Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln's Ominous Warning

There have been quite a few stories and cartoons in the media recently, wondering what Abraham Lincoln, if he was alive today, would say about the dangerous demagogue Donald Trump.

All seem to agree that the Great Emancipator wouldn't be impressed...



How could he be? 

When polls show many of Trump's supporters believe that he shouldn't have freed the slaves.

But I think Lincoln would also have a warning for his fellow Americans, and it couldn't be more chilling.



I think he'd read this threat from the bloated rabble rouser. 

Donald Trump predicted that there could be “riots” if the Republican nomination were to be decided by a contested convention this summer and ignored what he expects to be his own large lead in the delegate count.

” I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots,” he said.

I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.” 

I think he'd watch this latest attack ad from Trump headquarters...



Which couldn't be cruder, or more misogynistic, or aimed more directly at the lowest common denominator. 

And then I think Lincoln would warn the American people about their history of extreme violence, and the dangers of a mobocracy. 

However far we may be today from the scenes of violence that Lincoln described, it’s easy to see the danger he was talking about gathering force across contemporary America. Donald Trump personifies the mobocratic spirit; he fuels it and is fuelled by it, though it is doubtful that he can control it. 

All the elements are there: the incessant, escalating lust for violence; the instinct for mobilizing a mob to take the law into its own hands; the claim that whole groups are the enemy; the belief that those who are not with the mob forfeit all protection from the mob and invite attack; the attribution of hostile conspiracies to peaceful independent actors; the contempt for evidence, as if accurate information and honest adjudication of competing claims were dirty tricks contrived to disadvantage the mob; the vilification of the press as hooligans who deserve to be beaten, if not killed; an all-encompassing animosity toward the government and its institutions; in short, an ever-intensifying lawlessness.

For that is exactly where Trump is leading the U.S., by whipping up the mob into a frenzy with his racism and his xenophobia, and encouraging them to take the law into their own hands.

At a time when so many Americans are so angry at what is happening to them and their country, and are looking for scapegoats to blame.

And it is what makes Trump so dangerous... 



Not just him, but his followers, and the murderous passions he has aroused.

For while his most fanatical followers would almost certainly riot if their leader was denied the nomination. What might they do if he was nominated, but lost the election?

Would it lead to mass civil unrest, or domestic terrorism on a scale never seen before?

Could it even lead to a new American civil war? 

For when the mob runs wild anything could happen.

So yes, let's hope the Great Emancipator was also right when he said this...



Let's hope that sanity prevails, and that more Americans wake up from this living nightmare.

And realize where the dangerous demagogue Donald Trump might lead them.

Before it's too late...

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