The Final Call

Will Trump’s rhetoric continue fanning flames of division after mid-terms?

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Nov 12, 2018 - 8:03:14 AM

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WASHINGTON—In the face of a possible voter “blue wave” against them, another possible wave of new youth voters, and even a possible wave of disgruntled women voters, President Donald J. Trump and his Republican allies chose to concentrate their end of the 2018 election campaign rhetoric on outright lies, ugly hateful, divisive issues in rallies, untruthful advertisements, and thousands of racist robocalls, rather than focusing much on today’s relatively upbeat economic and unemployment news.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump speaking at rally in Missoula, MT, Oct. 18. Photo: MGN Online

“You put Stacey in there and you are going to have Georgia turn into Venezuela,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in behalf of Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp on Nov. 2. “Stacey Abrams wants to turn your wonderful state into a giant sanctuary city for criminal aliens, putting innocent Georgia families at the mercy of hardened criminals and predators.”

His speeches in a dozen states where he has campaigned all but full-time the last few weeks, have been laced with warnings about “left-wing mobs” and a migrant “invasion.” They have inflamed passions, energizing conservatives—the older and less educated White males and females that constitute his base of supporters—whom he hopes to mobilize to hang onto control of Congress. Many prominent politicians—including Republicans—have denounced the talk.

Most pundits seem unconvinced that Mr. Trump will tone down his rhetoric after the Nov. 6 elections. Members of his own Republican party have been highly critical but analysts don’t see it stopping anytime soon.

“What you’re losing with this kind of rhetoric is you’re losing Republican suburban women. You’re losing young people. You’re losing independents. Because people don’t want to hear this kind of talk out of our president,” Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) told “The Hill.”

Likewise, former President Richard Nixon’s White House Counsel called Mr. Trump “evil,” according to “The Hill.” “Trump is making the long nightmare of Nixon’s Watergate seem like a brief idyllic daydream. History will treat Nixon’s moral failures as relatively less troubling than Trump’s sustained and growing decadence, deviousness and self-delusive behavior,” John Dean tweeted according to the publication.

“White supremacists’ fear (is) rising that they’re getting regional glimpses of a post majority-White America,” Dr. Greg Carr, chair of African American Studies at Howard University said via social media. They’re desperately spewing all their old fear mongering dirty tricks, praying to rally the irrational. Eurostream media abets these people, like tar-brushing (The Honorable Minister Louis) Farrakhan.”

Despite resounding condemnation of Mr. Trump’s race-baiting tactics, before the votes were actually counted this mid-term, most experts were reluctant to predict whether or not the hate-mongering would carry the day.

“It’s hard to say,” Dr. Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston said in an interview. “The fact that you have to ask that question and there is no definitive answer is quite telling.

“Obviously it speaks to the point that many of our previous interpretations of U.S. politics have been woefully inadequate. It reminds me of Queen Elizabeth after the 2008 Crisis in Capitalism; she wondered why the economists had not foreseen this. I think we have to ask similar questions to our historians and those who consider themselves to be political scientists. That is to say, why haven’t they been able to give us adequate knowledge so that we can answer definitively, the intelligent question you just posed?”

“We’re in danger. We’re in danger. The country is in danger,” Lorne Cress Love, one of the founders of Pacifica Radio station WPFW-FM in Washington—and sister of the late Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, psychiatrist and author of the “Cress Theory of Color Confrontation,” found in her book “The Isis Papers,”—said in an interview.

“I mean, people elected a maniac and a person who, literally, as a human being, is, let’s say, insane. Now I’m not a therapist, so I really don’t know how they classify. But I look at the news everyday, and this man is insane, as a human being. And he has been elected to run this country, and he is running it into hell! Isn’t he?!”

Other political observers agree. “Overwhelmingly, the Republican Party is simply a major threat to—not only to the country, but to human survival,” Dr. Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at M.I.T. told “Democracy Now!” “I’ve said in the past that I think they’re the most dangerous organization in human history, on the issue of climate change alone, and I think that’s worth repeating.”

“We’re really in such serious, serious, serious trouble,” Ms. Cress-Love continued. “But we’re in greater trouble than we realize, because the forces of racism, White supremacy, that have still been operative, that have never really been dealt with in this country, have allowed Black people to be forced out of urban centers. That was a program that was implemented and recommended, it was recommended in the Kerner Commission Report,” in 1968.

“Now that was a plan developed in South Africa, under apartheid, when they forced the Black people out of the cities into what are called ‘townships’ and ‘Bantustans’ where they are still there today. People don’t even want to talk about that. Everybody’s worried about Donald Trump, but, as African Americans we need to be worried about ourselves, being forced out of the cities,” Ms. Cress Love said.

“What we’re now seeing is a revival of hate, anger, fear, much of it encouraged by the rhetorical excesses of the leadership, which are stirring up passions and terror, even the ludicrous claims about the Nicaraguan army ready to invade us—Ronald Reagan—the caravan of miserable people planning to kill us all. All of these things, plus, you know, praising somebody who body-slammed a reporter, one thing after another—all of this raises the level of anger and fear, which has roots, said Dr. Chomsky.

“The roots lie in what has happened to the general population over the past 40 years. People really have faced significant distress. An astonishing fact about the United States is that life expectancy is actually declining. That doesn’t happen in developed societies, apart from, you know, major war or huge famine. But it’s happening because of social distress, and not necessarily impoverishment.

“I think it’s pretty clear that he’s whipping up terror about invasions, people pouring across the border to plan to kill us all, to destroy our civilization. You take people who are already somewhat disturbed and living under harsh conditions, this can incite them to acts of extreme violence against targets like the Jewish temple,” Dr. Chomsky said.

Domestically, internationally, the tactic remains virtually the same. “Obviously there’s a lot of pressure on the United States right now. The United States is trying to twist the arms of the (Arab world) to go all in like Washington on their sanctions against Iran,” said Dr. Horne. “This may lead actually to a weakening of U.S. domination of its allies.” For example he pointed out, the inter-bank system. The Europeans are now thinking of an alternative to that system, he said, because they don’t want to go along with the sanctions. “It’s apparent that Turkey, Russia, and China and India will not go along with the Iranian sanctions. In fact, there are reports that the Russians will buy Iranian oil, and then re-sell it to the U.S.”

Despite the fact that the Pentagon initially denied the White House request for troops to perform law enforcement services at the border, Mr. Trump has ordered 15,000 active duty military personnel to the border. That’s as many troops as are stationed in Afghanistan, and they would be deployed to face an unarmed, starving, sickly, group on foot, with as many women and children as men, and which is several weeks from reaching the U.S. border.

“Today I led over 100 of my colleagues in sending a letter to the Secretary of Defense demanding answers on President Trump’s deployment of additional U.S. troops to the border,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) posted on Twitter. Mr. Trump, however, seemed unfazed, but not the Nigerian army, according to The New York Times.

The Nigerian Army fatally opened fire on rock-throwing protestors recently, killing 40. To justify their actions, they shared a video of a Donald Trump speech suggesting that rock-throwers at the U.S. Southern Border should be shot.

“The people who are demonstrating this fear and resentment (in the U.S.) may be even moderately affluent, but what they see is they’re stagnating. In the past, there was—you had this dream: You worked hard, you could get ahead, your children would be a little better. Now it stopped. It stopped for the last 40 years as a result of very specific socio and economic policies, which have been designed so that they sharply concentrate wealth; they enhance corporate power that has immediate effects on the political system in perfectly obvious ways, even to the point where lobbyists literally write legislation.

“This onslaught has literally cast a bunch of the population aside. They’re stagnating. They are not moving forward. They see no prospects. And they’re bitter and angry about it.”

The result, many observers agree, is more desperation and a more dystopian society. “So these grand schemes of Mr. Trump and U.S. imperialism are collapsing,” said Dr. Horne, “and that apparently is something to contribute to his much more frenetic pace, and the run-up to the decisive elections.”