His name is Donald John Trump, the Terrorist-in-Chief who somehow managed to win a presidential election against the clearly lesser evil with a minority of the popular vote.
And, although he wasn't in Charlottesville last Saturday, he might just as well have been. These are his people. They are, in fact, the minority that is spread out over enough states to put him in the Oval Office.
To take a step backward from the anger and the carnage (to use a favorite Trump word) that left three innocent people dead, and an entire community mortified by the stain placed upon it by a public demonstration of white nationalists marching through their streets chanting the Nazi slogan "Blood and Soil," it's worth asking: why now?
Racism has always been a feature of American life, including American political life. And it's hardly a secret that one major American political party (not mine) has spent decades manipulating American racism, successfully, for its own benefit. But a key to that success has always been keeping public, blatant displays of racism bottled up, so that mounting a frontal assault against it has always been difficult.
All of a sudden, last weekend, it was out of the bottle, never to return. And boy, oh boy, were a lot of dog-whistling Republicans embarrassed.
They said all the right things, when asked by the media to do so. They made sure they complied with the demands of the digital age by taking to social media (Twitter in particular) to clarify that the Charlottesville tragedy can only be blame on white racism that cannot and should not be tolerated.
I read many of those statements. As words, they are all that can be said, and credit goes where credit is due to those who said them. But will they stand by them, when the going gets tough?
And, by "tough," I'm referring to next year's midterm elections.
In this context, I am reminded of a quote from the late, great James Baldwin, who would not have been surprised by any of the events in Charlottesville, or many of the ones related to it: "I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do."
What's significant here is what the Republican Party, and the elected officials affiliated with it, do not do.
And that is to renounce not only the poisoned fruit that desecrated the streets and the peace of Charlottesville, but the poisonous tree that allowed them to feel free to desecrate. The tree that has sunk its roots at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
All of this nonsense about how the history and the responsibility of the office would force Trump to "pivot," and all of this additional nonsense about how the "guardrails" of the American political system would keep his proto-Fascist tendencies in check, has finally been exposed as the nonsense that they are by Trump himself.
In his first public statement about Charlottesville, Trump attempted to place the blame "on many sides." This despite the fact that one side clearly initiated not only the hatred, bu the violence that flowed from it. The same embarrassed Republicans who verbally denounced the hatred and violence then denounced Trump, forcing him (48 hours later) to bury a slightly more pointed condemnation of racism in an otherwise upbeat assessment of his inability to destroy the Obama economy. So far as Trump's reputation in this and all matters related to race, the damage was effectively done, beyond all undoing.
And no one--absolutely no one who made any attempt to honestly investigate Trump's character on this and other issues--had any reason to be surprised. After all, his racism both before and during the campaign was about as well-documented a thing as anything can be.
But the unchecked power that Republicans now wield in Washington and around the country is the undeniable result of that racism. As I noted, Trump is simply the logical conclusion of decades during which barely-closeted racism swallowed any chance of making progress on the problems all Americans face. And even Fox News is willing to come out and say that Trump has no qualms about reaping the benefits of racial politics. Doesn't get more blatant than that.
On the other hand, if all of those Republican officials and supporters meant their Charlottesville condemnations with every inch of their beings, there are two things they can do:
Dump Trump, using either the impeachment process or the 25th Amendment. And guarantee that, no matter what, next year's midterms and the 2020 presidential election will be held on time.
To paraphrase Mr. Baldwin, I'm watching what you do. And I'm hoping, for the sake of healing in Charlottesville and beyond, that I can ultimately believe what you've said this past weekend.
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