Every morning I awaken to a country bristling with hate, intolerance, and violence.
Trump bullied his way to the presidency, exploiting public anxieties, e. g., steel belt resentment of jobs sent abroad, latent fears of a changing demographic replacing White homogeneity, evangelical rancor against abortion, and Islamaphobia, which sees every Muslim as a potential terrorist.
Trump pledged he’d limit Muslim immigration and reduce refugee numbers. Shortly into his tenure, he attempted a 90-day immigration ban on seven Muslim nations, fortunately curtailed by the courts, though the recent SCOTUS decision suggests he may now have the upper hand.
One of his gallery of appointed rogues includes top advisor Stephen Bannon, known for his misogynist views on women and feminism that plague our nation.
Early on, Trump appointed the now disgraced retired general Mike Flynn as national security advisor, who’d previously depicted Islam as a “malignant cancer.”
Since his election, hate crimes have risen sharply. Think Progress has mapped their occurrence from the election through February, 2017, recording 261 hate crimes, 41% of which have been linked to Trump’s rhetoric.
But I want to be fair. Much as I dislike Trump, hate in our country has many sources and targets.
Violence comes from the Left as well as the Right. 13% of the 261 incidents included attacks on Trump supporters.
Now comes the June 14 shooting of four Republican congressmen, one of them critically, while practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity in Alexandria, VA by a disgruntled Bernie supporter.
There’s also Black violence, targeting Whites, often police, the abused becoming the abuser, the most notorious being the Dallas sniper ambush of twelve policemen, five of them killed (June 8, 2016).
Even liberals can become intolerant, as one of my favorites, simply because he’s so even-handed, Fareed Zakaria, reminds us: “American universities these days seem to be committed to every kind of diversity except intellectual diversity. Conservative voices and views, already a besieged minority, are being silenced entirely….Freedom of speech is not just for warm, fuzzy ideas that we find comfortable. It’s for ideas that we find offensive.”
Alarmingly, the number of hate groups in The USA has proliferated, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, increasing from 892 in 2015 to 917 last year. This number doesn’t track, however, widespread cyperspace hate raconteurs, whose venom sometimes seeps into social violence such as Dylan Roof’s heinous murder of nine Black church members:
ACTIVE HATE GROUPS 2016
KU KLUX KLAN ……………….130
NEO-NAZI…………… ………… 99
WHITE NATIONALISTS……..100
RACIST SKINHEAD. …………..79
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY……… ..21
NEO-CONFEDERATE…………..43
BLACK SEPARATIST…………..193
ANTI-LGBT……………………….52
ANTI-MUSLIM………………….101
GENERAL HATE………………..101
Total: 917 Active Hate Groups (“The Year in Hate and Extremism,” Intelligence Report, SPLC, Spring 2017, Issue 162.)
Top five states for hate groups? This may surprise you!
1. California……….79
2. Florida…………..63
3. Texas…………….55
4. New York……….47
5. Pennsylvania…..40
It’s not any better abroad. Britain’s decision to exit the European Community, which requires open borders of its members, parallels the upset victory of Donald Trump, many of the pro-exit voters older, working class Whites. France has its Le Pen; the Netherlands, its Geert Wilder; Germany its AFD (Alternative for Germany).
All of this comes down to the age old problem of the Other. Unfortunately, for all our supposed sophistication in today’s world of technological prowess, we’re still engulfed in the tribalism of our ancient progenitors, hostile to the outsider. And it’s not likely to get better, given the increasing anachronism of national borders that same technology makes possible.
Still, I am not without hope that the good side of humanity will ultimately prevail. Or as gifted Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye puts it,
My father’s hopes travel with me
years after he died. Someday
we will learn how to live. All of us
surviving without violence
never stop dreaming how to cure it.
–rj
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Brimmings: up from the well 