Relevant Parts (for this specific diary) Start at 43:41 At his campaign rally in Youngstown on July 25th, 2017, President Trump said a lot of scary things as he attempted to pump up his base. I’d like to focus on a very small portion of his speech, but one that I believe is incredibly important. The transcript is below, followed by my response, initially presented in a series of tweets here, but cleaned up and revised for Daily Kos for my very first diary. Please let me know if I need to make any adjustments. He’s talking about undocumented immigrants:
The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people. These beautiful, beautiful innocent young people. Will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you’ve seen the stories about some of these animals. They don’t want to use guns because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15. And others. And they slice ‘em and dice ‘em with a knife. Because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long. Well, they’re not being protected any longer, folks.
Seriously losing my mind here. People love to ask "Why didn't the good Germans do anything to stop the rise of Hitler?" I'm wondering the same thing myself. Why is this such a hard conversation? The man is obviously a bad man who should not be in charge of the remote, let alone the country. This type of rhetoric is what the Nazis used to make it ok to round up the Jews, the homosexuals, members of opposition parties, Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, and those deemed to be asocial or socially deviant. This is what white supremacists and the KKK did to make it ok to hunt, beat, torture, and lynch black people. This is the conversation that justifies slavery. This is the justification for the nobility's right to do whatever they deemed fit to peasants and commoners. This is how you turn "nice folks" into Nazis. Set aside discussion of any policies or political differences; can we at least agree that this is a wrong/bad/tragically irresponsible way for anyone, especially the President, to speak about other people? This is how we justified the Trail of Tears, which resulted in the deaths of 4000 Cherokee people. We call them animals. We talk about how much they laugh as they rape us and cut us and shoot us and steal from us. We brand them as sadists and savages, not as good or smart or deserving as you and me. We say our enemies are responsible for all our pains, failures, and disappointments. Then we call anyone who disagrees our enemy. This is how you turn “regular people” into Nazis. If only these people, these criminals, these animals, these savages, were not around, everything would be peachy. If only these enemies would stop trying to humiliate us and destroy our way of life, we'd all be happy. This is how you justify genocide. This is scary crazy talk that will incite people to violence. This is not right. We should not accept it, if only because he knows no loyalty to supporters. Right Reince and Jeff? Sean? If your heart or your conscience doesn't scream at what he's doing, does your self-interest? This is how you make people not people. And it is wrong. This is how you make it ok to lock up Japanese Americans during WWII. This is how you turn people to the dark side. This is how you convince white people that black people deserve abusive treatment from cops. This is how you make it ok to imprison protesters. This is how you get to the bad place where every animal is equal, but some are more equal than others. This is how you make terrorists. This is how you destabilize countries. This is how you sow chaos and fear and hate. This is how you make “nice people” look the other way when civil rights are stripped. Dehumanization is real and it works. Ask the military. This is how you make it easier to point a gun at someone and pull the trigger. 3 days. Day 1-Attack President Obama and the media in front of 30k Boy Scouts, even as you claim you’re not going to talk politics. Encourage them to boo a former president. Day 2-Get cheered by base for calling immigrants animals who enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on our children. Day 3-Kick out transgender soldiers and Department of Defense personnel and attack LGBTQ civil rights. I mean, what the hell? How is this normal or acceptable or decent or anything but fascism? This is how decency and democracy die.
Thank you so much for pushing this to the Rec List, and for all the shares. I am humbled that my outrage is shared and appreciated.
Just to clarify, he did not make these remarks to the Boy Scouts. These remarks were made to his supporters in Youngstown. I may have confused the issue a bit by mentioning the Boy Scouts at the end; that’ll likely be the next diary. But yeah, he saved these words for his base, to pump them up.