Political leaders who seek to divide, rather than unite, harm the United States.
America, from its colonial period up until the end of segregation in the 1960’s, endured a period when a portion of its citizenry was marginalized and discriminated against due to the color of their skin. Throughout this time, other groups also experienced hostility and prejudice based on aspects such as ethnicity, religion, or gender.
It was hoped that this era was long since abandoned. Over a half century of legislation, legal protections, and simply a realization that unity was better than divisiveness should have made the nation whole. And, for the most part, that is the case. But a disturbing pattern has re-emerged into the body politic, one which seeks to reignite hatreds long since quelled, and which uses epithets to reduce a vast portion of the citizenry into something less than fellow Americans.
The first step in the path to eliminating a group’s equality under the law is to affix a demeaning title, accompanied by a false narrative of alleged wrongdoing or inferiority. This eventually leads to the reduction of rights.
We have seen that in abundance in a portion of our political leadership. It has become acceptable, for reasons that are little more than crass opportunism, to label those with differing views “deplorable.” To falsely claim that, because they disagree with the views of the hard left, views which have failed economically at home and endangered the safety of the nation in the world, that they are morally or intellectually inferior.
On September 9, Hillary Clinton stated: “You know, to be just grossly generalistic, you could put half of Donald Trump’s supporters into what I call a basket of deplorables. Right?” The offensive epithet was launched, followed by the second half of the path leading to a reduction of rights, the Big Lie. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamaphobic, you name it.”
A political firestorm erupted. Writing in the American Spectator, Ben Stein responded:
Online shopping today is high in trend and it helps you lead a healthier and happier intimate relationship. viagra in australia These symptoms persisted over the next sildenafil 100mg tablets twelve years, during which time he made several records and titles. They are imposing the facts some times in so buy sildenafil uk much of problem while having an erection. The basic property is its competency in the viagra samples uk ED treatment. “Mrs. Clinton, who was just found likely to have committed roughly thirty thousand felonies by destroying e-mails subpoenaed by the U.S. Congress and smashing her Blackberries to bits with hammers to delete thousands of others, is calling people who want to have legitimate borders for this country and actual law enforcement ‘unforgivable’? There are roughly sixty to seventy million supporters of Donald Trump right now. They want to have the existing laws on immigration enforced. Naturally, Mrs. Clinton, to whom the enforcement of laws is like what a crucifix is to a vampire, calls half of them — roughly 35 million Americans — ‘unpardonable.’ Hillary Clinton, who bullied the women her husband molested and sometimes raped, who shamed them and humiliated them and broke their spirits and threatened their children, calls the people who want to keep convicted rapists out of this country ‘disgraceful.”
In response, Ms. Clinton issued a half-hearted explanation and pseudo-apology, which clearly she did not even believe herself.
Thus, just as racists of an earlier era justified their discrimination against people of a different race or ethnicity and made up lies to justify their morally indefensible action, Ms. Clinton seeks to justify her hatred—there is no better word—of those that simply disagree with her failed point of view, her disastrous tenure as secretary of state, or are repulsed by her utter lack of ethics.
Those who have, over the tenure of the Obama Administration and Ms. Clinton’s reign at the State Department, honestly disagreed with White House policies, have frequently found themselves subjected to both demeaning and untrue labeling, as well as more substantive assaults.
It is those substantive assaults that cause concern. From the earliest days of the Obama Administration, the refusal to enforce laws that the Oval Office found inconvenient was evident. Clear acts of voter intimidation in Philadelphia during the 2008 election were ignored. State government attempts to clean up inaccurate voter rolls, and prevent voter registration fraud and actual voting fraud itself—all of which are common practices by organizations allied to the Democrat Party’s hard left—were harassed and fought against. The Department of Justice was turned into a partisan machine that assisted in the prevention of appropriate legal responses to wrongdoings ranging from Ms. Clinton’s lies about Benghazi, her endangerment of national security though her private email server, her use of her role as Secretary of State for personal enrichment.
Those misdeeds were defensive, though criminal, in nature. It is the offensive ones that cause the most alarm. In the drive to dehumanize “deplorables” and reduce their rights, agencies of the federal government were used to prevent their exercise of free speech. The Internal Revenue Service discriminated and intimidated their organizations. The Attorney General openly speculated about criminally prosecuting those that disagreed with the President’s climate control policies. Democrat state attorneys general began the process of initiating nonsense legal actions against such groups.
The process of dehumanizing a portion of the citizenry has begun. Unless stopped, the same tragic results that were seen in the past will again occur.