Trump mourns the white supremacist statuary
Trump has been outdoing himself this morning.
Join me at 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, August 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona at the Phoenix Convention Center! Tickets at: https://t.co/2kUQfKqbsx pic.twitter.com/5ua74dlVtq
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Yet another fascist rally, because we haven’t had enough fascist rallies yet. Yet another opportunity to worship the dear führer, because he can never have enough worship because he is so revoltingly narcissistic and needy.
Publicity seeking Lindsey Graham falsely stated that I said there is moral equivalency between the KKK, neo-Nazis & white supremacists……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
…and people like Ms. Heyer. Such a disgusting lie. He just can't forget his election trouncing.The people of South Carolina will remember!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Note the incredible chutzpah of Donald Trump calling anyone else on the planet “publicity seeking” (especially a mere few hours after promoting yet another Worship Trump Rally). Note the familiar but still repellent lying. He did say that; he said exactly that; he treated the Nazis and the people protesting the Nazis as equivalent. And finally note the familiar (again) vulgar pseudo-explanation.
The public is learning (even more so) how dishonest the Fake News is. They totally misrepresent what I say about hate, bigotry etc. Shame!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Oh, sure. They “totally misrepresent” it by showing the video in which you say it, loudly and furiously.
Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He's toxic!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Random. Personal. Vulgar. Trashy. Childish.
And then the threnody for the tragic lost Confederacy.
Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
…can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
…the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
He wants a race war and is doing his best to set one off.
Beauty? No statue, no matter how well crafted or sublimely chiseled, can make the ugliness of antebellum southern slavery and postbellum Jim Crow anything but ugly. Get ’em all down. Since when do countries erect statues to traitors?
You want the Confederate statues gone? Easy. Tell the president you’re replacing these statues of losers with statues of a winner: Donald Trump. He’ll be tweeting in a heartbeat about the great beauty that is being added to our cities, towns and parks and never able to be comparably replaced!
See, ’cause Jeff Flake’s last name also means “unreliable or eccentric person.” God, this guy’s good.
Please, Sam, no. Then people have to look at Donald Trump all day (although it would serve the folks insisting on Confederate statues right, it would be no better for the folks who want them gone).
That’s all true, iknklast, but the thought of Trump getting shit on by pigeons warms my heart. And I’m sure one day the Trump statues will face the fate of the Saddam, Stalin and Lenin statues.
Technically, he tried to split that hair by claiming that amongst the protesters were some who were not Nazis, white supremacists, or racists, but who merely protested the removal on the basis of preserving history, while conversely there were those among the counter-protesters who were violent troublemakers.
This stops short of a full-throated equivalence, and instead invites the picayune argument whether it’s possible to have points of agreement with Nazis without being a Nazi, or to what extent a fellow-traveler is or isn’t equally culpable. Like a Nazi party member who actually loves Jews, but joined the party seeking advantageous business connections (can’t resist mentioning that one such person was Oskar Schindler), or someone who refrains form joining the Nazi party but who does support decisive action in the Sudetenland to defend Germans there from discrimination. (See how much fun you can have if you accept the bait Trump was offering!?)
Disclaimer, since it doesn’t go without saying: Trump was giving those Nazis cover; that’s why they were so effusive in their praise of him. Which is why this kind of hair-splitting has no place in a public forum for the general masses, even if some of it would have been suitable for discussion in a philosophy class or a history publication. The public as an entity is stupid, and public rhetoric is a blunt instrument. It’s not the place for making fine distinctions and then expecting the masses to go home with an accurate and nuanced perception of the issues.
And dammit, now I have to make another disclaimer. No, fellow travelers can’t simply absolve themselves of any responsibility for what they condone. Assuming there were any fellow travelers present at that protest, which assumes facts not in evidence. My experience in having versions of this discussion many, many times, is that the defenders of the Confederate statues range from full-blown racist assholes to genteel “racism is over” types soaking in unchecked privilege.
AMA, people joined the NSDAP for all sorts of reasons: hatred of Jews, trust in Hitler, patriotism, business advantage, hope of employment, promise of land reform, social approval, and so on. But all these people have something in common – they were Nazis. We don’t give a crap why they joined and the same goes for today’s Nazis.
Sam, up front I want to note that your use of “we” makes me uncomfortable: it reads as if “we” are the anti-nazis and “they” includes both Nazis and myself. If so, you have seriously misunderstood the tenor of my post.
“We” — meaning the allies in WWII — did give a crap to the extent that some Nazis we executed, and some we did not. In CERTAIN forums, such as oh, say, the Nuremberg trials, it becomes relevant to discuss the relative level of culpability of various Nazis.
Medical ethicists likewise discuss the implications of using data from Nazi medical experiments, and if you’ve ever googled to find out at what temperature a human freezes to death, then whether you knew it or not, you were consulting Nazi research. It shouldn’t surprise you to realize that there’s no ethical way to answer that question, so Nazi data remains more or less the only data available. This is a legitimate discussion for ethicists to have, despite my visceral sense that researchers who use that data are sharing in the Nazis’ crimes.
…none of which justifies any of Trump’s statements. I’m hopeful that you read my post with enough understanding to realize that I was in no way justifying any of it. Fora like the two I mentioned above are particular and rare. Anyone who asks, “How much like a Nazi can I be without being guilty of Naziism?” is automatically a moral miscreant and a giant fucking asshole.
In case my original point was swallowed up in tangents, it was this:
At no point did Trump state, “Nazis and anti-Nazis are morally equivalent.” (He implied the hell out of it, but he didn’t state it.) He was surprisingly careful to state (without evidence) that some of the protesters were not Nazis, nor white supremacists, and that of those some were “very fine people.”
It’s a pain in the ass being scrupulously accurate in quoting the enemy, but it’s worth our while not to misquote him, whether accidentally or for rhetorical purposes. Our argument is weakened when we make it sloppily or dishonestly.
AMA, sorry for the misunderstanding. I certainly wasn’t lumping you in with the Nazis when I used the word “they.” In fact, I was agreeing with you that there’s no point in hairsplitting and that fellow travelers don’t get to absolve themselves from what they condone. My point was that history condemns both true believers and fellow travelers.
Indeed, one of the major problems facing Republicans is the one you name: “How much like a Nazi can I be without being guilty of Nazism?” A lot of the ones in the White House are tacking mighty close to that line right now, and as far as I’m concerned guys like Bannon, Miller, Gorka, Sessions and Trump have crossed it already.
Thanks Sam, fully agree! Especially in Gorka’s case, the evidence suggests that he is an actual member of an actual Nazi organization. Hard to get more Nazi than that.
Was he not making the equivalence with his ‘on many sides’ rant? Also with his ‘alt-left / alt-right’ lunacy?
In 1980, Trump had precious bas-relief Art Deco sculptures destroyed to make way for one of his monstrosities. The Metropolitan Museum of Art would have taken the statues. Instead, they were jackhammered to bits.
@AMA
I think you give him too much credit for thought.
He just wanted to tell you that there were people who supported and elected him on both sides – those were, by definition, the very fine people.
Trump’s razor: Never explain any Trump statement by a thought process if it can be explained by narcism.
Oh, that’s very good – Trump’s razor. Five stars.