Terry Bracy: The language of violence and hate

On the day Donald Trump announced his first candidacy for the Presidency, he unleashed a screed of violence-inducing rhetoric against Mexican immigrants. “They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They are rapists.” Welcome to America!

Two months later, in Boston, two brothers were arrested for urinating on a homeless man. “Trump was right,” they told the officer in their defense, “All of these illegals need to be deported.” Never mind that the man they assaulted was a legal resident.

Words have consequences, especially coming from the mouths of candidates for the highest office in the land. Trump’s nasty opening day has by now had a long run on the Broadway of American politics. His faux-populist message was embraced early on by economic and social classes who felt left behind in a culture coping with a rapid transition to the information age and the loss of jobs as American-run conglomerates went offshore for cheap labor. But its explosive energy soon came from white nationalist groups, descendants of the Klan and newly imagined vigilantes like the Proud Boys. The racist demonstration they organized in Charlottesville in 2017 led President Biden out of retirement and into the battle for the American soul.

By 2019, according to a report in the New York Times, then-President Trump seriously contemplated stocking water-filled moats with snakes and alligators, and shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down.

A year later, in the wake of the George Floyd murder, Trump justified the killing done by a teenager with an AK-47 in this way: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” When the defeated Trump called his legions to Washington on Jan. 6 to march on the Capitol, this was merely the crescendo of a rant he had been voicing for his four years in the Oval Office. It should have come as no surprise when the director of his greatest show sat alone in the White House, watching television and enjoying the carnage. Donald Trump is a violent man.

A Trump victory would bring to office a figure who is also angry and in the market for immediate retribution. Still claiming he won in 2020, Trump recently said the following: “When I win, those people that cheated will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.” Those sought out by Trump police would include election workers, lawyers, political operatives, donors, and public officials. For models of his governing plan look to his heroes, strongmen Viktor Orban of Hungary and Vladimir Putin of Russia, who control through fear and intimidation.

Trump’s wingman J.D. Vance offers little to moderate Trump’s vocabulary, while specializing in the language of hate. Senator Vance’s presence is shaped like a house that is constantly being remodeled by an owner perpetually unhappy with its design. To be a bestselling author, Yale Law School graduate, and U.S. Senator is apparently not enough to satisfy his need for acceptance by his current father figure, Trump, whom he once condemned in the harshest terms. He gives new meaning to the term political chameleon.

Vance’s contribution to the lexicon of Campaign 2024 is a new category of human known as “cat ladies,” a slam at professional women who hopefully will soon be running the country. In Vance’s world, women who cannot or choose not to have children are unfulfilled and unhappy, a verbal shot aimed at Vice President Harris that landed in J. D.’s foot. Then came his tale of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio who eat their neighbors’ pets, an allegation at once shot down by the Republican Mayor who praised the contributions the immigrants were making to the economic revival of his city. Vance is all about stirring up hate, hoping that frightened voters will rush to the polls to save their dogs and cats.

Every day, the evidence grows that Donald Trump has wandered off the known world. In his tweets and speeches, the former President paints a picture of America that does not exist. In his dark, dystopian vision, Americans are huddled in their homes fearing to walk to the store or mailbox. Kids are forced into gender reassignment surgery; abortion is allowed up to the moment of birth; immigrants arrive from mental institutions and are as dangerous as the fictional madman Hannibal Lecter. Participants in the Jan. 6 raid on the Capitol are heroes. Only he, Donald Trump, can stop the conflagration he says is coming. This is not the man who became our 45th President, but a man struggling to maintain his sanity. I would view him with sorrow were he not so dangerous.