Trump plays the fear card
“Race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime. Those you deny it, are dishonoring the struggle that helped us achieve that progress.”
President Barack Obama – At memorial service in Dallas
Democracy is imperfect.
It’s also messy.
That’s because our democracy was firmly rooted in the freedoms to think, form opinions and to speak as loudly as we choose. And we can, if we choose, think harder, form stronger opinions and speak even louder to the contrary.
When President Obama joined mourners to honor five murdered police officers in Dallas last week, he acknowledged that America’s perpetual mess is race.
Yet, while he admitted that there is, indeed, a racial divide, the president was emphatic about how that divide has diminished since he was born.
His presidency, itself, is the living embodiment that supports that statement.
Meanwhile, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, had a different response to the bloodshed in Baton Rouge, Minnesota and Dallas.
“Our nation has become too divided. Racial tensions have gotten worse, not better,” Donald Trump told a rally.
Both Obama and Trump were applauded after making their respective statements about the current state of race relations.
Obama ran for the presidency with a message of hope
Trump’s message is one of fear.
While the nation struggles to overcome its grief, Trump wallows in it.
And there have been numerous times when he didn’t need a national tragedy to try to remind us that the United States of America is coming apart at the seams.
“We must maintain law and order at the highest level, or we will cease to have a country,” said while proclaiming himself to be “the law and order candidate.”
And you’ll notice within that statement came the warning that the United States just might be heading the way of the Edsel.
Bah!
He said the same thing after he announced his proposal to keep Muslims out of the country.
“If we don’t get tough, and we don’t get smart – and fast – we’re not going to have a country anymore,” he preached.
Perhaps Mr. Trump needs to pick up a history book and read it.
If this Republic didn’t disintegrate after the civil and voting rights struggles of the 1960s, it won’t now.
There were millions of protestors lining America’s streets, enraged by this country’s involvement in the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s, but the country survived.
Richard Nixon tried to use the authority of his office to thwart the U.S. Constitution, but, in the end the Constitution – and the nation held strong.
If the Tea Party movement couldn’t bring us to an armed struggle, or if that Occupy (Wall Street) Movement, with its 7,700 arrests and 400 injuries – failed to cause much more than an historical footnote – I’m pretty sure the Black Lives Matter movement won’t interrupt our nation’s will to keep moving forward – and to keep us from seeking answers to our country’s most complex problems.
Even the Civil War, that led to the deaths of 620,000 Americans, didn’t pull us completely apart.
But Donald Trump goes around the country trying to convince his potential voters that, “America is being taken apart piece by piece.”
He uttered that bit of nonsense, by the way, at one of his primary election victory speeches.
While Democracy is messy, we are, and always will be, a nation of grievances.
Some far more confounding than others.
It’s perplexing to hear a man who hopes to lead this country, frequently try to scare up votes by promising to “Make America Great Again” as if it’s crumbling under its own weight.
We’re already great.
A Trump presidency might make it less great.
Trump doesn’t need to stop speaking.
I said at the beginning of this, that he, like any American is entitled to “think, form opinions and to speak as loudly as we (he) chooses.
I just don’t understand why so many people have bought into this notion that America has become some sort of Titanic, and that only Donald Trump can steer the county into safe waters.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net