Campaign 2016

‘The K***s Are in a Panic’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

[Trigger alert: The following article quotes from antisemitic posts that have been published in recent days. I apologize.]

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Today marks the start of an era of bounty and happiness, although I’ll be honest with y’all and remind you that the road will surely be hard and draining at times.
 
But, at least my unborn son will come into a world ruled by a GREAT MAN that only comes around once every century or so.—columnist “Marcus Cicero,” Infostormer web site, “Victory Is Ours!“

Those who spend life’s precious heartbeats as a way to calculate how many people they hate have until recently tended to keep their communications in the shadows. One had to look for their articles. One needed to know that such hatred existed in order to know where to look for their articles and blog posts. Often, those web sites would turn out to be defunct by the time an amateur like me would look for them.

It was as if those who hate full-time knew that there was something impolite about what they felt, so they kept it behind a locked door and only opened it with a secret handshake.

That day is done. With his campaign for U.S. President and his election yesterday, it no longer matters whether or not Donald Trump himself holds these thoughts in his heart or not: some (many? all?) of his supporters do. I do not think it is all.
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A Generous Dose of Hate

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you. You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”—Kathy Miller, former coordinator for the Donald Trump campaign in Mahoning County, Ohio, this week. She resigned upon being quoted and called her remarks “inappropriate.” (What aspect of the statement qualified it as “inappropriate,” she left a mystery.)

“Look at what’s happening in the world today. The blacks are getting uppity again. I don’t know why, but it’s scary again.”—a personal acquaintance of mine, explaining why he has started carrying a gun again here in Orange County, New York.

Two decades ago, I worked for a weekly newspaper. Even though it was a small-circulation publication, the fact that we ran a “Letters to the Editor” section meant that we received letters. Lots and lots of letters. Our editorial policy was simple: no profanity or personal abuse.

I, a young assistant editor at the time, did not understand this simple policy, because the letters were often awful, hate-filled documents, even when they were free of profanity and free of personal abuse. My boss, the editor of the newspaper, explained that these individuals wanted their thoughts exposed, after all, and we were helping to expose them. “Let them show the world what it looks like,” was her reply to me concerning one letter’s ugly racism. “It is better when they (racists) are out in the open.” Absent profanity, I was not to edit, “clean up,” or not publish the letters.
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The Embrace of Donald Trump’s Hate

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

This is Donald Trump’s America now. If Trump does not win the nomination, it no longer matters: He has moved the debate into an ugliness that gives cover to almost all bigotry.

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“I’m no racist, but I think the one bunch it’s okay to hate is those Muslims.”

I thought to myself, “Did I really just hear him say that?” I have replayed this moment in my mind every day in the six months since I heard the man, an acquaintance of mine, say this to me. Shocked into complacency, I did not speak up.

An elderly women was beside us. She is the sort of person who looks like the meanest thing she might say in her day is something like, “A dozen cookies! That’s too many! Have another.” She chimed in: “They believe in the devil. They lie when they say they pray to God.” Her eyes flared and she repeated herself. “They know it’s a lie, and they do it anyway.” I excused myself, shocked into a mortified silence, which was an inexcusable silence.

Others were nearby, and no one spoke up. I asked a couple people later about what they heard the man say, and each of them expressed surprise but offered some variation of the excuse, “I guess he needed to get that off his chest.”

This is Donald Trump’s America. My first-hand report. These voters may not have the opportunity to vote for Trump for President of the United States next November, as he may not win the Republican nomination, but whomever they vote for next year is being shown the blueprint detailing how to win their support. With his status as the front-runner for the Republican nomination and his open espousal of complete racism, his promises of policies of brutality towards American citizens of one religion, Donald Trump has moved the debate into a region where less ugly racism, less obvious brutality, appears acceptable, becomes accepted. It will still be brutal racism. The moment has arrived when we can not shrug it off and say to ourselves, “I guess he needed to get that off his chest.”
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