Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
Last night I wrote about the Racial Rubicon that President Trump and his followers at a rally crossed. It was sobering, because what I and others have said about him since the day he announced his candidacy was on full display. Trump had ignited the bonfire three days before by telling people to send four Congresswomen of color back to their country of origin. All are American citizens, three of the four born in the USA and one a naturalized citizen.
Never before has a sitting President opened the doors of racism so wide as President Trump, even James Buchanan and his work to tip the Supreme Court In the Dred Scott decision, and his attempt to overthrow the law by attempting to have Kansas admitted as a Slave State, an effort that was successfully opposed by Senator Stephan A. Douglas, Democrat from Illinois, a member of Buchanan’s own Party. Buchanan threatened him, but Douglas, otherwise not a friend of slaves held his ground and built a bi-partisan coalition in the House and Senate to defeat Buchanan. Unfortunately, there is no one like the late Senator from Illinois. Douglas paid the political price, though the Democratic nominee in 1860, the party split and in a second nominating convention nominated John C. Breckinridge, Splitting the party and bringing Abraham Lincoln to office.
So where does this lead? That is a question one of my readers asked on Twitter today. I wish that I knew. But I remember the words of Mahatma Gandhi:
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.”
I sincerely believe that Donald J. Trump is incapable of discerning truth from lies. He lies so much that it has become ingrained in his very soul. In regard to this aspect of Of Trump’s personality, I am reminded of the words of Adolf Hitler’s Finance Minister, Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, who noted: “He wasn’t honest with his most intimate confidants…. In my opinion, he was so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognize the difference between truth and lies.”
Today the President attempted to pass the blame, and in effect through his chanting supporters under the bus, saying that “He did not like it, he did not agree with it,” but the problem is that he started it, he planted it through his tweets and statements in the days before. He reveled as the crowed chanted as he spoke against Representative Ilan Omar of Minnesota “Send her back, Send her back!” Representative Mark Walker, Republican from North Carolina (who I actually met and drank beer with in 2017 after the Congressional Baseball Game) immediately voiced his concern and consternation about the display, but very few other Republicans found anything to complain about. Senator Lindsey Graham blamed it on Trump’s narcissism, and the statements of Omar and the other Congresswomen, not racism, despite the decades of evidence demonstrating the latter.
Gandhi’s words are as true today as when he wrote them. Americans today have the choice of being, to use the words of Yehuda Bauer “The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.”
If you wonder how such events happen in a democracy, look no further than the words of Yale Historian Timothy Snyder:
“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”
The questions for all Americans today, will we be perpetrators, victims, or bystanders, or will ordinary Americans find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands.
Those are the questions after Trump and his followers actions over the past few days. Believe me, people I know, people I would have believed in ordinary times to be good and decent people are mocking those who criticize the President and making excuses for the illegal and immoral racist words and policies of his administration. For me that is frightening.
Where does it end? I leave that to you, but as a historian, ethicist, and Priest I have to say that if Trump remains in power by ballot or bullet, it will be something that will bring such shame to our country that generations from now our descendants will burdened with, just as the descendants of the Nazis. Sadly, we never did that with our Slave owners and those who brought about the Civil War, including my ancestors.
Until tomorrow,
Peace,
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 