One of the most disturbing things about the racist and xenophobic virus that neo- fascist Republican front- runner Donald "Rump" Trump is spreading in the country is how it's presenting itself in our children. It seems "Trump!" is becoming a taunt and a threat that's hurled at anyone who's deemed to be "them" by white students in an increasing number of instances. This virus has been mostly dormant, alive but under the surface, but Rump and his enablers in the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's party have allowed it to come out in the open where it is infecting a potential next generation of Stormtrumpers.
Paula Dvorak sees the contamination in elementary school children, even in diverse Fairfax County, Virginia, and Annapolis, Maryland:
“Get ’em out!” is what Trump screams at every rally when he sees Black Lives Matter and other protesters, even silent ones. This is not far off from what some third-graders allegedly said to two brown-skinned classmates in their Northern Virginia classroom. The mother of one of the children, Evelyn Momplaisir, posted an account on Facebook:
“I just got a call from my son’s teacher giving me a heads up that two of his classmates decided to point out the ‘immigrants’ in the class who would be sent ‘home’ when Trump becomes president. They singled him out and were pointing and laughing at him as one who would have to leave because of the color of his skin. In third grade . . . in Fairfax County . . . in 2016!”Dvorak then catalogs Rump's many affronts to decency and tolerance in the guise of not being "politically correct" and asks,
You think kids aren’t going to play this out in the schoolyard?
Even if they’re not taking their phrases directly from Trump’s playbook, his guided free-for-all has unleashed a growing atmosphere of hate.
I don’t know whether Trump was the inspiration for the kids on an all-white Annapolis-area hockey team who singled out the black players on my son’s team, calling them the N-word and harassing them throughout the game. But they heard those words somewhere. They learned that cruelty somewhere. And I don’t think it’s a stretch to blame their behavior on the nation’s growing tolerance of open displays of bigotry.Dave Zirin sketches two recent examples of the contagion at the high school level:
At a recent game between Perry [Iowa] and a rival team from Dallas Center-Grimes high school, opposing fans chanted “Trump” and racial slurs, and threatened to build a wall and kick the Perry players out of the country. After the incident, Perry student Kevin Lopez told reporters, “We are all aware of racism; it’s alive and well in small portions, but it’s alive and well, and it’s just hurtful to see that’s what they resort to.” By the way, Perry won that game 57–50.
That was a public school matchup. In Merrillville, Indiana, two Catholic schools—both part of the Gary, Indiana, Diocese—Bishop Noll and Andrean, faced off. The Bishop Noll team is majority Latino and had to face a large Donald Trump head being held up in the Andrean student section. Andrean students, according to numerous reports, also chanted “Build a wall!” and “Speak English!”Note that these are just some of the incidents being reported; we have no doubt whatsoever that there are many young minds being influenced by the hate speech emanating primarily from Rump, but also from his Neanderthal competitors, "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz and Marco "Roboto" Rubio. After all, it's what a large segment of the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's party now demands in its candidates: open, raw racism and xenophobia. "Telling it like it is." "Saying what's on people's minds." "Not politically correct." All of that is leading to an even more un- civil society, with seeds being planted for the next generation of haters.
The ugliness you've been seeing in their campaigns and "debates" is now playing out on playgrounds and gyms all over the country, and it's perhaps the most despicable legacy of this despicable cast of characters and their party.
