Trumpmentia
by Tom Sullivan
Is Donald Trump inspiring the crazy or simply reflecting it? And I mean simply. The guy seems to be running for president of the 8th grade.
If violent rhetoric can inspire violent action, I am wondering, can widely reported crazy talk inspire craziness in a population?
I suggested yesterday, if Edward Snowden somehow “inspired” the Paris attacks by ISIS (as some authorities allege), couldn’t wild talk by Republican presidential candidates have inspired the attack on the Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs?
Digby pointed out as Salon yesterday how authorities worry about homegrown terrorism from “troubled souls” radicalized to violent action by propaganda. It might be talk of jihad or it might be talk of Planned Parenthood allegedly “dismembering children purely for monetary profit.”
Matt Taibbi traded barbs on Twitter with people convinced that is true:
@mtaibbi @AdamBaldwin Baby parts go out, money comes in. In what way is that "not an accurate description"?— Lucky Eat-Anter (@LuckyEatAnter) November 29, 2015
@mtaibbi Mhm. That's why PP is fighting OTC birth control for $7 instead of paying them $500 for abortions and selling parts. @AdamBaldwin— Dan (@Maverick_SS_49) November 29, 2015
Last night, Chris Hayes observed that Trump makes wild, disproved assertions about American Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks and, when his followers echo them back, uses their support as proof that his false claim is true. Dick Cheney did the same thing by leaking bogus “intelligence” about Iraqi WMDs to the media and then after the New York Times reported it, Cheney went on TV and used their reporting as support for his bogus claims. He convinced a wide swath of the American public that attacking Iraq was justified. I’ll bet a few of them — in New Jersey — even celebrated bombing Baghdad. As Herman Cain said, “I don’t have facts to back this up.” Conveniently, facts no longer matter, do they?
What is most worrisome is the possibility of crazy talk inducing a kind of moral panic or a “virus of the mind” (to use the Richard Dawkins’ term) in the broader public.
Vice President Joe Biden worried about that back in September. He sought to reassure Americans we would overcome it:
“There’s one guy absolutely denigrating an entire group of people, appealing to the baser side of human nature, working on this notion of xenophobia in a way that hasn’t occurred in a long time,” Biden told the group of about 75 people.
“This isn’t about Democrat – Republican. It’s about a sick message. This message has been tried on America many times before. We always, always, always, always overcome,” he said.
Let’s hope he is right.