“The carnage stops here!”
Verbose, as always, why is it Trump’s promises always seem to turn out exactly the opposite of what Trump claims?
There’s a pattern here that can’t be rationally denied; “a pattern” of doing and saying whatever he must to inspire fear, yes, but also offering solutions to problems that make those problems worse, followed by even worse “solutions.”
This dynamic goes way beyond; and before, Donald Trump. More on that in a moment.
I left Nashville late July this year and returned early last week. Before I left in July I complained to Millie about how each and every daily Nashville news report included at least one murder. I even wrote in this column about it. A little more than 3 months later and it seems approaching 3 or 4 murders.
This offering bad “solutions” seems to have spread like some highly infectious disease among our public servants. Recently the Texas AG called for more guns in churches. Not quite as bad an idea as a few years ago when they claimed more guns in a dark theater would have stopped a theater massacre. No, it would just have augmented the murderer’s tally. Regular citizens are notoriously bad shots: especially in the dark and in a noisy, panic filled, situations. But when we keep hearing the solutions to gun violence are more guns, guns everywhere and Stand Your Ground-like legislation, my mind goes back “solutions to problems that make those problems worse.” I also think of whom this profits, and I don’t mean just dollar figures; though certainly that’s part of it. I imagine the current administration’s demands for “solving” such things involve whatever the hell Blackwater calls itself now. I’m sure soon they’ll be goose-stepping through even more of our cities to bring the kind of “justice” they brought to Iraq or New Orleans where they executed whomever they wanted to; operating as legalized vigilantes whose leader has tried again and again to make sure they are beyond any bothersome legal need to pay any attention to civil rights or the Constitution.
Hell, we’re not supposed to even question why we have to risk being shot when we go to church because, according to Trump’s spokesperson, that’s “politicizing it.”
This “making things worse” mantra reminds me of the “good old days” where bin Laden was wanted dead or alive, but allowed to escape and then live on unmolested while American soldiers died looking for him: I can only assume on snipe hunts intended to get them killed. After all: the more chaos caused the more certain pols can climb up on the corpses and demand solutions that create more chaos. Let me remind everyone that that mass causality report was brought to you courtesy of the first Bush mis-administration who told Saddam they didn’t care if Iraq invaded Kuwait, then climbed up on those corpses venting fake outrage. They even added fake baby incubator stories to drag us into creating more carnage.
Then we have the classic: using them to distract, distract, distract… anyone notice that right after some right winger we’re not supposed to call a terrorist terrorizes and commits mass murder there’s someone who Trump and his ilk immediately frames as another example of how all Muslims are “terrorists?” “Politicizing?” Trump and his enablers do nothing but.
“When is this president going to condemn radical right wing terrorism?”-John Fugelsang
The “solutions to problems that make those problems worse” tactic is damn near gospel these days among humanity’s worst leaders: those intent on misleading their people. Yes, that includes the Orange one.
Stopping the carnage isn’t the goal, doing what one can to make it worse is. Trump has made his name on violence and inspiring irrational hatred. He’s had lots of practice. Years ago when several people of color were found innocent he was pushed for executing them anyway. In Trump’s world Muslims are all potential terrorists, racists and Nazis good people. Remember the Brownshirts from history? During rallies and protests he has encouraged his own Trumpers to behave just like Brownshirts. The barely hidden message: “Continue assaulting people, driving through crowds: it creates more chaos more carnage.” Donald Trump doesn’t want the carnage to “stop.” Donald Trump wants more of the kind of carnage that serves his purposes.
There is a wider question here. Trump didn’t invent the promise to make things better in ways that make them worse tactic. Nixon had a secret plan to end the war in Nam that was so damn secret his helped him expand the war across borders, kept it going for years. Obama offered change but deepened the flow towards corporatism. Gitmo? Torture? Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson? W.’s form of conservatism was anything but “compassionate,” especially when backed up by Darth Cheney, Libby and Rove. Their “solutions” made it all worse. Might as well have called them the fathers who help give birth to huge litters of new terrorists sucking on the teets of today’s conservatism. Radical right wing ideology has become the birthing bitch of terrorism. Hillary’s husband ran as a leftist when he was actually more of a corporatist. We will probably never know for sure if she would have done the same: from her record as a public servant my guess is, “Yes.”
As bad as Donnie is maybe he’s just the somewhat “logical” end result of “fool the public once, shame on him or her, keep fooling us and we prove too damn many of us are too damn lemming-like.” If true the joke is on us: lemmings have more intelligence than us. They actually don’t follow leaders over partisan cliffs.
In regard to less historical commentary and more immediate concerns, no, the “carnage” won’t “stop here.” We’d better learn fast how to out frame the barrage of horrors he and his ilk will keep encouraging and keep politicizing. The blood drenched “games” have just begun.
-30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
©Copyright 2017
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
all right reserved