The Dark Side

By Mickey Friedman
December 16, 2015

Probably the worst thing about The Trumpster’s reality TV posturing is that he has turned all things upside down, fiction into fact. Telling lies, big and little. Moving from an amusing bluster to a clarion call to the dark side of the American soul.

And as all professional liars have learned, the effort it takes to confront a lie with truth becomes so very tiresome. So a lie has a longer life than the truth.

Just recently, Mr. Trump tweeted a chart that showed “USA Crime Statistics – 2015.” Claiming the following: “Blacks Killed By Whites – 2%. Blacks Killed By Police – 1%. Whites Killed By Police – 3%. Whites Killed By Whites – 16%. Whites Killed By Blacks – 81%. Blacks Killed By Blacks – 97%.”

Trump telling us blacks were killing whites and blacks were killing blacks.

How could a white person not be worried that a black person would take them out? The clear message: Blacks. Fear them.

Add blacks to the Mexican immigrants to the Muslims Trump tells us to worry about.

Because the Mexican government has helped its criminals to cross our border. And these illegal immigrant rapists and murderers have committed millions of crimes. So ship them back and build a monumental wall from sea to shining sea.

Of course, the great irony is that in 1847, during the Mexican-American War, the United States invaded and then seized massive amounts of Mexico. So when our Mexican brothers and sisters tunnel under or cross over into Texas, New Mexico and California they are only visiting their ancestral homeland. But I imagine no one has ever schooled Mr. Trump or many of his followers in the more embarrassing realities of our history.

Next, Mr. Trump would have us list and tag and watch our Muslims. Because our dreadfully violent school shootings and abortion clinic attacks have been planned and executed by Muslims. Or not.

Fear the others.

Trump’s lies are no ordinary lies. They are lethal lies. Lies that prompt those who fear and those who hate to fear and hate even more. To act.

Such deep fear and hatred justified slavery. Allowed Christian men to wrench African men and women from their homes, into chains and onto ships, to work them inhuman hours, to beat and rape them, to take their wives as their own.

Such profound hatred and fear allowed white men to lynch black men for looking at white women, for talking back, for trying to flee their servitude.

Such profound hatred and fear allowed and justified segregation. A system that survived for generations. If you’re not old enough to remember black and white restrooms, water fountains, lunch counters and the systematic effort to keep blacks from voting, find someone who is.

And so it is easy for whites to laugh off Trump. Easy to imagine these as just some sad bad-taste jokes.

But for people of color, for those of all colors and creeds who have been the victims of hate and fear, this is a clear message that you are not safe here in the home of the brave and land of the free.

You are not safe because you are an other. Not white but black, brown, in between. Your English isn’t quite right. Because you grew up in Mexico City or Pakistan or Syria or any of those godforsaken places that’s not Savannah, Georgia or Dallas, Texas or Butte, Montana.

We’re supposed to rest easy because most Americans don’t support him. But even here in the heart of American liberalism, the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Trump is leading the polls for the Republican nomination. Just a few days before Thanksgiving, Trump was winning the Boston Globe poll with 32% compared to Rubio at 18%, Cruz at 10%, Bush at 7% and Carson at 5%. Doing even better in the Emerson College poll, winning with 48% compared to Carson’s 14% and Rubio’s 12%.

Explain that to our Mexican friends who work hard on our American farms, in the kitchens of our restaurants, doing the work most of us no longer want or need to do. To Muslims whose only crime is believing in a different All-Mighty. Or blacks who have suffered and survived inequity with grace and resilience.

And now for the record. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 2013 of 3,005 white Americans murdered, 2,509 of the offenders were white. That’s 83.49%. Yes, of 2,491 black Americans murdered, 2,245 of the offenders were black. That’s 90%.

But that’s not surprising considering America is still largely segregated and that black household income is just 58% of white households.

But when it comes to murder, white people ought to be watching their white brothers and sisters.

And when it comes to fear, I fear the dark side of the American soul. Because hate has happened here before and is happening here once more.

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