If we had any doubt that the election of Donald Trump has unleashed a hateful, destructive force in this country, we need look no further than the news of the last week. Hot on the heels of the murder of two Good Samaritans who were courageous enough to stop an assault on two sixteen year old African American girls, we have seen a noose hung inside of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the “N” word spray painted on the Brentwood home of NBA great, LeBron James. Princeton Professor Keeanga-Yahmaata Taylor canceled two West Coast speaking engagements after receiving a torrent of violent, racist, sexist and homophobic threats in response to the Fox News broadcast of a clip of Taylor calling Trump a “racist, sexist megalomaniac.” The escalating violence against and intimidation of African Americans is not confined to the stereotyped states of the Old Confederacy. White Supremacists have waged violent attacks in the mid-Atlantic and the Pacific Northwest, in New York and California. This is a national contagion.
In addition to actual murders, the specter of lynching, that Jim Crow tool of terroristic intimidation, is suddenly ubiquitous. Nooses are hung in museums and universities. State legislators threaten those who seek to dismantle Confederate monuments with lynching. We have not seen this much overt, widespread racial hatred and violence since the dogs, firehoses, mobs and bombs used on Civil Rights activists fifty years ago.
Unfortunately, unlike fifty years ago, we cannot rely on the federal government to ensure our safety. At best, the administration is studiously indifferent to this onslaught of violent extremism. Trump, who has no trouble tweeting garbage syllables like “covfefe”, has been infuriatingly silent about the murder of Lt. Richard Collins. He only belatedly condemned the murders in Portland (and from his staff managed @POTUS account) after several days of criticism. At worst, the administration’s silence indicates their tacit approval of efforts to silence, intimidate and even murder people of color and their allies. Consider the evidence. Trump’s Attorney General, serial perjurer and committed racist, Jeff Sessions, has consistently used his power to blunt Black advancement. During his short tenure at the helm of the Justice Department, Sessions has rescinded the ban on private prisons, ordered prosecutors to seek harsh penalties for low level drug offenses and sought to undo the consent decree with the Baltimore Police Department. In The White House, virulent racist and anti-Semite, Steve Bannon is still a senior advisor, counseling on domestic and foreign policy.
Meanwhile, Trump seeks to literally set the world on fire, by withdrawing from the Paris Accord. This reckless decision serves no discernible policy goal and would position China and Russia as leaders on climate change, far ahead of the U.S. Trump’s truculence will have catastrophic and irreversible consequences for the planet. A dispassionate review of this administration leads to the conclusion that destruction is by design. Their goal is widespread misery; violence and chaos are their tools.