican Party had been moving toward this result for 25 years if not even longer, back to the so-called "Southern Strategy" that gave succor to white voters who felt "threatened" by the passage of civil rights laws; now that the “base” has become energized by the rhetoric of hate, there is no real reason to believe that this is an “aberration.”

The U.S. is ill-equipped to combat domestic terrorism

The New York Times is reporting on how the federal government is not only ill-equipped to deal with domestic terrorism, but because most of the terrorism is coming from white supremacists who are derived from a “base” that Republican politicians are loath to alienate, almost nothing can be expected to seriously combat domestic terrorism. Civil rights lawyer Martin Stolar was quoted as saying that you can’t just suggest any white person is a potential terrorist, because the “blowback would be outrageous”; he could also have mentioned that the loudest “blowback” usually comes from the people most guilty. As long as they don’t announce a plan for genocide, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are protected by the right of “freedom of speech”; it has been reported that the FBI was aware of Patrick Crusius’ manifesto just before the El Paso shooting, but even if they wished to there was simply not enough to go on to stop him, since 8chan allowed complete anonymity for any murderous fanatic. It seems that white people want it both ways: they want the right to apply any ugly stereotype against a minority group that they wish to and formulate policy based on it; it could be something “benign” like opposition to affirmative action, or the crime bill passed during the Clinton administration that led to a massive increase in the black prison population—or today, fear of a Hispanic “takeover” of the country leading to “executive action” by Trump to bring legal Hispanic immigration down to a dribble. 

Irony: despite its reputation as a bluest of blue states, Washington—three decades ago a haven for extremist hate groups like The Order, whose members were convicted of numerous local bank robberies and accused of the murder of Denver radio host Alan Berg—is now once again, according to a hate group tracker quoted by the NYT, “attractive” to white supremacists and neo-Nazis who wish to form an “ethnostate” here. Why is Washington and the Northwest in general so “popular” with white supremacists and neo-Nazis? It really isn’t a surprise to me; maybe The Seattle Times would like to “enlighten” those mired in self-denial. More irony: why are some people calling for the abolition of ICE? Because ICE was formed in the wake of 9/11 to identify and detain foreign terrorists on U.S. soil—a job that should have been the responsibility of the FBI—but because ICE agents ended up having too much time on their hands, they had to find something else to do to justify their existence: Hispanic immigrants suddenly became the latest “national security threat,” despite the fact that federal agencies have been hard put to identify anyone who could legitimately be called a “terrorist threat” attempting to cross the southern border. Some people might even call the way ICE conducts its activities similar to that of a “terrorist” organization.

It is true that  law enforcement on any level of government has not had a great track record in recent times in its confrontations with troublesome organizations who operate even out in plain sight; some people might be old enough to recall the 1985 standoff between Philadelphia police and the MOVE anarchist group, whose principle occupation was to ignore community standards for cleanliness and neighborliness. After the group refused to leave the house they were occupying, an explosive device was dropped on the roof, which ignited gasoline used for a generator—resulting in an out-of-control fire which eventually burned  to the ground 65 homes while the fire department trucks never left their stations. And then there was Waco, where David Koresh and his cult followers held out against federal authorities until a wall was knocked over, either causing a fire and being the occasion for Koresh setting the fire himself;  80 people in the compound were eventually found dead, many if not most by apparent suicide. The bad public relations fiasco of this other and incidents (Ruby Ridge) likely influenced the tepid federal law enforcement actions during the Bundy standoff, in which Cliven Bundy illegally grazed his cattle on federal lands without paying rights dues, attracting other armed anti-government fanatics who felt it was their “right” to threaten federal agents with gunplay. Wishing to avoid another public relations disaster, federal agents back down and withdrew. Although Bundy was eventually arrested, all charges against him were dropped last year--a move which likely only emboldens similar actions.

Although there have been a few instances where the FBI has arrested persons on charges of plotting domestic terrorist acts, this almost always involves explosive devices rather than legal guns; after all, you can’t go “hunting” or to a target range with a bomb without arousing suspicion, and thus the combination of “free speech” and the “right” to own an automatic assault rifle obviously hinders law enforcement on taking action on someone who actually is a legitimate domestic terrorism threat. To show how politically-fraught the issue is, the DHS recently disbanded its domestic terrorism intelligence unit, clearly a politically-motivated move. Republicans and the right-wing media oppose  a firm definition of what constitutes domestic terrorism, and  strengthening the power of the FBI to deal with it, because they know that, save for a left turn or two, all roads lead to their culpability in fostering the toxic atmosphere in which only needs to infect an already feverish mind to be translated into murderous action. I’m not saying that Trump’s party or Trump himself engage in “terrorism,” but through his rallies and tweet storms he acts like your standard fanatical “mullah” haranguing his followers to crush the “infidels”—and that a few actually take him at his word more seriously than others, just like the knights who murdered Thomas Becket, who “believed” that this is what Henry II desired after the king loudly and contimuously denounced Becket as a danger to the realm.

“Mental illness” is to blame for El Paso massacre—but whose?

Donald Trump’s televised address “condemning” white supremacy and bigotry should be the kind of thing that from him rings as hollow as the vacuum of space (between his ears?). “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.” Pretty words that he clearly was incapable of coming up with all by himself, or truly believes himself. Remember his “denunciation” of bigotry after Charlottesville that was clearly forced on him? How long did it take him to reverse course? One day? It might take a little longer for that to happen this time—but probably no longer than his next campaign rally. With 22 now reported dead from the El Paso mass shooting specifically targeting Hispanics, Trump’s words ring both false and hypocritical, and he has only himself to blame. Trump has compromised himself with his unending stoking of racial animus in his “base,” and he lost any credibility he ever had in being a source of “healing” in this country the moment he opened his mouth announcing his intention to run for president in 2015

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Trump, like everyone else on the political right, blames violent video games and “mental illness” for the record number of mass shootings that have occurred during his presidency, most of them by white supremacists. Hell, half the country would be suffering from “mental illness” if the definition of mental illness is what we knew of Patrick Crusius if you deleted the references to killing from his anti-Hispanic hate manifesto (which I am certain sounded “logical” to millions), containing the same typical racist paranoia that Trump and many like-minded people have broadcast loudly and clearly to the world on a daily basis. So is Trump and his racist base suffering from “mental illness” too? Is the difference between being “mentally ill” or not nothing more than actually going out and killing innocent people just because they belong to a race or “ethnicity” that you hate, rather than, say, “merely” confronting a Hispanic man and his mother doing yard work and shouting racist epithets at them, or threatening a black couple with a gun because they didn’t have a “permit” to have a picnic at a campground?

Were the “ordinary” Germans who claimed to be “ignorant” of what was going on in the concentration camps and the handicapped children’s homes right in their own midst suffering from “mental illness”? How about those who looked away from the Nazi thuggery that was going on before their very eyes? What about “ordinary” soldiers or police who “merely” carried out “orders” to commit atrocities? What about “ordinary” Americans—not just those consumed with racial animus, but even some who style themselves as "moderate," “liberal” or “progressive” who just go about their self-obsessed daily lives acting the same way they always do, completely oblivious to children being warehoused in and sometimes dying in filthy cages, or the latest carnage wrought in this Trumpian atmosphere of hate, very likely because if they are white or Asian they have no real motivation (beyond momentary “guilt”) to change it because they are its technical “beneficiaries” rather than its principle target? They may even harbor similar beliefs as that of people like Trump and Crusius, but they are  less “dangerous” because it isn’t their principle “obsession” in life. Still, such “benign” prejudices do in fact have tangible effects, such as what Trump parolee Dinesh D’Souza called “rational discrimination,” a phrase he coined to “justify” racial stereotypes and discrimination.

It is ironic that Trump uses the term “mental illness” to describe others in order to escape responsibility for words and actions emanating from his own questionable mental and emotional stability. “Mental illness” has been used in other contexts as well; in George Orwell’s 1984, it was those perfidious “loners,” who quietly opposed the rule of “Big Brother,” who after being arrested and accused of harboring “thought crimes,” and were tortured into something almost unrecognizable as a human being, and after “reeducation” were obliged to broadcast to the masses that they had been suffering from “mental illness,” confessing to a laundry list of made-up crimes. It was “mentally ill” to simply desire to live and let live without being fed a steady diet of hatred against whoever or whatever the state decreed was the “enemy” of that moment—always a group that did not possess recognizably Caucasian features (or was a “traitor” with a “Jewish” name)—as a means of controlling people by feeding on their fears, the reasons usually complete inventions. And hatred  toward and fear of what group has Trump routinely fed the masses to keep them in line? And who has Trump routinely accused of being “low IQ” and suffering from “mental illness” for having had the audacity to criticize him for his “Big Brother " proclivities?

The Day After

The day after the El Paso shooting we learned that a copy-cat killer took “heart” in the “courage” of Patrick Crusius to take action to restore the white order in America, this time in Dayton, Ohio—killing nine at a night club where police were conveniently in the vicinity to down the shooter a minute later. But in regard to what local police are calling a hate crime and the FBI a domestic terrorism act, there seems to be not just the usual denials of responsibility, but the usual profiling of the shooter and even the denial of the larger picture by members of the targeted demographic in El Paso. 

While some Democrats have directly accused Donald Trump of responsibility for stoking the flames of anti-Hispanic hate, most politicians have been silent on responsibility. Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney denied Trump’s culpability, pointing out that according to Crusius’ manifesto, his anti-Hispanic ravings predated Trump’s presidency. Yet there is a difference between harboring grudges and actually acting on them, and as should be obvious, the “spark” needed to motivate such a person to act can often be when someone—like the President of the United States—is on television or tweeting everyday acting like Der Fuhrer stoking and feeding off the hate he inspires in his supporters. The question now is does Trump have the sense to “tone down” his racist rhetoric—or will he just do what he usually does: “denounce” bigotry, and then carry on as usual, because despite everything, his racist insults draw the loudest cheers from his supporters?

As expected. Crusius has been given the crazed, video-game obsessed “loner” label, as if this “explains” why he carried out the shooting. All “loners” are potentially crazed killers, aren’t they? That is what the media will tell you, rather than face the ugly truth of its own complicity. You know, I grew up in all-white neighborhoods and attended all-white schools in Wisconsin (a state that is complicit in the crime of Trump's election), and I can tell you as someone who didn’t “look” like everyone else that there is vast difference between people being “friendly” and being “friends.” My dysfunctional relationship with my mother did not help either, and I simply feel more comfortable not having to deal with domestic turmoil. I am a “loner”—who would rather watch his collection old movies and old televisions shows, listen to his “old” music—the kind that offers you the world as you wish it would be, not the way it really is. Otherwise, I don’t give a flip as long as I am left alone.

But also disturbing to me is the apparent failure of some Hispanics to realize that this isn’t just about illegal immigrants, as anti-Hispanic fanatics like Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan will tell you. One El Paso resident, Karen Pena, demonstrated this blindness to the danger by claiming that the shooter had a wider agenda, calling the shooting “a warning to scare off Central American migrants.” The foolishness of this claim was attested to by Crusius himself after his arrest, telling police that he “wanted to kill as many Mexicans” as he could. Not Central Americans—Mexicans—and frankly to most Americans all Hispanics are “Mexicans.” 47 million Hispanics in this country are U.S. citizens and it doesn’t matter—they are all “Mexicans” and they are collectively a “threat” to white hegemony. 

The day after, the week after, the year after—it doesn’t really matter, does it? We will see more o the same.

Trump and Fox News' anti-Hispanic hate rhetoric leads to its “logical” conclusion in El Paso

At least 20 people were killed and 26 injured at an El Paso shopping center today. The shooter, a white male named Patrick Crusius of Dallas, had traveled all the way to El Paso because the city has an 83 percent Hispanic population, and according to a manifesto he reportedly wrote, “I can’t bring myself to kill my fellow Americans” as collateral damage. Crusius feared a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” that would lead to a “Great Replacement” of the white population, apparently advanced more rapidly by undesirable "race-mixing." Although Crusius claimed not to trust either political party, he did support those Republicans who favored extreme anti-immigrant laws, and he was especially grateful to Donald Trump in this regard. Crusius, who saw in the Christchurch mass shooting in New Zealand a way in which to put his own desires into action, decided to move “now” before he lost his “nerve” to do it. Crusius hypocritically claimed that he wasn't a "white supremacist," just "concerned" about losing the country that he recognized as his. Even more sickening was his complaint about "fake news": there is nothing "fake" about his hatred of Hispanics--or for that matter Trump's--or the innocent dead he left behind in his genocidal rage.

After three years of demonizing and dehumanizing rhetoric, calling Hispanics an “infestation” of crime, violence and raping, Trump—with the help of Fox News and other purveyors of anti-Hispanic hate like Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan—have finally reaped what they have been sowing: a mass shooting specifically targeting Hispanics regardless of their legal status. There is no denying this. The mainstream media and politicians will of course say that it isn’t “right” to put two and two together and “suggest” that racist hate rhetoric doesn’t eventually lead to acts like this, but the media has been acting blind to this for years. It sickened me to read Trump’s tweet calling the killing “terrible” and “pledging” support, when his responsibility for this is so great and so obvious. The FBI is calling the shooting a domestic terrorist act; to me Trump has been terrorizing innocent people for these past three years simply because he doesn't like the way they look. He is calling the shooter a "coward"; what does he think he is? All bullies are cowards.

Trump knows where he can stick his false “concern” and his racism. He is responsible for creating the atmosphere in which something like this could happen. He has made anti-Hispanic migration the top issue of his 2020 campaign, much as it was in 2016. He has before and continues to stir-up anti-Hispanic hate in his base. This man never has anything positive to say about Hispanics; he might suggest a few might be “good” people, but most have no “merit.” And you have prime time Fox News commentators like Tucker Carlson calling Hispanics “diseased” and “dirty,” Laura Ingraham spouting her “America First” and cultural fearmongering, and far-right commentators like Coulter and Buchanan fulminating that Hispanics are “out to destroy America.” The question wasn’t if a mass killing of Hispanics by a racist white fanatic fed such a steady diet of hate was going to happen, just when. And it has.

Don’t tell me that 2 and 2 don’t equal four. This isn’t the world of George Orwell’s 1984 yet—is it?