Phil Rucker on the front page of today's Washington Post on the racist- in- chief's deliberately stoking hatred and violence:
President Trump has relentlessly used his bully pulpit to decry Latino migration as “an invasion of our country.” He has demonized undocumented immigrants as “thugs” and “animals.” He has defended the detention of migrant children, hundreds of whom have been held in squalor. And he has warned that without a wall to prevent people from crossing the border from Mexico, America would no longer be America.
“How do you stop these people? You can’t,” Trump lamented at a May rally in Panama City Beach, Fla. Someone in the crowd yelled back one idea: “Shoot them.” The audience of thousands cheered and Trump smiled. Shrugging off the suggestion, he quipped, “Only in the Panhandle can you get away with that statement.”
On Saturday, a 21-year-old white man entered a shopping center in El Paso, according to police, and allegedly decided to “shoot them.” Inside a crowded Walmart in a vibrant border city visited daily by thousands of Mexicans, a late-morning back-to-school shopping scene turned into a pool of blood. Twenty people died, and dozens were wounded. [snip]
Regardless of the El Paso shooter’s motivations, Trump throughout his presidency has stoked fear and hatred of the other, whether Latino immigrants or black people living in cities or Muslims.
Although he has not directly espoused the “great replacement” theory of white supremacists, Trump has openly questioned America’s identity as a multiethnic nation, such as by encouraging migration from Nordic states as opposed to Latin America.
In speeches and on social media, the president has capitalized on divisions of race, religion and identity as a political strategy to galvanize support among his white followers...In the same paper, E.J. Dionne, Jr., defines the right and wrong side:
When one side proposes ways that human beings might begin to solve a deadly problem while the other side leaves it up to God, you know which side is right.
When one side proposes solution after solution to contain gun violence — and offers compromise after compromise to get something done — while the other side blocks action every time, you know which side is right.
When the president of the United States and his most incendiary media allies fuel hatred of those who are not white while his opponents say we should stand in solidarity with one another, you know which side is right.
When one side brushes aside the dangers of racist and white nationalist terrorism while the other side says we need to be vigilant against all forms of terrorism, you know which side is right.
Dionne calls out Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, whose unctuous subservience to NRA gun humpers was on full display when speaking to the media:And when Americans are gunned down in incident after incident, when we are numbed by repeating the same sorrowful words every time, when we move within a news cycle from “something must be done” to “the Senate will block action” or “the politics are too complicated,” you know America’s democracy is failing and its moral compass is broken.
The wrong side in this debate does not want us to come together. On the contrary, its goal after every mass shooting is to deflect and divide. Here’s what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said when asked by reporters what we should do about gun violence. “Listen, there are bodies that have not yet been recovered,” Abbott replied. “I think we need to focus more on memorials before we start the politics.”
No, Abbott, reading from the NRA’s script, started “the politics” right at that moment, and it is an insidious form of politics. Simultaneously, he deflected by pretending it’s impolite to answer substantive questions and divided by saying that those who raise them disrespect the dead.
Nothing will be done as long as the wrong side is in control of the White (Supremacist) House and the Senate, where when Moscow Mitch isn't doing favors for Putin, he's blocking gun control legislation:Nothing disrespects those who are slaughtered more than the political paralysis Abbott and those like him are encouraging.
After the Democrats took over the House earlier this year, they passed the most significant gun legislation in a generation, requiring background checks on all firearm sales in the country, and another bill extending the background check review period from three days to 10 days.
The Senate has yet to consider the bills.
After this weekend's mass shootings, Democratic leaders blamed Republicans controlling the Senate for blocking them.
They began demanding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell take action this week, arguing they could help prevent the next large-scale tragedy. McConnell's office did not say whether the Republican leader is open to dealing with gun violence with new legislation. [Spoiler alert: of course he isn't]Well, let's amend that last comment. Republicans might be willing to deal with gun violence by attacking it at the root cause... video games!
House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) took to Fox News on Sunday in the wake of two mass shootings in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH, to suggest that blame could lie at least partially with video games. [snip]
McCarthy’s comments echo ones made by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on Fox & Friends Sunday morning. “How long are we going to ignore — at the federal level particularly — where they can do something about the video game industry,” Patrick said. “In this manifesto that we believe is from the shooter, this manifesto where he talks about living out his super soldier fantasy on Call of Duty.”Lie, deflect, delay, repeat. The cowardly, sociopath Republican playbook.
This comes a bit late:
A San Francisco-based Web company announced Sunday it would no longer provide services to 8chan, a website notorious for hosting lawless message boards where manifestos have appeared before mass shootings.
Changing topics, the trade war with China is settling in for a prolonged duration. Here's the immediate impact on retail clothing sales alone:The move came after a screed against immigrants was posted to 8chan shortly before a mass shooter killed 20 and wounded 26 at an El Paso Walmart and shopping center. Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, a firm that protects sites from cyber attacks, said he decided to drop 8chan because it “has repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate.”
The new tariffs will jack up prices for consumers at the start of the back-to-school buying season, four large retail trade associations said on Thursday.
"President Trump is, in effect, using American families as a hostage in his trade war negotiations," said Matt Priest, president of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America.
Stephen Lamar, executive vice president of the American Apparel & Footwear Association, said his group's members were shocked that Trump had not allowed the resumed U.S.-China trade talks to proceed further before acting.
The measure will hit U.S. consumers far harder than Chinese manufacturers, who produce 42% of apparel and 69% of footwear purchased in the United States, Lamar said.Finally, please check out Infidel 753's link round- up (where we found that last piece on the trade war). It seems every week he finds even more interesting links to share. Impressive.
