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An invitation to carnage by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 29, 2018

An invitation to carnage
by Tom Sullivan


Meme featuring screen grabs from ADL H.E.A.T. Map

Expect even unradicalized conservatives to respond to the meme above with the same blast of whataboutism they have deployed in the last week in response to pipe bombs mailed to prominent Trump critics. After the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, the right wing echo chamber will turn the whataboutism up to 11.

Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt in a statement Saturday called the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue “the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States.” The president revels in records set on his watch. Now, on top of thousands of Americans dead in Puerto Rico, he owns this carnage. He’s already branded it.

Americans still have trouble accepting what they have done to their country in electing Trump president. Sure, his speech may be uncouth. Sure, his words weaken NATO and our alliances around the world, but they are just words, right? He actually has not dissolved NATO or locked up political opponents. He only sounds like an authoritarian. There actually has not been a fascist coup in Washington. How dare anyone suggest, Hugh Hewitt writes, Trump’s inflammatory slurs against the free press, “shithole countries,” immigrants and Americans of various hues have changed anything or incited violence against anyone?

Earlier this year, Jacob T. Levy debunked this naked ass-covering:

I have a hard time believing that anyone really thinks like this as a general proposition. Certainly conservatives who spent the postwar era reciting the mantra “ideas have consequences” didn’t think the words that carried political ideas were impotent. The longstanding view among conservatives was that Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech and Reagan’s call to “tear down this wall” were important events, words that helped to mobilize western resistance to Communism and to provide moral clarity about the stakes of that resistance. More recently, conservatives over the last ten years seemed to attribute totemic powers to words like “radical Islamic terrorism”—or, for that matter, “Merry Christmas.”

Words act on the world. Ask any evangelical about the power of The Word. Ask Hillary Clinton haters how her describing half of Trump’s base as “a basket of deplorables” acted on them.

Damon Linker writes at The Week:

His championing of “birtherism,” his denunciation of Mexican “rapists,” his denigration and fear-mongering about Muslims, and his attacks on “globalist” bankers convinced these extremist voters that Trump shared their fears of the country becoming less white, less Christian, and less willing to defend its identity as a white, Christian nation against various invaders, including Muslims, immigrants from Latin America, blacks, and Jews.

Recognizing the real-world effects of Trump’s stoking nationalism and xenophobia among his followers doesn’t require one to claim insight into his soul or lack thereof. His secret motives matter little, certainly not to the relatives of those who died waiting for hurricane aid in Puerto Rico or while praying in Pittsburgh. Levy observed how Trump’s “months-long rhetorical assault” on the State Department and the FBI has created an exodus of skilled and experienced personnel from various agencies without the need for direct purges. He has created a hostile work environment, and that is enough. Of course, the president’s words have effect. Trump is no longer welcome in Pittsburgh.

Linker continues:

One of those effects is to convince the deplorables that they now have greater room for maneuver — that things are moving in their direction, nudged along by the party that controls the White House and both houses of Congress. The evidence is everywhere — in Iowa’s GOP Rep. Steve King becoming an open white supremacist while avoiding condemnation by senior members of his party; in explicit neo-Nazis running for office under the Republican banner; in the president praising a GOP congressman for assaulting a reporter; in the increasing use of George Soros (a Jewish philanthropist and donor to liberal causes) as an all-purpose target and scapegoat for events and policies the president and his white nationalist supporters detest. The list goes on and on.

Not solely on the right, just predominantly on the right, and with the implicit, if not explicit, sanction of the president of the United States.

Trumps words have acted on the world. In his inauguration speech, he pledged to stop “American carnage.” But his tweets and vilification rallies before and after told some among his cheering fans “American carnage” was an invitation.

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