October 26, 2018
The events of the last few days evoke memories of Fort Sumter. On April 12, 861, four months after South Carolina had seceded from the Union, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, bombarding it for 34 straight hours, until Union soldiers gave up. In the last few days, a Trump superfan named Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe bombs to several prominent Democratic critics of Trump, including Presidents Clinton and Obama, Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, Congresswoman “Auntie” Maxine Waters, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan (sent to him ℅ CNN) and former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. Philanthropists George Soros and Tom Stryker were targeted, as was actor Robert DeNiro. It is only because, Sayoc shares his idol’s incompetence, along with his virulent racism, that the bombs did not detonate (Source: “Bomb Suspect Arrested in Florida; Charged With Five Counts,” by William K. Rashbaum, Alan Feuer, and Adam Goldman, The New York Times, 10/26/18).
This is what two years of Trump’s escalating rhetoric, along with the echo chamber of Fox News, has wrought. It is no surprise that Trump’s relentless demonization of anyone who believes in equality, compassion and the Rule of Law has yielded this result. At this point, anyone equating the noisy confrontation of Republicans over policy, with attempted assassination of the leaders of one of our major political parties is contorting themselves to avoid confronting a central fact— it has always been true that a significant percentage of white Americans will kill to maintain a strict racial hierarchy.
From the first bombardment at Fort Sumter, to the 4743 lynchings between 1882 and 1968, to the murder of four little girls in the 16th Street Birmingham Church bombing, to the murder of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964, racist whites have ALWAYS resorted to violence to maintain their privilege.
Although the attacks on prominent Democrats mercifully were not successful, two Black senior citizens in Kentucky were not so lucky. They were murdered in cold blood while grocery shopping, by a white ex-felon who told a white bystander, “whites don’t shoot whites,” (Source: “Man Who Killed 2 at Kroger Tried to Enter Black Church Before Attack, Police Say,” by Karen Zraik and Matt Stevens, The New York Times, 10/25/18).
Clearly, white supremacists around the country took Trump’s declaration on Monday that he was a (White) nationalist as a license to carry out his stated agenda— to re-segregate this country like a 1950’s Alabama lunch counter. That is why it is foolish to expect Trump to reach out to Presidents Clinton or Obama. That would have been like Lincoln expecting a conciliatory telegram in April of 1861 from Robert E. Lee, “Sorry about your Fort. Stop. You should have surrendered when we asked. Stop.” Then, as now, they don’t serve the same nation. We need to face the fact that this may mark the start of a new Civil War. This time, don’t abandon the fort.
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#DONTBACKDOWN