Will Somebody Have to Die?

 


People, people, people!  Does someone have to die or do we have to witness a bloodbath to break the spell Donald Trump has over “his people.”  There has been a constant escalation of the violent rhetoric coming from the one person responsible for setting the tone of a political campaign—the candidate, Trump himself!

I don’t usually say the words “I told you so.”  In this case, I feel compelled to point out to you that I have done a pretty good job of reading the tea leaves in this highly unpredictable political campaign.  As early as August 18, 2015, in this Unfair and Unbalanced column, I talked about Newton’s third law of motion “every motion has an equal and opposite reaction,” and how this is relevant to politics.  I pointed out that for every action Trump takes, there will be an equal and opposite reaction.  After months of threats, insults, and denigrating all things we usually hold sacred, Trump has gone beyond the pale.

Additionally, in the following except from my column dated September 15, 2015, I predicted the following:

I don’t see any scenario where he (Trump) will simply quit.  He’s got all the money in the world, now he wants all the power.  I don’t know what more he can say, or whom else he can offend that would cause him to plummet in the polls.  As you may have noticed by now, I have an active imagination and I’ve been trying to conjure up what will cause the end of Trump’s run for President.  I finally figured it out!  One of Trump’s goons is going to get over-zealous, drunk on the power, and do bodily harm to an innocent by-stander or protester.  Then the good people of this country will realize they don’t want a bully for President after all.

At the time I wrote that, I obviously under estimated the power of a narcissistic psychopath to incite violence among people whom otherwise are patriotic, peace loving, and considerate of other people’s opinions and beliefs.  I read a letter of apology written by a Korean War veteran caught on tape shoving a young African American woman at a rally in Kentucky.  His local veterans organization found his behavior shocking. He said everything was calm until Trump took the stage.  Then the shouting started.  At the insistence of Trump to “Get them out” the crowd started shoving and he was pushed to the floor.  Unbeknownst to him at the time, he was surrounded by a white supremacist group and he got caught up in the “moment.”   That’s no excuse, but that’s insight into how fast a person’s mentality can change when they are caught up in an angry mob being spurred to violence by their leader. 

The big question mark in my head my entire life has been “How did Hitler and Mussolini convince so many people to share their evil thinking and carry out their evil deeds so willingly?”  After witnessing the advent of Donald Trump, I now have a better understanding of that ugly time in history. 

A very scary sign that Donald Trump sees himself as more than a presidential candidate is the way he lays a personal claim to his supporters.  When we as citizens vote for someone, we are called a “supporter.”  Trump refers to his supporters as “my people.”  He constantly pits voters against each other by using the term “their people” versus “my people.”  I find this extremely offensive.  I do not belong to a politician.  Only Jesus may consider me one of “his people”. I am not, and never will be a “Kool-Aid” drinker.  

We could be on the verge of another ugly time in history.  Hopefully this column will not prove to be prophetic and nobody has to die before Trump is rejected by all of America.