For months Donald Trump has been whipping his fanatical followers into a frenzy with his inflammatory racist rhetoric.
Stirring up tensions in his already badly divided country.
And yesterday those tensions exploded into violence.
And we got a chilling vision of what a Trump America might look like.
When a rally had to be cancelled.
Donald Trump's divisive hate tour exploded in violence Friday with a bloody stop in St. Louis and chaos in Chicago — while the tone-deaf hate-monger denied his role in the madness.
The fury filled day began with clashes outside St. Louis’ Peabody Opera House, leaving one man bloodied and another charged with assault. And the havoc later rolled through a packed arena in Chicago after a Trump event was scuttled, and tensions boiled over.
This is what it sounded like inside the Chicago arena after the cancellation was announced...
And rage quickly turned to violence, just as it had at another rally hours earlier in St Louis...
And none of this should be surprising, for it was indeed entirely predictable.
What many had feared as Trump’s campaign has proceeded had finally happened on a large scale: A flammable brew of populist anger, campaign mismanagement, a candidate’s own provocative encouragement and protesters fighting back — quite literally — finally found its fuse.
Especially since Trump has been encouraging his followers to beat up protesters.
Trump, who encourages his supporters to surround and shout down protesters with chants of “USA,” has openly pined for “the old days,” when, he says, noisy demonstrators would be carried out of a political rally on stretchers.
"I’d like to punch him in the face," he told a Las Vegas casino rally crowd last month when one protester was ejected.
They have been answering his call.
Earlier this week, a 78-year-old Trump supporter sucker-punched a black protester being led out of the candidate’s event — and then threatened death to the man he had punched.
And even when he isn't endorsing violence, the threat of it hangs heavy in the air at all of his rallies.
So one can only wonder what might happen if the protests continue and Trump and his followers get angrier and angrier.
And when I watched this introduction to the live feed of the rally that never happened...
I couldn't help but wonder where that strange demagogue might lead those angry Americans?
Because to me its starting to look more and more like he's leading them down the road to fascism.
Which is when I give thanks that I live in a very different country, with a very different kind of leader.
Who when he was asked to comment on Trump yesterday, refused to get drawn into the fray, but did say he had confidence in Lincoln's good angels.
Let's hope he's right.
Because while we may have dodged our fascist nightmare when we defeated Stephen Harper and his brutish Con regime.
I fear our neighbours' nightmare may just be beginning...
Thank goodness for our new Canada.
God save America...
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Trump may not be a 'Hitler' yet, but when he brags about rounding up 11 million people to deport, I start to get a picture of SS-like fascist troops breaking down doors and busting heads in Hispanic neighbourhoods, to propagate his message of hate. No, Simon, he may not have Hitlers number yet, but he's certainly on his way to becoming a 'Shicklgruber' I'm sure Harper is sitting back in his loney room, staring at his TV in awe, wondering why his divisive hate politics didn't sprout bigger wings here.
ReplyDeletehi GreazedLitenen....No I wouldn't call Drumpf Hitler yet, he's more like Mussolini. But when you think of what he might do if he was ever President it is a frightening thought indeed. What I fear the most is the way he is stirring up his followers with his demagoguery, and making it look like it's OK to be a racist. When you light those kind of fires it's very hard to put them out...
DeleteWhile Trump states he doesn't condone violence one minute,the next minute he says he wants to increase waterboarding and other torture if necessary.Yet he draws major crowds to his rally's.All the national polls have him leading.
ReplyDeleteThe big crowd that started lining up at 3 in the morning in Chicago deserved to hear him speak.No one forced them to be there.Simple as that.
The crowd apparently Sanders supporters,that showed up to disrupt caused this,not Trump.Could they have been agent provocature's?
Just a thought.
Meanwhile,yesterday Hillary Clinton was praising Nancy and Ronald Reagan for all their fine work with aids victims.She was forced to apologize when leaders within the gays right movement fought back.
There were calls for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay-rights group, to revoke its endorsement of Mrs. Clinton. Its president, Chad Griffin, a former Clinton administration official, issued a statement saying that “Nancy Reagan was, sadly, no hero in the fight against H.I.V./AIDS.”
Story is in NY Times.
So as you see Simon it's not only Trump who is pissin' some people off.
It is Trump, Cruz, and everyone connected with the Republicans/tea Party who are inflaming hatred in America.
DeleteBernie Sanders supporters are a level-headed bunch that are pacifists who respect peaceful democracy.
By definition the Republicans have become the fascist party. What Harper wanted for Canada and the Reformacon party is what Trump is doing now.
All Americans should vote for Bernie Sanders if they want to take back their country from the brink of insanity.
hi anon 8:23 am...whether those protests are a good idea, is debatable. I'm not sure they are because they could lead to serious violence. But the point is they are inevitable. For you can't smear millions of people, and threaten mass deportations, without expecting people to fight back. And I'm not surprised that many of the protesters are Sander's supporters. Because he has a massive following of young supporters and they are a passionate bunch.
DeleteAs for the Hillary Clinton story, I saw that, and although it was unfortunate, it might have been just a mistake. She has just published a very long apology, which seems sincere. And although I am supporting Bernie, nothing Hillary could do could be as bad as the demagoguery of the racist Trump....
It looks like (short of a brokered convention) that Trump will win the nomination. I wonder if the scene in Chicago is foreshadowing of what every appearance of Trump will look like on the general election campaign. Coming as the election does on the tail of the "Black Lives Matter" campaign, I can't help but think that African Americans are well mobilized for just this kind of confrontation occurring every day all over the States as Trump campaigns. A large and continual turn out of racialized Americans protesting Trump will feed the fire of racists who will come even more out of the shadows. It really is a recipe for all out riots and violence occurring daily. When I was very young I lived in Detroit during the infamous race riots there. We lived literally right across the train tracks from one of the hardest hit neighborhoods and you could get a very clear view of the fires and riots from our windows. As I grew up, my father always reminded me that when you treat people badly for long enough they fight back and the tragedy is that they don't necessarily fight back in clear, organized, peaceful ways. Instead they often, and very understandably, just strike out in anger at anything they can find. But when the Detroit riots occurred LBJ was president and he had tried (in his limited way) to encourage racial harmony and equality. Now we have a leader with a national profile who is fanning the flames in the opposite direction and as events have suggested we have racists everywhere itching for a fight. It is a dangerous recipe for all out war.
ReplyDeletehi Kirby...yes it does look as if trump is going to win the Republican nomination. And like you I believe the protests could lead to riots in the streets. Which as I'm sure you know is what happened when Hitler rose to power, when fascists and communists fought pitched battles in one German city after the other. As I said above, I'm not sure that disrupting Trump's rallies is a wise move, because it takes the focus off the inanities he spouts, and could actually make him more popular. But you can't smear and threaten to deport millions of people and expect them to remain passive. So you have one angry group up against the other, and I don't think anyone can predict where this story is going, or who will win in the end. But it seems to me that globalization has finally hit the wall, and has been exposed as the Ponzi scheme it always was. And since it is capitalism's main mantra, we are edging pretty close to a revolution, which can only be a good thing because we definitely need one. So I think the next eight months are going to be the most tumultuous times you and I have ever seen. Fascinating, inspiring, but also rather frightening...
DeleteTrumps bumboy picks on a girl and Briebart throws her farther under the bus. Now the thug is under investigation and their own communication director quits and says Briebart is lying. Angry old white guy is charged for assault at a rally. Trump runs away from a rally in Chicago and hides. There are so many people jumping on his head right now , he's going to have to change his name to Trumpoline.
ReplyDeletehi rumleyfips...yes I saw that, and it really is turning into a three-ring circus. It looks to me a bit like the fall of Rome, and the question is what will emerge from this chaos. Will it be a new beginning, or will it be fascism?
DeleteAs I've previously suggested, Trump with his agenda, will produce a civil war in the U.S.A. should he be elected. A recent documentary shown on PBS about the history of the Black Panthers was very interesting. How much we forgot about their original goal. Its beginnings are very in keeping with Black Lives Matter.
ReplyDeleteBlack Lives matter is an organization which has less of a hierarchy, so it will not run into the problems of the Black Panthers.
If Trump tries to go into Texas or areas of California to "round up" people he thinks are Mexican, he may have a very big surprise. Canada will also have one, the run for the Canadian border by those seeking political asylum. If Cruz is elected we can see a run for the Canadian border by people in the BLGT communittee and any number of religious people not committed to Cruz's version of "chrisianity".
Although the power holders within the Republican party maybe upset by trump, they have espoused his views for years. This time its just they don't control the candidate.
Cancelling the rally was smart on the part of Trump. Having a riot by either side would have been bad optics. If you can't control your rallies how can you control the country or the armed forces.
I'm sure there is more than one National Guard commander trying to figure out where they will fit in with Trumps "round up", give many people in the National Guard are people of colour, not to mention the Armed Forces.
hi e.a.f...yes it does look a bit like the beginning of a civil war. The rich against the poor, white against black or hispanics, the educated against the uneducated, the old against the young. So goodness knows what's going to happen, but we're in for quite a ride....
DeleteHow will Trump's campaign end? Ask Canada.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/03/14/opinion/how-will-trumps-campaign-end-ask-canada