His “greatness,” if you will, is based on creating fear and hatred
by digby
QOTD goes to Christopher Dickey on MSNBC this morning:
TRUMP (video): Together we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told, the story of America. It is the chronicle of brave citizens who never give up on the dream of a better and brighter future.
JANSING: What didn’t you like about that?
DICKEY: “Brave citizens.” I think the emphasis on citizens there misses the point of American history. The whole greatness of America is built on the idea of a nation of immigrants building a future together. A nation of immigrants. Something he shied away from. Not a nation of citizens, not a nation that excluded people, but a nation that included people and included their dreams. The possibility to build a future in the new world that was infinitely better than the future in the old world. That is what America – American greatness is based on.
And that is exactly what Trump wants to ignore because his greatness, if you will, is based on creating fear and hatred, a kind of rabid nationalism that George Orwell said “bears something in common with the idea that you can classify people the way you can classify insects.” Citizens, non-citizens, you don’t classify them by their dreams, by their possibilities, by their faith in America. You classify them as citizens and non-citizens.
Also:
DONALD TRUMP : The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge. Our army manned the [inaudible], it ran the ramparts. It took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry under the rocket’s red glare it had nothing but victory.
JANSING: … So, Chris, here’s what The Washington Post writes about yesterday, “Historians – at least the ones fact-checking the president on Twitter – were not impressed. One likened the speech to ‘an angry grandpa reading a fifth grader’s book report on American military history.’” It may just be the President, you know, he has some trouble reading the prompter and it was raining, so that’s, you know, not the most fun, I could feel the pain on that. But shouldn’t his speech writers know not to conflate the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, which happened in separate centuries?
CHRISTOPHER DICKEY [DAILY BEAST]: And throw in the airports as well. I mean, it was a pretty extraordinary muddle, historically. I think the real problem here is not only that the speech writers screwed up or the Teleprompter screwed up but that the President himself is oblivious to American history. He has a kind of, how shall I say, a delusional notion of what made America great and I think that was reflected in his completely ignorant remarks about American history in that segment.
His reading of the speech from the teleprompter was the first he’d heard of any of that history.
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