Anathematizing Our Opponents

For John, BLUF:  We can all try to get along or we can divide up and hate each other.  The former is what we were supposed to have learned in Kindergarten.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Impeachments, insurrection, indictments — and indifference from Trump’s followers

Here is the sub-headline:

There’s no redemption for supporters who’ve chosen racist ideology over country or even party.

From The Boston Globe, by Columnist Renée Graham, 13 June 2023, 2:22 PM.

Here is the lede plus one:

It’s not that Republicans defending Donald Trump don’t believe that the former president willfully took boxes of classified documents when he left the White House; piled them up in unsecured locations all over Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate; endangered national security by showing them to guests; and tried everything short of smothering them in ketchup and eating them to keep them despite federal officials repeatedly demanding their swift return.

They just don’t care.

So, the Columnist asserts that those who follow Donald Trump are, in the Judeo-Christian view, mired in sin and cannot be saved.  For us there is no redemption, nothing to expiate our sins.  That is a pretty stark judgement.  It reminds me of 2016, when one of my friends said to me that until I renounced Donald Trump I had nothing to say [to them].

The end of the column wasn't much kinder than the beginning.

This is what happens to people dialed into their phony victimization and beliefs that equality is the province of whiteness (or those willing to employ pretzel logic to twist toward white adjacency) while accountability is a punishment only for those they don’t like.

Eight years ago this week, Trump descended an escalator in his garish Manhattan “tower” to announce his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He’s been dragging this nation through hell ever since, and his followers remain down for a ride that has pulverized political norms, the rule of law, and democracy itself. And that’s shocking only to those who still refuse to acknowledge the white supremacist origins of Trump’s repulsive success.

In fact, it expanded into something like an invocation of Author Robin J. DiAngelo's White Fragility:  Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.  We are supporting Donald Trump because we are "White Supremecists".

In my mind I compared this Column with Dr Richard Haass' book, The Bill of Obligations:  The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.  My conclusion was that the Author had judged some 74 million fellow Citizens and found them wanting.  They were so bad that there was no basis for compromise.♠

If the Biden voting base really thinks those who voted for Donald J Trump, and still support him, are irredeemable, then we are setting ourselves up for a confrontation.  Perhaps we will end up like Senegal this last month.♥  There are 23 dead in Senegal as of this writing.  I don't think we want to go there.

Because of my concern about the tone of this Column and the direction it seemed to be heading, I made it a topic for Lowell's Local Access TV City Life Show.  I invited, via EMail, Ms Graham to come on the show and present her views.  Alas, she did not respond.

In the mean time, we all need to acknowledge that our neighbors have acceptable reasons for favoring one candidate or another.  We are not living through the Stalinist Era, the Hitler Era or the Maoist Era.  There is no Gulag, no concentration camps, no Re-Education Camps.  No one has declared a Year Zero for the United States.  So, let us walk on together, working to make our union more perfect.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  In researching this Blog Post I did come across something new for me.  It turned out "The Redeemers" was a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era.  They were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party and their goal was to regain their political power and reestablish White supremacy.  Wikipedia has them active from the 1870s to 1910.
♥  There are rumors that two term President Macky Sall is trying to make a third run, despite a Constitutional limit of two terms.  There are segments who believe the conviction of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko represents an effort to prevent him from running in 2024.