After long stewing over it, I finally realized who Donald Trump reminds me of, and it is scary.
His fire-and-brimstone speeches gave me a sense of deja vu. It seemed I'd heard his applause lines before, but I couldn't put my finger on whose shtick he was parroting. Partially it was because he rarely attacked one opponent or weighed in on a single issue. He sprayed rapid-fire insults and ticked off a long list of problems that, he claims, orthodox politicians have either ducked or botched.
Then a phrase he used in a rally shortly after the massacre in Orlando solved the mystery. Condemning President Barack Obama for not taking a tougher stance on radical Muslims, Trump offered several explanations: political correctness, weak leadership and the like.
Then he ominously added: "There is something more going on."
My mind's eye flashed back to June 14, 1951, when Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy warned his fellow senators of "a conspiracy of infamy so black that when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men."
McCarthy's alleged conspiracy involved Soviet secret agents and American fellow travelers.
The conspiracy to which Trump alluded presumably involves Muslim terrorists and their Democratic Party enablers.
That parallel doesn't mean we're fated to experience a rerun of the 1950s witch hunts for communists supposedly burrowed into every corner of American life. A handful of spies were ferreted out, but thousands of innocent people lost their livelihoods. Performers were blacklisted, teachers and union leaders were banished.
Before it comes to anything like that, Trump could move onto another campaign theme, as he has previously. But he might just stick with this one, thinking he could ride it to the White House. The idea of treasonous leaders meshes all too neatly with the times.
Now, as in the 1950s, Americans are confronted by enemies with an ideology whose power is difficult for us to comprehend. During the Cold War, it was communist assertions that capitalist society's days were numbered. "History is on our side," said Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. "We will bury you."
That claim has been echoed more recently by militant Muslim leaders. "Jihad will continue even if I am not around," said Osama bin Laden, hitting the nail on the head. Since al-Qaida's founder was killed in 2011, terrorist groups have multiplied and, for all of its military might, the U.S. seems unable to stem that proliferation.
Our inability to put an end to radical Islamic terrorism can be understood rationally, but the explanations aren't emotionally satisfactory. Some troublesome facts hang out, like loose threads. By their very nature, conspiracy theories neatly tie everything together. That is why Trump is so fond of them.
He tried to link the father of his primary opponent Ted Cruz with John F. Kennedy's assassin. "I mean what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?" Trump asked, leaving the impression that the powers that be know the answer but aren't talking.
That conspiracy theory was woven of thin thread: an unsubstantiated story in the National Enquirer. Think of how much more Trump could do with our seemingly endless fight against "radical Islam" — words the president avoids like the plague.
How come he doesn't say them? It could be for perfectly understandable reasons. But I'd bet that the initial impulse of many readers upon seeing that question was to repeat it, perhaps adding one of their own:
"Why doesn't Obama say 'radical Islam'? Why did he change what he went by from 'Barry' to 'Barack'"?
Sen. McCarthy played that word game. Accusing Adlai Stevenson of communist sympathies, he referred to the Democratic presidential nominee as "Alger Stevenson." Alger Hiss was a former government official convicted of lying to a congressional committee investigating Soviet sympathizers in the State Department.
Should he choose to exploit them, Trump has some tall tales at his disposal. Like the 2012 attack on our diplomatic compound in Benghazi that killed an ambassador and three other Americans. It was said to be the work of a spontaneous mob angered by a video critical of Islam.
Yet even as government spokespeople were pedaling that line, television was showing damage to the compound done by heavy weapons. Was it believable that a snap mob was armed with bazookas?
"Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they'd they go kill some Americans?" asked Hillary Clinton, secretary of state at the time of the attack. "What difference, at this point, does it make?"
It might, if you assume the game has been rigged — an idea Trump has pitched, and I find absurd.
Currently he is berating Clinton for supposedly wanting to bring tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees into America — each a potential terrorist and collectively "a better, bigger, more horrible version than the legendary Trojan Horse ever was."
But that would mean that a presidential candidate was undermining our nation's security. That she has been doing so since serving in the Cabinet of a president either blind to America's interests, or worse — in the service of its enemies.
You would have to think that she and he were willing to expose Americans to more terrorist attacks on their own soil. Is that believable?
Only if you accept Trump's McCarthyite premise: "There is something more going on."
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來源: TJKCB 於 2016-06-20 09:26:29 [檔案] [博客] [轉至博客] [舊帖] [給我悄悄話] 本文已被閱讀：1706 次 (236158 bytes)