Trump's Seeds Of Hate Spill Into Schools

Trump mocking a disabled reporter ten months ago in SC. Students have picked up on his antics and used them to bully minorities.

As millions of Americans wince and shudder at the prospect of the third presidential debate tonight we are informed (CBS Early Show) that Trump plans to go lower than ever.  His off the rails M.O.  will continue now directed at lowering turnout, especially on the D side. How does he plan to achieve this? According to two former campaign strategists interviewed on CBS, he will seek to impugn the entire election process as one giant "fraud". A "rigged election". He will, in addition, spill venom onto the HRC leaked emails. All this to try to entice prospective voters - who perhaps still haven't made up their minds - to avoid the polls.

At the same time, as this degenerate, misinforming fiasco unfolds (see link to another article about it at end of this post) millions of students will also be watching tonight, soaking it in. Many will be of high school age and again exposed to the sewer pit of American politics. Will they channel or act out what 'the Donald' spews out? We don't know but the signs are not  encouraging, as new surveys disclose the leakage of hatred into secondary students' brains.

It probably was inevitable that as the ignominy of the Trump campaign reached ever lower levels of the sewer, the sludge would begin to ooze out and contaminate more than our political landscape. Now, the evidence shows it has not only driven our national discourse to new lows but even insinuated itself into our students, educational system.

In a recent 'Intelligence Report', the Southern Poverty Law Center presented a survey showing that what it called “The Trump Effect” has infected ever younger minds. Specifically, it found that “students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.”

More than 67 percent of educators in the SPLC study said children of immigrants and other students of color had expressed concerns about what might happen to them or their families after the election. More than 40 percent of the teachers reported being hesitant about teaching about the election. The survey drew more than 5,000 comments from educators across the United States.

Here in Colorado, the Trump Effect and its hate spillover has focused the spotlight on a clique of  15-odd students at a Boulder High School (Boulder Preparatory High ) calling itself  the “Fourth Reich’s Official Group Chat”  on Facebook. Members talked about starting a movement to kill minorities including Mexicans, Jews and African-Americans as well as other groups targeted by Trump in his assorted outbursts, according to a Boulder police report.

Those like the SPLC who monitor hate groups, assert the Boulder incidents appeared to be much more than simple youthful rebellion, calling it "a product of a dangerously overheated political environment" that has also "seen an increase in bullying and intimidation of fellow students."

After the ring leader offed himself on September 21, to “show his allegiance to the Nazi party and the killing of Jewish people,” according to a police report, the other instigators have also received their comeuppance. Boulder Prep headmistress Lili Adeli said Monday one of the students is in the school’s restorative justice program and is in the process of being allowed back in the school. Another wants to be readmitted, while two others have declined to go back to the school and a fifth student is under a restraining order.

Adeli heself is convinced "mental problems" played a role in the FB hate fest, but that assumes over the top expressions of hate are mental issues. If so, one can rightly ask why Trump himself is walking around yapping in dog whistle form about "rigged elections" and "voter fraud" when he ought to be in a straight jacket at Bellevue.

Meanwhile, Becki Cohn-Vargas, director of the anti-hate organization Not In Our School, points to an April survey of 2,000 K-12 teachers who suggest the rhetoric from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is inciting more anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment in classrooms.  It is clear from Cohn-Vargas survey that kids are picking up on what's happening in this vile campaign- the "worst in American history" according to CBS' Bob Schieffer.  They are especially seeing how Trump is able to get away with his bully boy antics and even outright admissions of assault on women with whom he comes into contact.  Since they observe no payback, naturally many kids who are from dysfunctional backgrounds will believe they can get away with this stuff too.

According to Cohn-Vargas, quoted in yesterday's Denver Post:

"The fact is with this type of election campaign, it’s given license to young people to do hateful things and to repeat those activities online and elsewhere. We’ve definitely seen in an uptick on those types of activities.”

She added that the surge of social media and a 24-hour news churn that recycles biased viewpoints only encourages kids and adults to "drag their already hateful thoughts into the open."  After all, they reason, if Trump can spew his hateful rot then why can't they?  As Cohn-Vargas put it (ibid.):

"It’s appealing for a young person who feels alienated to pick up on one of those groups and be a part of that,”

If this is so, it might also account for the  yen of too many young fools to want to join the ISIS bugs. Michael Langone,  counseling psychologist who tracks cult activity in the United States, said the same strain of alienation that attracts kids to Nazi ideals also leads to young adults signing up for the Islamic State terrorist group. All these kids - like Trump - are losers at heart and want to inflate their identities beyond loser status. The easiest way to do that is to pledge allegiance to the most psychotic nuts - which used to be the Nazis, but now replaced by ISIS.

Langone says:

"We’ve seen many young men who go over to fight for ISIS (the Islamic State) and they are not particularly religious and they were looking for something to make them feel more significant,”

He insists it's the "function of a cult" but I believe it's even more fundamental: it's actually the absence of any moral capacity, as defined by Ethicist Cheryl Mendelson.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/69442/the-last-debate-how-low-will-it-go

Excerpt:

"What’s worse than a political debate that fails to give voters the information they need? One that misinforms them, while at the same time demeaning the democratic process. The final 2016 presidential debate takes place Wednesday night, and expectations are low.

Donald Trump will undoubtedly disgorge more of his predictable and already tiresome tirades. Words will once again pour out in randomly shuffled stacks, like cards dealt by a drunken croupier. One imagines him under the hot lights, reeking of narcissism, Trump “Success” aftershave, and flop sweat."

Will History Repeat and Syrian Refugees Meet The Same Fate as German Jews 70+ Years Ago?

German Jewish refugees land at Antwerp, Belgium in June, 1939. This was after being denied landing rights in Cuba and the United States. Most ended up in Nazi gas chambers.


Hispanic immigrants display posters with Trump as Hitler.

It was the philosopher George Santayana who once said: "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it".

But today in the U.S., amidst a batshit crazy Republican presidential candidate field - paired with few Americans who recall history (at least in the pro-GOP fold -  we find we may be close to repeating it again.  This time, with the fleeing Syrian refugees being forced back to their shredded homeland to meet the same fate as the desperate Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany 76 years ago - except the Syrians will likely end up slaughtered by ISIS.

In a Denver Post story Saturday, the experience of Sol Messinger was described -only 7 when he stood with his father at the rail of the ocean liner St. Louis and stared into distant darkness to see the lights of Miami glittering off the bow. So near to him and more than 900 fellow Jewish refugees aboard, yet beyond their reach. The port of Miami and the U.S. refused to allow them to disembark to find freedom.

Too many Americans, with the exception of those like Messinger, are aware of the disturbing similarities between the rhetoric of today and the attitudes of the U.S. public and officials during World War II - which ended up sending thousands of Jews to their deaths because of our nation's refusal to accept them.

Like the anti-Muslim hysteria today, that somehow ISIS will plant terrorists among the Syrian refugees (despite it being much easier to enter on a fake passport and tourist visa) American attitudes in the late 1930s-40s were fed by fears the Nazis "would plant agents, spies and saboteurs among the Jewish refugees.   In other words, Americans at the time feared the Nazis would pressure the Jews, particularly those whose families were still in Germany, to act as agents on behalf of the Third Reich,"

This, according to Alan Lichtman, professor of history at American University, adding:

"Those arguments are chillingly similar to the arguments being made against the admission of the Syrian refugees."

To reinforce this, on Monday, an Ohio professor, Peter Shulman of Case Western Reserve University, used Twitter to post results from a 1938 public opinion poll showing Americans overwhelmingly rejected admission of German Jews in the years leading up to the outbreak of war.

The reaction according to Shulman,  "was instantaneous and totally overwhelming. It was like nothing I've ever experienced before,". One of his tweets of the decades-old polling data has been relayed 4,600 times, cited by commentators in The Washington Post, Time and other publications.

According to Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois:

"When we sent Jews back to Germany and when we sent Japanese to internment camps, we regretted it and we will regret this as well,"

Yet according to recent polls, most Americans - especially on the Right (and backing Trump) are literally petrified of this coming true: some one Syrian refugee suddenly setting off a mass killing spree a la ISIS compatriots like  in Paris. They ought to be more worried about thugs like Urich Caine who shot a Tulane medical student in the stomach using a straw-purchased Mac-10 in New Orleans' Lower Garden District. three days ago.

It has even been suggested that, living here in Colorado, I ought to be petrified too and hide under my bed because our Governor John Hickenlooper plans to take in at least 230. But know what? I am not the least bit terrorized at the prospect, or petrified nor do I regard myself as "naïve" or "dumb". I know, in fact, there's a much greater chance of an outbreak of violence if a concealed carry law is passed and especially the current loophole - allowing those on the terror watch list to purchase weapons - isn't closed. Why the fuck would I fear a poor, besieged Syrian family, forced to flee for their lives, when they're also victims of ISIS? Because some asshole politico says I should?

But see, it proves again Americans have zero conception of probabilities and risk assessment. Most aren't aware that 20 of their countrymen are killed every year by cows, but we don't dispatch all the cows from the country. (We need them for food, burgers, milk, etc. so accept the 20 a year death toll - which is more than all the would-be terrorists have killed.)

Don't these douchebags grasp this barring Syrians refugees is just what ISIS wants? To try to get even more Syrians and others to join their ranks because no one in the West will accept them? How fuckin' dumb is that? (As one Denver Post letter writer put it yesterday, "the best way to create a new terrorist is to send a five year old child back to his war torn land with nothing to live on, and no home of his own. ISIS will soon enough take him under its wing and in 10-15 years or so he will emerge as a new threat")

But see, when millions have their brains fermented in an emotional froth and hysteria-  breeding mass paranoia - there is little capacity for reason and logic to enter. The fear centers in the amygdala take over and the reasoning centers in the neocortex are left high and dry. This is also what a pernicious mind virus does.

By contrast, France has set an example for what a true nation valuing freedom looks like. This happened when President Francois Hollande announced that France will still take in the 30,000 refugees it promised under a new EU accord, even in the wake of the Paris attacks.

At the apex of the American anti-refugee reaction has been Donald Trump, who has actually recommended a "National registry" for Muslims, as well as closing down Mosques.  Trump is notable for almost single-handedly making immigration the centerpiece of his campaign. Moreover, with the Paris attacks he - as well as other GOOPs - have hyped up their anti immigrant rhetoric even more.

The SPLC 'Intelligence Report' (Winter, 2015) notes that:

"after the release of Trump's immigration plan, dozens of threads about the candidate appeared on Stormfront, the world's largest hate forum - founded and still run by a former Alabama Klan leader."

A post followed to the effect of "deporting about 25 percent" and another followed suggesting "shooting the rest".

Already, we see the venom of fascism and fascist support creeping in just as it did in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The character of the German people was altered just as our character is being altered now by the fears sown by the demagogues like Trump.


WHO exactly are these people, these would-be voters, who support Trump so splenetically? William Galston writing in The Wall Street Journal ('Trump Rides A Blue Collar Wave') has broken down the pro-Trump demographic nicely.

Galston writes that "55 percent of his supporters are white, working class" and the most likely to back him are men "aged 50-64 with no more than a high school education"

In other words, the same basic demographic that has been shown to be prematurely dying from drug overdoses, suicide and a lot of other maladies, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/11/why-increased-deaths-for-middle-aged.html

More interesting yet, this is almost exactly the same demographic that helped hurl Adolf Hitler to the Chancellorship in 1933, according to Robert Payne in his The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, 1973.

Interestingly, according to Galston:

"These voters are least likely to say that government is looking out for the interests of the middle or working class or white men, and the most likely to affirm there is discrimination against these groups."

And yet, incredibly, they'd cast votes for a billionaire blowhard belonging to a pro-billionaire, pro-corporate party which couldn't give a rat's ass about a declining middle or working class because their wealth is based on it!

Barbara Ehrenreich ('This Land is THEIR Land', p. 6-7, ought to be read and re-read by these voters:

"How many 'wake up calls' do we need, people? How many broken levees, drowned cities, depleted food pantries, people dead for lack of ordinary health care? (Waters poisoned by blown deep water oil wells)......Why don't we dare say it? The looting of America has gone on too long, and the average American is too maxed out, overworked, and overspent to have anything left to take. We need a new deal, a new distribution of power and wealth, if we want to restore the beautiful idea that was America".

She goes on to note  "the share of pre-tax income going to the top 1 percent of American households has risen to 16 percent. At the same time, the share of income going to the bottom 80 percent has fallen by 7 percentage points."

But it's worse than that! Those top 1 percent of people and indeed the top 5 %, have made out like bandits since the Bush tax cuts were passed in 2001 (extended through 2011). As a result, there has been an average transference of $7,000 every year from lower and middle income earners to the top. According to a New York Times piece cited by Ehrenreich: "It's as if every household in the bottom 80% is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent".

Which begs the question of how any normal person with a normal brain, invested in his or her own interests, can possibly be for a pro-wealth party or pro -wealth guy?  Do they suppose they can also amass a Trump level of wealth? If so they are more deluded than these 30- odd Repuke gubernators who don't grasp they can't refuse refugees because they have NO legal authority to do so!  The laws of the federal gov't trump their paranoid histrionics.

The answer lies in the same basis for this demographic offing themselves (see above link) at above normal rates: they have given up on trusting the system to work in their favor and now opt to act like lemmings - just to vent their IDs. (Google "ID")

It is a sad commentary when a nation succumbs to governance by its collective ID as opposed to reason. But history tells us this has happened numerous times before. Each time that nation was left in ruin and had to rebuild. Let's hope it doesn't happen here.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/64905/right-wing-populism-in-2-minutes-24-seconds

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/mason/64885/donald-trump-is-unfit-to-be-president-because-he-is-a-demagogue-and-a-racist-islamophobe

Conservative Twitterati Try to Go After Marilyn Mosby - End Up Looking Like Damned Fools

How dumb is dumb? Well, when ignorant, dumbo conservatives can't handle the truth, and especially can't wrap their febrile minds around a person with a fearless sense of justice and impeccable integrity seeking it. That this person - Marilyn Mosby - is the product of five generations of police officers would seem to indicate more support than attacks - but not for the conservo Twitterati, most of them brainwashed by Hannity, O'Reilly and "Fox n' Friends".

When I saw Prosecutor Mosby's announcement yesterday, I told my wife: "Make no mistake she will be attacked by the racist knuckledraggers". They hide behind the veneer of politics  and pseudo-justice but as the Southern Poverty Law Center's recent "Intelligence Report" noted - it is all about racism since Obama's 2008 election.  While the numbers have somewhat diminished, a residue of hardcore hate groups remain. See e.g.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2015/spring

 So no one can tell those of us involved in deep politics that the nasty flood of backlash that's followed the Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott and now Freddie Gray incidents - deaths is merely ordinary expression of  "un- PC" pinions. Oh no! Not now, not ever. Each vile backlash which cast the murdered victim as bringing on his own death and in addition referring to them  as "apes" or "gorillas" discloses the comments are not value -neutral regarding race. They are imbued with the same sickening racism that cast Obama as a "skunk" on a Facebook page - creating the incident that led me to break off any family relations with a brother in OK.

The latest example erupted from the right wing noise machine on Twitter yesterday - with some of the tweets given below with the Twitter addresses of the sorry senders:

Ben Shapiro:

This is a textbook case for recusal for Marilyn Mosby, by the way. Here's her husband blowing off looting

--
Here,  as one salon.com writer put it: "to Ben Shapiro,  Breitbart’s Editor-at-Large, the conservative calculus is clear: five generations of police officers — including, at a minimum, at least five members of her immediate family — don’t even remotely equal one husband. Her husband essentially functions like a zero, so no matter how many other family members you multiply against him"

Of course, Shapiro's other inexcusable transgression is conflating Ms. Mosby with her husband - a Baltimore councilman - intimating their interests must be the same.

Other idiotic tweets from the conservo backwaters:

Adam@keepitrealist:

Wow, Marilyn Mosby is married to Nick Mosby, the riot and looter apologist. Can you say conflict of interest?

Mythos@victorsteve:

marilyn mosby:"I have a racist narrative that matches my ideological bias & corrupted brain. all cops are murderers until further notice"

mike matheson @mikematheson5

@FoxNews WRONG cops r innocent! mosby let being BLACK LIB KKKrat influence Being BLACK lib kkkrat comes 1st 2 them This decsn is RACIST

Richard Colon @porthosposrtosp

The prosecutor is a rookie, racist and political and working with the mayor, al shapton and the White House in this case

This is just a sampling but the rest aren't any better: all drenched in blatant racism and/or unfathomable ignorance.  The typical trash racist, of course, will always seek to re-interpret the views of her husband and impute them to her, or seek to conflate the two separate people as one. The fallacy of "re-composition".

The dreck from the likes of "Mythos" discloses a foolish twit incapable of even processing the special prosecutor's words when - after her charging statement- she noted that the Baltimore Police Department deserved high praise and could not be sullied based on the actions of a few. She re-asserted that in her interview last night, telling Chris Hayes: "I understand and respect that most police officers are risking their lives day in and day out. They're on the streets of every urban city, not just Baltimore, and risking their lives for the betterment of their communities."

And again, let's bear in mind she comes from five generations of police officers and both her parents were cops.

The other congenital morons who bring up  Ms. Mosby's "conflict of interest" are also averse to the facts at hand, including that there can be no such "conflict" between a prosecutor and councilman. One "makes the laws" the other enforces them. As she also told Chris Hayes in her interview:

"There is no conflict of interest! My husband represents the district in which I live. I am the Baltimore city state attorney. I represent his district and thirteen other districts throughout the city. I prosecute crimes there. I don't have to turn on the news or open a newspaper to see the impact of crime there. All I need to do is open up the door. So there is no conflict of interest."

As for the claim by Richard Colon (funny how his surname describes the human large intestines), that the "prosecutor is a rookie" - this is an out and out red herring. As Mosby pointed out in her Hayes' interview: "The people of Baltimore elected me to exercise my discretion to apply justice fairly and equally with or without a badge."

Colon also errs by imputing that experience trumps integrity in such a case, when - given that one is properly qualified for the position,  it is always integrity that is of highest import. Something that LBJ and his "Warren Commission" might have contemplated and invoked  - but then it was never LBJ's intent to do that, but rather to cover up his own role in the JFK assassination.

She also pointed out that any alleged "independent prosecutor" would in fact be a political  appointee, not elected.:

"Where's the accountability? Someone political is going to appoint someone else."

Hence, the political nature of the appointment would likely undermine any pursuit of justice in the case.

The tweet by Mike Matheson, meanwhile, is classic racist. Anyone who would scrawl such keyboard feces as:

mosby let being BLACK LIB KKKrat influence Being BLACK lib kkkrat comes 1st 2 them This decsn is RACIST

Is projecting his own blatant racism - in this case against all blacks - onto the person. He, in fact, is likely a "KKK" or at least a KKK sympathizer, who probably gets off when they burn crosses on the lawns of black people. He also probably calls Obama a "monkey" or represents him as a skunk as my now disowned Okie brother did once upon a time.

As for the claim of a "rush to judgment" as asserted by the head of the Baltimore Police Union, this canard was also easily dispatched by Ms. Mosby who informed Chris that:

"From the time we learned of this tragic event, we started canvassing the area, speaking to witnesses, reviewed hours and hours of video surveillance, reviewed hours and hours of statements in the case, and medical records. This wasn't something that was quick, fast or in a hurry or a rush to judgment. This was a thorough investigation that we were conducting in parallel with the police department. So the information that was provided to us yesterday by the police department is information we already knew. ....This was a thorough investigation, we applied the facts to the law and we pursued this case fairly and appropriately."

Make no mistake that the backlash by racist conservatives against Marilyn Mosby is not about to end soon, not by a  long shot. There is way too much racist hatred in this country to keep it stoked - as the SPLC Intelligence Report notes. But she should know those of us who are sane and sensible back her up to the fullest!

The racist knuckledraggers may try all they want to slander her as an "out of control ape" or "racist tramp" but such reckless invective is all they have in their disgusting corner. We see her as the epitome of fearlessness and adherence to the rule of law - not merely dismissing charges because the crimes were committed by those wearing badges.

Kudos also to the ex-Baltimore cop whistleblower, Pete Castle, who exposed the crimes of  two of his mates (beating shackled prisoners),  highlighted last night on 'All In'. He was abandoned by fellow cops as a 'snitch' - disclosing their ethics as no better than those felons who try to hide their crimes while in the 'can'.

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/02/america_is_back_to_lynching_baltimore_freddie_gray_and_the_noxious_legacy_of_white_supremacy/


And:

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/02/bill_maher_compares_baltimore_police_to_the_catholic_church_the_institution_covered_for_pedophiles/