Sunday, August 13, 2017

‘If You’re Not Outraged…’

After hearing tRump’s “fire and fury” announcement about North Korea this week, I looked around my house. 

Maybe its nuclear ICBM would not hit Connecticut, but we would surely experience the fallout. I thought: How tight can we seal the house? Put in the storm doors. Make sure the cellar windows are closed tight. Create a stash of food, water, and toilet paper. Food and litter for the cats. Gas up the cars.

I’ve said many times that I don’t want to live though a nuclear attack. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies and I can’t imagine my comfortable existence being upended. If it’s gonna happen, just suck me up into the big mushroom cloud.

In the meantime, there’s the never-ending anxiety about what the Twitter-in-Chief will tweet about next. Hands-down, he’s a lunatic. The evidence is mounting on all fronts – financially, politically, personally. His attempts at legislation are abject failures and the Republicans, in their efforts (and tRump’s) to Undo Everything Obama, have been slow to realize his ineptitude.

Heather Heyer/Facebook
The hate spewed by his mostly male white nationalists supporters has been growing rapidly came to a head on Saturday with the bloody “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. One person died and 19 were injured when one of the neo-Nazi thugs drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters. Later, she was identified as Heather Heyer, whose last post on Facebook was “if you're not outraged you're not paying attention."

When twitter-in-chief finally took to the podium, he refused to acknowledge that the white nationalists were responsible for the chaos, rather attributing it to “many sides.” Heaven forbid, since they’re ensconced in the White House. He did not acknowledge the chaos and the car crash as domestic terrorism. His comments were later cheered by the white nationalists, including former KKK wizard David Duke. Compare that to President Obama’s response to the Sandy Hook shootings.

If you listened to the tone of his voice, he sounded disengaged and remote. There was no passion in his voice or sense of outrage. Really, he was more emphatic in voicing his “fire and fury” warning against North Korea.

On Sunday, his minions backpedaled and saying that of course he condemned the hate groups’ actions. Statistics don’t lie: The Center for Study of Hate and Extremism finds that hate crimes are up 20 percent since the election.

But the die is cast. There’s a pattern here. He’s fueling his hate-filled base. He lies about anything and everything. He has little understanding of world politics or legislative issues. He’s becoming more delusional and dangerous by the day. Republicans are only barely awakening from their zombie-like acceptance of him.  

Indivisible is already organizing events reflecting solidarity with Charlottesville.

Are we outraged yet?



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