Saturday 27 July 2024

Things are hotting up in America

Watching what's happening in the USA, it's often hard to figure out what a Trump presidency would really mean for Americans. There is a lot of fear and exaggeration on both sides as they seek to fire up their respective bases and I can't see things getting better as we move towards 5 November. US elections are usually tumultuous affairs with billions of dollars spent over months of campaigning. This one though already feels different. Earlier this week a Republican senator, George Lang of Ohio, speaking to a crowd at a Trump rally talked about a "civil war" starting if Republicans lose the election.

Here he is:

This seems incredibly inflammatory given what happened to Trump in Pennsylvania although Lang later apologised saying:

“Remarks I made earlier today at a rally in Middletown do not accurately reflect my views. I regret the divisive remarks I made in the excitement of the moment on stage. Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included.”

The problem is that remarks "made in the excitement of the moment" are usually Freudian and DO reflect a person's views accurately, more accurately than when they have time to consider the impact of what they're saying.

Yesterday, Trump himself was on camera at another rally where he seemed to be talking about ending democracy altogether. He told a cheering crowd at a rally organised by Turning Point Action, described as a Conservative advocacy group that if they voted for him in November, they wouldn't need to vote anymore:

Note he addresses the crowd as 'Christian' and they all appear to support him yet he has broken more of the Ten Commandments than anyone in Western public life. What do they see in him?  Why are they so fearful of a Democratic administration?  I struggle to think of an answer.

I don't know if the clip was taken out of context and he was actually talking about something else but it looks shocking. Having said that, it's quite often hard to see the context of any Trump speech since he shoots off at tangents and abandons the written speech because he tends to mangle even the simplest of words. Michael McFaul BTW is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and was US  Ambassador to Russia, 2012-2014.

Does Trump really mean to end presidential elections? Remember this is what Hitler did with the 1933 Enabling Act giving the German Chancellor the power to make and enforce laws without troubling the  Reichstag or President Hindenburg, which led to the rise of Nazi Germany.

Politicians owe it to their citizens, both opponents and supporters, to be sensible and moderate in their language and not to inflame things, particularly three months before an election in a country with nearly 400 million firearms circulating freely and a three-month gap between the vote and the inauguration. 

Things are hotting up and it does not bode well for the future.

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