(begin) It was quite the hate fest the Trump campaign put on last night at Madison Square Garden. Some “comedian,” selected and vetted by the Trump campaign, warmed up the crowd: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” Just to make sure people didn’t miss the point, he also crudely mocked Latino Americans in general, and “joked” about black Americans carving watermelons instead of pumpkins this Halloween.
Some talk radio guy—selected and vetted by the Trump campaign—called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a bitch” and Democrats “a bunch of degenerates. Lowlifes. Jew-haters and lowlifes. Every one of ‘em.”
Some man grasping and waving a cross screamed from the stage: “Kamala Harris is the devil! She is the Antichrist!” (Again: This was a speaker selected and vetted by the Trump campaign.)
Not to be outdone by these nobodies, top Trump aide Stephen Miller worked himself up into a pitch of nativist frenzy: “America is for Americans and Americans only.” (What a minor nation in world history we would have been had this been our policy for the last couple of centuries! Somewhere backstage, Elon Musk and Melania Trump waited for their turn to speak.)
In addition, Miller said of the assassination attempt against Trump: “They also tried to take his life.” The unspecified “they”: always a favorite of demagogic conspiracists. Miller wasn’t the only speaker to adopt this construct.
Leading Trumpist thinker Tucker Carlson weighed in later, explaining there was no way “a Samoan Malaysian low-IQ” candidate like Kamala Harris could win 85 million votes. (That’s about the number of votes Harris is likely to get, which—in the event she wins—Carlson and the Trump campaign will spend the next two months insisting was impossible as they try to overturn the results.)
Trump himself didn’t shy away from demagogic incitement, especially as you’d expect against dark-skinned immigrants. “A lot of people are coming from the Congo prisons,” he declared on stage. But he was also happy to attack Americans of any color or national origin who oppose his campaign: “They are indeed the enemy from within,” and “the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth.”
This was the grand finale of the Trump campaign, personally insisted upon by him, paid for and produced by his campaign. This wasn’t Trump appearing at an event sponsored by a wacky local party or a goofy affiliated group, where the crazed speakers were locally produced farm-to-table types. This was 100 percent Grade-A Trumpism. This is what they wanted people to see.
Last night, at Madison Square Garden, they presented to us Donald Trump’s vision for America. But Madison Square Garden also evokes another vision for America. On May 8, 1970, Knicks center Willis Reed, suffering from a torn thigh muscle and not expected to be able to play in the NBA championship series’ decisive seventh game, hobbled onto the court as his teammates warmed up. Reed started the game, made the Knicks’ first two field goals, and inspired the crowd and his teammates, who proceeded to defeat the Lakers and secure the underdog Knicks the championship.
Willis Reed was a black man from Louisiana who’d attended Grambling, the famed historically black college. His teammates included Bill Bradley, a Princeton and Oxford-educated Midwestern banker’s son; Dave DeBusschere, a Catholic kid from Detroit; and Walt Frazier, who learned basketball on a dirt playground at his all-black segregated Atlanta school. The Knicks coach was Red Holzman, born on New York’s Lower East Side in 1920, the son of Jewish immigrants from Romania and Russia. That America is the America some of us see when we think of Madison Square Garden.
It is therefore tempting to avert our eyes from the ugly spectacle that was imposed on us at the Garden last night. But looking away won’t cut it. The only way to get beyond Trumpism is to defeat it. (end)
I marvel at the number of people who avert their eyes and vote for ugliness.
Deacon David Pierce
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