Boycott!

February 7, 2018

It is easy to become inured to Trump’s unceasing barrage of inflammatory rhetoric such that we don’t react.  We know that he consistently rails against anyone who fails to display the appropriate amount of fawning obsequiousness, but we still should be shocked by his declaration yesterday that the Democrats who sat in stony silence during his State of the Union address were guilty of “treason.”  In the same unmoored speech in Cincinnati yesterday, Trump stated that he would welcome a government shutdown if Congress doesn’t enact his hardline immigration restrictions (Source:  “Trump’s Latest Surprise:  Shutdown Might be a Good Idea,” by Mark Landler, The New York Times, 2/6/18).

The same day, Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, said that it was doubtful that DACA would be extended and averred that those undocumented immigrants that had failed to sign up for DACA “were too lazy to get off their asses,” later saying that they should have gotten “off the couch,” (Source:  “Chief of Staff Kelly suggests undocumented immigrants who didn’t sign up for DACA were ‘too afraid’ or ‘too lazy’” by Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN.com, 2/6/18).

The torrent of vomit inducing, hateful bigotry spewing from these lizard brained dinosaurs on a daily basis is exhausting.  Kelly, though, has shown his true colors for some time, to those who were paying attention.  Despite all of the Beltway nattering about Kelly being the “adult in the room,” who could impose some restraint on chaos magnet Trump, the truth is Kelly is the racist adult in the room with a long track record of authoritarian impulses.   During his time in the military, Kelly defended the use of torture, opposed the closing of Guantanamo and opposed the integration of women into military combat units, arguing that it would lead to lower standards (Source:  “John Kelly:The Facts,”  ACLU.org. (with embedded sources)).  During his tenure as head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kelly “eliminated guidelines that governed” the conduct of ICE agents,  dramatically expanded the “categories of immigrants…targeted for deportation” and presided over a 40% increase in immigration arrests (Source:  “Evaluating John Kelly’s Record At Homeland Security,” by Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, 8/1/17).

Kelly is emblematic of every Republican currently in office:  i) gripped by an irrational and poisonous hatred of, and contempt for, Blacks and Latinos; ii)  a fierce determination to remake America as a white supremacist nation; and iii) the determination to achieve their twisted goals by any means necessary.  Fortunately, signs are everywhere that more and more Americans are waking up to the very real danger that this white supremacist death cult poses to the country.  Yesterday, 27 year old Democrat Mike Revis won a special election for a Missouri State House seat by 3% in a district that Trump won by 28% (a 31% swing towards Democrats).  In addition, conservative journalist Jonathan Rauch and Lawfare’s Ben Wittes issued a clarion call in The Atlantic urging every American to “Boycott the Republican Party” and support Democrats “in every race, from president to dogcatcher.”  Mincing no words they state, “The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy.”  (Source:  “Boycott the Republican Party,”  by Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, The Atlantic, March 2018).  Mic dropped.