NOTE:  I have had enough.  I must speak out.  NOW.

I have written before about my experiences as a  child and young adult.  (I also spoke about groups spewing hatred.  Also here.) Where, despite living in Metropolitan New York, my neighborhood was 99.9% Catholic, Irish and Italian.  And most of the kids went to Catholic school, where they were taught that the Jews killed Christ.  And,  my brother and I were explicitly taught that we were going to be the targets of their vengeance.

Whether it was ganging up on us or breaking the bay window of our home, there was rarely a week over a decade that we were unmolested.  To be honest, we should have moved-  but I am fairly certain my parents lacked the funds to do so until I was 12.  They had a deposit with a builder and we were finally planning to move- but that act was accelerated when our next door neighbor informed my parents that there was a good chance we would be killed that weekend or- at the very least- they would kidnap and maim me. (Our neighbor couldn’t be certain exactly how far they would go.)  So my parents and the builder arranged for us to move into a different house, but immediately.

I mention this for one purpose.  To let you know that I know the ‘dog whistles’, the ‘buzz words’, and the outright declarations of terror spewed by folks who hate others for no good reason.  It is probably why I was so active as a child to help register Blacks to vote in the South, where their rights were being denied routinely, and why I was active in helping Soviet Jews to escape from their oppression.

It’s why I recognize the problems Black folks face almost everywhere in America.  Where store owners overreact when a young Black man enters their store.  Where police feel empowered to hassle Black folks walking down a street that the cops ‘feel’ they don’t belong.  Why the cops tend to shoot first when a Black person is the subject of their interest.  The “Black Lives Matter” campaign is not stating that only they do, but in recognition of the subtle and blatant forms of prejudice that are directed against them.

And, with the rise of Trump and his alt-right supporters, coupled with the White male non-college folks that also support Mr. Trump,  prejudice has become more acceptable to too many folks.  It has even expanded beyond Blacks, Jews, and Moslems, to encompass gay folks and women.  These folks routinely feel “at risk” in many situations by the entitled, White, Males, whether they be business managers or crass groups.

America has lived through this before.  Back when I was a child and another bigoted jerk from Wisconsin attempted to remake the country in his image. (Father Coughlin and Charles Lindberg predated McCarthy by twenty years; they made life hell for Jews, too.)   McCarthy claimed that folks who controlled the international banks and media “meet in secret”, [have] “passports that are American, but their loyalties are not”; [and] “manipulate public opinion and finance political deceit. Their aim is nothing less than the annihilation of America’s political independence, and they will stop at nothing—including rigging a presidential election—to achieve it.”

(Why did McCarthy specify international banks?  Because they were run by Jews; American banks, by and large, discriminated against Jews, so they were not in positions of any control.  The media McCarthy detested were the New York Times, the New York Post, the Newhouse papers, NBC, and CBS, among many others-  all Jewish owned.)

Right before Sukot (and right after Yom Kipur, on 13 October) Donald Trump spewed his hatred in a rambling speech in West Palm Beach.  (I tweeted contemporaneously that “I  am not going over the top; this speech is worthy of Goebbels”.). Trump averred that a  “global power structure” centered around Hillary Clinton aims to “plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty”, while stepping on the necks of American workers with open borders and ruinous trade deals.    Trump routinely says the “media”  is rigged against him.  (No, it is that they refuse to acknowledge that he has the character one demands of a leader.  And most recently, after this piece was queued for publication, Trump is no egging his supporters on to scream “lügenpresse“, the same term Nazi supporters used to intimidate the press from reporting on their heinous acts.)

As if that weren’t enough, Trump invokes another McCarthy meme; that international banks plan ‘the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich’ themselves.   The Daily Stormer, an alt-right spewer of hate, praised that same speech for telling the world that the media is  “the lying Jewish mouthpiece of international finance and plutocracy.

Let us not forget Trump’s years of denying President Obama’s was an American, his matriculation, and his religion.  Or, Trump’s continuing insinuation of rampant voter fraud in “war zones” [his terminology for urban black neighborhoods] and his refusal to absolve the Central Park Five (who have been rectified by the justice system).  All of these remarks are intent to stew up latent bigotry against Blacks.

Yes. This is a nominee for President. From the Grand Old Party. May it disappear soon (mostly because they refuse to disavow this bigot, this molester)- before the hatred becomes acceptable in every corner of America. Not only for Jews, but for Blacks, for Hispanics, for Moslems, for Gays, even for those who graduate from college…

Here’s how this problem will exacerbate.  It’s as we heard from the old ADL (Anti-Defamation League) commercial.  “You have to be carefully taught.”  (I wrote about the ‘Sins of the Fathers‘ here.) Our children are sponges.  They absorb the values (or the lack thereof) that surround them.

This process is how normal parents help their children become capable adults, to learn how to succeed in society.  But, when parents spew vile hatred, don’t read real news, spread only the tripe they find on ragsheets that invent news-  that’s what their kids learn.  And, kids follow the actions of their parents’ and the adults their parents promote as heroes- their explicit and implicit concepts of the worth of various societal and social groups that exist.  (Even by kindergarten, many kids have already been imprinted with the racial attitudes of their parents and the social status afforded various groups by their parents.)

 

 

Hate for one group always becomes extensible to hate for all groups. The Germans proved it already. We don’t need a repeat performance within the greatest government system. Not within these American borders.