The Garlic: Trump Violence

Sunday, March 13, 2016

As To The Trump Violence, We're Doing The "I Told You So"

Going back to the early days of the campaign, some media did report the violence at Trump events.

Since the cancelled Trump Rally in Chicago Friday night, the floodgates have been open, with many fulminating over the Trump violence, offering details of past Trump events and timelines to illuminate it.

Today, we have Josh Marshall at TPM offering "Someone Will Die", Karen Tumulty, and others, at WaPO asking "Trump has lit a fire. Can it be contained?", and you can go out to Memeorandum for more.

All well, and good, these writings.

It's just that the timelines and denunciations of Trump Violence doesn't go back far enough.

After pointing to Trump's Fascism on November 20th, from the GOP Debate, and Trump doubling down on his call to close all Mosques, and track all Muslims, it took all of 24-48-hours to see what his rhetoric wrought.

In our post It's Starting To Get Ugly Out There, on November 22nd, we linked to story of "Black protester attacked at Donald Trump rally called 'monkey' and other racial slurs, he says".

The Donald, actually, defended the beating of the protester!

A day later, we highlighted, straight out of Central Casting, and on-cue, "Armed protesters stalk peaceful Muslims at Texas mosque: We want to show force"

These were the early days of the campaign, when the Republican Establishment, and many in the Media, believed that Trump wasn't a serious candidate, that he would either self-implode, or drop out.

But he didn't do either, instead, gained strength, in part, hammering the GOP's Golden Saviour JEB!, to the point, JEB! was the one that self-imploded and dropped out.

And, the rhetoric, and violence continued at Trump events, escalating, to where we are now.

Trump is blaming Bernie Sanders, and his supporters, for the disruptions at his events this weekend, even, on stage, mocking Sanders, for when protester took over Sanders on-stage, taking the microphone away from him, to which we noted, back in November;

So, according to The Donald, Bernie Sanders is a wimp, for not kicking the shit out of the protesters at his event.

And, The Donald, with a comment like that, has given tacit approval for his supporters to beat up anyone who protests, or, criticizes The Donald.

We've see that come to fruition, the violence, and mocking of Sanders, which Trump will milk, at least, until Tuesday, when there's a new round of Primary Voting, and we see what impact the weekend's events has on the outcomes.

We ended our November post with;

Before some actually gets murdered, time for The Donald, all the presidential candidates to adopt a policy of #AllWordsMatter.

Otherwise, the campaign trails melts down to a free-for-all, and the candidate with the better fighters and goons wins.

We refrained in November, so, now, belatedly, we told you so.

Bonus Links

Donald Trump's ideology of violence

Kansas City police pepper spray protesters outside Trump rally

John Legend to Trump & Son on Chicago Protests re: their Racism: ‘This isn’t Complicated’

Opinions, Context & Ideas from the TPM Editors TPM EDITOR'S BLOG

2011's Grand Harmonic Convergence

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Trump Harvesting The Fascist Crops

Well, considering there was no Primary Voting yesterday, no terror attack, no Missing White Woman, Cable News, and their cavalcade of Talking Heads got a bonanza of a bonus last night, via the chaotic Trump Rally in Chicago.

This will allow them to go wall-to-wall with it over the weekend.

Okay, a little audience participation here ...

Everybody raise their hands as to who didn't see this coming?

Since he entered the Presidential Campaign, Trump has promulgated fascist, racist, bigoted, xenophobic, homophobic principles, and, at his rallies, as uttered rhetoric of the same, including violence, at protesters, and, the media.

Numerous people, on Cable last night (Rachel Maddow, for one), as well as blogs (Here) have presented a timeline of Trumps hostile speeches.

Even President Obama weighed in on it last night, offering;

"How could you be shocked?" the President exclaimed during a fundraiser in Austin. "This was the guy who was sure I was born in Kenya."

"As long as it was being directed at me they were fine with it. It was a hoot," Obama continued. "And suddenly they're shocked."

Granted, a good portion of the protesting last night was organized, which gets us into the whole 1st Amendent thing, and, unfortunately, it allowed Trump to play the victim.

He was interviewed, via telephone and was in complete denial that he had anything to do with it, that he wasn't/isn't inciting violence, falling back on his stump speeches of the country's divided, people are angry, he'll make a better deal for everybody.

Yet, just hours before the Chicago Rally, in St. Louis, there was protesting, and violence.

How did the prospective GOP Party Leader react?

Trump said that there used to be "consequences" for protesting, and told his supporters that the protestors are bad for "our country," according to Politico.

“There used to be consequences. There are none anymore,” Trump said. “These people are so bad for our country. You have no idea folks, you have no idea.”

So, it's out there.

If you disagree with Donald Trump, you're bad for our country, so bad for our country.

I'll take the first place in line that I'm bad for our country.

Futher, I'l speculate that the Chicago Rally, and the chaos that ensued was planned by Trump and his staff.

Trump said of the St, Louis Rally, and violence that occured;

"These are not good people folks, just so you understand," he said, according to video of the rally. "These are not good people. And I heard this was going to happen, and they said, ‘Mr. Trump, would you like to cancel?’ I said, ‘absolutely not.’"

So, let's go up river to Chicago.

Trump, and his staff chose the University of Illinois at Chicago, which is in downtown Chicago.

As one may except, a university is going to be, overwhelmingly young people, under the age of 25-year-old, reasonably educated (heck, their in college), and ethnically, and racially, diverse.

Trumps average supporter is considerably older, 45-years old, or older, less educated, and, white - and with this frightening personality trait.

So, why on earth, did Trump and his people pick this location?

From interviews conducted last night, the protesters didn't just show up last night.

On campus, when word went out about the rally, protesters began organizing earlier in the week, which, one can speculate, was known by University officials, Chicago officials and, of course, the Trump campaign.

If Trump, and his people, didn't, outright, know of the organized protest, they, by chosing this location for a rally, hedged their bets that it would happen.

And, by having it happen, Trump dominates the news cycle, and gets to play the victim, gets to cite all these "bad people" who prevented him from speaking, casting himself as a "huge advocate of free speech."

James Fallows has a good-read piece up, After the ‘Nice’ Debate: Trump's Shape-Shifting Power, in which he posits that "Trump has a dramatic range no other candidate can begin to match" (making Ronald Reagan look like a cable-access piker) and "He may be the most ignorant person, about public policy, who has ever gotten this far in a presidential race."

He's not so ignorant about manipulating the conversation, and the media.

In short, we speculate Trump and his staff orchestrated this Chicago chaos, planting the seeds for it along the campaign trail, and now, are beginning to harvest their fascist crops.