"A bad hair day" in Pittsburgh!

Way back in May 2016, in writing about the looming dark clouds, I worried:

It starts with a swastika and 1488 etched on a bench on a bridge over a river :(  Here is to hoping that we will end it all before it even takes hold.

It has taken a firm hold!

A mere two weeks ago that I wrote in this post:

When the President says all the horrible things that he says on a daily hourly basis, it reflects an utter lack of an ability to "fancy with the sufferer"--a complete and total lack of empathy. 
It is not any surprise when he makes even tragic situations only about himself. Or, talks about the most nonsensical things like how a boat ended up in some guy's yard.  A lack of empathy means that the asshole-in-chief can never behave like the comforter-in-chief that Presidents are expected to be in the face of tragedies. 

Through his incendiary rhetoric, this President created the monsters who marched around shouting "Jews will not replace us" and shooting at the faithful who had assembled for Shabbat prayers.

True to his personality, which he never hid from the 63 million who voted for him,he could not be bothered with being presidential:

Now, after a week of fear, with pipe bombs being sent to a list of people whom President Trump has said horrible things about, and to CNN, which he consistently targets, 11 Jewish citizens were slaughtered in their place of worship on the Sabbath. Trump’s response? He joked that he almost canceled an event because, after having to speak to reporters about the shooting in the rain, he was having “a bad hair day.”

I agree with the author:

This president will never offer comfort, compassion or empathy to a grieving nation. It’s not in him. When questioned after a tragedy, he will always be glib and inappropriate. So I have a wild suggestion: Let’s stop asking him. His words are only salt in our wounds.

Instead, "Let’s instead remember that the people in our daily lives are hurting too."

Shabbat Shalom.

In the 48 hours since the Pittsburgh attack, POTUS tweets:

- RTing D'Souza interviewed by the NRA
- going after Tom Steyer
- the press is the Enemy of the People
- calling Andrew Gillum a thief
- the caravan https://t.co/GSzqmDUjj6

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 29, 2018

J'accuse! J'accuse! J'accuse!

In June 2016, I was in an airport shuttle van with an Armenian-American driver and two German tourists.  The male tourist said that because it is illegal in Germany to say or do anything supporting Nazis, there is nothing there, at least in the open.  He blamed the US for exporting neo-nazi stuff to Europe.

This past weekend, the neo-nazi side of America was in full display.  A woman's death, and a black man's near-death, and more ...

Even prior to that post, in May 2016, I wrote about the looming dark clouds.

It starts with a swastika and 1488 etched on a bench on a bridge over a river :(  Here is to hoping that we will end it all before it even takes hold.

The evil has taken a firm hold, and eradicating it now will be a much tougher problem than anybody could have imagined.

In those posts, the two highly religious and openly Republican readers who used to comment stayed away from commenting.  One of them had even pontificated a year prior in a post on our biased and bigoted selves:

I do not understand how one person thinks he is better than another simply because of skin color or religion or any accident of birth, such as the wealth of the parents or location of the home. Every human has value and has gifts and talents and skills to share. None is more important than another.

I bet that those readers were two of the 63 million who voted for trump, who was thanked today by the former KKK leader.  The "thanks" was because the president equated "activists protesting racism with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who rampaged in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend."

Two weeks after the November election, I wrote that white nationalism is not new to the GOP.

The big difference between 1984 and 2016 is this: Reagan used the political dog-whistle to remind the GOP white loyalists about blacks and immigrants.  Trump ditched the dog-whistle and went for the straight talk.

Elections have serious consequences.  This past election was perhaps one of the most consequential one ever, which is something for future historians to write about.

I quoted Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote:

Trump’s victory, in light of all of his antics during the campaign, makes it all but impossible to deny the continuing currency of racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia in the United States. It’s on display for all to see. This could be a good thing: It forces us to reckon with who we really are. Is America really about the democratic, progressive values professed in the founding documents? Or, are we really the small-minded, bigoted place Trump’s election represents?

The nine months after the election have made it clear that the 63 million did vote for racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia, and more.  They stand accused!