So forget that migrant caravan on the move down there in Mexico…?
Another suspected bomb was found in New York City on Thursday morning as a manhunt was under way for a serial bomber targeting high-profile Democrats [including former U.S. President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder] and CNN, less than two weeks ahead of elections that could alter the U.S. political landscape.
The latest device was addressed to actor Robert De Niro, according to CNN. …
(Reuters, October 25, 2018)
President Trump has normalized the politics of distraction and projection, sowing dangerous divisions he’s too ignorant, myopic, and narcissistic to care about. Accordingly, I cannot repeat this Trumpian phenomenon enough:
The psychopathology afoot here is called projection. It is defined by people attributing to others traits, faults, and blame that inhere in themselves. And it explains almost every insult Trump has hurled at his opponents throughout this presidential campaign.
So when you hear him calling other people crooked, insecure, weak, beholden to special interests, liars, etc., be mindful that he’s just revealing self-conscious truths about himself, dimwittedly.
(“Forget the Clinton Foundation. Shut Down the Trump Organization!” The iPINIONS Journal, August 26, 2016)
After all, before Trump, everyone would be condemning these unprecedented assassination attempts and expressing sympathy for those targeted. Instead, right-wing Republicans are insinuating that they are just part of a ploy by some left-wing Democrat to suppress Republican votes in the midterm elections, which are already underway. Never mind this prevailing fact:
You’re seeing a national effort by the Republican Party to try to restrict voting rights [of blacks and Hispanics], and it’s playing out in states all across the country.
(NPR, October 23, 2018)
This kind of shameful, blame-shifting, gaslighting tactic (of turning facts and reality upside down) defines the Trump presidency. It is what had Republicans insisting that Democrats were using allegations of sexual assault against Judge Brett Kavanaugh as a ploy to derail their political agenda. In other words, Kavanaugh was the target, accuser Christine Blasey Ford the assassin.
In fact, the enmity between the two parties is such that Republicans are deploying the militaristic term “false flag” to propagate their insinuation in this case. Of course, the irony is that, we’re living in such absurdist, Orwellian times, they could be right.
Specifically, it would be all too fitting for some left-wing idiot to think that sending pipe bombs to Trump’s most-high profile critics would detract from that migrant caravan, which Republicans were cynically hailing as “manna from heaven” to feed their midterm prospects. Sure enough, given their blanket coverage of these pipe-bomb deliveries, you’d never know the news media were covering that caravan just days ago as if millions of migrants were about to invade the United States.
Moreover, even that idiot would’ve been shrewd enough to know that everyone would consider some right-wing nut the prime suspect; hence distraction and projection, sowing dangerous divisions not seen since the North and South were laying the predicate for the Civil War.
But, no, I don’t think we’re experiencing the sparks of a looming civil war. This is just a more menacing continuation of the corrosive effect Trump’s presidency is having on every facet of public life. It will inevitably manifest in all manner of politically motivated violence, including more of this kind of domestic terrorism. And I fear it will take a generation or two for this country to recover from the political ravages of this Trumpian interregnum.
Apropos of which, I will end with this pithy observation: Before Trump, any president in this situation would have made a public show of reaching out to his predecessors – not only to inspire public confidence but also to show presidential camaraderie.
But Trump showed long ago that he just wants to rile up the base instincts of his political base, and that he couldn’t care less about camaraderie with former presidents … of any party.
More to the point, evidence of the dangerous behavior he inspires (or incites) abounds. Consider this, for example, from just days ago:
A Florida man accused of groping a passenger on Southwest Airlines told an FBI agent after his arrest that the ‘President of the United States says it’s OK to grab women by their private parts,’ according to a criminal complaint.
(CNN, October 23, 2018)
As for the camaraderie, here is my take on this curious feature of his presidency:
Trump seems determined to be the first to alienate his predecessors so much that they all shun him like the plague. Mind you, it would probably suit the congenitally insecure Trump well to complete his entire term without even a phone call, let alone personal contact, with any of them. His tweets give the impression that anything Obama related is like kryptonite to his presidency.
(“Trump’s First Year Ends with Government Shutdown,” The iPINIONS Journal, January 20, 2018)
In any event, here’s to this serial bomber being interested only in terrorizing (whatever his lunatic motives) without killing.
In the meantime,
Related commentaries:
Migrant caravan…
Brett Kavanaugh…