Trump's Specter of Violence

Trump's Specter of Violence


In a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, the glib comedian blamed Trump supporters for the phenomenon of Trump's candidacy in a fit of pretzel-logic, right before continuing to slander and dehumanize them as “fact-free racist rednecks” to a jeering and snickering audience. This charge, as fact-free and racist as it was, gave me sufficient evidence not only of Maher’s spuriousness and posturing, but of the reactionary double-standards at work in maintaining the political status quo.

The compulsion of piety has always been the mortal enemy of the open mind, the open book, and the open discourse—and people like Maher are pious. Nothing illustrates this point more than the puritanical hatred of what Trump has said and how he delivers it, which does not conform to the political orthodoxy and their preferred mannerisms. Of course Trump has never hurt a soul, but he is a blasphemer in both words and style, and his supporters are evil by extension. As soon as Maher later remarked in a tweet that this was an “election of decency”—this from a man who makes a living off partisan mockery and insult—a whiff of sanctimony and pretence aired throughout a hypocritical breeze.

This odor is common among defenders of such an orthodoxy. Where fundamentalists congregate the air usually stinks. Notice the prevalence for name-calling, body shaming, and other bullying among the card-stacking intelligentsia of the media class. Statues of a naked Trump populate the streets just for these people. Outright mockery of his skin, his hair, finds itself on the lips of those who claim to oppose Trump’s bullying ways. Like Maher and John Oliver, they have the dehumanization down pat. All they need now is the violence.

When Donald Trump mentioned that he could walk out onto 5th avenue, shoot someone dead, and his supporters would still vote for him, it didn’t take long for opponents to feign outrage and start posturing as if this was their first time in contact with figures of speech. CNN and CBS picked up on it quickly, with an oily Huffington Post biting at the bit with the narrative that “the specter of violence at a Trump rally is hardly new”. Trump's opponents followed suit. In an attempt at humour, the animatronic Ted Cruz reassured his supporters in an ingratiating tone that he had "no intention of shooting anybody in this campaign", and everyone fell satiated when the familiar lullaby of sanitized and forgettable political humour rang through their ears once again.

E.B. white once remarked “Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process”. Leave it to the Cable News Network to dissect frogs all day when Wolf Blitzer had to ask Donald Trump, sitting as he was behind the illiterate graphic "Trump reacts to 'shoot somebody' remark controversy", if he was joking. After confirming to Blitzer what we and Wolf already knew—of course he was joking—Trump no less had to explain to CNN and its obsequious consumers the reasons for why he was joking, what it meant, and at any rate, why they couldn’t understand it, questions easily answered by watching the speech. But by that time the comedic effect was long gone, and the media’s posturing had served its course towards its desired effect: namely, beating into malleable brains the notion that Trump advocates violence.

Not only violence, but unless you’ve been under a rock for the past year or so, he also advocates racism, bigotry, misogyny and the assassination of his political opponents, like any good ol’ fascist. At least that’s what they tell us.

If we are to trust the gutter press, the violent perpetrators at Trump’s rallies are his supporters, while the protesters are innocent victims. The supporters, who just wanted to see a rally, are inspired to violence by Donald Trump’s words, and not by the protesters, whose sole motivation was to disrupt the rally. A man pushing a protester out of the rally was driven by racism, because she was black, which was inspired by Trump’s “divisive rhetoric”, and not because he was pushed and shoved himself. The Chicago protests, resulting in a heckler’s veto (ironically, because Trump didn’t want anyone to get hurt) were the result of Trump’s tone according to nonsense-pusher Donald Lemmon. Meanwhile, the media’s tone is fine and dandy.

Cracking jokes in a typically New York fashion, speaking how we might around friends, and not laying prostrate before a politically correct orthodoxy, constitutes a “specter of violence” and incitement to it. Yet the labelling of a political candidate as a violent, racist, misogynistic and bigoted danger to the world, whom is sure to bring about the coming holocaust with an army of racist brownshirts, is accurate reporting. Considering the effect of propaganda on the worst of atrocities, I’m not so sure about that.

When New York Magazine asked its readers if they would kill a newborn Hitler given the chance, 42% said "Yes", 30% said "No", and 28% were "not quite sure". This telling piece of information indicates that calling someone Hitler seems to be a great incitement to violence, so much so that people would kill a child if convinced it was him. Suppose they carried out such a killing, consoling themselves with the hope that they had done the right thing, that they had saved the world. The paradox of hindsight becoming prophecy proves how irrational such consolation would be. All they had really done was murdered a baby on a hunch.

What would happen if an unsound mind was presented with this same kind of moral dilemma? Illegal immigrant Michael Sanford got the chance when he came up with the idea to assassinate Trump on a similar hunch, except he wasn't from the future as far as I could tell. After his failed attempt, his parents were left to guess what had turned their impressionable son into a would-be assassin, supposing whether he had been "blackmailed or put up to it". Who or what may have put him up to it we can only guess, but in the background, a darkened corner, and a flickering tele-screen, "the dull rhythmic tramp of the soldier's boots formed the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice" (1984).

Prophetic writers and pundits have written extensively about Trump’s fascist, authoritarian tendencies, while comparing him to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, even before he has spent a single second in public office. We cannot be certain of how they arrived at their revelation about the future, convinced that somehow the country will doomed, but we can be certain it doesn’t reflect anything else but their own sophistry. But in all likelihood, their fear-mongering has directly contributed to the motives of those who protest Trump, those who planned to assassinate Trump, and those who justify violence against his supporters, because they surely haven’t derived their fears from anywhere else.

We don’t hear much about plots of assassination or that kind of violence against Trump from the media anymore—supporters getting egged, spit on, or beaten in the streets, their cars keyed, their signs vandalized, stripped of humanity by pundits and morally bankrupt individuals—but we’ll never forget that a grizzled Trump supporter punched a guy at a rally that one time.

Trump's specter of violence is indeed a specter—it is a ghost. The real specter of violence surrounds the media.

LesMis

Really stripped of there humanity, thats some great stuff there bud.

Overly dramatic, what a snowflake.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Notice the prevalence for name-calling, body shaming, and other bullying among the card-stacking intelligentsia of the media class.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Notice the prevalence for name-calling, body shaming, and other bullying among the card-stacking intelligentsia of the media class.

hypocrisy |həˈpäkrəsē|
noun (pl. hypocrisies)
the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Notice the prevalence for name-calling, body shaming, and other bullying among the card-stacking intelligentsia of the media class.

hypocrisy |həˈpäkrəsē|
noun (pl. hypocrisies)
the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.

Did you just call yourself a hypocrite, dont be so hard on yourself.

a reply to: dukeofjive696969

Did you just call yourself a hypocrite, dont be so hard on yourself.

Is that what I did?

I am having a really hard time understanding this thread, trump fans where happy when trump was insulting people, now that the tables are turned, its bad to call people names?


Snowflakes on the right, say aint so...

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: dukeofjive696969

Did you just call yourself a hypocrite, dont be so hard on yourself.

Is that what I did?

Did you?

a reply to: dukeofjive696969

I am having a really hard time understanding this thread, trump fans where happy when trump was insulting people, now that the tables are turned, its bad to call people names?


Snowflakes on the right, say aint so...

Who said they were happy Trump was insulting people? One example will do.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: dukeofjive696969

I am having a really hard time understanding this thread, trump fans where happy when trump was insulting people, now that the tables are turned, its bad to call people names?


Snowflakes on the right, say aint so...

Who said they were happy Trump was insulting people? One example will do.

Dammit you asked me for 1 example, you proved me wrong lol.

Mexicans are rapist, got applause's.

a reply to: dukeofjive696969

That's not what he said.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

That would be false equivalence.

Donald Trump says things that some people feel are offensive. Bill Maher says things that some people feel are offensive.

Great. Bill Maher is a comedian and political pundit. Donald Trump is a candidate for President. Are you arguing that it's somehow wrong to have different expectations regarding the behavior of the two?

a reply to: theantediluvian

That would be false equivalence.

Donald Trump says things that some people feel are offensive. Bill Maher says things that some people feel are offensive.

Great. Bill Maher is a comedian and political pundit. Donald Trump is a candidate for President. Are you arguing that it's somehow wrong to have different expectations regarding the behavior of the two?

Not at all. I'm arguing that there is no specter of violence around Trump, that it is around the media, and that people like Maher only serve to enhance it through dehumanization of the candidate and his followers.

This thread went off the rails in a hurry. It;s a shame too, because it looks like it took a little bit of time to put together.
Damn near everyone in politics and the politically motivated media hates Trump and works overtime to distort his message, slander him, poke fun at his supporters and try to paint them as unintelligent, racist, ect.
That is one of the biggest reasons why I want him to win. If the gov't and media is corrupt, and they see him as a threat, then he is a threat to their corruption. Plain and simple.
His supporters are no more ignorant or stupid than HRC supporters. I would even go as far as saying that they are less ignorant and more intelligent.
When it comes to offensive speech, Bill Mahar has no room to talk. He is a funny guy and when he is non-partisan, he makes very, very good points.
He always looses me when he starts bashing Reps and praising Dems. Its like all his vigilance and practical thinking goes out the window...
Almost as if, you have to support the dems and bash reps to have a show on HBO.......

originally posted by: dukeofjive696969
I am having a really hard time understanding this thread, trump fans where happy when trump was insulting people, now that the tables are turned, its bad to call people names?


Snowflakes on the right, say aint so...

Lefty wingers lecture on violence and yet all the violence we've seen has come from left wingers.

originally posted by: dukeofjive696969


Mexicans are rapist, got applause's.

You guys can never be honest about anything. You just lie and hope nobody calls you on it and even if they do, you dont care.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Dear LesMis,

Elegant words in Donald Trump's defense do not erase the inelegant and brutish actions and words of the man himself, which are well documented.



Violence begets violence, and violent rhetoric stirs the coals of discontent and weaponizes the True Believer, those who have waited for permission to act out on their anger and sense of growing disenfranchisement (or that sense that they are no longer fully on top and in control as a demographic).

Words do matter.

While some may be hypocritical in disparaging violence originating from Trump's words/actions/instigations and then themselves acting out violently in response, or praising "bullying" tossed back at him and his followers, at what point were the original violent ideas and suggestions made by Trump, his innuendo and outright calls to attack, simply supposed to be "forgiven" by those who were targets of his baiting?

Why would you hold the reactions of those who were attacked to a higher standard than Trump, or Trump supporters, who originally did the attacking?

For every action there is a reaction, and in human behavior the intensity or calm of that reaction may vary greatly from the original source -- we get to choose our reactions, in other words.

One can meet obnoxious words, bullying behavior and outright calls for violence with a turn of the cheek, or by ignoring them. One can take the "high road." One can attack on the merits of policy rather than personality, one can lash out at bad ideas rather than bad behavior. This high road is to take on the mantle of "the angels of our better nature" and to soar above the mire with their wings.

Some can and have done that in reaction to Mr. Trump. Others have given back what they have received, and perhaps others have given back more, in mirror of Mr. Trump himself who claims to "hit back harder" every time he is "hit" or attacked. Link - Breitbart - Trump: If Someone Hits Me, I Have to Hit Them Back Harder

Why should you or anyone expect a nobler response to Trump than that of Trump, himself?? Is not that very quality in him praised by his supporters, as witnessed in the linked article?

One must ask, then, who vomited the original foulness that required someone to find their reaction? Whose mouth spewed forth and fomented the first insult? From the "left's" point of view, it was Trump. He did so against his fellow Republicans from the very beginning, and insulted swaths of various groups in addition: How Donald Trump Insulted His Way to the Top of the GOP

To be clear, I condemn the physical attacks on Trump supporters at rallies, as that kind of reaction is not in my nature, and I do not excuse them.

So while I would like to be able to claim that all the responses of all those thus insulted by Trump and his supporters was higher, nobler and more mature than Trump's original inflammatory remarks and exclamations, I cannot.

But when Trump's protestors stoop to the level that has been set by Trump's own words, they simply become his mirror, and how can he or his followers then claim victimhood? If he bullies people for their physical appearance, how can you cry "victim" when someone then mirrors him, and makes a naked statue of him in ridicule?

It seems Trump's followers began by spitting on protestors (see video above), by being violent and using violent language under Trump's influence and by his example (or at least used him as an excuse for their actions). It begs the question, if Trump had acted more nobly and more calmly himself, would his followers now be dealing with the "keyed cars" and "spittle?"

Which leads to the other obvious question, if he had acted more nobly and calmly, would he now be the leader of the GOP?


- AB

originally posted by: TheBulk

originally posted by: dukeofjive696969
I am having a really hard time understanding this thread, trump fans where happy when trump was insulting people, now that the tables are turned, its bad to call people names?


Snowflakes on the right, say aint so...

Lefty wingers lecture on violence and yet all the violence we've seen has come from left wingers.

originally posted by: dukeofjive696969


Mexicans are rapist, got applause's.

You guys can never be honest about anything. You just lie and hope nobody calls you on it and even if they do, you dont care.

Cant stand the heat son, dont play with fire.

Now stop being a snowflake and put on your big boy pants.

originally posted by: JAY1980
This thread is great...
2 ill informed anti-Trump bots vs one very articulate ATS member.
Keep up the good work LesMisanthrope!

Mis is good with words, dosent make it true do.

a reply to: o0oTOPCATo0o

Thanks for your OP, it is certainly interesting watching how MSM reports on Trump, they seem so open now in their hate of him. If they had just reported on what he said and his proposed policies with out all the salt and vinegar tailored narrative, this wouldn't be such a divisive election. They seem to be almost hysterical sometimes. Do you think it might be due to them becoming increasingly aware that people are switching off and finding alternative news sources, or going straight to the facts like actually reading speech transcripts and listening to them in their entirety. Is there venom coming from their fears of becoming irrelevant?

I'm not American and have no vote, please just vote for who you want, and good luck to you. I'm posting in this friend because I'm intrested more in how MSM is acting. Not to join your election war