Don’t blame Trump for these recent tragedies. If the inflow of migrants/illegals to the USA will not be blocked effectively these tragedies will pale compared to future civil backlash and unrest. The president is right in coupling more stringent gun control with tougher immigration laws.
14
Mass shootings represent only 5 % of all death by guns in the USA: nothing.
The dramas that mass shootings produce help hiding the real truth that the USA are a very violent nation. 8 times more violent crime per capita than in Europe.
8
Funny, how you manage to drag The Palestinians into your argument. Jake Tapper did the same on CNN. If you are going to draw parallels between Trump and the Occupation of the Palestinians, would it not be more fair to compare Trump to Netanyahu? "They're (the few Palestinians who have the right to vote in Israel) voting in droves," vis-a-vis Trump's dog's whistle of Hispanics "invading" the U.S.
I condemn the tactics of Arafat (dead 15 years) who betrayed his people; but in present tense, let's condemn Bibi and The Donald in the same breath.
17
Bret's criticism of Trump illustrates an important divide between intellectuals who are against him and intellectuals who are for him. Those who are for him generally look at what exactly he said. Those who are against him look at the "spirit" of what he said, their potential connotations, and possible misinterpretations. This latter effort to read in-between-the lines is fraught with pitfalls, which the mainstream media often falls into. Trump inadvertently sets these traps because his words are often imprecise--like that of ordinary Americans--and the media tends to infuse their interpretation with their own bias--without knowing it. Bret, as smart and articulate as he is, has fallen into this trap. Nothing he interpreted is implied by what Trump actually said. By writing these kinds of articles, Bret just discredits himself with people like me, who look at exactly what Trump says. I am sure that this divide between Americans in the interpretation of Trump is similar to the divide on the reading of the Constitution. Those who are for him read the words and want to minimize interpretation. Those are who are against him are for the "living" Constitution--whatever that means.
8
When something bad happens we search for answers as to the cause. In the case of Mr. Crusius we dont really know everything that caused him to do what he did. But we feel the need to find a motive that is easily defined and if possible dealt with. However the truth is that seemingly senseless killings have occurred in the US decades before Mr. Trump appeared.
And most likely will be repeated after he is gone. But it makes us feel a lot better to say that Mr Trump is the root cause so we can eliminate mass killings in the future by electing someone else as president in 2020.
Yes ,by all means say Trump incited Patrick Crusius to
kill many people. Now we can say we have a plan of action and pretend we have dealt with the problem. We can forget
all the messy other motives that are in play and sleep better tonight and feel good about ourselves.
4
Perhaps Mr Stephens and other true conservatives could form an actual Conservative Party. It would be able to advocate for truly conservative policies that were consistent with the United States Constitution. They would be able to work in a mature, intelligent manner with others of differing political philosophies. At times, they might be aligned with Libertarians; at other times, with "old school" moderate Democrats, and still other times, with the Trumpists. I have a feeling that some of the approximately 40% of the electorate and 90% of registered Republicans would be glad to have a more responsible, intellectually consistent alternative.
17
An issue that has not been addressed ( and I even fear to do so) is how long immigrant and minority populations will tolerate the constant rhetorical and physical violence directed at them with out responding in kind. How long can people be disrespected and oppressed before they respond ?
4
For all that is said about Bret Stephens, including by me at times, he is an independent thinker, a reasonable man, a compelling writer, and at times very funny. I disagree with him on the economy more often than not, but I respect the fact that he is an intellectual, and I think he has got this spot on.
People like Tom Steyer really destroy our (Democrats) credibility on these issues. He has a specific mass-shooting ad that he has ready for mass-disemination timed for the next shooting. It is hard to describe such a state of affairs as anything besides opportunistic. I am a Democrat, but its hard to be in the same party as someone like Tom Steyer--he literally attacks the children relatives of his enemies--punishes the helpless, and is the definition of an indecent man.
Bret Stephens is a smar and decent man, albeit one I disagree with often. Tom Steyer is an indecent moron---and there is nothing more dangerous to our party than giving such a man a platform --he does not represent us!
3
I was dockside in Eastern Long Island today and saw a disturbing site at the gas pumps: a new, 60-ish foot power yacht with a big Trump flag on the back.
Putting aside the "robber baron gone wild" image, what struck me was that this boat owner was being very deliberate in flying that flag one day after the Trump visit to Ohio and Texas. S/he was saying, "in your face!"
Do Republicans really not comprehend Trump's racism, his targeting of minority groups and individuals? I mean, Trump himself isn't exactly being coy about it. It really is plain and obvious. No dog whistle, more like billboards with giant sans-serif type.
I get that some rich guy likes his tax cut. But flying a flag like that on your fancy boat is a real statement. To do so in the wake of recent events is really something.
21
I didn’t live through the rise of Hitler but some of my family did. I feel as if I’m experiencing a similar scenario with trump, and it scares me to my core. How do people not see the parallels? Aren’t those who forget the past condemned to repeat it?
16
Both men were crazy. The used different excuses to to fulfill their crazy need to kill. It had nothing to do with politics
5
We've faced times in the past when the country could have become a dictatorship or split apart. The period of time from the end of WWII up to 1980 was an aberration. Yes, the parties got along, but at the expense of blacks, women, Hispanics, Muslims, and other "others". The Civil Rights era was an attempt to rectify many of those wrongs, and conservatives are hell-bent on dragging us back to those times, which were truly good only if you were a weathly, white Christian (Protestant) male.
I, for one, don't want to go back. The "good old days" weren't so great for many of us. But Trump's base loves him, kisses his robes and feet, when he attacks and debases those of us who are "other". No, he can't be absolved of responsibility for the hatreds that lead to this latest round of mass shootings, but he will be adored, forgiven, and encouraged to do much more of the same by his base. The GOP in Congress will turn a blind eye regardless of what he does. Those who are facing elections are fearful of his base, and don't want to anger them and give them a reason not to reelect them.
We're no different than the Roman Republic, which also fell to dictators (aka emperors, starting with Julius Caesar). Ben Franklin noted, when asked what kind of government we have, "a republic, if you can keep it". Setting one up can be done. The challenge is keeping it. We're at a crucial point--will we do the right thing or not. I fear that we won't.
8
Consider that much of the "conservative denial" stems from the ubiquitous and specious accusations of "racism", "white nationalism", "white supremacy" and even "Nazi". Of course, people are denying the charges. These charges are now being made against every single American who is a republican, Trump supporter, etc.
4
Here's what's really idiotic-parsing the mass murder of people into columns of attributed blame. So because the guy in El Paso killed more Hispanics and the guy in Dayton was more "race, gender neutral" in his slaughter, that's supposed to meaningfully differentiate the two?
By that "reasoning", the murderous swine in Las Vegas, who unselectively mowed 'em all down should get some kind "race, gender neutral" award.
Speaking of him, what ever became of efforts to outlaw bumpstocks (essentially turns a semiautomatic into a a full automatic) which he used to slaughter so many people.
I know- nothing.
Now that's something worth spilling ink on instead of trying to figure out the precise motives of the sick creeps who do this stuff.
Remember the movie Rocky, where his loan shark stops Rocky from decking the shark's driver after he'd gratuitously insulted Rocky's girl, and Rocky asked
"Why he's gotta say stuff like that??!!"
The shark, " Rock take it easy. Some people hate for no reason."
2
Is Trump a monster?
No!
Is he a racist?
No!
Is he a white nationalist?
No!
Is he egoistic and full of narcissism and hubris?
Yes!
Thus, are the people who voted for Trump the racists, the white nationalists and monsters?
No!
Why do many people hate Trump?
Because he is smart, capable of instantly recognizing your worst weaknesses and exposing them in public to benefit personally.
He did it to the entire Bush family, McCain, Romney and a bunch of the US generals during the GOP primaries, but nobody concluded that he hated the Caucasians.
That’s how he won the GOP primary and general elections.
However, after he was equally critical of Obama and Hillary Clinton, the left construed such behavior as racism and sexism.
Trump might be rude, cynical and greedy, but he treats everybody in the same way…
7
The inconvenient truth of our massive murder of American citizens is, in reality, the ownership and easy access to weapons of mass destruction. More than any other, certainly mental illness is a small circumstance within the access to assault weapons.
The other reality is trump's daily cacophony into those evil brown and black "bad" others or evil Democrats. This needs to end, but who could stifle this loud ignorant fool who loves the baiting of his base as well as shut-down his tweeter nonsense.
6
The President repeatedly cries, "Emergency!" The border is being overrun by brown skin people bringing drugs and disease. They will steal your jobs. They are rapists! It is an invasion. An infestation.
And Republicans debate whether 45 inspired a right wing "patriot" to go to El Paso in defense of his country. An act I think was entirely consonant with the President's screeds.
5
This is somewhat difficult to say from the People’s Republic f Boulder but you go Bret.
1
The line left out by Mr. Stephen"s column is Impeach this vile man who never should have been allowed to run for the office.
5
1. The idea that someone cannot be absolved rather defeats the whole idea of asking for and receiving forgiveness.
2. Since when did a victim’s race, creed or color affect his/her “deadness”?
3. It’s convenient in an opinion piece to ignore the context of a conversation (the big picture). But I read the quotes from the speeches he gave, and if they fell short in the apology department, they went a long way towards the dialogue that we so desperately need as an alternative to the hatred that is spewing in all directions. Try an open response when he denounces white supremacists, even if he doesn’t “go far enough “.
2
From the Immigration Act of 1924, to the America Firsters before the second World War, to the Birchers who called Eisenhower a communist, to Goldwater, Reagan and now Trump, the Republicans' base has always been racist, xenophobic, and anti-intellectual. The Republican Party owns the morass we find ourselves in today. That some of the more decent ones are running for cover, or have simply decided not to run again, absolves them of nothing. Their refusal to stand up and renounce the hatred and concomitant assaults on the rule of law is a profile in cowardice.
7
The man operates in a moral vacuum.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
So do I.
3
Mr. Stephens, the innocent deceased in Dayton ARE STILL DEAD.
Please don't use the gunmen's names. It plays into the hands of potential copycats.
2
I was having my first moment of agreement with Bret. Then he goes: “The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months...”
No señor! It is not democrats’ role to save you from disgrace. We did not chose that. It is your own party that needs to stand against the dark forces.
10
It seems it’s always necessary for conservatives to throw in a false equivalence to show how balanced they are. You could probably find people on the left who say poverty & climate change are the root cause of terrorism but it is not a mainstream idea at all. To associate that idea with the left is disingenuous. I stopped reading at that point.
2
Finally I agree.
1
Not only should Hispanics and Muslims fear Trump and his tweets, but members of the Democratic Party should feel the same. Inspired by Trump, as the recent killer in El Paso, there will be someone out there who will follow Trump's suggestions, followed up by his partners on Fox, that Democrats are the problem and they must be shoved out of the way by any means.
1
Folks - when you speak about "immigration" do you mean illegal immigration or all immigration? I'd like to see the modifier brought back...
Yesterday Trump said he thinks his rhetoric brings people together. He’s correct. His rhetoric brings white supremacists, fascists and racists together. You know, Trump’s definition of the best and the brightest.
5
Trump, his supporters, and the GOP all take offense at being painted as white supremacists and racists. They do this by making blanket statements about all Democrats, all immigrants, all minorities, all other countries. Why are Americans falling for these cheap political tricks?
Very powerful and accurate critique!
Wonder if it will show up in Breitbart...
Agreed. Having spent a good part of this afternoon being shouted at by Trumpista brownshirts -- full disclosure, nonviolent demo for immigrants & against violence -- I am skeptical that the disgrace, insult & threat to our union troubles his supporters (note: I would welcome being proven wrong on this view). The last point -- that of national security -- might go somewhere if more folks choose to discuss how he has undermined national security. That was the first issue on which he lost my most conservative friends -- later followed by buffoonery-induced buyer's remorse among friends who voted for him to "shake things up." Long story short: Bret, let's do talk more about national security.
2
See Zoot Suit Riots. Bit I don't think anyone died.
Republican voters cannot be absolved of Responsibility for El Paso.
People who vote Republican are voting to let Mass Shootings continue.
People who vote Republican are okay with fanning the flames of Racism.
Good people do not vote for Racists.
Good people do not allow mass shootings to continue.
It really is that simple.
3
Does anyone know what the definition of liberalism is?
1
Here we go again - a liberal leftist article blaming President Trump for something he had nothing to do with.
My air conditioner broke today, and my son didn’t clean his room - it’s Trumps fault !!!
1
Trump is not a ‘creator of things’. He wasn’t as a real-estate developer and he’s not as a president. He merely ‘facilitates’ things; in his business dealings with other people’s money and in his presidency with other people’s lives.
2
Thanks, Brett.
Nothing is more frustrating and outrageous and heartbreaking than hearing all the excuses and gaslighting and deflection.
I do feel hunted, and the response on the right makes it so much worse. All for a man who is just not worth it.
9
Amen.
13
"It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
That's a nice thought, but it isn't the job of Democrats to convince people of that. Frankly, that's your job, and it's the job of the American people to see this for themselves when the evidence is right in front of them.
That so many refuse to says a lot. It says that they think they have more immediate problems in their lives than the mean-spiritedness of the president, even if it's resulting in deaths. That's sad, but it also appears to be true.
People will continue to support Trump so long as he seems to be the only one fighting for them. For some, that fight is against minorities. That's racism and there's not much any of can do to reach those people.
But for others, it's low wages, lack of healthcare, an insecure future, unfair international competition and outsourcing, automation that richly rewards the capital class while leaving the working class behind. Democrats can reach those people, but only if they talk about those people, recognize their problems.
If Democrats spend all their time talking about trump, they'll lose those people.
Mr. Stephens dislikes Trump, but likes low taxes on his high income, health insurance stocks he can profit from, and all the other economic factors of Republican presidency. He just wants a new figurehead, but no changes to the system.
11
Great Mr. Stephens - are you and other Conservatives going to actively campaign against Trump? How about recruiting a sane individual to run against him in a primary so we can see what the true nature of the Republican Party is - right out there for all to see. If someone were to challenge Trump on the issues you state at the end of your article - that Trump is " a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." - I wonder if the GOP voters would disavow Trump. Unfortunately I think not - and that is the real disgrace here - one of our two major political parties is willing to accept such a man to represent them.
18
Trump provides an arena where his fans can watch murder and mayhem.
It's a bloodlust, and it needs victims.
Humanity's history is sadly not one of enlightenment, but of violence and predation. The rational and compassionate impulses embodied by the likes of Buddha, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Mandela, and the intelligence of Shakespeare, Virgil, and Toni Morrison, random examples of the best of which we are capable.
7
Wow!!! When somebody “tips” this hard, it’s remarkable. And Bret deserves great credit for seeing things as they truly are, calling Trump out for his role in inciting the, and writing unsparingly of the danger to our society, our Republic, and our civility.
I feel tearful after reading this. Grateful.
Thank you, Bret! Keep it up!
8
I once registered as a Republican.
I have occasionally voted Republican (not—emphatically—in 2016).
That there are not 20 Republicans mounting a Primary challenge to Trump is an enduring disgrace to the Republican Party.
25
The bully pulpit of the Presidency indeed. Words from leaders do matter, they can either inspire - or reinforce, aid and abet a dark side which destructs, justified by abominable prejudice brayed incessantly by those elected to lead, political gain their only impetus.
The words one can read at the Lincoln Memorial written by Abraham Lincoln, the nobility expressed and their appeal to act on behalf of intrinsic goodness, will never be those of Trump's. He and his cronies have made the United States of America unrecognizable.
4
I consider Trump's hold over Republicans, some whom you would hope had some sense of decency, is perplexing. Perhaps this comparison could explain it: Trump (like a dog does on trees ) left his scent on many of the Republicans in the Congress and the Senate. They are in his territory and must be submissive to him no matter how repulsive his behavior. Nothing is going to separate them from their master. Many or the Republicans, McConnell, for example have not only the scent of Trump on them, but the scent of the NRA, the Russians and other special interests groups. Good luck American changing these stumps.
7
The problem isn't that conservatives are in denial about Trump. The problem is that they know exactly who and what he is and what he is responsible for and they have embraced every single rancid bit of it.
12
"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Yes, yes and yes...come on Dems, get with the program!!
6
Thank you Bret. Well said. I find the contortions of Trump surrogates deeply troubling. Perhaps among the worst I listened to this weekend was Mick
Mulvaney. He is a smart guy applying his intelligence in a destructive fashion. Deeply troubling. He put’s a veneer of respectability on the racist rants of the President he represents.
6
Our first reality star presidency is all about ratings. Morality, leadership, manners? No. Unless he gets more ratings.
El Paso has given him more ratings and we can expect more of the same because democracy according to the very White House will lead to more 'events'.
If you want to kill a conversation or dialogue Mr. Stephens, say his name. He and his minions have no ears, literally, or the capacity to hear anything but the dulcet tones of the worst hairstyle on the planet.
The most important question of his administration remains, will Putin approve another term?
3
As usual Stephens is way off base.
The correct way to evaluate the comparison is to ask white nationalists to cite ANY Democratic candidate who lashed out at rallies against an invasion of upscale diners in the Dayton Oregon district.
It is idiotic to do what Stephens does: compare ideologies, social media sites, political leanings of the shooters in an attempt to prove or disprove the "both sides do it" meme that the MSM is famous for.
The correct comparison is between the elected officials and what THEY say to determine if there is a relationship between their words and its effect on incitement to do mass killings.
Republicans LOVE to point to the Steve Scalise shooting by a Sanders supporter as proof both sides do it.
I NEVER heard Sanders give a speech warning of the dangers to the nation of Republicans playing softball.
4
According to the logic of Stephens, the El Paso shooting would not have occurred but for Trump's tweets, which "predicated" the shootings. In other words, if Hillary Clinton was president, the El Paso shooter would have stayed home. Does Stephens really believe that?
2
This is right and what Douthat wrote yesterday was mostly wrong, though of course he pointed to some obvious truths. I don't want to be seen as giving in to postmodern mumbo jumbo, but what is evident to me is how difficult it is to get people to see anything other than what they're primed to see.
After an Islamic terrorist attack, I don't need to read The Times editorial board; I know what they'll say. Likewise, I wasn't at all surprised to see the WSJ saying that the leftist politics of the Dayton shooter were as irrelevant to his mass killing as the politics of the El Paso shooter were to his.
That is not true -- but the WSJ is so stuck in its narrative, it doesn't see anything that conflicts with it. When you see interpretations of ANYTHING from the Right and the Left these days, it becomes clear that facts barely matter, only narrative. Now, maybe unanimity would be an even larger problem than disagreement, depending what we were all agreeing about; but our MANNER of disagreement strikes me as different in kind from anything since the 1970s.
Speaking of postmodernism, Gilles Deleuze wrote a lot of rubbish -- a LOT -- but at least he stressed the import of a "rhizomatic" life, not accepting the identity that the world gives you. Static identity is problematic, idiotic. No group merits praise as such. Perhaps there is too little individualism, in some ways, not too much. Identity-based movements, Right and Left, want a kind of caste system. Or worse.
He can be absolved because he does not hate.
Liberals put folks in classes.
Conservatives see INDIVIDUALS.
Most people are basically concerned for their own welfare, to the exclusion of others who are not close to them. It’s human nature. The idea that the president cares equally for “all Americans”, including residents who want to become Americans, is almost unnatural, and scary. “Will I get my share (of the wealth of the nation)?”
Trump makes it clear. Trump wants for you, his base, his worshiper, exactly what you want and makes it clear that the others (Immigrants, Democrats, pro-choice, pro-gun control) will be cut out of the deal. As your president he is working for you, not the other guy. Most politicians probably feel the same way, but speak like, well, politicians. Trump is not a politician. He’s a hater who makes it clear who he hates and who he loves. That’s what his supporters love, because he says he loves them and hates the people they hate.
2
You say that Trump, unlike the Palestinian leadership, doesn't offer money to the families of terrorists. But he did offer to pay the legal bills of people who committed acts of violence against his opponents. Isn't that the same thing?
9
Thank you Mr. Stephens. I wish David Brooks and Ross Douthat could be so forthright.
1
Which is morally worse in Trump's case -- being an actual racist, or pretending to be one for political gain?
4
Toxic right and left have one group they hate in common -- women. It's the one group we pooh pooh when they speak - because, Oh, but she might lie!!
Yes, she might, but she probably isn't. Violence against women is soaring worldwide according to many different sources including World Bank, UNICEF, and US and EU law enforcement.
Hate speech against women --- outpaces all other forms of hate (race, homophobic, religious) by 10:1.
Toxic left or right both have in common the Fomenter of Hate in Tweets -- as he covers all the basis: misogyny, racism, homophobic, and anti-anything but Evangelical.
What a disgrace.
2
Nonsense.
Trump didn't run a covert stealthy subtle campaign.
Trump can't be blamed on divine royal sanction selection nor an armed uniformed military coup.
Trump won 63 million votes including 58% of the white voting majority made-up of 62% of white men and 54% of white women. Every American knew who Donald Trump was and was not and voted accordingly.
Trump is the consistent logical result of a nation founded upon the idea that all white Anglo-Saxon Protestant English men who owned property including their enslaved black Africans and the lands and natural resources stolen from brown aboriginal human pioneers were divinely naturally created equal persons with certain unalienable rights.
Richard Nixon's ' crime in the streets' and ' Southern Strategy' morphed into Ronald Reagan's ' states rights', a 'Cadillac driving Chicago welfare Queen', 'a strapping buck standing in line with food stamps waiting to buy T-Bone steak" and wondering if Dr. King was a communist.
Trump is a combination of the worst of Nixon and Reagan without any of acting, governing and political experience or talent or gift for color aka race aka ethnicity aka national origin for rhetorical euphemism.
The Republican Party of Donald Trump is the preferred personal partisan political choice of the white European American Christian majority.
7
With one exception, I agree with Brett Stephen's.
This is one of Ben Franklin's "A Republic, If You Can Keep It" moments. They come infrequently. One such moment was the Civil War; the Civil Rights movement was the last one.
Providence never decreed that America would get an exception from the rot that led to the downfall of Athenian democracy, the Roman Republic and Venezuela's once flourishing social democracy.
Arguably, the counter-revolution of Southern bigots like Tom Watson, an author of the White Primary and segregation, reintroduced the virus of white supremacy into the body politic, a virus which not even MLK and the Civil Rights Acts could eradicate.
Iif Democrats fritter the moment in endless chatter, Trump, like Alcibiades of ancient Athens, will get credit for killing off the Republic.
The exception: health care. The Supreme Court, heedless of anything except logic chopping, will kill Obama care, dooming 10s of millions. If Obama care is ruled unconstitutional, no legislative fixes are possible. So Democrats would be prudent to argue over which version of Medicare for All is best.
A Supreme Court victory for contagion would mean, willy nilly, that health care will rank at the top of 2020's issues, along with the preservation of the Republic.
79
@Frank McNeil You must be aware of the Resistance Movement? This is a grass roots movement that stands as a watchtower to this presidency. We are holding our Congressman accountable. Visiting his office weekly to the point that they have called the police and now ban our group from visiting his office. (Legal?) We only ask to voice our concerns and stance on issues. This is not how democracy should work and they will all be held accountable
12
I believe that most voters in a presidential election are motivated by two things: they want to be safe and they want more money. (I'm not sure what #3 is on this list, but I don't think it's 'helping thy neighbor').
To win the election, Democrats will have to show how they can deliver these benefits better than Trump can. Yes, many voters will be exhausted and disgusted by Trump. But Democrats need to emphasize how unreliable he is and how his policies have failed- and how they will do better.
2
Can anyone on the Right cite rhetoric from any of the Democratic contenders that could by any stretch be interpretted as encouraging violence against any particular group?
I think that is Mr. Stephan's point.
6
It is difficult to imagine that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are the best people the Republican party has for leadership. If it is true, it is a poor reflection on the party itself, and on our country.
Is there no one who can oppose abortion, taxes, universal health care, affordable higher education for all, social programs in general, government regulation, and meet all the other general Republican objectives while still maintaining honest, rational, knowledgeable, and civilized discourse, decorum, decency, and the dignity of their offices, or at least advocate for their causes without disgracing the country and serving as an embarrassment to a large proportion of its citizens?
6
I agree with everything Bret Stephens had to say. But the real problem is that Trump is just one person. He would not be so dangerous if he did not have millions of his supporters who believe everything he says. He would not be so dangerous if he did not have the Republican Party only too willing to sell their soul in order to keep their jobs. Once Trump is out of office, these people will still be here. And that is what is truly dangerous.
15
The GOP's "whataboutConnorBettsism" here ignores the point that it's exclusively one political party which blocks any meaningful regulation of the kind of modern weapons of crowd destruction that made this kind of carnage possible in less than 30 seconds.
As far as underlying motivations, mental health checks, etc. I find myself questioning why balanced members of a civilized society feel the need to own, collect and play with what are essentially weapons of war that are more lethal than the "tommy guns" banned since the 1920s. Rather than try to psyche this out, the reinstatement of the '94 Assault Weapons Ban seems not only reasonable, but urgent. This isn't a constitutional, but rather a hobbyist vs. public safety issue.
20
Dear Bret,
As a liberal, I try to resist offering meddlesome advice to the "other side." But I do have one tiny suggestion: inasmuch as the current membership of the GOP kowtows to actions that are supposedly anathema to recognized conservative ideology, it may be useful to cease using that word to describe them. By writing "conservatives" in quotation marks, or using the phrase "those who claim to be conservatives," you would remind readers of how unmoored the Republican Party has become from actual conservatism. (I recall reading, in a long essay recounting the path leading to the current GOP, the line "true conservatives abhor racism." Which on reflection makes perfect sense—it would be nonsensical for an ideology which reveres individualism to consider something like racial (or any other) identity to be of any relevance.)
If there's a silver lining to the Trump Era (assuming that the Stable Genius doesn't void the 2020 election and appoint himself President-for-Life), it may be that Trump has so severed the GOP from the ideology that the party claimed to follow that when he and it go off the cliff into oblivion, authentic conservatism need not go with them. As a liberal, I prefer progressive policies, but I would be the last to argue that liberalism should run completely unchecked. Both ideologies need to be checked by the other, and the country is better served in the long run by both compromising (willingly or otherwise, as necessary) to solve the problems we face.
22
Bret’s best column yet. These days it takes courage to state the obvious.
21
@Michael Kittle
The proposal that criminals do not get their names mentioned or faces shown in the media is very dangerous. It is the thin end of the wedge to an opaque justice system. How about people accused of political crimes never having their faces shown or names ever heard of again.
5
Yet another excellent attempt at both siderism. You’re wrong, Bret. Both sides do not do it. Democrats, progressives, liberals, whatever you want to call us are not the same as Republicans, are not the same as you. The more you try to obscure that fact, the more obvious it is that you share the attributes that make white supremacists tick and you don’t condemn them st all as long as they are killing the right people.
3
Do any actual leftists write for NYT, or just these centrist/moderates in Dem clothing? I know it's somewhat off-topic but I find it frustrating that the same people conducting analyses of presidential conduct *every single day* on the front page of NYT are the same people who badger the living daylights out of the left, and who tell Joe Biden to be proud (you read that correctly) of his crime bill. As I write this, Frank Bruni is working on his next article about why all the ideas the left has are wrong, and why we need to shut up and elect a milquetoast centrist with zero ambition - for the good of the country.
2
That the actions of the shooter in El Paso are obscene is beyond question.
The feeling that this is a unique, aberrant attack against Hispanics is , however, merely the largest boil on the American public. The casual dismissal of Hispanics is as widespread as the Black racism.
As to this being the worst attack in living memory, look bask to the "Zoot Siut" riots in 1942 Los Angeles and the disturbances when Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles displaced an Hispanic community.
2
No matter how left-leaning Betts may have been beforehand, because he was a severe racist the Democrats disavow any claim,to him.
Conservatives will clutch at anything they can right now as their breed is being threatened. It doesn't matter if there is a logical pattern or not. They're drawing at straws.
4
The problem is not our current president. It is the people who believe in him, and the people who support him because he is good for their wallets or keeping government small and powerless.
Reasoning with these people does not work because reasoning, for them, is a tool to produce sophisms that defend their interests or derail their opponents. As Trump himself illustrates, the ultimate reality for them is the successful advertising campaign, a campaign that, like the Emperor's new clothes, is believable even though everybody knows it is bull.
We need an advertising campaign that ruins the effectiveness of all advertising campaigns, including itself.
The conservative denial this column condemns is the same sort of denial that keeps the column's author from reasoning clearly about things like the Green New Deal that would uproot his establishment and its current conservative values. The author used to work in this conservative environment and it still pulls his strings. If his columns showed him trying to remove these strings, they would be much more valuable and interesting.
4
Yes, Trump is a racist white nationalist who is stoking and enabling all elements of the alt-right, including those who believe they will find rapture in killing non whites But defeating Trump will not stop the waves of white supremacy that involve up to 1/3 of our population and that arise predictably after every period or event of racial progress To focus on defeating Trump is to miss both the point and the moment It is time for a significant national confrontation of the white culture and its supremacist role Perhaps this occurs via a discussion about reparations, a truth commission, modification to the 1st Amendment to enable hate crimes legislation or all 3 But, we simply cannot position Trump as a sacrificial lamb/martyr for the millions of Americans who either purposefully or out of ignorance perpetuate white nationalism
2
Trump may not have offered to pay domestic white nationalists to perform murderous acts as Arafat did, but he has certainly encouraged people at his rallies to commit assault on protesters by offering to pay their legal expenses. How different is that, really
13
So Brett—if this is what you think about Trump what are YOU and other similar Republicans going to DO in the 2020 election? Anything?
14
This is the first time I've seen the shooter's name anywhere. More and more, mainstream outlets have recognized that they shouldn't be naming these murderers and giving them the fame that, in part, motivates their actions. Why not NYT?
Do better!
To the writer......please consider adhering to the New Zealand guidelines for terrorists. Don’t mention their name. Don’t show their photo. And don’t give their manifesto any more press coverage than necessary.
They are non persons for their killing. Their attention getting self serving behavior should be refuted!
2
The author ends the article with this 'It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.'
You can rest assured that v.v.putin could not be happier.
3
Thank you Bret Stephens. Once again, from the Right comes the smartest commentary on Trump and his shelters.
"It's that the [republican party] is a disgrace to [our democracy], an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Fixed it for you.
9
Rambling piece. Interesting that something about Trump also has a kick at a subjugated people (the Palestinians) and ignores Trump's murderous ally, the ruler of Saudi.
A little more consistency would be welcome.
4
You said "The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." Why isn't that a responsibility of YOUR party, which continues to remain spineless and silent while #MassacreMitch and #TrumpsTerrorists continue to hold our country hostage, gun control bills languishing at #MassacreMitchtheGrimReaper's feet? And just a reminder - you already have a more trsutworthy Republican running for president - why don't you #NeverTrumpers get behind Bill Weld and stop telling us Dems how to vote or what priorities we need to focus on? We can walk and chew gum at the same time - healthcare, gun safety laws, climate change - we know how to handle complexities in the Democratic Parry, it's the GOP that wants to always simplify the complex issues and think a one-size-fits-all mentality.
12
I am shocked how much agree I agree with Stephens in this article. I hope he realizes that the his main task, possibly his only task, is to demand more of his rapidly detriorating party. He doesn't need to carp on what he thinks the Democrats should do when he knows exactly what the GOP must do.
I get the still sane remnants of the political right fear the leftward lurch of the Democrats. But, assuming there is much sanity left, they actually know that between the Courts and the Senate whatever they fear about the Democrats is not coming to fruition anytime soon. But if the GOP continues their descent into anti small "d" democratic party what comes next isn't going to be pretty for conservatives for quite a few elections after this next election.
T
3
so why then does trump appeal to so many million of voters ?
he speaks to the hearts and minds of many to whom you do not relate or mingle with- knowingly.
the rage and alienation of trump's followers are zealots of a magnitude that rivals those who opened the doors of fascist horror in the 1940's.....
the middle ground is tenuous these days and rational thought, common decency, and intellectual honesty are hard to find
get ready for another trump administration
politicians in washington poisoned their own well over the past decades and people are angry and fed up.....
2
Stop giving the GOP'ers cover. There are no conservatives in the GOP, The GOP is comprised of right wing reactionaries.
The longer the press covers for the GOP (as they did for trump and cheney) the worse it will get - and it's going to get a lot worse
9
The 1st part is, Trump is a racist, we knew that going into the election. I don't think he's more than that, just a racist Plus, we've learned that his base is racist, too. This, to me, due to the number in his base this is quite alarming. The 2nd part is, The Republican party has shown their stripes, which is one of the saddest comments of all. I believe that the Republican party could have disavowed Trump's remarks, but still follow the way Trump wants to lead the nation. This is also a sad comment for these leaders in that the Republican party is afraid of Trump and his negative remarks should they talk badly about him. Or, they've surprised us in showing their stripes, too. Lastly, I am surprised at the Evangelicals and their willingness to wholeheartedly join Trump in all of his endeavors. This surprises me the most due to the teachings of the church. I guess the phrase: You learn something new every day - applies. Where did America go??? I saw her going over the hill with Abraham, Martin, and John.
10
Why is anyone surprised that the evangelical “Christians” support a misogynistic racist? As long as he says abortion should be illegal and the more guns you have the better, the evangelicals will support them. See 43 and his wars, nothing Christian about him, but God forbid senator Kerry be supported, he thought Row was decided correctly.
1
I was caught by on phrase in particular in this editorial: "... the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill...". Really, conservatives are hung up on that? Doesn't anyone remember that is was Ronald Reagan who forced the closures of so many mental institutions by de-funding mental health care? I remember walking through Sayville on Long Island shortly after the closure of several nearby institutions, seeing helpless people roaming the streets, not understanding what had happened to them... no where to go. De-instituionalization... Really?
12
Right. Reagan rode racism and jingoism into the White House, and once there demonized black, poor and gay people, By cutting public funding for mental institutions and closing them, he birthed the homeless crisis that we still haven’t dealt with. So much for St. Ronnie.
2
If the Ds dont have a video bank at the ready of all of the disgusting things trump has said, and all the the ignorant and disgusting things he has written [dont call them tweets, call them presidential statements], then they deserve to lose.
You are right, this election shouldn't be about policy as trump will talk rings around the Ds with his senseless policies all the while getting his base riled up and the Ds will try to act the adult. NO, stay the adult but reprimand him and this will serve to encourage those on the fence that the better person for the country is ANY DEMOCRAT.
And, btw, the Ds should forget about the base, trump could shoot someone who belongs to the base on 5th Ave and they will still vote for him.
8
Spot on.
1
I have just one question: based on Trump’s own words over the past 3 years, could he pass a “red flag” exam?
7
I agree. Trump is "a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
5
Wow, this might be Bret Stephens best column.
4
It is a pretty low bar to cross!
1
Interesting -- not one scintilla of evidence that the cited tweet was read by the shooter or that he gave damn about it. Not one bit of evidence that the shooter was inspired at all by Trump. Not a mention that the supposed manifesto of the shooter says he was not inspired by Trump. Just assertions that it must be so.
Also interesting that Bret is so alarmed by imputation of bad faith to political opponents by Trump, which of course is what every politician does every day. Indeed, the entire left says that the only reason politicians oppose their pet gun control laws is being bough by the NRA -- never occurs to them that someone could oppose them because they think it's bad policy. Indeed, the left says every position by a conservative is based on some evil motivation. Bret has nothing to say about that.
Also no mention that the manifesto also cited many left-wing ideas for his actions, like environmental issues.
In short, this column long on outrage, short on any evidence, consistency or honesty.
2
@Alan
The El Paso shooter said he was "protecting his beloved Texas" from "Invasion" He travelled 10 hours from Dallas to find as many Hispanic victims he could find. His screed is a racist rant against Hispanic immigrants echoing Trumps language about "Invasion", "rapiists, MS-13, Drug trafficers" infestation" The Pittsburgh shooter targeted that temple because of their work helping immigrants resettle in America, the Florida mail bomber's van was a bumper sticker pictograph of Trump.s rally speech's. And of course David Duke is so in love with President Trump because he hears his talking points about people of color coming out of the mouth and twitter feed of the President. Proof enough for me.
2
Not just the president. The silence of the GOP makes them complicit as well.
12
Just noting: The Montana man who slammed a kid's head into the ground because the kid kept his hat on during the national anthem is apparently now attributing the assault to Trump's comments on the anthem etiquette.
https://missoulian.com/news/local/superior-man-believed-he-was-acting-on-trump-s-orders/article_4842efed-7f34-5855-81fb-92ad2dc0c64f.html
9
"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
It would be arguably more effective if responsible Republicans spent the next 15 months explaining this to others in their party. Those who need to hear it might be more prone to listen.
5
The republican party are culpable, as well, by their silence.
8
The sad irony is that one doesn't have to be "white" to subscribe to the tenets of white supremacism . Driven by Trump and represented by its members in and out of government, the Republican Party itself seems impelled toward an abysm of extreme ideologies. .
3
Thanks Brett, well said and accurate. But as one of what I assume is the overwhelming majority of readers that agree, you are preaching to the choir. I have no expectation that anyone of another overwhelming majority - conservatives backing Trump - will change their opinion. We are in the era where truth no longer matters to them. The pillars of honorable media built by people like Robert Morrow, Walter Cronkite, Woodward and Bernstein, Ben Bradley and forward to today are to be avoided as "fake news".
I recently asked a Trump minion about Global Warming and society's contribution to it. He said he didn't believe any of it. I asked why and he said he wasn't smart enough to understand it, so he didn't believe it - yes, that is what he said. These minds are programmed not to listen to facts - only their puppet master.
We are talking about the equivalent Ebola virus of the mind, both highly contagious and destructive to those who are exposed to it. El Paso is only the most fatal example of this sort of social malaise.
If all we can do is vote, it may not be enough. We must organize a front of common sense with unequivocal passion to expose this monstrosity of a president . I don't believe hate is the soul of America, but we are about to find out.
245
@Plumberb
Truly an excellent comment!
13
@Plumberb My friend René Girard once said to me, "What happens when you design a society to succour only the accomplished and educated is like what happens when you fill a room with pure oxygen. All it takes is a match."
We recently had traditions and institutional structures - technologies if you please - to assure people that their lives were more than the sum of their social or professional status; that their dignities were transcendent. These techniques worked across strata of intellect. They were often critiqued as "methods of control." I often agreed with such critiques.
Increasingly, that control is gone. I am not liking the result.
21
@Plumberb Go no further to make your case on irresponsible man-made environmental disasters than to watch the 3 episode Dust Bowl documentary. The affects of mismanagement of farming turned Kansas, Oklahoma and parts of Texas into a desert with massive dust storms. Fortunately, then President Roosevelt loved the farmers and sent a farming expert to teach them farming management.
15
"Pres. Trump is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Yeah, run with that for the next 15 months. I am sure that will work!
1
".... the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Bret, that about sums it up. Sadly, Republicans in Congress and Trump's personality do not care. The rest of must.
7
"What happened in Texas was racist terrorism ... [which] directly implicates the immigrant-bashing xenophobic right led by Donald Trump." Mr. Trump's visit to El Paso is like the arsonist returning to watch the fire.
3
What should frighten ALL of us, right/left, black/white is this... The next election is a LONG ways off and things are only going to get WORSE. What happens if there's a Korean attack on Japan, an Israeli/Iran war? With these grossly incompetent & unqualified people in charge, we truly are as Neil Young sang, "finally on our own"...
3
To all of you claiming that Trump is responsible for inciting the hatred that led to the El Paso shootings:
-- what are your credentials -- are you a psychologist or psychiatrist
-- how much time have you spent studying the factors that trigger mass shootings
-- can you explain the link between Trump's rhetoric and the shooting
-- can you say for certain that this wouldn't have happened under another president
-- have there been other mass shootings when Trump wasn't president that were inspired by hate
Face it. You don't have any credentials for making the assertion that Trump is responsible for the El Paso shooting. You can't make the case. This is just another progressive-anti-Trump opportunity. The Russian puppet gambit failed so now you are resorting to saying he's a racist, white nationalist, blah blah blah. Well, you haven't convinced me and this kind of irresponsible, opportunist prattle will lead to Trump's reelection in 2020.
1
That's a lot of noise to try to evade the fact that the El Paso killer used Trump's and the Republicans' relentlessly repeated description "invasion" to justify his atrocity, and that he drove nine hours from Dallas to El Paso specifically to murder people Trump and the Republicans described as the so-called invaders; and that that Trump himself has repeatedly, publicly, either advocated or tacitly approved the use of violence as a political tool (including amplifying a rallygoer's remark that migrants should be shot).
No one cares that you're not "convinced" whether Trump is a white nationalist. He's a hero to every neo-Nazi and white power group in America; particularly former Klan leader and white supremacist David Duke, who called Charlottesville the first step in fulfilling "Donald Trump's promise." The neo-Nazis and white power mob are convinced, and they're the ones slaughtering Americans in their churches, temples, mosques, schools and Walmarts.
Trump supporters should be honest enough to admit they don't mind that he's a put a target on the back of every Latino, every Jewish person, every minority who has the audacity not to submit to his garbage-fire presidency. And now his supporters are pulling the triggers.
1
Impeach and imprison--2020. Get this disgraceful man out of office.
4
"It’s worth noting that the Walmart massacre is, as far as I know, the first large scale anti-Hispanic terrorist attack in the United States in living memory." While some may argue what is or isn't a"terrorist" act, the fact is that there is a long and ugly history of racial violence perpetrated against Mexican-Americans/Hispanics along the U.S./Mexico Border, well documented as a living memory at www.refusingtoforget.org.
4
This is why Trump’s supporters stick with him, and probably will stick with him: He’s an idiot who has made it in this world. In identifying with him they can live the fantasy that they too can manage successfully in a world that is changing and leaving them behind. We “resisters” imagine that his flaws, reprehensible conduct,and reprehensible statements make him unattractive, but for his supporters, they do the opposite.
2
Add to this.......in May Trump spoke at a Florida rally concerning illegal immigrants rhetorically and asked what can we do about them. A yell from the crowd responded, “Shoot them!”
...........Trump joked that only in the panhandle can you talk like this.
Or saying that maybe those standing for the 2nd Amendment could find some remedy for Clinton taking away all guns (a favorite Trump lie).
Condoning, speaking violence......as they say in Tn., “Trump is as guilty as sin.”
8
A recent companion column by Mr Bruni concluded that Mr Trumps election could not be attributed to his nativist, racist and bigoted personality. I submit that it can. But this is not a Trump problem, it is a Republican Party problem. The margins in the last election were so thin that anything that Mr Trump and the Republican party can do to drive the vote will be done. Republicans have relied on racism as a winning formula; Nixon did it with his Southern Strategy and so does Trump. Of course as a presidential candidate, George Wallace did it better than anyone. I applaud your insight and the fact that you are calling out this nonsense. But as others have mentioned, you do yourself no favor by letting Republicans off the hook.
6
Wait, the El Paso shooter is just like the Palestinians? Of all the comparisons, why on earth is that in this piece? The El Paso shooter is a member of the dominant power structure in America who explicitly opened fire on other Americans to incite terror and maintain that dominance. Is Bret trying to say that Palestinians are the dominant power in Israel?
Of course not. What he’s trying to do is make liberals feel bad by creating a clumsy false equivalence. It diminishes the argument he’s making and makes me wonder about his motivations.
7
It would be refreshing for once in everyone's life time if we could just be a country of decent human beings. Human beings who picked each other up when we are down, who wake up each day to be a better person than we were yesterday.
If we could for once abandon our endless quest of ensuring that our cemeteries are filled because of our daily dosage of hate.
If we could just be decent to each other for one day maybe we could listen ,stop the slogans and maybe graduate from the third grade. Alas that will never happen because its easier to put ourselves in political parties,never identify the issues and never resolving anything that affects all of our lives. We have to do better than what has been on display by the GOP and just plain haters for the last few years. We have to do better in honor of the people who are now in their early graves because we refuse to mentally and emotionally grow up. Enough already, lets get busy and change our behavior otherwise there will be no country left to fight over.
5
Dear Mr. Stephens, your last sentence describes the president as "a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." You're correct and what you say was clearly foreshadowed through his words and behavior way before his campaign. I'm glad you see it now. Keep writing. Encourage everyone to vote
Before the 2016 election I told my family and friends that I wouldn't vote for him if someone put a gun to my head because of my concerns for: global security, how he treated people and protecting my personal health care. I never imagined the inhumane depths of this administration and of Trump supporters. I am volunteering and speaking up in several areas. If we all take action and vote we can end this nightmare. Keep speaking up. We're counting on people like you.
5
the biggest shock is not Trump - he never hid anything but that despite knowing all that indecency 63 million presumed decent Americans voted for him.
6
I agree with everything Mr. Stephens wrote except: " or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border." Stop with the republican memery, please.
But trump is raging mess of anger and hate, tweeting out insults faster than the Fox pundits can tee them up for him. He is a clear and present danger that 40% of the country worships and defends.
3
Oh my! How can we take the actual words and deeds of Trump and hold him to account? After all, we dont know what he really means. We dont know what his intentions are. It's just not fair I tell you.
1
Although I often disagree with Mr. Stephens, this article says what must be said. If I'm going to quibble with anything, it's that he concludes by saying it is the "main task of Democrats" to convince people that Trump is a danger to this country. This should, in fact, be the main task of every decent person, most of all Republicans. Bret is lending his voice, but needs to convince more people from his side of the political divide.
5
"...the progressive ideology of one shooter..."
Describing this psychopath/criminal as a leftist is bad enough; calling him "progressive" proves only Mr. Stephens' very shoddy grasp of the meaning of the term. Does the NYTimes pay its pundits to stoke division?
5
Thank you for this column, Mr. Stephens. It is possible to be both conservative and decent. Those who excuse Trump are neither.
6
I agree with Bret Stephens, especially on the laser focus the Democrats need to keep on Trump and not get distracted by policy debates. The sad thing is this advice is coming from a life-long very distinguished conservative who doesn't seem to have a political home. The GOP has become the party of Trump. It's members find it easier to resign than to do battle with Trump and his associates. After the election is over, Republicans will have to ask how someone with no moral center and no real convictions took over their party, just as Germans and Europeans at large had ask themselves how it happened there. So although I agree with Mr. Stephens, I think his attention is better focused on a home for conservatives who consider themselves patriots and want to eliminate the rot which is the present GOP.
6
What's particularly disturbing is that it's taken so long for any significant voices on the right to acknowledge Trump's monumental unfitness for the office he's managed to find himself in. It was as plain as day, yet Republicans with their particular fetishes -- dismantling Social Security and Medicare, suppressing minorities and minority votes, gutting environmental protections in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence (Stephens is a climate denier), fostering the supremacy of giant corporations over individuals, installing politically motivated reactionary judges, overturning Roe and most pertinent today, preserving the base's "right" to own assault weapons -- saw him as a means to their ends. It's irresponsible and immoral and it's going to take us years to get back to normal . . . if that's even possible.
9
It's time for the majority of the Dem candidates to drop out and rum for Senate if there is an available seat. If there's no available seat, maybe they should shop for one.
Carpetbagging, you say? That didn't stop Dick Cheney from changing his residency from Texas to Wyoming when he wanted to run for VP. And it didn't stop Jersey John Chrin from buying 3 or 4 houses in PA when he was trying to takeover a PA congressional district.
Let's get serious here. We need Trump out and we need the Senate.
3
Bret Stephens misses a glaring point and does the same thing he is accusing others of doing in not addressing root causes and deflecting.
The Dayton shooter had a long history of violent fantasies (hit lists) and attacking his girl friends. This time he shoots his sister and her companions. He had driven with her to the site of the shooting. What triggered the attack? Apparently, all who could have answered that question are dead. His sister did or said something that made him want to kill her.
It was all her fault. She made him do it. If she had not done whatever it was, he would not have had to kill her and all those other people.
This is what we hear every time a male attacks, maims, rapes, humiliates, intimidates a female partner, employee, classmate, parish member, student, patient, or female family member. It is so common, it is not even brought up in any of the coverage I have seen about these latest stories.
He shot and killed his sister just like hundreds of women/girls are killed everyday and for similar reasons. They were not subservient enough to satisfy an overbearing male ego.
133
@BJW: sad that in 2019, women are still not being beleived #IbelieveChristineBlaseyFord #ITMFA
16
@BJW
I beg your pardon, but the point you try to make is hardly “glaring,” or even particularly relevant in this context.
And your data (i.e., “...hundreds of women/girls are killed everyday and for similar reasons.”) is highly suspect.
Domestic violence and abuse is certainly an important issue that needs to be addressed in our society (and in the world). But El Paso had nothing to do with domestic abuse, and while his abusive and disturbed past is well documented, the specific motivations for the Dayton shooter’s rampage will probably never be fully understood.
Let’s focus on the real issue here - and the issue that can and should be addressed. Okay? And imo, that would be how access to weapons of mass destruction makes it much more likely that a seriously disturbed individual (like either the Dayton or the El Paso shooter) can act out his sick fantasies in America, regardless of his target(s) or his motivations.
17
@BJW
In the same paragraph you note that anyone who could give insight into what set him off is dead, while also offering a definitive explanation that tidily proves a larger point you wanted to make.
If we can't know what happened, then how do you know?
26
This is the kind of rhetoric we used to see from centrist conservatives. I’m deeply impressed that Mr. Stephens has chosen actively to defy the spirit of tribalism, obfuscation, and misdirection that has overtaken the Republican portion of the electorate.
3
Why isn't it also the responsibility of Republicans to convince America that "the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety"? Why are no other Republicans (except hopeless Bill Weld) announcing a primary run against Trump? If Republicans continue to sit on their hands here, what good are they? Why are they there? Why is it always the job of Democrats to clean up the mess Republicans make of our economy, our environment, our health care system, our standing in the world, our country?
15
Let it not be forgotten that just days before the massacre in El Paso, at a rally in Florida, Trump laughed at the suggestion that the "invaders" be shot. "only in the Panhandle folks, only in the Panhandle" wink, wink. It's all there on video.
I was grateful and impressed when John McCain corrected an ignorant woman at one of his rallies who called Obama a Muslim. Trump failed his John McCain moment in a horrible, consequential way.
14
And when will Stephen Miller also answer for his culpability in all of the worst moments of this disgraceful administration? The Muslim ban, the chants about the wall, filled with near bloodlust, the shutdown over the funding of it, ramping up the medieval zero tolerance family separation policy, the increased ICE raids that have shattered so many families - it's beyond the pale.
Yes the Dems must uneseat him above all else. Too bad the GOP/RNC are still apparently fine with him being the leader of their party going into the next election.
14
@JKvam Stephen Miller has been the mastermind of this administration immigration policies - a very noxious person. His demeanor exudes hatred towards them.
Uf !! Terrifying but sadly true. Trump is a very, very dangerous person -
I have relatives who are Trump supporters. After heated discussions - their last words are almost always “Someday you will have to acknowledge that he will be the best USA President - ever”.
There is nothing you can do except encourage democrats to go out and vote- for whoever wins the candidacy.
10
Why don't you go ahead and publish an article of dated Trump hate tweets / statements with their correlated (subsequent) violence? You've got the resources for this, it would make the case much more strongly, and be irrefutable.
4
The compassionate approach would be a forensic mental health center - time for his crimes and help for his (Trump's) mind. The mental health crisis of this nation starts in the oval office. I've met his type before - as a chaplain in just that setting. He cannot control his hate speach. It feeds his narcisism disorder. And his speach fuels fear and hatred, spilling into domestic terrorism. Without intervention, many more innocent lives of American citizens will be lost.
2
Thank you, Mr Stephens, for exemplifying conservative common sense. I am a liberal and I am utterly convinced that a healthy free society needs both liberal and conservative forces to check on one another, point each other’s contradictions and thus, allow us to move forward. Your column often points out the problems of conservatism in America which affect the whole of society. I wish your voice was the example of conservative leadership voices now, but it is not. Common sense, and a modicum of decorum or decency, are both MIA in the right these days. The results are obvious for all to see.
Again, thank you for another brilliant column.
5
I’m glad to see that Bret Stephens is calling out the bankrupt arguments of Trump supporters in the media and Congress, but the problem really goes deeper than current blame. Conservative media, Republican politicians and conservative voters knew what Donald Trump was for at least 20 years, yet they did not step in and stop this problem before it reached the White House. And he needs to come out strongly that Republican voters cannot vote for Donald Trump if he appears on the 2020 ballot. If he can’t bring himself to recommend the Democratic candidate, he needs to urge Republicans to stay home. Likewise, he should tell his Republican readers that if their congressional representatives defend Trump, they cannot vote to re-elect them.
But Mr Stephens can’t help making some false equivalences, that blaming video games or the culture “is the right-wing equivalent of the left’s idea that poverty and climate change are at the root of terrorism: causes so general that they explain everything, hence nothing.” Of course, he’s right about the former, but as for climate change and poverty and terrorism, see the lead article in today’s NYT, in which climate change is held responsible for water and food shortages, and thus poverty. People who are dying of hunger and thirst will do extreme things either to get the resources they need or to lash out at those they perceive as responsible for their plight.
2
Thank you for this column. It helped me understand.
1
Trump's views on immigration are shared by the majority of the population, as indicated by his election.
If he has incited the violent passions of anti-immigrationists, it is by failing to fulfil the promises he made. And, in that, he is not wholly, or even principally, to blame. The political, media and judicial establishment has conspired to thwart his proposal to build a wall. It is this anti-democratic conspiracy that triggers extremists, not Trump's rhetoric. Those feelings already existed before Trump spoke.
The moral touchstone for assessing political demands must be majority will. In that, a jihadi and an immigration restrictionist cannot seriously be compared. The jihadi's demands are wanted only by a negligible number of people. The immigration restrictionist wants things willed by the majority.
3
He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.
You are welcome.
4
Busting chicken processing plants hiring
anybody they can get is close to absurdity
I understand why, and it is a catch 22, because
cheap labor keeps prices low as possible, and
seemingly everybody loses, buyers, sellers, workers
and the nation when these breadwinners are
deported
The point is that real citizens apparently
aren’t interested in such work
if they can help it
The problem has been ongoing for mucho years, and
interfering I suppose is like tariffing Chinese goods
Lose-Lose
2
So just hold your nose Mr. Stephens and vote for any democratic candidate in 2020.
8
As a human rights activist who has spent much time in Israel and Palestine on multiple occasions, I take strong exception to Bret Stephens outrageous statements about alleged Palestinian support for terrorism, as well as his linking Palestinian opposition with white supremacist terrorism. The overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people and responsible leadership do not advocate violence against the occupiers of their ancestral homeland. Stephens never once has condemned the routine Israeli army violence against the Palestinians, including the deliberate killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, Israeli army bombing of UN schools, hospitals and hospices in Gaza, inter alia. It is sad that Stephens can bask comfortably in his ignorance while sitting in his NYC office, as he appears to know little about much of the rest of the world.
4
Racism has been a feature of the Republican Party, not a bug, for most of my adult life, and I’m old enough to remember Eisenhower as a child. Nixon’s Southern Strategy, his “silent majority” and calls for “law and order”, these were coded racist messages. As time has passed, the messages have become more blatant, more openly, shamelessly racist, and the Republicans have by and large, remained within their comfort zone, oblivious to the fact that they are in a pot of water, almost at the boiling point.
His is the same racism that led to the marginalization of Republicans in California. I suppose that being a Republican doesn’t necessarily make you a racist, but if your a racist, it’s likely you’re a Republican.
7
Mr. Stephens writes: "Connor Betts, the alleged Dayton shooter, had left-wing political views, believed in socialism, supported Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy, and regularly inveighed on Twitter against various personages on the right (including, it turns out, me)."
Here's a suggested re-write:
"Connor Betts, the alleged Dayton shooter, expressed left-wing views, claimed to believe in socialism, wrote in support of Elizabeth Warren's candidacy, and regularly inveighed on Twitter against various personages on the right (including, it turns out, me."
The point it this: No one knows what views Connor Betts (or Brett Stephens, or Donald Trump) holds, what he or they "believe" in, or whether any of them truly "support" anyone else. This is not an issue of the Trumpist "post-fact" era, but a simple matter of diction.
5
@Martin Daly
Excellent points. Thank you.
The El Paso shooter is a white separatist. His rampage was triggered not by rhetoric but by the recent tsunami of illegal border crossers. The number of illegal border crossers is expected to top one million by the end of the year.
Patrick Crusius picked El Paso to stage his attack because on a single day in May the Border Patrol arrested a group of more than 1,000 migrants as they crossed from Juarez directly into El Paso. It was by far the largest group of illegal border crossers ever apprehended. It put El Paso in the spotlight of the illegal immigration debate.
Democratic presidential candidates seized the moment. They rushed to El Paso to be photographed as they deplored overcrowded conditions at Clint Station, a CBP processing station on the outskirts of El Paso. And during the recent Democratic presidential candidate debate, leading Democratic hopefuls pointed Clint Station as they called for the decriminalization of illegal border crossing. They described Americans who oppose illegal immigration as racist bigots.
Crusius no doubt found the Democratic rhetoric infuriating.If rhetoric is to blame for the El Paso tragedy, it is Democratic rhetoric.
7
@William Case
No mass murder can be justified by outrage over immigrants seeking refuge at our borders. Those who attempt to cross the border illegally are hoping to find a better life, not looking to harm Americans.
The El Paso killer is a hate-filled, warped individual who has done the reputation of our country--a nation of immigrants--immeasurable harm.
4
@William Case
"His rampage was triggered not by rhetoric but by the recent tsunami of illegal border crossers."
In other words, Trump supporters are now justifying the El Paso massacre.
Good to know.
6
@Jane White
I did not suggest the El Paso shooting was justified. I lived most of life in El Paso. Many of my friends are attending the memorial. I would attend myself if I still lived in El Paso.
2
False equivalency alert: of course there are nuts on both sides (which is why you'd think the right would want to curb guns too).
However: I can think of a lot of examples of Trump's rhetoric that has served to inflame and incite rather than turn the burners down. ("Cops, don't be gentle"..."I'll pay your legal bills"..."Invaders"..."Only in the panhandle"...
Can anyone point out anything like the same kind of "go get 'em" language coming from the left?
12
Your last sentence is absolutely correct. We must convince the sane voters in this country that trump is wrong for our country.
trump is inciting people to attack “the others”. Whether they are Mexicans, the Press, liberals, or you disagree with trump, or you do not bow before him, all of us are threatened.
trump should have been impeached and convicted long ago for failure to uphold his oath of office. Now we can add obstruction of justice. We have an airtight case. Unfortunately we have a Republican-held Senate. We need to vote out all republicans so that our government can be sane and be for all citizens.
7
I applaud this article.
But let's call a spade a spade.
Bret and many other pundits are dancing around the fact that our president is engaging, wittingly or not, in stochastic terrorism:
According to dictionary.com, stochastic terrorism means: “Acts of violence by random extremists, triggered by political demagoguery.”
The demagogue triggers the extremists. The extremists pull the trigger. And the demagogue screams, "wasn't my fault!"
9
Thank you Bret for laying out the roadmap for people of good faith to rise up and eject Trump: "that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." Everything else-- whether it's the Green New Deal or next Supreme Court appointment-- is a sideshow.
3
That was the approach that Hilary took. All other things are not equal, but it didn't work out too well for her. "T"'s "base" know what he is, and don't care.
134
I understand, and can accept, political tribalism. But moral tribalism -- willfully suspending your values and morals in service to political solidarity -- is frighteningly dangerous, as we are learning. Is there no bottom to the GOP's madness?
599
@Frank--Excellent comment. It seems today that there is NO bottom to the GOP madness.
54
@Frank Spot on. Bending moral rectitude comes easily to the pandering self-help evangelical sects (Joel Osteen, etc.) of which 45 is via Norman Vincent Peale. The corollary of which is if it's good for me, it's good for all. Relativism run amok.
20
Joe Biden gave a speech on this very topic yesterday, in Iowa. It is on YouTube. His entire reason for running is (to paraphrase it) "to make America America again," and make the Trump regime an aberration in our history. As he describes it, this upcoming election is about "who we are as Americans." It seems to me that Brett Stephens and other columnists agree that this is the issue in this election. Perhaps they could all pay attention to what the Democratic candidates are saying.
877
Trump is not an "aberration". He's a Republican. Like Ronald Reagan, who created homelessness by deinstitutionalizating the mentally ill. W lied us into the Iraq war and the great recession of 2008. Republicans must be stopped at the ballot box in 2020. REGISTER TO VOTE!
51
@Mark L. Zeidel, M.D. Sounds like another yearning to go back to an America that never was.
5
@goldenboy: Actually, deinstitutionalization started in the late 1960s, but certainly Ronnie Ray-gun and his GOP minions helped accelerate it by block-granting Medicaid payments to the states.
10
Is Bernie responsible for the attempt on Salise? Is Warren responsible for Dayton? Is Obama responsible for Fort Hood? No. And Trump is not responsible for El Paso.
5
Come on. Bernie, Elizabeth and President Obama did not provide moral justification for these killing via their Tweets and speeches. Trump, on the other hand, uses Tweets and speeches to indirectly if not directly provide his supporters the moral justification to attack people they see as a threat to America. Moreover, Trump has done nothing to stream the tide of violence because the violence serves his purpose and energizes his base. Trump’s campaign slogan should be “Make America Hate Again”.
3
@Eric:
trump does not speak in a vacuum. We all hear and read his words and, yes, he advocates violence against those he doesn’t like (immigrants, journalists, anyone opposing him—check out what he’s said in public appearances and tweets.) If Warren, Sanders or Obama had EVER made racist or even slightly inflammatory statements, believe me, we would be holding their feet to the same fire.
4
Trump uses inflammatory rhetoric in screaming rallies- specifically targeting non-white people. This resonates with a fringe part of his base. No Democrat ever used such talk. Another right wing false argument, delivered with faux authority.
4
El Paso and Dayton are the same. Only the Left draws a distinction.
1
Conservatives do seem to think that Ohio and Texas are the same thing.
Let’s see how that theory plays out in 2020!
2
For allowing white supremacists to incite violence through tweets, shouldn’t twitter be shut down now?
5
The reason the GOP doesn't denounce Trump and why Trump doesn't tone down his rhetoric is that they have nothing to gain from doing that politically. Trump desperately needs his base, and that base absolutely loves that he is 'calling it like he sees it", "Telling the truth", not to mention many of them are racists and white supremacists.
On the other hand, people who might vote for Trump who otherwise deplore the racism and divism, will still vote for him because they don't think the hate and racism and the like Trumps what they perceive as benefits to them, whether it is tax cuts or the idea that Trump is behind a 'blistering' economy, or they like his trade actions, etc.
So whatever little Trump and the GOP might lose because of this ugliness, they know it will keep their base voting and they know the suburban burghers and the upper class industrialists and the like will still vote for him; and the people getting angry at this will do exactly what they did in 2016, either vote for Trump's opponent, or not show up as blacks and hispanics and young people did in 2016, either through complacency or the idea Hillary was either evil for denying bernie or not worse than Trump...so they have nothing to fear from the 'good' people who despise Trump on either side of the aisle.
2
Can we just admit that there is and will always be racial prejudice to some degree, and not just among white and light-skinned races but all those other races of various colors where they live in close proximity. Western European whites are not the only "racists" in the world. People of other races feel their race is superior intellectually, morally, physically and culturally too. If we can admit it, then we can get closer to seeing and judging the individual and better succeed in minimizing the damaging effects of our prejudices on people's lives. I'll start. Yes, I am prejudiced. I am working on overcoming.
1
@abigail49
I agree that we are all prejudiced to some degree, and that the first step in overcoming our own racial prejudice is to recognize it. However, the undeniable fact that one race in particular has marginalized, dominated, dehumanized and murdered the members of the other races en masse cannot be dismissed. One race needs to answer for its institutionalized brutality, and that is our race: whites. If you are a dark-skinned person, your fear and mistrust of the white race is, sadly, not misplaced.
115
@Jane White
...and which race ended slavery - worldwide?
1
@Ami:
"Worldwide?"
Although slavery still exists in one form or another, which was the last race to promote and institutionalize it?
If I'm not mistaken, your comment sounds a bit Trumpy: create a problem and find the solution (Trump, though, really has no solutions for the problems he's created).
1
The El Paso victims were , according to the author ) "overwhelmingly Hispanic". I checked the reference he gives for his assertion: the victims were actually " thirteen Americans , eight Hispanics and one German" , that is about one third were Hispanic . Not exactly " overwhelming " .
1
@MS Swing and a miss. The quote is: "Those killed include 13 Americans, eight Mexicans and one German." It's referring to citizenship, not ethnicity. Most of the Americans (U.S. citizens) were of Hispanic ethnicity.
21
@Steve hi : How do you know it was citizenship and not ethnicity? In any case Mr. Stephens was talking about ethnicity ( not citizenship) and it is fair to assume that the reference he gave was about ethnicity.
1
@MSWere the "Americans" of Hispanic lineage?
1
No,Stephens, it's not ideology first. Hatred for these young men begins with their perception that life is a trap and they cannot escape. In the Middle East or in Dayton. From despair comes hatred. The order is important.
Yes, trump is a danger to our safety. Do not assume that he will not be re-elected.
2
"It’s not about ideology, they say: It’s a mental-health issue."
Funny. I never heard conservatives say the 9-11 murderers were mentally ill. No, everyone seemed to understand they were driven by a poisonous ideology that celebrates violence against innocents for political ends.
But with El Paso, our conservative friends aren't talking about the murderer being driven by a poisonous ideology that celebrates violence against innocents for political ends. They're talking mental health.
Double standard, anyone?
4
Excellent point. I guess Republicans believe those murderers who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and killed so many people were brought up on video games, and not on hate-filled language and beliefs.
2
Trump's denials make no sense whatsoever. Do you think MS-13 members, even if they were allowed to vote, would take time out from their street gang activities to stand in line somewhere to vote? I kind of doubt it. I don't remember ever hearing Elizabeth Warren urging a crowd to do anything other than to vote and contribute to her campaign. It's not video games or Tide pods or the fluoride in the toothpaste either.
Since there's no place to comment on those ICE raids in Mississippi I need to say a little about that. Why are the employers not being charged? They hired 680 people that were undocumented and it went unnoticed? One or two maybe, but 680? Have the arrested employees been replaced by all those fine Americans that claim immigrants are the cause of all their problems? Somehow I doubt it.
3
Rather than giving advice to Democrtats or socialists or progressives, maybe David Brooks, Ross Douthat and Bret should find a candidate and encourage, him, her or they to run in the Republican primaries and help drain energy from Trump's campaign. It would have to be someone who wouldn't agree to endorse him if they lost. Interstingly David, Ross and Bret are not clones. So they could splinter over things before they even begin. But on a lot of things they seem pretty okay. It is only on some really serious and basic issues that the deep reactionary fever surfaces but again often in very different ways.
3
To Trump supporters as long as Trump does not come out and say "Someone needs to get a semi automatic rifle and start killing these people before they overrun the country" they are willing to look the other way. Even if he did, I am not at all sure a significant percentage of them would stop supporting him. He would respond "I never said that" or " I was joking. OK?" or "Just because I said it doesn't mean I wanted someone to actually go out and do it". And that would be enough for them. Charles Manson never 'murdered' anyone. He got others to do it for him. If Manson could tell Trump supporters " I never thought they would go out and actually kill anyone", that would be good enough for them. The more you drink the Kool Aid, the harder it is to recognize it's not very good for you.
5
If we are to talk about "incitement", we must also talk about the rise of specious allegations of "white nationalist", "racist", "Nazi", etc., against ordinary Americans who harbor no such views. The defensiveness you see may be entirely justified because, today, simply disagreeing with a progressive opens you up to all kinds of vulgar charges.
4
Quietly supporting a racist or white nationalist for any reason is to support racism and white nationalism. Pretending otherwise is dangerous; that’s why people are calling it out directly.?
2
@AACNY: Which "ordinary Americans" would those be?
2
@ANCCY terrorism and murder and not equivalent to accusations of bigotry. Why does that need to be said. But the absurdity goes further: Trump and so many others are earning the accusations. They earn it through the merit of their bigotry filled words and deeds. And their apologists earn their red badge of bigotry and hate as well.
1
Mr. Stephens, being a Republican is an explicit expression of acceptance of Trumps's actions because they have the support of the whole rotten party. You look like just another profiteer, making lame excuses and telling the decent party what to do. Clean your own house.
4
Mr Stephens, your hatred of President Trump is well documented so your blaming the El Paso shooting comes as no surprise. In your wisdom though, please explain what motivated the Dayton shooter, President Trump? The California stabbings, President Trump. It is easy to blame all the ills of the world on our current President but be fair and explain why we have all the other mass killings. In your world, probably Trump even if he wasn't President. You truly disappoint me.
4
I’ve come to believe in TDS, actually. Because boy howdy, have Trump and Trumpists ever got it.
Koolaid ODs...a terrible thing to see.
"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
And why is that the "main task for Democrats" and not the main task for all of US?
Why don't you include yourself and all the other so called conservative pundits; who have allowed the republican party to sink to its present low? After all t rump is not some aberration that somehow just showed up. He is the only logical conclusion to 50 years of southern strategy. 50 years of republicans calling Democrats un American if they didn't support the latest war being waged. 50 years of race baiting done with winks and nods, but effective enough to get poor rural people to vote against their own best interests, as long as republicans promised to keep the black folks down.
When Obama was elected they knew that republicans lied to them, so they found the biggest sledge hammer they could find to wreck the entire place.
And that sledge hammer is t rump.
5
The Republicans used Trump to get the tax cut and rubber stamp judges through the Senate. The murder and mayhem is just collateral damage. They don't really care.
8
Brilliant analysis. Folks, the horrendous experiences we are living through in our country have already been printed in the annals of history.
Racism, incitement of rage, xenophobia, murder, allianation have been ignited by malignant narcissist leaders' exploitative agendas imposed on unaware sectors of the population. Anybody with a family background of Nazi's extermination and or lived under a dictatorship, as I have on both counts, detect this horrifying existential reality instantly, naturally, without getting lost in the intricacies of political division. Bret Stephens article, makes me transcend my identity as a Democrat. In this microcosm, he captures the big picture of the historical, psychological, sociological tragedy which once belonged to other countries and continents. Now it belongs to us. For sure Democrats and Republicans should be transcending their agendas and look at the stark reality here exposed. Getting stuck in the tree of partisan division will make us lose the forest.
In the final sentence of Niemoller: "Then they came for me,and there was none left to speak out for me
3
You write:
The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.
I would edit it as follows: The main task for Republican thought leaders over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, . . . It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.
Why put the burden on Democrats unless you believe that the Republicans are hopeless?
5
In addition to being "a disgrace to his office . . . danger to our safety," he is also very likely a felon and, if not in the Oval Office, would be prosecuted and face prison time.
5
Couldn't agree more with the conclusion, "the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.".
Let's make sure his term ends as soon as possible!
2
The writer says Democrats running for president must convince the Nation that President Trump ' is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.' Isn't it true that most Americans already know this? Just one small note: Yesterday's ICE raids with 680 arrests in Mississippi were 'in planning for more than a year' yet executed an hour or so before Trump landed in El Paso. Trump would insult our intelligence with 'just a coincidence'! Trump set the timing to manage the news and take some heat off him and the massacre in El Paso. That amounts to a disgrace to his office, and an insult to our dignity (and our intelligence).
3
“ It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.”
It’s a sad day when The New York Times disparages our president with such extreme language. That it’s true is even sadder.
1
Democrats’ slogan should be: Restore honor and dignity to the White House.
1
Bret Stephens, thank you for speaking truth! There are dozens of Trump quotes that incite and embolden hate, violence and bigotry. Trump is a bigot, a racist. His re-election strategy is to keep his supporters scared and angry!
Yes, just a matter of time before we are faced with another massacre. Trump’s trope of “invasion” and the referring to undocumented immigrants as “rapists, murderers and MS-13” is deliberate.
Call me naive but I believe in the goodness of America! Believe that, We, the People will rise up and oust Trump in 2020!
Ps. Yesterday, in what I see as a new distraction by Trump, 680 undocumented workers were rounded up by ICE in Mississippi, their children came home to empty homes after school! Trump continues to traumatize children and their families. It’s pure evil!
2
"It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
I'd say that's a challenge that also falls on conservatives like yourself Bret. Perhaps even more so since it's conservatives who launched this full scale ideological war under Newt Gingrich, and ever since, only feeding it and nurturing it, defending the hateful talk radio and internet forums that are mostly conservative.
Yes, of course the left are guilty of bias and ignoring of facts when they don't agree with their cause, but the vast majority of the mainstream and liberal community certainly do not engage in spreading outright lies, and in turn labeling facts a "Fake News". The false equivalency deployed to give cover to this deliberate ignorance shrinks in the face of the truth: conservatives have fed an effort to create an alt-reality to be used to justify their beliefs, and this has led directly to the "manifestos" like the El Paso terrorist issued, and all the others spread on conservative supported sites like 8Chan.
Maybe you're finally coming to your senses, or maybe your guilt is pushing you to now atone for your complicity in what's happened to our country, not just these latest massacres, but the sitting of a massively unfit, and likely criminal in the White House. If so, you have a lot to atone for, so get busy.
2
Trump incited the El Paso terrorist.
Say it, hear it, repeat it, don't forget it.
Trump incited terrorism in El Paso.
4
"..In the early 1990s, Hutu propagandists in Rwanda spoke of the Tutsi as “cockroaches.” The word served as a preamble to the 1994 genocide.."
This is echoed ad nauseam by paranoid commenters, most of whom couldn't locate Rwanda on a blank map of Africa if their lives depended upon it. The Hutus knew more arithmetic, not to mention geography, than these commenters. The last local colonial power, France, had put in charge the Tutsis, a lighter-skinned, better educated, racial minority, but before departing they held an election, which the majority Hutus naturally won. Tutsis then logically decided to win future elections by becoming a majority.
For decades they exceeded the previously observed biological limit, average of 8 live births per woman, by considerable margins. Large properties, divided by 10 once, divided by 10 twice...maybe even Mr Stephens can calculate that. The Hutus, also, managed this calculation, and figured out that, since only Tutsis and insects seemed to multiply at such rates, the solution known to work on one infestation might also be effective on another. For the record, this solution was universally recognized by Rwandans after the genocide, and the country passed a law limiting couples to a maximum of 3 (three) children. Peace returned to the land. Less hysterical propaganda, more arithmetic, wouldn't come amiss here.
Thank you for writing this, Bret. Back in October, 2016, I called out Trump and his movement as just another banal ethnonationalist movement here https://realcontextnews.com/republic-of-georgia-shows-trump-his-fans-depressingly-normal-just-another-ethno-centric-nationalist-movement/ This has only been overwhelmingly confirmed since.
This is not the Democrat's problem to solve. The GOP knew what he was before they nominated him. A Birther, a misogynist, a racist, a fraud. Major newspapers have not called on him to resign. It's time for that to happen.
4
Two comments:
1) Mr. Stephen's last paragraph is laughable.
That ANYONE needs convincing that "the President is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union and a danger to our safety" is a sad commentary on the success of the Republican political machinery, carefully planned and built over the last twenty years to court, harness and direct as a political weapon the racist, misogynist, narrow minded worst of people.
2) Mr. Stephen's outrage over the actions of the Republican party he has promoted and defended for years is, I think, a day late and a dollar short.
4
It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.
Absolutely, but unfortunately, too many voters just don’t care about that...a tax cut, or any number of other “policy” initiatives that benefit them personally are more important. Furthermore, there is no outrage, action, let alone leadership by the Republicans about their president....it’s party over country, power over simple decency. I will never forget, forgive, or vote for any Republican again.
3
You give trump too much credit by suggesting he didn’t incite violence in the same way others have done. I think you’re wrong. As his minions have stated - he speaks in code. His supporters transcribe it the way it best fits them. Sometimes it results in violence.
He’s good at that. He takes credit always and shifts blame. Video games? Mental illness? Sorry.
We aren’t born bigots and racists. That’s something that’s taught. It’s passed down through generations and he’s helping teach it and reinforce it to other Americans.
But this isn’t the USA of the 1950s and 1960s - the years he had bone spurs in, uh, which heel was it?
The USA is different when it comes to demographics than it was 50 years ago. That’s part of what should make it great.
So mr. president - you can’t go back where you came from. Here’s my code - get with it or get out. It’s 2019.
1
You have to admire the cleverness of Mr Stephens. In a column ostensibly about his now fallen former political hero, Mr Trump, he slips in a dig at the illegally-occupied Palestinians.
Done with aplomb and craft. Compare and denigrate, all the while signaling newfound virtue and enjoying the praise which will surely flow his way.
3
How long will it take this opinion writer to admit it is the Republican Party that is in denial "that the president is a disgrace to his office...a threat to our Union..."
The Republican Party that has a duty to protect our country. Trump is a Republican problem that they created for all the people of the United States. What are they doing to correct him?
6
Or, make that the main task for Repubilcans would be to repudiate Trump and the hate speech he peddles. Primary him, and beat him.
4
And Anti-Fa and people like Maxine Waters and the Sanders supporter who shot Republicsan Congressmen playing basewall are what exactly? The entire process from the left to the right has become unhinged
2
Trump is responsibility is the same as if he yelled “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater and the ensuing stampede was deadly.
1
Brilliant analysis. Folks, the horrendous experiences we are living through in our country have already been printed in the annals of history.
Racism, incitement of rage, xenophobia, murder, allianation have been ignited by malignant narcissist leaders' exploitative agendas upon unaware sectors of the population. Anybody with a family background of Nazi's extermination and or lived under a dictatorship, as I have on both counts, detect this horrifying existential reality instantly, naturally, without getting lost in the intricacies of political division. Bret Stephens article, makes me transcend my identity as a Democrat. In this microcosm, he captures the big picture of the historical, psychological, sociological tragedy which once belonged to other countries and continents. Now it belongs to us. For sure Democrats and Republicans should be transcending their agendas and look at the stark reality here exposed. Getting stuck in the tree of partisan division will make us lose the forest.
In the final sentence of Niemoller: "Then they came for me,and there was none left , to speak out for me".
2
Just when you thought this column was going dangerously off track, if you hang in there for eight paragraphs or Mr. Stephens manages to work in some demonization of Palestinians. The moral: President Trump should do the right thing and keep his demonizing to Palestinians and he'll be more than fine.
1
Amen, and Amen..."one nation, under God" is a far cry from the current president. He doesn't know the pledge of allegiance to the flag...he's stumbled through it weveral times. He hates people in his own country.
He's definitely "a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." It is the duty of every voter to exercise their constitutional right to vote this guy out of office. Please. Amen.
1
I would like to put in a fervent suggestion that articles like this be posted with photos of people other than this particular individual. Media that plaster his face everywhere are contributing to the cult of personality that he has been building since the moment he came down that escalator. I will not share anything on Facebook that includes his photo. He wants everything to be about him. Let's stop helping him achieve that goal.
I think mr Stephens is spending too much time at NYT. attacking your opponents is not calling for violence. Democratic rhetoric is equally extreme
2
But it doesn’t incite terrorism, collude with the Russians, dodge the draft, disrespect war hero’s, separate families, etc, etc, etc
4
Anyone who doesn't already see how disgraceful and dangerous Trump is likely too blind and deaf to be persuaded otherwise.
The overriding task is to get all those opposing Trump to the voting polls, overcoming all hurdles Trump's cronies will surely try to impose and general voter laziness.
That's our only hope!
2
Just to keep it real, the vast majority of self-identified Republicans in recent national opinion polls overwhelmingly support Trump.
We will not be able to stop the metastasizing white nationalist cancer unless or until Republicans come to their senses and conclude that what Trump has spawned by his reckless tweets and statements is tearing the nation apart.
3
Donald Trump is disconcertingly close in tenor to Slobodan Milosevic's calls for a Muslim-free Kosovo.
That he finds a receptive national audience for his racial views is more than disconcerting.
To our existing problems––extraordinary income inequality; persistent de facto segregation; climate change; homelessness––we must now deal with ethnic cleansing promulgated by the president.
To those who don't know history, it's beyond comprehension.
2
Why do conservatives from Bret Stephens to David Brooks keep asking the Democrats to stand up for decency? Why are they not asking Mitch McConnell and the GOP to do it? Could it be because they know the GOP is morally bankrupt? If that is true, then how can any decent American still hold a GOP membership card?
4
Trump's moral bankruptcy has never been a mystery to me. For at least thirty years, his vanity, sexism, racism, and soullessness have been on (a well-documented) display. What has been a shock is how Trump's presidency has revealed the darkest, most deeply-held beliefs of my friends, my family members, my neighbors, and my religious leaders. I don't know that I'll ever recover from that unhappy revelation. Trump has given millions of Americans permission to be their worst, least humane selves. That is our national tragedy.
4
@Jackson You are right. This whole time has revealed the moral bankruptcy of people I thought I knew..people I considered dear friends....people I have now walked away from forever. I know that I will never recover from that revelation. My heart is broken.
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@Jackson
This is my family, my brother complains about his finances one minute and praises trump's handling of the economy next. This from a
prestigious university MBA, unreal.
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A couple of years ago the media coverage over the charge of racist cops became so overheated that there followed an outbreak of arson, looting and hate-filled protests that culminated in assassinations and a massacre of cops by a couple of deeply disturbed individuals. Though many, including myself, believe that there is a problem with law enforcement and African Americans that needs to be addressed, the media chose to fan the flames of anger, resentment and hatred rather than seek a peaceful and sober approach.
No one back then that I can remember ever blamed the media for the assassinations and massacre of cops which were the acts of clearly insane individuals. While I agree that Trump's rhetoric could have helped set off the insane shooter in El Paso, he is no more to blame than the media was for the actions of the crazed Dallas assassin who shot fourteen innocents.
I feel that the over the top coverage of the El Paso tragedy in which Trump and his supporters are being accused of White Supremacy and racism is extremely dangerous, divisive and inflammatory and could lead to more violence. It should also be remembered that Democrats need to win over a large number of Trump voters to win in 2020, and if they continue to call them all racist we'll have Trump for another four years.
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I do not totally agree with the following quote from the article: “He will not, as Palestinian leaders still do, offer financial rewards to the families of terrorists.” He has been coy but very clear by his use of the office’s pardon power that he will take care of those who do his bidding or otherwise please him.
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Sorry Brett. Your party is 100% responsible for this travesty. If the Republican Party has any future they 1) need to choose a new nominee in 2020 and 2) disavow Trump and 'Trump-ism.
I'm not holding my breath...
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Well said. I appreciate this column today.
Every gun fanatic’s ultimate argument is that they need their weapons just in case our government becomes tyrannical. What they’re really advocating is anarchy.
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Neither Trump nor his advisors have ever cared a wit about the dignity of the office.
Nor have they grasped, at even the most basic level, the power of language coming from the POTUS' mouth.
Trump is the most insecure and faux tough guy the office has ever seen. Skin so thin it is transparent.
It is no surprise he feeds his bottomless need for acknowledgement and validation with these absurd rallies of people reacting to his 'tough guy' talk.
And of course he incites wittingly with his impulsive and reactionary language which represents his true nature.
So we are stuck with a man who can not let any slight, or negative opinion go. He has to launch a counterattack and berate and degrade the 'attacker'.
And he does so in very loose and dangerous language and dogwhistles to his constituents. A base which will never abandon him, but that base alone can not win the election.
He wants to be the tough guy, but he really is the insecure and impulsive bully. The reactionary child.
The GOP knows this, and has always known this, and with a few exceptions they simply do not seem to care.
This is who Trump is. There will never be a turning point. He will never change. He will never grow in to the office. His true nature has always been on display from the Central Park 5, to the Birther Movement. To now.
Pay attention America.
And vote him and his supporters out.
We must defeat the existential threat they all pose, and Trump leads them.
1
Vote him out, if the elections are not rigged!
Let's see...in 2016t he Dem candidate for President spent the last month of her campaign pretty much only talking about how Trump would be "a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." IT FAILED MISERABLY! Voters do want help in this economy and the Democrats have the best (and only) real policies to help them. Going after Trump as the boogieman will not win in 2020. However, if Republicans like Stephens spent the next year and a half trumpeting how vile Trump is and stopped crying about the Democrats' great ideas, the entire country would benefit.
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"The president cannot be absolved of responsibility for inciting the hatreds that led to El Paso."
That is absolutely true and neither can the complicit Republicans who have been using racism and hate for decades.
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Bret S suggestion for 2020 Democrat candidates to call out DJT miserable failures as President applies equally to Republican candidates.
2
"This is the right-wing equivalent of the left’s idea that poverty and climate change are at the root of terrorism...." Straw man alert! Informed lefties don't ascribe poverty and/or climate change as the "root of terrorism." We know it has myriad causes, but much of the time it's driven by factors (i.e., colonialism, chattel slavery, exploitation, authoritarianism, etc.) that result in bad outcomes, such as poverty, especially when those outcomes are exacerbated further by factors like climate change (itself the result of exploitation, pillaging, etc.).
1
I completely agree with everything in this column except the last paragraph. Everyone paying attention, including Repubs, knows that Trump is utterly unfit to be President and a clear and present danger. The problem is, Repubs don't care. They seem to be fine making a deal with that devil for tax cuts, stock market, abortion, and power. So I think your last paragraph is dead wrong and that Dems absolutely do need to talk about policy in clear terms. I wish you would realize that Reagan is over and was the germ of our current moment with his "Gov't is the problem" and Philadelphia MS visit. You are shouting into the Repub wind. Get on board with the people trying to change it, whether Dems or others. I'm sorry for you and your party, but constantly telling the Dems what they should be doing is getting old.
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Thanks for that June 2018 tweet; Trump’s apologists are usually able to hind behind his sloppy, vague language, or his maddening attempts to disavow his own words by appending “some people say”, or to claim he is “joking” or misunderstood.
But every once in a while Trump manages to be explicit and clear. I suspect that he’s most comfortable and versed in the incitement of hate and therefore in that subject able to concisely and unambiguously make his thoughts known.
And the statement that “Democrats are the problem”....watch you backs, dems.
You and Ms. Williamson are correct. I fear the electoral college and a Republican Party devoid of any leadership will result in a close election. Impossible not to conclude a sizable part of electorate are White Supremists. Sad
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Well said. Trump "is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.", as you wrote.
But whatever Trump does that offends Democrats, be it lousy wages, climate change denial, no green energy subsidies, crushing, in the cruelest ways, immigrants who seek asylum here, ICE round-ups and a border wall, are all music to the ears of his supporters.
Some Trump fans think he was anointed by God to be President.
A more detailed case against him has to be presented to American voters. Voters need to hear how he disgraces his office (Executive overreach, e.g., usurping Congressional powers, international overreach with tariffs and sanctions on the world, leading to a weaker U.S. economy, accepting foreign campaign donations, intel and emoluments).
They need to know how Trump is a danger to our Union (ignoring his proscribed duties in the Constitution and usurping those of Congress and the Judiciary, via the DOJ, divisive, inflammatory words against people of color, women, the handicapped, encouraging and making violence acceptable at his rallies).
Democrats must define how Trump is a danger to our safety (denial of climate change, the number one security threat, toying with war against Iran, defying Congress and shipping arms to the Saudis).
Trump rages and lies from his bully pulpit. And you're right, his language against infestation by immigrants, inevitably suggests the “solution” of extermination.
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I wish to add that the President of the United States has a unique moral responsibility beyond any ordinary citizen. The amorality and immorality of Trump are the roots of the greatest failure of his presidency.
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Well said. Trump "is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.", as you wrote.
But whatever Trump does that offends Democrats, be it lousy wages, climate change denial, no green energy subsidies, crushing, in the cruelest ways, immigrants who seek asylum here, ICE round-ups and a border wall, are all music to the ears of his supporters.
Some Trump fans think he was anointed by God to be President.
A more detailed case against him has to be presented to American voters. Voters need to hear how he disgraces his office (Executive overreach, e.g., usurping Congressional powers, international overreach with tariffs and sanctions on the world, leading to a weaker U.S. economy, accepting foreign campaign donations, intel and emoluments).
They need to know how Trump is a danger to our Union (ignoring his proscribed duties in the Constitution and usurping those of Congress and the Judiciary, via the DOJ, divisive, inflammatory words against people of color, women, the handicapped, encouraging and making violence acceptable at his rallies).
Democrats must define how Trump is a danger to our safety (denial of climate change, the number one security threat, toying with war against Iran, defying Congress and shipping arms to the Saudis).
Trump rages and lies from his bully pulpit. And you're right, his language against infestation by immigrants, inevitably suggests the “solution” of extermination.
"...it will surely not be the last or the worst."
And that folks is our collective fault. The NRA and the GOP (and much of the media most likely) will declare it's not the gun, it's the shooter that is the problem. Well how very insightful of them. Of course, the shooters are a bit askew in their thinking, but knowing that won't stop the next off-kilter gun owner.
Stronger gun laws, such as licensing and registration, background checks won't stop hateful people from being hateful and spewing their garbage. But, mass shootings are very difficult without a gun.
" It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.'
And the scary thing is, even though all these things are true, he will have thousands cheering him on at his next rally, not to mention the blind allegiance of the republicans in congress.
"This needs to be said not because it isn't obvious, but because too many conservatives have tried to deny the obvious."
Of course, when the GOP nominated the Lyin' King as their presidential candidate, they demonstrated that objective reality, intelligent debate and base level honesty were no longer of importance to them.
Intellectual dishonesty and deflection (along with obstruction) in pursuit of ulterior ends are now the dominant characteristics of Trump's Republican party.
The contemporary GOP is the party of Trump. The party of lies.
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Well said, Bret. Trump "is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.", as you wrote.
But whatever Trump does that offends Democrats, be it lousy wages, climate change denial, no green energy subsidies, crushing, in the cruelest ways, immigrants who seek asylum here, ICE round-ups and a border wall, are all music to the ears of his supporters.
Trump's fans think he was anointed by God to be President.
A more detailed case against him has to be presented to American voters. Voters need to hear how he disgraces his office (Executive overreach, e.g., usurping Congressional powers, international overreach with tariffs and sanctions on the world, leading to a weaker U.S. economy, accepting foreign campaign donations, intel and emoluments).
They need to know how Trump is a danger to our Union (ignoring his proscribed duties in the Constitution and usurping those of Congress and the Judiciary, via the DOJ, divisive, inflammatory words against people of color, women, the handicapped, encouraging and making violence acceptable at his rallies).
Democrats must define how Trump is a danger to our safety (denial of climate change, the number one security threat, toying with war against Iran, defying Congress and shipping arms to the Saudis).
Trump rages and lies from his bully pulpit. And you're right, his language against infestation by immigrants, inevitably suggests the “solution” of extermination.
Put a frog in a pot of hot water and it will leap out. Put a frog in a pot of cool water, turn up the heat slowly and it will cook.
Americans were put in a pot of cool water with Nixon, vetted by Eisenhower the war hero. Republicans have been turning up the heat ever since with their Southern strategy, Willie Horton, welfare queens, swift boating, whitewater, birtherism, private emails. They really can't sell their ideas to a majority of voters so they sell hate, fear and envy. The total hypocrisy is the giveaway. Republicans tried to crucify Bill Clinton with extramarital affairs. Trump flaunts his immoral behavior in the tabloids and tv and the evangelicals call him a messenger from God.
The modern Republican Party is a repudiation of the greatness of Lincoln and Roosevelt. It is a slur on the Founding Fathers who risked all for the ideals of liberty and equality.
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“....Alternatively, conservatives have cited the decline of civil society, the effects of the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill, the paucity of prayer and the ubiquity of violent video games — in sum, the breakdown of “the culture” — as explanations for mass shootings. “
Why does Brett fail to mention that it was the Trump administration ( at the bidding of the NRA) that obliterated Obama era regulations regarding gun purchases by the “mentally ill” ?
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Finally. A brilliant rebuke to our current President and the affairs he has led us to as a Nation. It took a conversative opinion writer as gifted as Bret to provide the catalyst of resistance the democrats and in my opinion, all Americans, need to wage war against the dark angels of our past manifested in the personality of Donald J Trump. We are far better than this - the world needs a better America more than ever.
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Excellent breakdown of the rightful condemnation of Trump's incendiary rhetoric. While the last phrase says it all, there is much in the body of this opinion worth thinking about.
I don't know who has come around more, myself or Bret Stephens, but I think we are meeting somewhere now. I so miss reasonable conservatives like Mr. Stephens. Thank you for your thoughtful commentary, sir. You're going to need a bigger tip-jar.
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Not bad, but, as a conservative, what do you think poverty does cause, if not rage, despair, hopelessness, desperation, and, often and eventually, violence?
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@Christopher Shipley
The foolishness of that view is almost beyond reason. You would posit the view that it is "poor people" who cause violence?
Your views appear to be wrongly looking for a causation connection that does not exist.
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Republicans no longer have any discernible ideology except the wielding of power for personal gain and unfettered political and economic control.
It's an old story...
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Could it be that even republicans have had enough of frump?
GOP apologists excuse frump, his takeover of the party and attempted murder of our democracy, acting as if he's an aberration. But the party before frump has been for at least four decades in an anti-immigrant fight, never mind that republicans also love the cheap labor immigrants provide.
They snickered and nudged each other at each worsening frump obscenity, rolled their eyes, tried to ignore him utterly. Frump orders his mob to not believe what they see or hear, and they obey, but so does the GOP at large. They believe what he tells to them to believe, despite all evidence that he lies.
And Mr. Stephens wants the democrats to pull the country out. Maybe they will, if they can overcome the Russians, the electoral college, GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression.
But the question remains: where are all the republicans in the frump nightmare, and when will they finally have had enough? And will they move a muscle to rid us of him? Will they vote for another candidate, even if a democrat?
Do not hold your breath.
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You make a good point, but don’t underestimate the power of committed people to change the trajectory of our nation. We are fired up and ready for the Blue tsunami!
Your final paragraph states that the main task for Democrats over the next 15 months will be to convince some fraction of those who now plan to vote for the president in 2020 that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and is a danger to our safety - and therefore for the improved welfare of that fraction they must not vote for him.
If this fraction cannot already understand those truths about the president, then I find it hard to understand what might change their minds. Is that not the real problem?
What could possibly change the mind of a self-declared evangelical Christian who so fully accepts behavior, actions, and views that seem to be totally un-Christian yet have become completely acceptable for that person?
Think of the Vice President and tell me how you could change his mind. Maybe we really are doomed.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
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Finally. Some logic, reason, and measure. Thank you.
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Trump is a danger to our country as well as to the world. There are more of us in this country that believe this than people who embrace him. He will not win in 2020!
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Unfortunately the Democrats won by 3 million more votes in 2016... and still “lost”. Are you endorsing the end of the electoral college? Overturn Citizens United?
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I believe this is the single most direct, powerful, clear, mature statement from the NYT so far--I honor and respect Bret Stephens.
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The downplay by conservative columnists like Mr. Stephens of the importance of healthcare for our nation is ludicrous. Apparently he and his loved ones are nicely covered. Healthcare amongst the many other ignored/aggravated issues by this President and Senate is a great travesty. It causes people to go without the care they need and in too many cases...DEATH!
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“The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.”
That that, Bret, isn’t self-evident by now, and I would argue was also evident on the day he declared his candidacy, is a complete stunner. Why anyone thinks he’s worthy of occupying this or any other elected office is something I will never be able to wrap my head around.
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Words matter. If You disagree with this idea, then the Declaration of Independence and Constitution aren’t worth much. They are just a bunch of words. Nothing more or less. Yet these words created a nation. Since they were produced by men, there were inevitable flaws in their creation. Yet the words had great power.
We have seen some ugly events in our country lately. The slaughter of innocents by hatred. Hatred created and disseminated by words. Our President uses the words of loathing which is the spouse of hate. In the past, these words were coded and spoken with a wink to fellow haters. Now they’re spoken proudly and sadly now acted upon. The defenders will talk about mental illness as the real cause. A clever way to deflect blame. But we can see it with our own eyes, that loathing and hateful words beget hateful acts. Action follows thought. Words matter
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Thank you for the thoughtful column. It’s not every day that Mr. Stephens writes one that helps focuses the concerns of the vast majority of us. With the exception of Trump’s racist followers, most of us share your horror.
The bottom line here that is important: So often, the madness of genocide is preceded by the dehumanization of a group of people. From the golden escalator debut to the “send her back” chant, Trump has amplified the growing drumbeat of evil. We shy away from comparisons with the great catastrophes of history - the Holocaust, Rwanda, the Rohingya - but this is how these things begin. It’s time for all of us, from columnists to politicians (Republicans, this means you, too) to those who avoid talking politics, to sound the alarm.
The hateful rhetoric is not OK. Putting kids in cages is not OK. And slaughtering Hispanics is a line we should never have allowed to be crossed. This must stop now.
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As a Navy veteran ('65-'69) and a retired federal prosecuting attorney (1995-2010) I would only add that those who continue to support Trump, after his unseemly conduct yesterday, are just as much of a disgrace as Trump is.
And whether they realize it or not is of no moment. For the evidence overwhelming suggests they have willingly and, I might add, gleefully branded themselves with the stain of Trump.
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You say: The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months is ...
And what please is the the main task for your Republicans over next 15 months?
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“It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.”
Perfectly expressed, but as an ex-pat, I would also add, that this president is a danger and destabilizing element for the rest of the world’s citizens as well. By dint of its military might and nuclear capabilities, wealth and economic influence, the US government and its leader have an enormous responsibility to the rest of the world’s civilized countries to exercise power wisely. We all now live in a global village and no number of “America First” chants by our xenophobic president and his enablers will change that.
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I'm all in Brett! So how do the Democrats get this message out? I think that if you want to communicate to somebody that you need to speak their language. The language of the right for a large part is Biblical. Having a very religious upbringing I know that these people will only hear you if you bring the Bible in and apply it to these circumstances. Show where the Bible says to take care of each other... etcetera. If they can't hear you nothing will change
While Mr. Stephens' conservative skewering of Trump for inciting the murderer in El Paso is welcome, let's not forget that he does it on the pages of the New York Times. Few conservatives will ever see his op-ed. They get their moral lessons from either the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, or right-wing social media. Those sources are cranking out defenses for Trump and even patting him on the head for his allegedly gracious visits to the scenes of the crimes.
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Strong words from Mr. Stephens and right on the mark. Yet when native-born Representative Joaquin Castro pronounces “El Paso” with a hispanic accent (“el basso”) and when signs greet the President with the equivalent of “Yankee go home!” in Spanish, what’s the average Joe to think? The irony is that 200 years ago when the area was part of Mexico the Mexican government welcomed “Anglo” immigrants, since they were primarily seen as providing a buffer against marauding Commanches. The newcomers, however, had no intention of learning Spanish . . . .
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"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months...It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
That the Dems, or anyone else for that matter, need "to convince" other Americans about the danger Trump poses to society, in and of itself, demonstrates, just how sick and disabled the society is. Trump supporters are as adamant in their support for him as normal people are against him and his policies. Trump's supporters knowingly and willingly sold their souls to him in 2016 and they will swim and sink with him as the time comes.
What they will never do is accept any personal responsibility for the negative outcomes on society that Trump has and will produce. Trump's supporters have vowed to themselves and to him, they are willing to see society as we know it destroyed because they were unable to cope with it. The whole scenario is their Jim Jones moment. Our task is to avoid going down with them. It won't be easy. But don't look to convince Trumpites of any danger. They have already decided to go over the cliff. What they fail to realize is that Trump won't be going over with them.
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"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Although I agree with the sentiment, it can't be an "either or." The Democrats, while clearly demonstrating that they are against everything that Trump and his sycophants stand for, they must also give voters something to vote for.
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Great article! However, this was all the evident years ago. The GOP knew exactly what they were getting with this monster, and they made their deal with the devil.
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Thank-you for well articulating what needs to be repeated daily to the masses. I hope their are conservative outlets that will reprint your essay.
Your last statement:
“It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.”
sums up the reason why he needs to be removed from office by whatever quickest way possible.
Do not forget that it was the Republicans in the 1980's who shut down the mental health system. All done in the name of shrinking big government and providing tax cuts. Now, they bemoan the lack of the very system they dismantled. And they blame gun violence on the very situation they brought about. Hypocrisy? Unwillingness to take responsibility for their actions? I think so... Hallmarks of a weak hollowed out party.
Yes, Bret, the CurrentOccupant is a disgrace.
Simultaneously, we DO need health-care overhaul, the economy is an inequitable mess, the system is rigged to empower the powerful, and NO high-profile person is recommending an "open border".
Everything that Trump says, folks like Rush Limbaugh have been saying for 3 hours every day over and over and over again. "The democrats hate you, they hate freedom, and they hate this country" about 50 bazzillion times. It's sometimes hard to tell if Rush is leading Trump or vice versa, but it is also pretty creepy that they are in constant contact with each other (as are Hannity and other Fox entertainers). Either way, Republicans have sealed their brand as Trumpians, and people will judge them for a generation on this.
The GOP has been the party of white supremacy for decades. It's only since the Tea Party (who came into being exactly when it became apparent that Obama could win the election) that it was brought out of the closet. Trump is just a symptom of a much greater disease. America's white supremacy/white fear won't go away when trump does. This republican op-ed once again, fails to acknowledge our American reality.
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The totality of Mr. Stephen's op-Ed today at least tries to be balanced.
But, and it's a big BUT, as a Republican scribe he has to blame the so-called left as also being complicit, writing that they believe that poverty and climate change are the root of terrorism, while insisting in the very last paragraph that they are also for open borders.
The constant refrain that we lefties are to blame as well for the overt racism and resulting bloodbath is unfortunately still a constant refrain of anti-Trump politically right-leaning journalists, and a mentioning of Nietzsche and the Death of God is just a rotten cherry on a cake.
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Yes, Bret, the CurrentOccupant is a disgrace.
Simultaneously, we DO need health-care overhaul, the economy is an inequitable mess, the system is rigged to empower the powerful, and NO high-profile person is recommending an "open border".
Yes, Bret, the CurrentOccupant is a disgrace.
Simultaneously, we DO need health-care overhaul, the economy is an inequitable mess, the system is rigged to empower the powerful, and NO high-profile person is recommending an "open border".
As Stephens correctly notes:
"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Just as crying "Fire" in a crowded theater is an incitement that causes both fear and potential danger, using chants such as "Lock her up," or suggesting "I (Trump) will pay for any legal costs (if you slug a protester at one of my crowds)," denigrating countries as ____holes, describing immigrants as rapists and murderers, and using words like "infestation" are also motivators for sick individuals. When mental illness combines with assault weapons, the result is massive suffering.
Brett,
I’m not one to write fan letters, so this one is short. You are currently the most clear-headed, intelligent and honest commentator of the awful mess that we find ourselves enmeshed. That you are also conservative adds even more credibility to your analysis.
For too long people have danced around Trump’s outrages, rationalized his incitement’s and ignored his escalating existential threat to our democracy. Before the election, I could not comprehend that this clown and grifter might actually become president. A perfect storm, including his opponent somehow made this possible. God, look at the consequences!
This monstrosity has to be faced, honestly and directly. Thanks for being such a major part of this effort.
Hear, hear, Mr. Stephens: kudos to you.
But what has happened to our country--or, more likely, what has been revealed about our country--that we can have such a schoolyard bully elected to the White House, a man who has millions of followers who howl like hyenas in approval of his provocations? That is what me feel like an alien in the land where I was born.
"[T]he president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Too right. But what do we make of the Republicans in Congress? Majority Leader McConnell won't even bring a gun control bill to the floor because there's a chance the president will veto it.
But that lets the Senate off the hook. Voters need to know where their senators stand. The vote is a commitment to reason or a bow to the status quo.
Of what value is a Congress that refuses to take a stand on important issues?
1
Sadly, the reason that Republican politicians, and Trump supporters like, support and will not criticize Trump is because he is, in their own words, stated in public on TV, "saying what we think." He is simply saying out loud, in public, for all Americans to hear exactly what Republicans have had as their core "values" for many, many decades but had to use code and dog whistles to tell their followers what their real policy was in order to seem civilized. Now the mask is off, the truth is out and we will not be going back. We will hold Republicans and Trump responsible. As always, Republicans will be known as being on the wrong side of history but doing everything they can to drag us backwards.
4
We absolutely have dyed in the wool "conservative denial" going on but I think there is a method to their madness. I believe Mitch and his crew all find Trump's conduct to be contemptible. But they want him re-elected in 2020. Why? It's about the potential Supreme Court vacancies and getting conservative judges in the federal courts.
I also think the following scenario is quite plausible:
Trump gets reelected in 2020. The House remains Democratic. The House introduces Articles of Impeachment, and the Senate convicts Trump. Why? Because I think even they are getting tired of the way he is tarnishing their brand. Then Pence gets in and brings along someone like Nikki Haley as his VP and the Republicans think they can then start to mend their reputation with someone like Nikki Haley in the White House.
Not so fast- they have allowed a clearly compromised individual to remain in the White House, compromising our safety security on an international and now a national level.
We will not soon forget about what they are doing to our country by sitting on their hands and saying absolutely nothing. Not a sound.
Attempts to blame Trump for hate crimes, and the intensity of the moral outrage over his anti-immigration rhetoric, astonish me as much as the lack of widespread moral outrage over the Iraqi war astonished me during the Bush II Administration. There is simply no objective causal connection between Trump and any kind of violence, but the catastrophic loss of countless American and Iraqi lives in the Iraqi war has been the direct result of Bush's decision to take the nation into war. I have never understood why Americans, particularly liberals, have not subjected Bush to the same kind of sizzling moral indignation that they now are directing at Trump. I find this even more puzzling because I don't believe that Iraq ever posed any threat to the United States, but that illegal immigration profoundly imperils this nation's well being. And, no, I am not defending the manner in which Trump expresses himself, which offends me so much I cannot stand to listen to him.
1
Deny Trump’s hand in this if you like, but at best he is a manifestation of this current of xenophobic anti immigrant fervor our culture suffers from. However, he frequently does speak directly to the folks who share the El Paso shooter’s value system in their own language.
because Bush, for the most part, played nice...
Clear as a bell. Finally, a conservative has confronted and dealt with what is before our eyes. Thank-you.
There are and have been many mass shootings over the years, but there is a definitive subset of white supremacist attacks, and they are increasing, and they are going global. Scholars are noting this and they are explaining it. Look for new work on this subject.
The president's self-serving personal and political neediness makes him unfit for office. His "movement," as he consistently refers to it, has hollowed out the traditional Republican party. Legitimate conservatism is on the wane. He is amassing a power structure in the same way that fascist dictators have done before.
We must vote him out!
Trump was inciting violence, specifically gun violence, even before he was elected, and republicans said nothing about it then either. I refer to the words ". . . second amendment people . . ." in a campaign speech which posited how to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president.
Yes, Stephens is correct to point out the false equivalency of the "motive" end of these 2 crimes, but fails to address the "means" part of the issue, the possession of an assault weapon by both shooters. Now there's an equivalency we can do something about without having to engage in the social engineering which would have to done to try to prevent crime from the "motive" (mass murder is a mental health issue) and "opportunity" (deny certain freedoms to some individuals with "red flag" laws) ends.
1
Thanks, Bret.
Somebody tell Marc Thiessen.
2
People dehumanize those who they do harm to in cold blood. Whether it’s in war or theft or violent attack as mobs or individuals.
Trump uses resonate messages to acquire the trust and confidence of his supporters. He appeals to their concerns and biases, he makes them feel confident that they are right and entitled to their fears and loathing towards people who fit stereotypes. He makes people who are psychologically inclined to do harm to feel justified in directing that violence towards those who they have dehumanized.
It makes him a contributor to crimes by people he has emboldened.
All I can say is thank you, Bret Stephens, for that unequivocal condemnation of Trump and his apologists and enablers.
Stop giving the GOP'ers cover. There are no conservatives in the GOP, The GOP is comprised of right wing reactionaries.
The longer the press covers for the GOP (as they did for trump and cheney) the worse it will get - and it's going to get a lot worse
2
It can't be said enough that Trump didn't get here alone, and was in fact selected by the GOP long after they knew who and what he was. The one thing that DJT has succeeded at while in office has been the unmasking of who the Republican party is. They will never be able to remove the stain of DJT. His bigotry, misogyny, his corruption, lavish spending, service to the richest among us and inability to tell the truth have all taken place in public view and the Republican Party has been there to stand at his side, bask in his destruction of our government and institutions, and rake in the deficit dollars for the political donors at the costs of most Americans.
While I am pleased to see Mr. Stephens, on this occasion call out something that's been as plain as Mr.Trump's red tie since long before his election, it is far too little and far too late to commend his perspective. Even now, as the GOP prepares to water-down any meaningful gun legislation, Mr.Trump continues to fan the flames of hatred and bigotry with talk of an immigration bill to go along with (very weak) background legislation. It is shock to see just how low the GOP will stoop to support this criminal, bigot president.
No Republican, in any race in this country deserves to win in 2020, and if they had any dignity, they wouldn't even run. In fact, any person of moral character, with any sense of virtue, should not even be willing to call themselves a "Republican". It's a name for the history books now.
2
Mr. Stephen's piece has obviously been written a few hours before Donald Trump's statement that he opposes all hate groups singling out ANTIFA, which rephrases his "good people on both sides" moment. He also missed the ICE raid on Mississippi chicken processing factories, where nearly 700 Hispanic people were arrested, leaving their children unattended, while also ignoring the many MS-13 gangsters, that Trump has warned us of so often, roaming our streets. I can only hope that the Times will not let these two, weirdly intertwined stories slip away.
One of the better , more honest articles addressing this issue -
Our president did not pull the trigger, but he incited the hatred. And worse, he seems to take pleasure in it.
Everyday he is in office he debases our nation.
1
I absolutely do feel that President Trump is a real danger to my personal safety. I live on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. I see each and every day how the United States government has had to ring each and every government building with bollards to prevent government-haters -- mainly incited, as was Timothy McVeigh, by Republican-led "government is the problem" rhetoric -- from driving truck bombs next to government offices. Trump's rhetoric is just another kind of Republican-led, violence begetting rhetoric. The Republican party is clearly the party of manufactured anger and violence, and Trump has deliberately capitalized on it, bringing racial hatred back into our daily lives because he need an enemy to scare his pathetically frightened voters.
Trump does not need to specifically incite anyone. His careful use of broadbrush gets the job done again and again by the angry people he knows are out there -- anger he deliberateky exacerbates -- while keeping himself off the legal hook.
It's only the legal hook he evades, assisted by his Republican Mini-me's in the U.S. Congress. Morally, President Trump is as guilty of America's rash of hate crimes as the individuals he incites.
The President of the United State deliberately incites violence. He invited people to shoot immigrants, specifically, in the panhandle of Florida, specifically. I don't give him a pass on his specific invitation to such action in May 2019.
It's all of a piece: While Trump throws red meat to the hyenas, McConnell kills gun legislation, John Roberts decides that Civil Rights laws are no longer necessary, and Republican state legislatures scour voter rolls in order to exclude whomever they can. The "invader" rhetoric has to echo that of the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War, when Southern white people found themselves outnumbered in some places by the black people their kind had imported.
Where is the Republican outrage that our President* cares more about his personal battles than his country? That he tanks markets with his "trade wars are good and easy to win" tweets and soothes the savage breast of some guy with a grievance and an automatic weapon? Is there truly no Republican who cares about the disparity of gun deaths between the US and any other "civilized" country?
Remember which party decided that Donald Trump would be a nifty President*.
If you are still included on the voting rolls.
1
I agree that the Democrats must convince voters that “the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.” However, Dems can walk and chew gum at the same time. They also need to talk about immigration reform and health care delivery and meaningful job creation and economic stability because Trump supporters need to be swayed by the question of what had he really done to make your lives better. Nothing. He has not done any of the things he promised to do other than to dismantle government while making money of it it, and that dismantling has left you with less of a safety net and your grandchildren bound to debt.
1
Mr. Stephens, thank you for this column. When not working to enrich himself at our expense, our dreadful President is using all of his powers to fan the flames of stochastic terrorism, making it more and more likely every day that an unbalanced person will decide that this is the day to shoot and kill members of a group that he has designated as a target.
I see him as responsible for all the deaths perpetrated in his name - he knows what he's doing, and sad/horrifying to say, he enjoys it. While most acts of terrorism are committed by self-proclaimed conservatives of various stripes in this country, it doesn't take much imagination to see that the incitement to violence will at times cross ostensible political lines
"The former attack vaguely implicates the “dark psychic force” that Marianne Williamson spoke of in last week’s Democratic debates."
Conservatives like Brett Stephens have been musing themselves with Marianne's comment, "dark psychic force," for over week. That was an amorphous statement meant to encompass everything bad with the Trump administration.
Brett's tongue and cheek jab at Marianne was a quick way for him to keep his GOP membership card. The reality is Brett knows exactly what Marianne meant- he's just too weak to acknowledge it.
2
"It's not about ideology, it's a mental health issue". The ideology is a mental health issue.
Regarding this part:
"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
At this point what can Democrats say that demonstrate this more forcefully than Trump's own behavior. How could (objective) people not already see that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety?
1
I appreciate the candor from a conservative about the false equivalency so often practiced by the media and talking heads. While it's true that Trump is an abomination who must go, that alone is insufficient. The GOP must be rooted out of control of Congress for the country to have any meaningful ability to reverse course. McConnell may not be as crude, but he has been no less destructive to our democratic republic than Trump.
3
They say, "Guns don't kill people (then what does?); People kill people (hence, mental health problems do.). But people with guns kill people and, if they don't have guns they can't kill people easily..
It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety... The end of Bret L. Stephens says it very clearly "a danger to our safety". The mounting count of death and wounding... I have been posting about sane gun control and safety since social media became popular... Yet as Time Magazine's current cover shows the number of mass shootings in 2019 is greater than the number of days so far this year. Yesterday was a sham, a demonstration by a president who cares about only one person in America - himself... Yet there's always hope... I'm sure that the Republican Representative from Dayton, woke up and realized that his own flesh and blood - his daughter, was in the vicinity in the Oregon District last Saturday night. We also say this time is different, well that's the same thing said after Sandy Hook, Orlando, Parkland, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh and now El Paso and Dayton... As Neil Young's lyric states in his powerful song Ohio, about the Kent State shootings in 1970 "How Many More"?
Not only can the president NOT be absolved of responsibility for his hateful comments that stretch back beyond his candidacy, he must be held accountable for being unable to accomplish the most basic tasks of his job.
He has not filled his administration with the best and the brightest. He has attracted the inept and the corrupt and welcomed them with open arms. He has lost more employees than any other president and made more foolish appointments than any other president. He has thumbed his nose at the judiciary, the Congress, and the intelligence community. He has refused to work ethically. He has spent his presidency running for a second term, playing golf, watching TV and twittering. He has made Republicans tie themselves in knots to continue his presidency for which they ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Our nation needs two hard-working parties that revere our nation and work together for the good of all citizens. It's time for Republicans to pull their share of that weight in Congress. Without Republican collusion, this presidency would not be possible.
1
There's an unofficial job description for the office of president. Some presidents have been deficient in some areas, but, for the most part, even the ones I've disagreed with over the years have come close to fulfilling the necessary attributes for the office. Character...intelligence....critical thinking skills, empathetic, quick on their feet and able to communicate, cool under fire. Trump is obviously unqualified for office. You read it in his lies. His boasts. His bombastic tweets. His rage. His apparent insecurity. (yes Donald, men who talk about themselves constantly are not stable geniuses).
Conservatives have been demonizing people to appeal for political support for decades. It was not the habit of conservatives to do so before the coalition that Reagan used to gain power. FDR was demonized but not the people who voted for him. Progressive Liberalism was denounced but not people who were liberal. That coalition that Reagan achieved included right wing bigots and racists who had to be accommodated. Coded messages were used to appeal to the racists without explicitly expressing racism. Trump expresses his appeals to racists with racist talk.
McCain was an old fashioned conservative. His conservatism opposed change which necessarily impeded resolving racism in our society but it was concern for the unexpected outcomes from change rather than racism that motivated him. That used to be the problem that progressives had with conservatives.
1
I think that all of Twitter's investors should challenge the board to force them to shut Trump down. He is clearly violating their terms of use by using it to spew hate. I'm sure he could quickly find another method to get his horrible language out to the public but perhaps this would send him a message.
2
We should all look back when Pres. Donald Trump exit the elevator throwing his hat into the ring that day his rhetoric started, a lot Americans didn't see through Pres. Donald Trump the lies his business dealings and tax returns for insurance purposes, even stealing from his dad's business what a great son. There is last two years as president we have seen division hate, warmongering. And even stealing from the government.
His little red hat should mention who ever falls me falls and destruction.
President Donald Trump stole the election 2016 with Russians president Putin. Finally that they were able to hack some of the boards to counties in Florida that the FBI decided let out to the governor of Florida but not the people. We still have two more years of Pres. Donald Trump rhetoric I hope we can survive he's a dangerous man one finger away from destruction, will he be the one. If we get to the 2020 election please vote Donald Trump out office and into a jail cell next to Paul Manafort.
1
Bret Stephens has got this one correct. This election has got to be about Trump and whether the United States of America continues down this dark path or whether it rejoins the rest of the world as a civil and just society. As important as health care and economic justice are as issues, with Trump we are faced with a fundamental threat to our nation. Trump is a hard core racist and white supremacist. As long as he is president he will be a threat to all those who don't look like him. Thanks for a very honest and important article. You got this one right. In the right way.
1
We’re daily wandering through a haunted house on Halloween. A shock around every corner. Our country is the obese, diabetic, heart diseased patient that is in the oncologist’s waiting room expecting to be cured of Stage 4 cancer. There’s just too much going on to have any hope of a cure. Okay, you just wait until the election, assuming there will be anything left to save. Sure, a reason to hang on...then what?
1
He HAS to go, or he will sink us...if he hasn't already. That remains to be seen.
1
"No, Trump did not specifically incite anyone to violence..."
Perhaps not in this instance, but I tremble thinking about what he might do if he loses in 2020, particularly if it is by narrow margins in some states. Trump is someone unable to accept losing. He has rarely, if ever, admitted to making a mistake. I certainly wouldn't put it past him to incite and unleash his base to do the unthinkable.
1
"No, Trump did not specifically incite anyone to violence, as characters like Yasir Arafat once did. (“To Jerusalem we march, martyrs by the millions!”) ... His scripted condemnation on Monday of white supremacy was, at least, a condemnation."
You can add that the Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, at a minimum disassociated himself from the Hebron massacre in 1929.
1
More important than “the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety” is the fact, taboo in press coverage, that the President has a developmentally damaged brain which makes him a textbook psychopath, and an extreme one at that.
But Bret, your condemnation of “The sneaking conflation of illegal immigrants with violent gang members,” rings hollow when you, and almost all of the media, routinely conflate legal with illegal as “immigration.”
3
First it was Catholics. Then it was the Irish and Italians. Then the Chinese. Then the Germans. Then the Jews. Now its Hispanics and brown-skinned Muslims - and in the more regressive, darkest corners of the European ancestry hate club... yes, still the Jews, who are said to control the world's money supply and have been responsible for most of the slavery in the 19th century somehow. There will always be marginalized, easily-villified groups of people who are percieved by many to be "invading" and "displacing" the dominant cultural group - in this case, light-skinned folks of European descent. (skin pigmentation is used as a convenient way to identify groups who are non-European in ancestry - by itself it means nothing at all, but it does serve as a Red Flag to inflame the tribal Us vs Them mentality of certain factions of the Euro-centric majority. The battle is never-ending, it seems!!! Yet progress HAS been made, as wave after wave of immigration to North America has been assimilated and more or less accepted as part of the "in-crowd". We must continue the battle - not with crude, brutish words and military-style weapons designed to kill and maim as many as possible in the shortest time, but with reason, tolerance, logic and patience: this is a long-term, multi-generation effort. We must not give in to hatred ourselves: that way lies more violence, and a continuation of the cycles of intolerance, marginalization, poverty and insanity.
1
Stephens' final sentence nails it perfectly - Trump is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.
Impeach now, or in 2020 fire this absurd embarrassment.
4
Think about it. We as a country have allowed and supported people being able to carry assault weapons. We've allowed these assault-weapons-people to have authority over the rest of us. They are starting to control where we can go. We can no longer go to the movies without checking where the exits are or permitted their kids to go to a school that doesn't have active-shooter drills?
We are no longer free people.
1
"the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Is this your call for impeachment or do you still feel as in your June 4 exchange with Gail Collins that
"As for football, it’s a dumb and dangerous game of maximum brutality and minimal movement. Just like impeachment."
Thanks, Bret, for the advice which is on target. This election is not about whose healthcare policy is best. It’s about values and decency. Period. Until the Democrats get this, they should be prepared to lose again in a close one. Trump’s name doesn’t need to be uttered—and the Democratic nominee should refuse to debate him. Who are we as a people and what are our shared values? Please remind me candidates.
Thank you for this column Bret. I wish you hadn't named the gunmen (not necessary and it is hypothesized to help quell the motivation for these massacres), but pointing out the link between violence in Trump's speech and our current cultural climate is extremely important at this moment, and, most likely, many moments to come.
1
Mr. Stephens what has happened in El Paso and Dayton has absolutely nothing to do with Israel and the Palestinians. Why you brought that up is a mystery to me until I read that you where in Israel editor in chief for the Jerusalem Post. Two totally different types of conflict. One is a war. The other is a ideology. Israel is at war with Palestine because of what happened in 1948.[ there land was taken from them] The other is an idea that white people have a god given rite to dominate any and all other peoples. We can get into a discussion on the similar redirect, as how Israelis feel that Paliaitnsens are less than human and that is how Israel can justify their treatment. So when you are at war all bets are off when it comes to dignity. When you talk about White Supremacy , that is an idea that needs to end. So the prez. did not put a direct price on the heads of migrants, he did and still does think they are not worthy to be called humans and that is what gives others cart-blanch to kill.
2
Let’s not forget that Trump praised a politician who body-slammed a journalist.
Let’s not forget that Trump suggested, implied or promised to pay the legal fees of his supporters who assaulted protesters at his rally.
He won’t condemn those who support him, who hold racist views, and instead will say those people love him.
In my book, that qualifies as Trump inciting racial violence. It’s a no brainer.
Readers, I am sure, will remember other past flagrant examples.
6
Thanks for this article, Brett. This needs to be said and conservatives need to be called out. But please, do us all a favor if you want to get trump out of office, STOP saying that Dems want open borders. You're smarter than that and you know that isn't true. It is yet another trumpublican talking point that helps stoke their fear mongering.
3
Let's see, this is the, I don't know, 10th or 12th article in the Times trying to link Trump to the El Paso shootings in the last several days. And now Bret joins the chorus.
But just let me point out that you have no evidence to make that linkage You aren't a psychologist or psychiatrist -- you're a pundit. You have no knowledge of what makes mass killers tick, what sets them off. All you have is a petty political narrative that you want to share with the world in hopes of convincing others that Trump is responsible. No, the shooter is responsible. Or would you advocate letting him go since Trump probably sent mind control waves over twitter which forced him to do the shooting.
This column is pure rubbish.
To this I wholeheartedly agree.
I usually look at Bret askance, but this is spot on.
1
The ultimate irony is that gun kooks with their 1874 Wild West phony machismo are really the ones with deep seated insecurities. Those of us who have no desire whatsoever to own a gun are far better adjusted emotionally and psychologically.
3
Mr. Stephens your conclusions are right on the money. I have been proclaiming since Trump was a candidate that on the world stage he is a Terrestrial Horror and to our nation he is The Ugliest American.
1
It is Trump's supporters who are "an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." Without them Trump is just another racist incompetent spewing right-wing-lunatic-fringe ideology. The reason we have a madman in the White House is that we have a racist populace who believe in that ideology. A lot of the nominally "Christian" supporters actually believe their deity sanctions these hateful views and sees non-supporters as demonic spawn of Satan. It's as crazy out there as I've ever seen it, but we've got to stay strong and vote!
5
He is never going to change. And he was the same guy during the 2016 election, his whole campaign built on the racist birther conspiracy. The GOP tolerated it, and eventually incorporated it because power and money is all that matters to them. Well now they own it. He's yours boys, can't walk away from it now. We will NEVER forget how your party hoisted this flim flam dictator on us. You will live with the stench for a generation.
4
The beauty of the United States is we supposedly have the right to believe and be any thing you wish. We can be, fascist, liberals, Nazis, communists, gay, straight, both, any thing we wish but we don’t have the right to kill people we don’t agree with. The President must represent everyone’s right to personal freedom, but when he proclaims allegiance to a specific ideology and gives it the power to impose its will on everyone else, than there are people who believe they have the right to kill the disagreeables, they believe it is the honorable, patriotic thing to do. President Trump has special powers and responsibilities, Trump is abusing his power, neglecting his responsibility and encouraging hate, chaos and anarchy. If he were not President, the FBI would have him under surveillance and a terrorist threat.
3
Hallelujah!
Finally a conservative calling it the way decent people on the Dems side have.
3
That the Dayton shooter and the El Paso shooter held different political views in part proves that the so called Red Flag Laws won't do anything to prevent gun violence. It's easy to say that a shooter is psychotic and unhinged, after the shooting; more than difficult before the fact. Where many of them are loners, who is to say they're emotionally disturbed, and unfit to own weapons?
As for your last paragraph...I couldn't agree more. Disgrace, Insult, Threat and Danger. It may take decades to repair the harm this guy has done.
Oh..and does anyone remember, "I alone can fix this!" ?
This is not for the Democrats to solve. Unless, at some point, the GOP threw up their hands and ceded all power in which case...the judicial branch would look quite different. Trump is on republicans to counteract. Primary him, vocally denounce and don’t vote for any legislation he would sign. Vote for impeachment. Stop clutching your pearls and demanding the Democrats do something. We are, we have been, we are tired and need help because we’re fighting his mind numbingly loyal minions...the GOP.
2
The best condemnations come from conservatives- well said.
1
Sadly, conservatives and the Republican Party writ large, have winked and nodded at this kind of rhetoric for decades. Trump comes along and says all of it out loud (with horrible diction, sentence structure, grammar, elocution and pronunciation)
The thin veneer of civilization is being pushed to the limit by a racist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic, horror show of a man with the self awareness of dirt.
The decision will be ours in a short while......will we choose the German way of the late 30’s early 40’s or what the founding documents spelled out so eloquently? We have lost our way many times along the road but fingers crossed, MLK was correct about the moral arc of the universe.
1
"The former attack vaguely implicates the “dark psychic force” that Marianne Williamson spoke of in last week’s Democratic debates. The latter directly implicates the immigrant-bashing xenophobic right led by Donald Trump."
You must not have been listening to Williamson. She blames Trump for cultivating this atmosphere of darkness, egotism, and nihilism, or in Williamson's own odd, pseudo-SciFi / mystical language, "dark psychic forces". He is directly responsible for the El Paso attack, and while he is complicit in the other for enabling rampant gun use, encouraging violence, etc, you have clearly misattributed the blame.
A better way to concieve it may be as follows: Trump is actively to blame for El Paso, and passively to blame for Dayton / all others (I would lump most GOP and conservative minions into this latter category). El Paso is a direct manifestation of these "dark psychic forces" or energies; Dayton is a more peripheral manifestation.
1
"The right’s attempt to downplay the specifically ideological context of the El Paso massacre is a transparently self-serving effort to absolve the president of moral responsibility for his demagogic rhetoric."
I wish it were so "transparent." Millions of Americans hear and accept without question the right's spin, as well as the "idiotic" comparison of the El Paso and Dayton shooters, nightly on FOX through Sean Ins-Hannity and his guests.
2
If Donald Trump is so awful, then why are the Republicans on the path to nominating him for a second time? Why do conservatives keep dumping this into Democratic laps? We never supported him. Why aren't any viable Republicans "primarying" him? Only Republicans who criticize him get "primaried." Where is the leadership? Where is the morality? Is there no one in the GOP with a sense of history?
3
This:
It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.
Mr. Stephens, will drive exactly zero people to the polls and convince but a tiny number of republicans to either stay home or not cast a vote for tRump.
That is sad, but I believe, true. Dignity doesn't mean much to those voters, threat to our Union doesn't resonate and danger to our safety? Well, white folks weren't targeted, so that's a non issue, too.
Michelle Goldberg made an observation on this week's "Argument" that had not occurred to me: Trump has been president for the entire adult lives of these shooters (not to mention of countless other young people). I can only imagine how damaging and distorting that must be. Trump gets our goats because he is such a grotesque aberration compared to what we've experienced in the past. But what if he was all you ever knew? Yikes.
1
I do not believe that Trump wanted hispanic citizens to be gunned down in El Paso, nor did he want pipe bombs sent to CNN and other organizations and persons on his “enemies of the people” or “fake news” lists. He just constantly demonized those groups at every news gaggle and every reality TV show political rally. Unfortunately, that fits the very definition of “stochastic terrorism”...where words are inflammatory and incite a potential for violence but the violent acts themselves are random and unpredictable. The author of such rhetoric cannot be held legally accountable for the violent act but can and should be removed from the highest office in the land come November 2020.
3
Trump is a danger to our safety indeed. Words matter. The Democratic candidates need to stop haranguing one another and deal with first things first. They must unite in one voice. There will be no new gun laws, no health care upgrades, no immigration reform, no climate change legislation and no peace and civility unless and until we get Trump out of office. Trump is the biggest threat to our country and the world. Biden had it right when he said we have to fight for the soul of our country. Yes, first things first-- Throw Out Trump!
Nope.
Brett is and has been a Republican for decades.
Trump isn't something new. He is just the current manifestation of the Conservative Party agenda.
Trump and Party are what you and yours's made of it Brett.
You want a fix, look in the mirror.
5
And the main task for Republicans is to realize that "the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." Bret Stephens and other conservatives must write and speak about this not only in the NY Times but on Fox and in the Wall Street Journal and meetings of conservatives.
2
"It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Very well said. Now, let's see if the NYT, Washington Post, CNN and other important and respected news outlets can keep from chasing Trumpian diversionary squirrels over the next 16 months and stay on that theme. Trump is the greatest threat the US has faced in my 68 years. Don't be distracted.
2
There are many reasons that lead to violent outbursts and murders. My guess, and only a guess, is that the Dayton killer wanted to kill his sister and her male companion, perhaps because he was upset that she might be gaining independence from him. There may have been other, even sexual problems,
but we can't ask the armored killer or the sister. What might she have told her companion or friends? Not every attack leads back to Trumpian language, but the president and his supporters do contribute to a "national climate" of rage and violence.
The Times reports that here in Montana an adult male seriously injured a 13 year old boy after the boy refused to remove his hat during the national anthem.
Words (like "sticks and stones") can, contrary to the old saying, be harmful.
1
The people who call themselves conservatives today are fake conservatives they dominate talk radio and some TV outlets.
Their sole purpose is propaganda not real conservative values.
Their job is to blame Democrats, liberals, leftists or lefty's
for every problem real or imagined.
They never invite real conservatives on their shows as real conservatives would blow them out of the water.
Now they have started adding supposed Socialist to their enemy list with no basis in fact. The liberals have given us Medicare, Social Security, paid holidays, paid vacations, maternity leave, 40 hour work week etc. While fake conservatives have not given us anything but lies and innuendo.
Those who call themselves conservative Republicans today have very few if any moral values. Now lying, adultery, bigotry, hate speech is all acceptable or they simply ignore it as if it might go away.
It is too bad that one political party, Republican, has basically sold out. It is now Party before country and they could care less.
4
So Brett, I guess you'll have to vote for the Democratic candidate, even if it's Bernie or Elizabeth.
2
If rhetoric is to blame for El Paso shooting, it is Democratic rhetoric.
Patrick Crusius picked El Paso to stage his attack because on a single day in May the Border Patrol arrested a group of more than 1,000 migrants as they crossed from Juarez directly into El Paso. It was by far the largest group of illegal border crossers ever apprehended. It put El Paso in the spotlight of the illegal immigration debate.
Democratic presidential candidates seized the moment. They rushed to El Paso to be photographed as they deplored overcrowded conditions at Clint Station, a CBP processing station on the outskirts of El Paso. And during the recent Democratic presidential candidate debate, leading Democratic hopefuls pointed Clint Station as they called for the decriminalization of illegal border crossing. They described Americans who oppose illegal immigration as racist.
Crusius no doubt found the Democratic rhetoric infuriating.
In his manifesto, he wrote, ”My onion on automation, immigration and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president. I [am] putting this here because some people will blame rage President or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case.” But he wrote, “Democrats are nearly unanimous with their support of immigration.”
These events will continue as long as the US population remains 330 million cowards who immediately flee from any sound of gun fire. If the mob ran toward, not away, then of the gun man’s targets, some would be shot in the front, not in the back, and the gun man would be overwhelmed, blinded, stripped naked and drug through the streets till rescued by police. This outcome would dim the ardor of most potential gun men. Except for those few whose mental illness causes them to seek just such an outcome.
Yes. Trump is a great threat.
The threat comes so lethally in a nation infested with weapons of war, "securing" the homeland over there, while bringing such insecurity here. Bringing the irony of "open borders" home. Bringing the irony of setting red lines home.
In a nation in which individuals -- alienated, rootless and unmoored -- can readily form sick identities with killing machines. In a nation where the rights to purchase and own weapons of war trumps our rights to living.
We are being Trumped in more ways than one.
1
Instead of these bitter divisive articles, it would be far healthier to give credit to Trump when he does something right. He came out with a denunciation of White supremacy, hatred and violence. He also visited the shooting sites and met the survivors and their families. This is all good stuff. We all do and say dumb things. Yes, as President Trump has a special duty to do better. But tell me which one motivates you? People who always see the worst in you or people who see the best? Or is this really just another game of politics?
Thank you for being honest here. Now my question is, do you still believe Trump is the moral choice over Sanders? Do you still contend that redistributing a small percentage of wealth is morally worse than white supremacist violence?
3
Bravo, Bret, for this excellent and spot-on column. I agreed with everything you expressed.
However, when I got to your last sentence, I had to pause a moment to process all the feelings those words stirred up: sadness, anger, fear, disgust. You wrote, “It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.”
So how, in god's name, is it possible that a good portion of our electorate still supports this man?
2
The administration ought to take pride in our diversity, not incite hatred of folks who don’t look exactly like you, come from different neighborhoods and cultural backgrounds.
Fortunately the large majority of citizens understand and appreciate the fundamental need to respect one another, even when we disagree on political issues, which is a sign of health in a functioning democracy.
But the president’s words are inciting division, and are being used as a rallying cry as the link from today’s Philadelphia Inquirer amply demonstrates:
https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania/sesame-place-go-back-where-you-came-from-pennsylvania-20190807.html
Some people are bound to suggest it is only a few in the minority who are parroting Trump’s venomous words, but they are missing the point - the hateful rhetoric is entirely unnecessary and self-serving toxic propaganda.
The cause of mass shootings is very simple. Forget mental illness, hatred of this group and that, gays, muslims, 32nd flloor windows and even trump's incitement. In 2004 George w Bush refused to pressure Congress to extend the assault weapons ban. Laura, Barbara and Jenna Bush were at a campaign event at Aon Corporation Chairman Patrick Ryan's home in Winnetka, Illinois. They saw a small school across the street and requested a photo op visit. Hubbard Woods School replied no, in 1988 Laurie Dann shot up a second grade classroom at Hubbard Woods, killing one student and that President Bush should press to extend the assault weapons ban. The failure to extend the assault weapons ban is the entire cause of mass shootings, period.
1
Stephens comments are all valid. However, there is no mention of guns in this OpEd. Trump incited violence, yet the instrument of this violence is given a pass. We will never be safe in this country while guns are an epidemic. The notion that healing the violent nature of the human beast is an easier task than eliminating their weapons of destruction is a fool’s errand.
2
Give it to Bret Stephens, he's written a fine column and not another cleaver conservative screed. And it is both timely and appreciated. As Americans, today we're all from El Paso.
most of the mental illnesses are not prone to violence
Sociopathy, anti-social personality disorder is indeed prone to violence...
they lack a social conscience, and they "think" they have "good reason" that "justifies" causing harm to others
1
The left will blame society for the act of criminals, including murders to the point of denying all personal responsibility. When has the left attributed societal ills on terrorism? To Al Qaeda, to Isis, to the Taliban? What is rejected is blaming all Muslims for the acts of particular groups. Terrorism within Islam mainly kills Muslims. The left should pay more attention. It is the right that is in massive denial about the impact of pluralism on white nationalism and white terrorism.
Clearly something strange is going on. We heard Dayton mayor on TV she was all praise for Mr Trump’s interaction with victims and first responders. But Trump turns around and starts to politicize the situation. It can all be traced to his Aide who tweeted twisted misinformation. Mr Trump is surrounded by ear whisperers who mislead him misguide him. Being reactionary Mr Trump behaves like bulky, an attack dog at the incitement of those who surround him. Mr Trump seems to be a puppet in the hands of Steve Bannon, his own aides and FoxNews. Chief of staff come and go but they don’t seem to have a handle on Mr Trump. It boils down to his aides, those who feed him stories cuz it’s very clear Mr Trump is not well read and doesn’t like to read except cliff notes.
Media, you are directly responsible for reporting the truth and not allowing Mr Trump’s malicious aides to malign facts. We have no idea who are these aides surrounding Trump, who planted them, what is their motive, who is their master of Universe! Can you find out, NYT!
2
Even with best intentions I find it inevitably impossible to finish Bret Stephens’ articles (he gets more pieces published than Krugman or Kristof). Here again while pretending to criticize Republican apathy to do anything about routine mass shootings, he suggests that the left blames climate change and other global issues for terrorism. Not true. The Left (a conservative right-wing collective deterministic label for a diverse people that cuts a wide swath of progressives, liberals, socialists, independents, LGBTQ+, High-School students, college graduates, etc.) blames the United States for creating Al Qaeda and the ISIS (a direct result of disbanding Saddam Hussein’s army after Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq). He goes after Arafat, the Palestinian leader, when Palestinians were fighting for independence and self-determination from a cruel and unjust occupation of their country by Israel. Stephens never misses an opportunity of impugning the left while he takes a tangential side-swipe against the conservatives. In this article he begins with Dayton massacre caused by a socialist sympathizer, which doesn’t make any sense. His acts of mass shooting was not encouraged by Elizabeth Warren. Trump is directly implicated in hate killings, because of his racist hatred of immigrants from poor countries. Domestic terrorism is a broad definition that doesn’t distinguish Islamic terrorism from white nationalist terrorism. One is ideological, the other is institutional.
2
Connor Betts has something in common with Trump that you missed: Previous reportage noted Betts was highly mysoginistic.
1
When you get it right, you get it as well as anyone in the business.
2
It's worth noting the Rwandan genocide was ultimately triggered by the assassination of Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana. Paul Kagame, the suspected assassin, ultimately became the de facto leader of Rwanda as a result.
The Hutu perpetrators were forced to flee the country en masse for fear of retaliation. Properly so. You should see the photos of the Hutu exodus into the already war torn DRC. Talk about asylum seekers. Hutus just hacked a half million people to death with machetes and they lost political power in the process.
So ask yourself this: Is the brutal murder of nearly 500,000 innocents worth the permanent and irreversible political reorientation of a bigoted country with a bigoted leader. Paul Kagame apparently thought the answer was "yes." That's why he allegedly killed the Rwandan President.
Trump and his minions, are expressing long held beliefs that have existed since the founding fathers, who said that "all men are created equal", but counted a slave as 3/5th of a man. We need to stop saying "we're better than this", own up to the TRUTH of our history, and pave the way for a truly equitable society.
Mr. Stephens may be correct that the main task for Democrats over the next 15 months will be "to convince America ... that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." However, the target is not really America, it is Republicans. There should not be many concerns about Democrats voting for Trump. However, there may need to be more than the call of patriotism and national pride to convince certain Republicans.
I do not recall who said it, but someone broke down Trump supporters into three groups: those who are greedy and want him to implement policies favorable to that position; those who are cynical and believe he will do less damage to their personal interests than the other candidate; and those who are stupid or gullible.
If that assessment is accurate, no amount of outrage over Trump's incompetence and moral failings is likely to sway the first and third groups by any meaningful amount. The second group, however, may offer real opportunity. I wish it was a simple as Mr. Stephens proposes, but I suspect members of that second group - the cynics - will want to have some confidence that they are getting a politician that is not too far from their position before they agree to vote Trump out of office. So as unfortunate as it seems, the message to that group cannot be only that Trump is a national disgrace, it must also include some definition of what is next in the queue.
Is the President responsible for the Pulse nightclub, Las Vegas, and Parkland shootings? How about the garlic festival? Trump makes an attractive target here in the Times but the murderous propensity to violence in America is abetted by a sea of guns, many of them military style weapons. Getting rid of Trump won't change that set of facts.
Bret Stephens gets it.
The most accurate description of acts like these, regardless of terrorist intent, cultural motivation or mental illness, is "hate crime." These mass shooters are haters, triggered by rage. In rally after rally, tweet after tweet, the man in the White House shows himself to be one of them. He demonizes. He stokes cataclysmic paranoia. He may not kill people with a gun, but his hate drips into the body politic like poison. Its infection spreads like a plague.
So if you don’t like what Trump says, don’t vote for him. Admit it. Even if Trump said something you agree with, you hate him and never would have voted for him, especially because he is not a Democrat.
All I can say is post Trump, the next President will have to be a uniter and bear the burden of ridding the country of the divisiveness of Trump's empty bloviations.
So the Dayton murders are leftist nihilism (supposedly).
We are thankful the
cops were there in less than a minute.
We are obviously being confronted by radicalism/extremism/psychopathy, and our Potus seemingly
eggs it on with ugly political rhetoric.
I can’t help but think we are dooming ourselves
by foolishly weak gun regulations.
The politically crazed murders apparently are unstoppable by way of the now normative outrage aka gridlock.
We do not enjoy consensus about doing something
substantive.
Forty thousand lives per year is cultural insanity
Australia has the guts to do what we manifestly
can’t.
I was with Mr.Stephens until his likening Trumps rhetoric to Arafat and Palestinian leaders'. Not to Mr. Stephens Netanyahu is not the only Israeli politician who sounds like Trump. Ayalet Shaked (it's OK to kill Palestinian women because they will breed "little snakes") and most others are lined up to continue the policies of oppression. When military demolish peoples' homes to make room for settlers, when police (and military) detain children, when snipers shoot unarmed people standing in their own land asking for human rights, there is something wrong with the government that orders it.
1
Does Trump incite white nationalist violence? Of course. But sincere columns like this one by Mr. Stephens paper over the real problem.
And the real problem is not Donald Trump. The real problem is not the Republican Party. The real problem is not Fox News.
If Trump's supporters didn't already think as Donald Trump does, they wouldn't have voted for him. The fact that they still support him is evidence of this. His "policies" have hurt them as much as anyone, but they don't care. They cling to the racism. They cling to the hate.
And the same for the Republican Party. Their leaders say what they say because they need Trump voters. Any Republican who dares cross Trump is gone.
And finally, Fox News isn't to blame. If there weren't a huge audience for their "programming", they'd be out of business. Fox is there to make money, and they understand that nearly half of us will tune in every night. If they stopped their racist and bigoted screeds, they'd lose viewership.
We need to finally - finally, call out who is really responsible here. And it is Trump voters. More than half of white voters in the 2016 election voted for Trump. Get your head around this one fact. The majority of whites who voted in 2016 voted for an obviously hateful, bigoted man, a man they knew had all these qualities long before they entered the voting booth.
Until we who are sickened by what has happened to this country start calling out who is really responsible here, nothing will change. Nothing.
4
Trump doesn't really believe in anything, he's just an opportunist with a big megaphone and a loud mouth. I doubt that he remembers most of what he says, much less believe in it. White nationalists and racists are a voting block for him, so he says what they want to hear. He would like for people of color to vote for him too, so when he addresses them, he has a completely different message. He tells evangelical Christians that he's one of them, but hasn't been to a church service in years and violates the Christian commandments and new testament teachings of Christ daily. If the flat earth society was a big block of voters, he'd be out everyday agreeing with them and calling round earthers dangerous radicals and traitors.
And the Times calls for "funding for research". Really? This is the editorial position of the Times? Very weak. Research is not needed to discover that the conditions these mass gun murders (not 'shootings') arose from are a combination of corporate right-wing media agitation, NRA/gun lobbying, a domestically-terrorized general populace and a Mussolini-Lite 'president'.
A solid majority of people already support meaningful gun control legislation despite *all* Republican attempts to derail it.
People murdered with too-easily available guns by right-wingers acting on Trump’s rhetoric are not just "deaths" that happen because of some mysterious force we know nothing about. They are innocent human lives being cut short and sacrificed to a political agenda.
It sure isn't feminist vegan liberals that are killing people.
I think President Trump's greatest error was to not use this situation to at least attempt to bring the country together, which he could have done from the White House. But he chose the low road once more. According to the WP the inpatients in El Paso refused to see him, something which could have been easily done by simply saying family only. But the WH chose to mislead (he saw former patients) one more time, claiming otherwise in the absence of the press. We are a forgiving nation as shown by current treatment of former VP Cheney, who was a major part in starting two "optional" wars. At some point, soon perhaps, Mr. Trump will not be able to seek that forgiveness.
2
We absolutely have a mental health problem.
Let's start in the Whitehouse with the man sitting in the Oval Office.
The fact the president doesn't see that no he didn't pull the trigger but he has poured fuel on the flames of hatred is
crazy.
There needs to be an intervention.
Javanka are you both watching?!
2
Millions of men and women who grew up with an abusive & narcissistic father see Trump as their "daddy". It is a cult writ large.
1
Does anyone remember Congressman Steve Scalise who was shot by a crazed gunman distraught over President Trumps election. Where was the outrage against the media and left politicians who lambasted and shouted all sort of horrible epithets in a continuous non-stop wailing against President Trump ??? Say what you want People are not idiots the economy is great foreign policy is strong common sense rules jobs are in good shape. No one needs a green socialists President running this country.
2
@NS Calling a spade a spade is not an epithet and does not warrant rage. The continuous, non-stop wailing against trump was/is only a direct response to trump's own hateful, divisive words and outright lies, spewed forth on a daily continuous basis. Blaming the media for reporting his hate and lies doesn't change his message.
1
It's quite interesting how Bret ends every column with the same "oh it's up to Democrats to now rescue the country from Trump." Bret your party made this bed we are all forced to lie on. please call your party out more often and don't conclude with your classic line. "oh Democrats it's up to you all." No, it's up to your party to stop supporting a known bigot.
6
A Nobel Prize? No! How about a Tony? More in line with his limp performances and, besides, he most like doesn’t know the difference.
“the left’s idea that poverty and climate change are at the root of terrorism: causes so general that they explain everything, hence nothing.”
No. “Poverty” and “climate change” mean things, complex intersection of history, loss of civic duty and empathy, fear of change and not being willing to be teachable.
You are sometimes a lazy op-ed thinker when you don’t integrate daily, accessible analyses— in scientific and social science journals, New Yorker articles, and carefully written Twitter threads by Niraj Warikoo and Hannah Giorgis, books by historians like Timothy Snyder and Jill Lepore.
1
I'm rather surprised, Mr. Stephens, that you've decided to put the blame for the language of incitement to murder where it lies. In the Oval Office. It's really not like you to criticize the president.
Oh, you scored a direct hit hit with your accurately delicious "bottomlessly dishonorable" description (August 31, 2018) of the president. But you mostly go out of your way to shore up his party (and yours) and extol the virtues of a conservatism that hasn't been on the national scene since Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961). But to the point.
Yes, the "manifesto" of the El Paso executioner might have been lifted from the lines of hate uttered at one of the president's innumerable rallies. How many? Sixty-five? Isn't he supposed to be, you know, working at something? Or is it just watching Fox News in the morning and flying to some red state on the public dime to gin up the hate for '20 and beyond?
He and the Republican Party are in serious denial. Note how Mick Mulvaney spluttered and splashed bile all over himself on last Sunday's talkies. Who's he kidding? And why did the president make a complete fool of himself yesterday in Dayton, flying in and then flying out to El Paso, trashing the mayor of that stricken town because she dared--yes, dared--to let him know that he's the engine for all of this?
You haven't gone far enough, Mr. Stephens, in calling out this menace to society. May we see more honesty from you in the future? Wouldn't that be nice!
3
How about the irony of Mr Trump visiting El Paso to meet with suffering victims hospitalized with wounds from one of his deranged followers and on the same day unleashing his ICE storm troopers to round up hundreds of Hispanic immigrants, bringing untold heartbreak and suffering to them and their families.
2
No surprise that the undemocratic Israel is the only country in the world that overwhelmingly supports trump (outside of the Kremlin)
1
The author says:
"What happened in Texas was racist terrorism in the mold of Oslo, Charleston, Pittsburgh, Christchurch and Poway."
The massacre in Oslo, Norway was not "racist" terrorism. Anders Breivik targeted white Norwegians of the same race as him. His victims were not minorities. They were children of the ruling party in Norway at the time.
You liberals argue like petulant teenagers, with no consideration of complicating facts.
1
Cynical me, wondering why you started this piece with a paragraph about the Dayton shooter’s political leanings. I have not heard a word from any Democrat that can be considered inciting hatred and violence towards others. So writing that section was unnecessary, but I guess you had a good reason.
Now that you have called him out for stoking the flames of bigotry, will you endorse a move to impeach this man?
6
Really ? When the Republican congressmen were shot at at the baseball game, I could read hundred of comments saying “I personally don’t condone violence, but they had it coming, their policies are killing people”. Sounds like Trump ?
Bret, dear, you are a nice, intelligent man but incredibly Naive.
Denial is the main “ conservative “ defense, along with the infamous “ both sides do it “. Free yourself ! Take off the shackles, speak the truth, and be free.
Seriously.
4
There is the proverbial deafening silence that the Dayton shooter was a vicious lunatic allied with the antifa movement, a violent partner of Democrats and American leftists, a partner whose riots and vandalism they quietly encourage.
Unusually, I can only agree with Brett Stephen's column today. Now, if he can only start preaching to the Republican side of the choir. Their silence in response to the President's ugly rhetoric has been as deafening as usual, so they'll have no trouble hearing him.
2
Thank you for this column. It needs to be said over and over again that this man is unfit for office and is a clear and present danger to the Republic.
1
Thank you, Bret Stephens. We are experiencing the bystander syndrdome among Republicans, and that may be the most frightening and damaging legacy of Trump.
Would that Ohio's Republican members of the House and Senate proclaim that Trump is unfit to serve as President and, more importantly, a grave danger to our democracy. And, improbably of course, support and authorize the impeachment process.
5
Although I like the idea of Democratic Party candidates at the Iowa State Fair uniting in support of Stephens' position, that is not enough. The candidates need, yes, to constantly and consistently oppose Trump, but also focus on practical solutions to our problems of the moment, not "policy reform." (That kind of reform will only be possible after they replace the president and take control of the Senate.)
They also need to develop a detailed position that what Trump is doing is truly criminal, like shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre - even if that concept was developed as an example of a Constitutional limit on free speech. As a lawyer, I tremble to think of what kind of proof is needed to show this crime, let alone defining it. But Trump's actions are "beyond impeachment." They call on use of the 25th Amendment, Sec. 4. Alas, I dream. The only way out is a massive vote for the Democratic candidate for president next year.
3
How can you call it a conspiracy theory to say that Dems want to import voters? It’s true. Political operatives at high levels always consider where their votes will come from. Also corporate interests on both the Left and Right need the cheaper labor to pump up bottom line profits and both sides have been very pro as-much-immigration-as possible to fill that need. Elites world wide envision open boarders everywhere and Wall St very much encourages that. This is totally obvious to those most affected communities and to be told they are racist is infuriating. It’s not about race - it’s about resources. Immigration is fine, and of course it’s part of the American ideal but it need to be monitored. Dems are deciding to frame the issue as racial bc they think it will work for them strategically and that is a very dangerous thing to do . Inflaming emotions and stoking division btw the left and right. Those who don’t think of it in terms of race see right through the strategy and laugh. Keep feeling high and mighty and calling everyone xenophobic and see how it works for you.
3
I live in a neighborhood of legal and illegal immigrants. I’m not mad about it. They are trying to do what’s best for their families. I can relate to that. What I can’t relate to is people like Trump who hire illegal immigrants and then turn around and demonize them. Yes, we need immigration reform. Mostly to protect immigrants from people like Trump and his buddies. Millionaires and billionaires who are anti union so that they can make even more money by paying unlivable wages. And when citizens won’t take those jobs, they hire illegal immigrants.
2
I generally find that when somebody yacks at me about how things are, “totally obvious,” they aren’t. And when it’s a Trumpist doing the yacking, you can be peetty much sure it isn’t true, either.
2
@Martini
If someone manages to get here and start a life it’s certainly not ideal to deport them! We know that! Reforms have to be made. I agree ie the unions but that’s a class and economics issue not a left/right issue and wall st is the biggest player there in actuality. Just stop calling people who don’t want open borders “racist”. It’s not true and it’s not working
Brett, your last paragraph is so true.
"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
You almost sound like a democrat.
7
Superb, as usual. I can only add that the Republican Party’s general response to all of this proves that Trump, in the end, has proven not the disease, but the malignant end result of 40 plus years of increasing racism, jingoism and violent (yes, violent) contempt for traditional liberal thought by the GOP. As a very wise relative put it just yesterday, in his usual succinct manner: “Trump just ‘outed’ them, that’s all.”
7
“... [This] is a transparently self-serving attempt to absolve the president of moral responsibility for his demagogic rhetoric...”
Yes, Yes, Yes.
Bit it is also a transparently self serving attempt to avoid the moral responsibility to reduce the number of guns in this country. That is sickening as well.
2
Mr. Stephens, your last paragraph says it all! Trump has made a disgrace of our country.
It is simple- every bit of rhetoric allows a person's fears to beget hatred.
5
“It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.” Repeat every hour, every day, every candidate.
3
The last sentence is a keeper: "It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." Well said.
2
So, Mr. Stephens, you could not get him on being a Russian agent, so now it's "disgrace, insult, threat and danger".
Why don't you and your comrades just run a candidate that can win against Trump. So far, I see none.
1
Steven's editorial is all true. Trump needs to be defeated/impeached but we know that so far at least despite his advisers Trump has not started a needless war so far although he has come close with Iran. George Bush II's wars with Iran and Afghanistan were far worse. It is noteworthy that the Watergate break in and Clinton's lying about sex both grounds for impeachment were petty crimes as is Trump's racist remarks and his bribing of porn stars/models about affairs. The true High Crimes of starting needless wars had virtually no support for impeachment (except by Dennis Kucinich) and Bush so far has caused immeasurably more damage to the U.S. let alone Iraq and Afghanistan than Trump.
1
The election needs to be about the American people. Trump made a lot of people feel good about themselves. Now, these people are doubling down on support of him. I think that the Dem candidate needs to inspire Americans to listen to the better angels of their nature. "Shoot them." I would ask GOP legislators and their supporters to look in their hearts. Is that who you really are or did a con man wind you up? Is that who you want to be or is there a better way? I think we can be better than this.
2
On a per capita basis Canada, Germany, France, England and numerous other countries have just as many violent video games, mentally unstable people, loners and white nationalists as the United States.
None of the above countries allow easy access to automatic or in some cases non-automatic weapons...think that has anything to do with the lack of mass killings in these countries.
4
@doug mac donald
Uh, France is probably up there with us. The November 2015 attacks in Paris killed 130, with 90 shot to death in the Bataclan nightclub alone. The Charlie Hebdo shooting killed another dozen, and there were the Toulouse and Mountauban shootings of Jewish schoolchildren and French soldiers. I am sure there were others. Plus the truck attack in Nice which killed 86.
All off a much smaller population base.
1
Same goes with the right's favorite refrain: 'what about Chicago?!!'
Gun violence in Chicago is predominantly gang on gang (i.e., criminals targeting other criminals). Not so different from the bloody days of prohibition era gang violence.
White Supremacist, on the other hand, see every individual on the planet that they do not identify as one of their own as a target for violence up to and including murder.
And their victims' offense? Having been born; merely existing in the world.
That's the difference. That's the heinousness.
2
It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.
Unfortunately that is what makes him so popular among Conservatives. They want to bring America down with the idea that they can rebuild it as a white-nationalist nation.
4
Looking back to the ride down the gold plated escalator the die was cast that day. People didn't realise at the time what a sick man he was who was putting himself forward to be president. They had their chance to reject him. They failed to do that. For the sake of all that might be decent and approaching normality again one day in the future - after your nation has repaired its collective psyche - do not allow him to have a second term.
6
Brett Stephens nailed it today. Compare his article to the infantile argument of Mark Theissen in today’s Post. Thank you for rationality.
3
"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America [of various policy needs...]. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Well, Bret, you almost got it. Try this:
"The entire Republican Party is a disgrace to the nation.... and a danger to our safety."
When Trump was elected, it became obvious that our only defense against his corruption, chaos, and cruelty was going to be the Republican Senate and House. But they fell in line, because they were complicit in the rise of all the forces that Trump seeks to incite.
Evidence: No action on gun control. No response to racist attacks on members of Congress. Broad state-by-state racially based voter suppression and election rigging. No reaction to the imprisonment of children.
This is a thoroughly corrupt, deeply anti-American movement, funded by billionaires, propagandized via Fox News, armed by the gun industry, championed by the White House.
Trump is the symptom. The cancer is the Republican Party.
7
Thank you for this, and for showing liberals like me that there are still people across the aisle who haven't lost their eyes, ears, minds, voices, and moral compass. Any others out there? Hello? Speak up! Please!
2
Trump: "The enthusiasm was there for all to see."
What enthusiasm?
Enthusiasm that so many so-called verminous invaders and Mexican rapists got brutally shot dead to successfully protect America from infestation? Enthusiasm over making America great by vigilante justice and upping the ante of the body slam again? Enthusiasm for (first) body and cage (then bullet) slamming so-called invaders (of bigot's safe spaces with challenging questions or outer appearances), because those who can and will volunteer to do so are "my kind of guy?"
The fight against crime magically added hundreds of thousands of previously non-existent "criminals" to the prison population. The illusionist made the illusion come true by sawing off real limbs of colored people's lives. Did this obsession to fight crime end us up with less crime & bloodshed or with more crime-prone hate and gun access opportunities seducing to crime? Now we're escalating the fight against crime by criminalizing the hard-working undocumented doing the underprivileged jobs we shun and inciting to crack down on them.
Seriously, what enthusiasm was there for all to see in these days of Mourning in America? This can only be the enthusiasm for the henchmen and for the guy who whispered the instructions in the henchmen's ears and pats them on the back after the public execution, or, please explain, what enthusiasm?
Bullets may split a skull, but first and foremost words will split skulls in presenting ideas that send us bullets.
2
Great last sentence!
Absolutely right Bret
It's about guns.
Let's keep our eye on the ball here.
2
We may never know what spurred Mr. Betts to do what he did. Perhaps in his twisted pursuit of "progressive ideology" he felt obliged to respond in kind to the events in El Paso. I only wish that the fuming conservatives had demanded the President do something to keep weapons of war out of the hands of the crazed liberals...and hence, everyone.
Well articulated.
3
Uh.... sorry, but Trump doesn’t need to specifically incite violence or offer money to terrorists to be directly responsible for the El Paso (at least) shooting. How in the world is he given ANY benefit of the doubt about intent to incite violence at this point? I just don’t get it!
2
For once, I agree with almost everything Bret says, except for one thing there at the the end:
It's not the Democrats job to fix the Republicans. The GOP is the problem. Massacre Mitch continues to block any attempt at make America safer from gun killers. There are no Democrats in Kentucky voting for him. Clean up your party before it kills us all.
2
These patterns of class hatred and intolerance in the Trump administration are very worrisome.
As a lapsed Catholic, I have many Catholic friends, some who consider themselves conservative and have aligned themselves with President Trump and his agendas. May I remind them of America's dark and not very distant history of passionately hating Catholics.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
1
“The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months… to convince America…that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.”
2
George Will said it best: electing Trump in 2016 embarassed the nation; re-electing him will be an indictment of our nation.
4
It is obvious that in general there have been two kinds of male shooters in these massacres.
One is the Sandy Hook and Dayton episodes where the shooter was a social outcast who hated the women who would not date him and the men who would not be his friend. These shooters have no empathy and kill with indifference.
The second type is a person fueled with rage at the 'other'. The other may be of a different color, religion or love people of the same sex. The El Paso killer was this type.
The Las Vegas killer was somewhat unique and does not fit in either group but may have been suicide by police because of his gambling losses.
We will never get all of the assault weapons off of the street but we can get the large capacity magazines out of the hands of potential killers.
2
So it’s up to the Democrats to clean up the mess created by Republicans. Typical.
Well, at least you defended Elizabeth Warren from a ridiculous charge. I’ve never heard her advocate violence like Trump does regularly.
3
"Poverty and climate change" are certainly NOT vague - they come down to that plant that doesn't grow anymore for the farmer in Guatemala, which causes thousands of climate refugees to start to bump up against a racist culture - no climate change and poverty are not at all abstract, and do cause terror and violence, as starving humans have to find out how to live. Did you read the headline of your own paper today? I have posted it for your edification.. I find your opinion incredibly isolated and insulated, as only a white man in America can be.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/climate/climate-change-food-supply.html
1
Thanks for this! We should get rid of guns but first we should get rid of Trump.
1
Trump is a one-trick pony. He railed against Mexican immigrants on the day he announced his candidacy and hasn't let up since. Now mass murders are being attributed to his obsession and invective. People are dying. That is several bridges too far.
1
While these type of tragedies happened under presidents before, Trump has taken it to a dirty art form, ie with bigotry, rabble rousing and dog whistles actively encouraging it and let it spread like wild fires.
That is the difference. Past presidents did nothing about the problem, Trump actually encourages it.
2
What you say is true, of course, but it omits a serious consideration—which needs to be stressed and repeated. Even if the Dayton killer believed in the policies of Sanders or Warren, neither of them ever said anything that could be construed to give encouragement to what happened. The same is true for the shooter of Steve Scalise. Republicans like to say that he was a Sanders supporter, but nothing Sanders said could even be twisted to imply any animus toward the Republicans gathered on that baseball diamond.
Contrast that with the three years of Mexican-bashing by Trump, plus the Trump language in the manifesto, plus the location of the killings, and it’s hard to deny the connection between the El Paso killers actions and Trump’s influence.
Denying that connection is as illogical and stupid as denying the connection between assault rifles and mass shootings.
2
Enough is enough. Quit blaming everything on Trump and avoiding your own responsibility. For years the fly overs have been insulted as deplorables, clinging to our guns, Bible and religion. The Left Coasts believe themselves superior to everyone in between.
1
The “Left Coasts” don’t need to blame Trump: The person who committed the El Paso massacre quotes his rhetoric verbatim as the reason for his atrocity. Trump is not being blamed for “everything,” only his exact words and actions. Trump supporters should acknowledge that; Trump should apologize and then resign. You people are an anvil around the neck of this country.
2
The hate in Crusius’ screed bears no resemblance to progressive or leftist rhetoric. It is on several occasions densely allusive to Trump’s standard rhetorical Trump’s. Coincidence?
I suppose we can expect no better analysis from those who draw inspiration from Ayn Rand. The answer to “Who is John Galt?” Is “Who cares?” Read some legitimate philosophy.
1
Brett, one point of critique:
As a writer, you surely know that words and phrases, particularly specifically-chosen words, urge their own acceptance.
Referring to even a large influx of fellow human beings as an infestation, as President Trump did (actually, he used the more actively threatening verb, "infesting"), is an act of dehumanization and de-individualization that encourages -- yes, even "incites" -- violence against members of that group. Indeed, it invites and, again, serves to incite, violence of the worst kind.
German (et al) nazis referred to Jewish people -- mom’s, dad, kids, grandparents, babies -- as lowly-regarded animals. Framing the Jewish people and Jewish persons as such paved the psychological path and set up psychological signposts to not only individual stomping and other forms of harassment and murder; but also the Holocaust genocide by, among other means, using a highly poisonous gas to mass-murder hundreds of individuals at a time -- a gas originally developed as an insecticide.
Similarly, Rwandan Hutu leaders repeatedly referred to their compatriot Rwandan Tutsis as "insects" -- and thereby incited the Hutu people to cut down and incinerate their Tutsi neighbors and coworkers in an effort to exterminate an entire ethnic group.
Trump's reported to have kept a bound copy of Hitler's speeches on his bedside table. One cannot credibly claim Trump's word choice wasn't a knowing, inviting (inciting?) reference to these and other mass murders.
2
I just about stopped after sentence #1. That's all it took THIS time for Bret to selfishly hijack the point around which ALL current events spin. (Never since Dan Rather has news based on whom observes it consistently endeavored to trump the actual news itself.)
But I'm glad I didn't stop because "the decline of civil society" INDEED comes when pluralism's particle/wave duality unduly collapses unto but a point not unlike Bret thinking HE'S the ONLY one who gets to open Schrodinger's box since the actual fate of Trump's 50/50 can't POSSIBLY depend on the insurgence of poverty entangled w/ climate change. ~~Rolling mine eyes right outta my skull!~~
Can't wait for the Nietzsche/God which-expired-first query to be superseded by the Bret/NYTimes decoherence to but a meaningless point.
Bravo Bret. As you called it it 2016, we have Mussolini masquerading as president of a diverse democracy. But it’s not just the Democrats and some of your fellow enlightened conservatives that need to focus on this plague. Where are the right(ous) pastors?
2
Invariably admire your clear analysis and writing. It’s easy to become deflated, discouraged, depressed in response to our country’s dreadful political moment. I fear that it’s difficult to perceive the tipping point which may catapult us towards chaos and destruction. Isaac Beshivas Singer, when asked (by Dick Cavett, how his family knew they had to leave Poland in the thirties responded “Anyone with eyes could see it”. Chilling.
3
"The president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Thank you, Mr. Stephens, for stating this so succinctly. This should be posted in every public space.
2
Your comment that it's up to the Democrats to convince the American people "that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety" basically gives the Republicans a pass on their own responsibility to address the terrible deficits of the current occupant of the White House.
4
"It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
And there you have it -- in a nutshell; what more need be said?
Only this: thank you, Mr. Stephens.
1
A wrongful death lawsuit should make him pay for the damage that he's done. When Mar-a-Lago is sold to pay for damages, then we might see some modicum of justice in this massacre.
This is the road to fascism. I can't imagine that Trump is elected again. If he is, the riots in the streets will make the 1960's seem like a cakewalk.
1
Thank you for today's comments, Bret. I thought you would also mention that the presidency's bullhorn is bigger and louder than anybody else's, and presumably, has more weight. Unfortunately for us, that is true in Trump's case as well. Only the beneficiaries are the racists and white supremacists among us, as Trump gives them the support that normal people are loath to give. The GOP will never admit what most of the world already knows and what Trump reinforces daily: he is a racist and a white supremacist, and he winks at his supporters as they themselves shout "shoot them" and "send her back".
All too true in Bret's column today. We must make the country understand that our safety depends on getting him out of office in 2020 or we will have more of the same for the next four years. I believe the Judicial Com. should start formal impeachment hearings so the public hearings will broadcast to the nation the lying corrupt person he is. Let him squirm a bit and struggle to keep his mess of an administration together. Also, as he so enjoys denigrating nick-names for others, I recommend using Spike Lee's favorite name for him, Agent Orange! Sums it up precisely.
"[T]he president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Perfect summary. Let no silent Republican say, when the day comes when they all find it necessary to distance themselves from the national disaster called Trump, that we - and they - did not know of the danger and cost of their complicity.
The fact that Trump is a disgrace should be self-evident to every American. What more do people need? You either see it, acknowledge it, and are repulsed by it, or....you find it, like Trump's base, delightful. If people haven't come to their senses by the daily outrage of this sociopathic man, than, good god, they'll never see it.
So I disagree with Mr. Stephens. Point out Trump's ugliness but take a path that leads us out of this administration and into actually solving our country's issues. Focus on policy. Bring some light back into this thing we used to call democracy.
Gee Whiz, Brett, you don’t have to sugar-coat it! Your mention of the misuse of the “bully pulpit” as one of Trump’s failings is spot on. He fails to use It to spread the American ideals of equality, fairness, civility and empathy and in the process demeans us all. And, rather than just being a buffoon, he is dangerous.
The sad thing is that the only way Trump could lose in 2020 is if he abandons his racist and hateful rhetoric. That would be regarded as the only betrayal that his supporters would find unforgivable. Anything else goes.
1
The President spews toxic propaganda in his tweets, at his rallies. He revels in applause, and if that applause springs from fear, hatred and violent leanings, that is OK with him, as long as he gets the ratings.
No liberal politician - no matter how much you disagree with their viewpoints - has called for violence, or let the violent undertone ("Shoot them!) fester at rallies for laughs and applause.
Somebody did "Shoot them!" and now we have the National Apologists on FOX Propaganda scrambling to wonder why Obama never got blamed for Sandy Hook.
Here's a hint, oh geniuses of the right: Never once did President Obama seek a laugh line by suggesting someone go on out and shoot up a few classrooms of first graders. And because Obama was personally devastated by the act, and for the families, and tried to fight the GOP brick wall to make meaningful change.
Trump was mechanical, and unable to see himself as a cause let alone consider a solution. Oh, yeah, we'll ban video games, but continue to stir up fear and loathing in campaign rhetoric. A few Hispanic families devastated is a fair trade for a second term, right?
If this were a Greek tragedy, Trump would find himself struck blind and dumb by the Gods, exiled and left to wander alone and without cheers and applause, in the company of feral dogs. I've never found myself wishing for Euripides to write the ending before.
2
..."the left’s idea that poverty and climate change are at the root of terrorism"....
Sorry Brett, no one on the left says this is a "root cause". There have been articles and analysis based on food shortages and migration leading to turmoil (in Egypt for instance, write by Friedman), however to state "the left" (an undefined and amorphous group) hold this as a 'root" cause of terrorism, is simply made up to create a reductive straw man argument conflating both sides as simplistic. The very thing you accuse Trump of doing.
1
Yes, "the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety." Well said. But to the millions of voters who stand by him, Trump is the country's savior. What does that tell you about the state of the nation? What does it tell you about the country's future?
1
The last sentence of Bret's column says it all and bears repeating. "It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Thanks Bret, I could not have said it better-
“... the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.”
Thanks for sharing, but the elephant in the room is being ignored, and willfully by you.
Trump is the product of republican politics; not its cause. White supremacy has under-girded everything republicans have stood for; Jim Crow, incarcerating every black person possible, resisting civil rights, thunderous support for cops who shoot blacks, and muted support of violence and arson against blacks since before you were born. What is Trump except the party's new corrupted fruit?
Republicans know this - although you seem not to, or at least profess as such. FOX is very busy denying that white supremacy exists. Failing that, they are quick to point that white supremacist is too small a force, and irrelevant. Because they could ever confront that hate media of their sort has promoted white supremacy in one form or another while pretending to be cloyingly not so. The gods of the republican party, under the alter of whom the party worships (Tucker Carlson, Fox talking heads, Alex Jones, Limbaugh, Nugent, other crackpots) - are doing everything possible to suggest that white supremacy is benign, irrelevant - and failing that - the others asked for it.
Trump cannot be absolved? The whole republican party cannot be absolved. The whole right wing hate machine, including the religious right churches cannot be absolved.
I.e., do not scapegoat Trump so you can feel good about yourselves.
2
@Kalidan
Jim crow was a product of Southern Democrats after the Civil War.
@DaveD: Who then became Republicans after Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act, quashing it.
2
Democrats aren't the problem, Donald Trump is. Our president incited his American loyalists to violence by constantly stoking the social media fires of race-hatred and bigotry. Trump's demented reality TV gutter talk will sink us sooner than we can imagine.
Democrats aren't the problem. The infestation of young white supremacists shooters, armed with military-style weapons, is our American problem today. El Paso and Dayton are just the tip of the horror iceberg. Our 45th president is a threat to our safety. A threat to our democracy.
1
It speaks volumes that a couple of days after 3 mass shootings in a week, NRA president La Pierre can call the president of the United States and remind him (threaten?) that his supporters will not be happy if he supports background checks. I guess the NRA wants felons and crazies to have the right to buy whatever weapons they can afford. Has La Pierre had a direct line with any other president?
1
Right wing arguments are often delivered with rat-a-tat ballistic fervor- smug, aggressive, certain. False equivalence is a major strategy:
- If Scalise was shot by a BernieBro or Betts liked Warren then white supremacy is a hoax and political rhetoric is irrelevant, easy access to combat weapons by civilians without background checks cannot be the problem.
- If you are worried about Russia contaminating our elections then you must agree to voter ID to protect US elections from fraud...even if that is actually voter suppression of poor, often Black eligible American voters.
1
Trump is in way over his head, even 2 1/2 years in.
It seems very clear from his speeches and tweets that Trump is a white supremacist. Believing white people, men in particular, are better than anyone else, destined to rule, and should always be first in line for everything: power, money, position. That is the definition of a white supremacist.
A bridge too far: Using the same logic, as Holman Jenkins, Jr. observed yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, then the social justice warriors and professional football players who daily accuse the police of violent racism "cannot be absolved" of the 2018 murders of 55 policemen and policewomen (?policepersons).
Bravo Mr Stephens!
Republican voters cannot sever overt racism from other policies they may favor. They have the lesson of Germans standing by in silence and tacit approval in 1933 as their leader scapegoated and dehumanized Jews.
Voting for Trump or any Republican senator so that McConnell is allowed to promote Trump's incitement to violence is an act to approve and promote racism.
And what policies are so important to extenuate racism? Caging kids? Support of Russia's favorite candidate to harm the U.S.? Trashing America's reputation and its word to abide by treaties it executes? Alienation of allies? Trashing the economy? Repressing the voting rights of fellow citizens. Making war on the environment?
Enough–
1
Trump's advocacy for violent solutions to problems is quite clear.
“If Hillary gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
"I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough - until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad," Trump tells Breitbart
342
@mungo He also encouraged his followers to "beat the hell out of" protesters and said that he would pay their legal fees, "I promise. I promise." No better than any of his other promises, fortunately.
36
@mungo
DJT reminded us that he also had the military and LE under his command. That was not a very subtle threat that he had considered using them in his own defense.
Why didn't that threat get more attention?
15
@BJW Trump also ignored the fact that lots of US military and LEO's didn't support his election.
If things played out the way he described, we would have a war with-in the ranks.
Lucky for everyone Trump is delusional.
10
From the earliest days of his political career, George HW Bush used race as cudgel in order to get elected. I read in fact that he was so upset with himself for having done it once at the state level that he confided with his pastor about it, and swore he wouldn't do that again. Well, he did of course with the infamous Willie Horton ad and that helped cement the presidency in his favor.
I mention this not because I hate Bush, but because I think he's about the most decent Republican I can think of. He truly did not intend anyone harm. Nevertheless, it is the legacy of Bush and others like him that has gotten us to Trump. Stephens may want to isolate Trump and say that he is to blame, but the truth is that Trump is the product of many years of Republicans strategically cultivating the white racist vote.
3
Thank you so much. This is the simple truth, and cannot be said too much.
1
Thank you for (again) saying so well precisely what I’ve been thinking.
1
Good column, Mr. Stephens.
"[Trump] will not, as Palestinian leaders still do, offer financial rewards to the families of terrorists."
But in his 2016 campaign, Trump DID offer to pay the legal bills of his supporters if they got into trouble for beating-up liberal protestors. Even here, the President has been dragging our country into some very dangerous territory.
1
Whether Trump’s rhetoric is a proximate or direct cause of the El Paso shooter’s twisted views is only one part of the challenge. The Republican leadership’s platitudes and usual defeating silence and some Democratic leaders’ irresponsible comments directly implicating the President in the shooting only add to the intractable morass. No one from either party has the kahunas to step outside their Twitter echo chambers and risk their careers for the good of the country.
I have a simpler view of the problem that is present. Our government is failing to keep its citizens safe. Ensuring the safety and security of its citizens is one of the fundamental missions of a functioning government. With mass shootings(3 or more) occurring at least once a week, we are at a tipping point. Resolute bipartisanship leaders can rise up and work to begin to solve this heinous problem. Absent that, we face a very perilous future, I believe. If government does not have the ability to keep us safe, then what? We are a short step away from being a country that descends into chaos and self destruction.
Given the personal wealth of Osama bin Laden and many of his followers, and the fact that Saudi Arabia unlikely to suffer much from climate change, as it is currently a DESERT, I find Bret’s assertion that “the left (some guy I met at a party once)” thinks that poverty and climate change causes terrorism, to be absurd.
But what’s a little false equivalency from a right wing writer? Answer: his daily bread.
On the bright side, at least we agree that Trump is vile. But is he vile enough for Bret to vote for Elizabeth Warren if she’s the nominee?
I doubt it.
Can’t let a little racism get between a conservative and the dismantling of environmental regulations and tax cuts, can we?
2
"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be........."
In yet another op-ed, Republican Brett Stephens tell Democrats what they should be doing, and how they should vote.
I been seeing a lot of Mr. Stephens on cable news programs, like MSNBC, giving the same 'advice' to Democrats.
When will he start telling members of his own party what they should be doing?
1
Thank you, Mr. Stephens. Now you know what ‘woke’ is supposed to feel like.
Why do you suppose it is that Republicans only listen to trump's hateful rhetoric and not to the voters?
Why elect any politician who will not listen to voters?
It's as though the democracy became a dictatorship long before trump, a dictatorship run by an entire political party.
I have to say I'm flabbergasted by the response of conservatives in defense of this consistently perverse president.
Even if the Dayton shooter was a Warren volunteer, which of course, he wasn't, in what way would that erase the widespread and completely deleterious effect of Trump's constant demonizing of large swathes of the population, his lying about individuals he deems "enemies", or in the case of politicians like Senator Brown or the mayor of Dayton, berating those not sufficiently worshipful, including the free press?
Forgive me my presumption, but I assumed that "I know you are, but what am I?" was a defense that grown ups left behind in elementary school. I genuinely hope that at least some of those defending the indefensible will wake up and remember they are presumed to be responsible adults.
1
Biden has read your mind Bret. Giving away the store ala Sanders and Warren is not the way to go for Democrats for 2020. Keep laser focused on Trump and his dog whistles calling out the crazies and the GOP endorsing his wackiness by staying silent
That will energize not only the Democrats but some of those who mistakenly put their trust in Trump in 2016. We need not only Trump out but the Senate has to change hands as well to regain our sanity.
1
"The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
Bravo Bret, yes, we can win on that, and I pray the Dems get it. All the policies are important, health care, inequality, climate change. But when you get right down to it, another four years of DT and we're sunk as a nation with any values to speak of. DT has so trashed the office, it will take a few terms of decent leaders to set the ship of state to rights.
1
Bret Stephens points out one truth, but ignores an other. Yes It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety. But it has been the conservative obstruction to all the social needs their pure greed and cynicism to there base that has lead the country to were we are today. The right had given up on building our nation and new ideas with the likes of Lee Atwater and Ronald Reagan. In a way he is trying to make Trumps argument after Charlottesville. "There a good People on both sides". Bret it's just getting harder and harder for me and much of the Nation to see good People on your side.
2
Another impeachable offense, Nancy!
The tweet mentioned in this piece, and many others, seem to meet the standard for criminal speech. I'm not a lawyer, but to me his speech advocates violence and is likely to produce violent acts.
Of course the hate was around before Trump or he wouldn't have been able to garner such support and admiration from so many. But as POTUS his words have a terrible and powerful impact. As we have seen in the loss of so many lives at the hands of those who hear his words.
3
This resentment toward Mexican immigrants has been simmering for far longer than Trump has been president. The motivations for white supremacist terrorism are also far older than Trump. This anxiety among white people, the fear of "replacement", reached its fever pitch in 2011 when 77 people were killed in Norway for purely ideological reasons outlined in a lengthy manifesto, reasons that were echoed by the Christchurch mosque shooter in 2019 in his own manifesto. A span of 8 years and thousands of miles separated these incidents, yet the ideas behind them draw a clear line between them. What happened in El Paso is undeniably a part of this pattern. As is the emergence of Trump as a leader in the intervening years between Oslo and Christchurch.
It does not make sense to me to see Trump as a cause of this hatred, he is a late comer all things considered. He is a symptom of it, as much as the shootings are. While the killings wreak a terrible, immediate cost in lives, Trump's toll is far more insidious and widespread. He is like an auto-immune disease, weakening society's ability to resist already-present pathogens. I do not mean to say everybody who voted for Trump is a white supremacist or a murderer, only that there is a commonality in deep seated emotional motivations.
It is the racial anxiety. It led to Trump getting elected, who in turn worsened the anxiety rather than alleviating it. In that he is culpable. But this cannot be laid solely at his feet. It goes deeper.
1
It's not just Trump's own language, but the language of his supporters that is incendiary. When Trump spoke about the "invasion" of Hispanics at his Florida rally and someone yelled out "shoot them," he could have stopped right then and cautioned his fans to "condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy" and that "hate has no place in America." But, these were the words he read from a teleprompter after 29 people were dead. Instead, in Florida Trump smirked and smiled as the crowd erupted in laughter and cheers at the suggestion.
It's not too much of a stretch to see the connection between the person who yelled "shoot them" to the approval of Trump and his followers and the men who actually decided to do just that. Trump supporters get defensive about Hillary Clinton calling them deplorable, but what other adjective characterizes people who laughed and cheered at that call to shoot Hispanics?
This is hard for me to admit as a life-long liberal, but Bret Stephens has become my favorite NYT opinion writer. His reasonable, well-argued, and often surprising columns are a must-read, regardless of the topic. Even when I disagree -- as I do deeply with some of his climate-change views -- I respect his mind and admire his voice.
1
Spot on!
The real "Conscience of a Conservative" highly recommended reading for all Americans. I am a former life-long Republican, whom Trump chased away. Also former member of the Fake Media (now retired).
2
It's not the the El Paso shooter was a Trump supporter. It was the he complained on social media about immigrants then proceeded to go to "El Paso" and started shooting. Trump became president in part by turning up the heat and railing against immigrants crossing the Southern border illegally. Most reasonable people would see the connection there. Trump supporters are enabling continued anti-immigrant violence by refusing to condemn it. Instead trying to pass the blame and muddy the waters.
Hear, hear
If Bret is writing this it must be time for Impeachment
4
It is important to remember that the Republicans are now using, as Mr. Stephens puts it "Evasive reasoning" by escaping blame for these mass shootings by calling for a "mental health system" to catch these people before they cause more carnage. What they conveniently do not admit is that it is the Republicans that very deliberately dismantled our mental health system in the 1980s. They claimed it was too expensive and just another example of big government.
2
Democrats cannot save the country from Trump by themselves. Republican politicians and the millions of Americans who still support him have to decide whether holding the White House for four more years and appointing a couple more conservative justices to the Supreme Court is worth the long-term damage he is doing to our international standing, the wanton cruelty he is inflicting on vulnerable people, and the debasement of our public discourse.
3
Trump is everything you say. Yet he has 90% approval rating among registered Republicans. What does that say about Republicans? Is there not a single decent human being within the GOP willing to challenge Trump for the 2020 nomination?
4
@Laurence Hauben
You are the company you keep and support. That is human nature.
Hence.. the bulk of what remains of the republican party is as loathsome as Trump if they continue to support him and make excuses for him.
One would think that conservative republicans would cut their losses with Trump and find a way to unseat him early and put the puppet Pence in the office.. because he is a better reflection of extreme conservative values and at least behaves politely in both public and politics. Since this is not the case though.. it to me indicates that they are indeed hateful racists just like Trump.
The Dayton shooter:
1. was a democrat
2. supported Elizabeth Warren
3. supported Antifa
Trump was no more responsible for the El Paso shooting than Warren was responsible for Dayton. Both shooters had mental health issues.
The media must stop dividing our nation!
https://nypost.com/2019/08/06/dayton-shooter-may-be-antifas-first-mass-killer/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/05/us/connor-betts-dayton-shooting-profile/index.html
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/08/07/dayton-shooting-what-do-we-know-connor-betts-politics/1942122001/
4
-The Dayton shooter did not leave a racist manifesto
-The Dayton shooter did not drive 10 hours to specifically kill people of an ethnicity
-No Democratic leader talks about specific ethnic groups as an infestation
1
@99percent - Elizabeth Warren never spoke of an "invasion" of this country by "rapists and murderers" who were becoming an "infestation".
False equivalency.
2
But racial hatred did not animate the Dayton shooter, nor did he target any particular race. White America has a White Supremacy problem, and this president is exploiting it to try to keep himself in power. He joked with his supporters in Florida about shooting Latinos at the border. And then one of the did it. Your point is a false equivalency at every level.
2
Words matter and the President's word matter even more.
Whether we like it or not, people hang on to the President's every word to determine what is acceptable or not. This is why even unintended words have consequences. This why people (used to) have a PR department and this is why people who use Twitter without a filter can have consequences beyond what a you might think.
My advice to Trump would be to please not open your mouth and certainly stop using Twitter. Nothing that is coming out of your mouth - intended or unintended - is proper or anything anyone really wants to hear.
If you can't say the right thing, don't say anything at all.
While not all Republicans are hate filled white supremacists, it seems that all hate filled white supremacists are Republicans - and this is company the current occupant of the White House is glad to keep - without too much argument from the other’s in his party. His People, His Party. This is now America.
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Racist rhetoric + guns modified to kill humans = 45
What is hard to understand?
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Conservatism today is white supremacy and elitism dressed up in an old George Will bow tie.
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It's easy to blame Trump for his divisive rhetoric. But the modern idea ("essentialism") that people are defined by their ethnicity is promoted by the left, who endlessly talk about race. If we thought of each other only as Americans, which is what unites us, none of this would happen. Anything else should be left to our private lives.
Once we remove the ideas of ethnicity and race from the public sphere, immigrants become as valued as natives when they adopt the American ideas of democracy, the political culture bestowed on us by centuries of Anglosphere politics.
The "Squad" and their allies who dominate the Democratic Party are as divisive, and as responsible for our troubles, as Trump. They deserve each other, and should all depart from public life.
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@Jonathan Katz trump doesn't go a day without tweeting insults or racist posts about some American or foreign minority. You ignoring that fact and then pivoting to four congresswomen who represent a few hundred thousand constituents in total is an absolute joke.
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This is not only one of the best op ed columns I have read, it is the most necessary at this moment in history. How do we get this message across to the least self-reflective president this country has ever elected? How do we get it across to his advocates? Please. Tell me. It is too late to wait for voting him and his party out. Especially when we are constantly being told that he might win again.
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Can you please go on Fox ‘News’ and say that?
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And why aren't more people of integrity running against Trump -- as Republicans.
Personally, I think it is every honest, truly America-loving Republican to try to wrest the Presidential nomination from Donald Trump and his ilk.
So, how about it, Mr. Stephens? Other readers who are Republican?
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Climate change and poverty DON'T cause conflict??Are you kidding??. They are not diffuse or non-specific, they come down to one farmer in Guatemala not being able to grow one square foot of corn, and these people become refugees and bump up on our government, which tortures and deports them, and that causes active resistance. Do you really live in such a bubble that you do not see how cli mate change is causing terrorism and wars?? That statement on your part belies the common sense of your entire opinon piece..
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That's not what he said. He implied that terrorism, specifically, cannot be explained simply by referring to climate change or poverty.
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@grace thorsen
I suggest you go back and read again.. this time with your mind in neutral.. and not in hard reverse (ie: republican spoon fed talking points that always try to deflect from the core issue of unrestricted high capacity firearms in the hands of white nationalists ready and willing to use them on any target by the republican party).
@A Reader "This is the right-wing equivalent of the left’s idea that poverty and climate change are at the root of terrorism: causes so general that they explain everything, hence nothing. Why not also blame Friedrich Nietzsche and the death of God??"
Sorry, @A Reader, climate change, drought, floods, starvation are a LOT closer to chaos and war today than an 'implied" correlation with Nietzche..It is really an amazingly insulated comment designed to denigrate the science of climate change and the effect it is having..I would be a lot more supportive of Bret if he even gave climate change a whif of respect..Instead, he is like, it is like the death of god, or. might I impugning his further opinion, " a chinese hoax." No thanks, Bret, it is far more consequential than Nietsche and the death of god..That is just flamboyant, unsupported rhetorical misdirection..
By "scripted condemnation" you of course mean a leaden attempt to actually read words. He didn't write them, he barely got through the painful-to-watch process of reading them, and he certainly doesn't mean them. His hands are drenched in red from the attack in El Paso, and the sooner and louder we shout that from the rooftops, the more likely that this outrage will not be forgotten. Thank you for this article.
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Just for the moment, let's ignore the fact that Crusius stated flatly that:
"My ideology has not changed for several years. My opinions on automation, immigration, and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president. I'm putting this here because some people will blame the President or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case. I know that the media will probably call me a white supremacist anyway and blame Trump's rhetoric."
So, if for a moment we ignore all the facts, and words of the shooter himself, Stephens' accusation of incitment by Trump would hold water.
And that is typical of opinion pieces in the Times. In order to paint a false narrative that fits the progressive left worldview, facts are glossed over, or ignored in their entirety. It's also a common practice in news items, where exculpatory information is excluded in order to inflame public opinion.
If we DON'T ignore the facts, Stephens' contention is baloney.
@Objectivist. ...You don't understand. Think of the El Paso shooter as a fire. Pour gasoline on a fire and you get a conflagration. Trump didn't start the fire, but he did pour gasoline on it. If the two things aren't connected in shooters mind, then why did he bother to mention it?
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Fair enough. Crucius’ manifesto said: “My opinions on automation, immigration, and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president."
And that very well may be true. But having racist or xenophobic ideas is one thing. Acting on them something is entirely different.
When you have a president that gleefully fans flames of social tensions and unequivocally validates animosity toward outsiders, you're gunna get people who feel emboldened to actually do something about their horrible ideas.
Don't for a second tell me this guy’s actions exist in a vacuum. They are absolutely tied to the cultural climate created by a president who, every single day without fail, looks for ways to validate the worst of humanity.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2019/may/09/trump-laughs-after-audience-member-suggests-shooting-migrants-video
You are assuming three things:
1. That verbatim or near-verbatim duplication of Trump’s rhetoric is purely accidental and not allusive;
2. That the shooter could not plausibly have lied with respect to the influence of Trump, perhaps thinking the embattled president should be shielded from the blowback of the terrorist act;
3. That it is entirely likely that, yes, Crusius’ sentiments predate the Trump presidency, just as the mass shooting epidemic does, a sociological fact which is, in fact, a prerequisite for Trump’s presidency in the first place, but also that Trump’s enabling rhetoric has created a feedback loop and given such preexisting hatreds license. THESE TWO THINGS ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.
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Thank you for this opinion piece, Mr. Stephens. It has been deeply frustrating to see conservative commentators and conservative news outlets trying desperately to spin events to make it seem like "both sides" are equally struggling with violent extremism, or that Trump's rhetoric has no bearing on the succession of violent attacks that we have seen recently. I disagree, however, that the main task at hand is only for Democrats to convince America that the current President is a disgrace to the office, democracy, and the Constitution, as well as a threat to our safety. This is the responsibility of all Americans of good conscience, who care deeply about our nation and its people. This is not about political party. This is about what it is to be American. We are better than this. Let us all do this together.
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It's so nice to read a conservative's critique of the president that is honest, intelligent, and harsh.
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We've known Donald Trump is a racist and inciter of hatred since well before he ran for president; his amplification of the birther fiction, demonizing the Central Park Five, and record of discrimination in housing rentals were more than enough evidence. Our problem is that Trump has an unshakable core of support of almost forty percent of American voters, and another large segment of the electorate who could easily vote for him if the economy is good at election time. How do you save a nation from its own descent into moral turpitude?
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Mr. Stephens, your final thought is key. With discipline and effort we can vote Trump into history. However, the country is infected with hate, and the condition is acute and spreading. You made the point that Dayton killer, Connor Bett's liberal political leanings don't square with the ethnic hate fueled act by the El Paso assassin. I have reason to disagree. The majority of the Dayton victims were people of color, except for Megan Betts, the killer's sister, and two white males. Many questions were raised about the reason for the fratricide. Could Betts have mistakenly killed his sister in the confusion and frenzy? Ethnic hate is the answer here too! It is my understanding Megan Betts had an African American boyfriend. Evidently her brother preferred to see her dead than with a black man. Hate caused their parents to lose both of their children.
All true, but sadly, his base does not care. Most of them, deep down, think Trump is right. And also that Obama was born in Kenya and there are still kidnapped children in the basement of that pizza place in DC.
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“This is the right-wing equivalent of the left’s idea that poverty and climate change are at the root of terrorism”
Okay, I’ll even give you that this is true. But will tackling climate change and poverty lead to the destruction of civilization? Addressing these issues can only have positive outcomes regardless of the motivations for them. Unlike not tackling white supremacist terrorism.
Bret Stephens: "Southern strategy," "Philadelphia, Mississippi," "Lee Atwater," "monkey," "Willie Horton."
Answer us.
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Agreed. The President cannot be absolved of responsibility for the hatreds that led to El Paso, nor can he be absolved of the crimes the Mueller report shows there is evidence he did commit. So let's see, Obstruction of Justice, Failing to report election assistance from a hostile foreign power, Incitement of Violence, Furthering the goals of White Supremacy and Racism by terrorizing the children of immigrants and demonizing non white people.....And so now that we for the millionth time know that Trump is up to no good, WHEN DOES THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL START? Let's get this thing going before more pepole die!
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In the case of the aforementioned Rwandan genocide, it is interesting that a couple of those propagandists were charged -- and convicted -- of complicity in that genocide.
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Bret has laid out a strategy for the Democratic Party:
Abandon the positions taken by most of your candidates and focus on Trump and you can win the great middle and the election. Or pursue your left most positions, and watch moderates hold their noses and vote for Trump.
He probably has that right.
As to the general question of mass shootings, culture and the internet and mental health do seem the predominant drivers. Of the 20 worst shootings in US history (back to 1966), only 2 (El Paso and Pittsburgh) seem driven by extreme right or anti immigrant ideology. 3 were Islamic terrorism (Pulse, San Bernardino, and Ft. Hood) and 1 was a robbery (Seattle). All the rest seem lacking in any motive, other than maybe a response to bullying (some of the school shootings), and are simply the inexplicable acts of deranged individuals.
A list is here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1039016
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@Meg "Bret has laid out a strategy for the Democratic Party:
Abandon the positions taken by most of your candidates"
Brilliant strategy!
But wouldn't that make them Republicans?
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A house divided cannot stand Trump.
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“He will not, as Palestinian leaders still do, offer financial rewards to the families of terrorists.”
I remember a certain pledge to pay the legal bills of those that assault. Maybe that doesn’t make the top 50 outrages?
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"It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
We know all that.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the GOP are using the uproar from these tragedies to divert attention from their suppress the vote efforts to benefit Trump.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/corey-lewandowski-new-hampshire-voting-law_n_5d4849d2e4b0acb57fd06a4e
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Title correction:
"Stephens' Rhetoric and Conservative Denial."
There, fixed it.
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Re the gratuitous: "He will not, as Palestinian leaders still do, offer financial rewards to the families of terrorists. "
This is about compensating innocent families who are victimized by Israel's illegal policy of collective punishment, including destruction of houses where terrorists had once lived. It's not about a "reward."
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It does not invalidate this editorial by any means, but it may be worth noting it is precisely what [the crazed shooter] predicted would be written in his crazed “manifesto”.
As usual, the media is exploiting this tragedy by printing rumors as truth. We have unverified Manifesto with no proof who wrote it being touted as fact. Since Law Enforcement has the shooter why can't we wait for confirmation before we jump to our own biased conclusions before we exploit another tragedy for political gain
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Like many liberals, I cringe before reading one of Stephens' columns, but he regularly does a better critique of Trump than just about anyone.
Should I say, thank you for calling out deluded conservatives on their denials of the obvious racist terrorism?
There is a white supremacy agenda lurking as the defining background colour in the ugly mural of terrorism in this country, which you didn’t point out.
However, after a sentence like this,
“It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.”
one can overlook the oversight.
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Well done Bret.
You need to contextualize your suggestion that “the Walmart massacre is . . . the first large scale anti-Hispanic terrorist attack in the United States in living memory.”
We can mince words over the definition of a “terrorist attack” but, especially as someone who spent his childhood in Mexico City, you know that this sentiment is misleading.
Mexican Americans have been victimized by Americans since the early nineteenth century. The instruments of this terror were the Texas Rangers, ranchers, and settlers. Mexicans were routinely lynched and killed, a conveniently ignored aspect of the story of Texas. Mexicans did not migrate to America then, but US borders redrawn around them.
Texas asserted its independence from Mexico in 1836 and became a part of the Union in 1845, triggering the two-year war between Mexico and America in 1846, and culminating in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
The Rio Grande boundary for Texas was established, and the US came into ownership of California, half of New Mexico, and most of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. Mexicans within these new boundaries could relocate to Mexico or become American citizens.
That this latest attack took place in El Paso is part of a larger sordid history.
The 1943 Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles are also noteworthy.
The NYT has devoted many articles to this subject, including the excellent piece by Simon Romero (March 2, 2019).
But, of course, you already knew that.
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"Connor Betts, the alleged Dayton shooter, had left-wing political views,"....So the argument is that a misogynist with an assault rifle is a liberal? That's weird.
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Could we got through even one "conservative" column without blaming the left for something?
Is there not sufficient moral and intellectual failure on the right, to fill one entire column on its own?
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I wonder; by blaming shootings on mental illness and saying that the mentally ill should not have guns, is Trump implying that white supremacism is a mental illness, and white supremacists/ white nationalists should not have guns? That would be an interesting argument.
As for Texas being invaded by Hispanics, who is writing the history textbooks these days? There were indigenous people in that area before the Spaniards arrived in the 1500s, and there were Spanish-speaking "Mexicans" there before Texas became part of the US in the 1800s; who invaded whom?
Finally, since we are discussing different leaders' rhetoric, let's not forget that Menachem Begin called Palestinian Arabs two-footed beasts and his chief of staff called them cockroaches.
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What part of “existential threat” did you not perceive until just now? No empathy, no moral compass, no respect for truth, no curiosity, no introspection and NOW you’re stating in journalistic horror that we should vote him out because he’s “an insult to our dignity, a threat to our country and a danger to our safety”? Where ya’ been, Bret?
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"His scripted condemnation on Monday of white supremacy was, at least, a condemnation."
Gee, Bret, you almost had me believing you were sincere in your refutation of Trump's invective. Then you go and give some degree of credence to an "apology" that came only from his mouth, with no hint of his heart and brain being involved. There wasn't a scintilla of remorse.
He said nothing of value and, as usual, nothing with even the faintest scent of unity. He attacked El Paso's leadership BEFORE he left to allegedly console the survivors and credit the first responders.
I'm sure it's hard to walk off the plank of conservative support. If you're going to try you need to take the last step.
Hillary tried that last sentence. See where it got her??!! Some 45% of the American people like what Trump says. The Upshot just said that Trump has more popular support now than he did when he was elected
"...It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety."
And that's putting it mildly.
The GOP's continued, unwavering support for this man is a moral failure of the highest order.
Is there not one senator among them who is capable of stepping forward to say enough's enough?
When Trump finally drives us off the cliff he's going to pull everybody over the side with him, even all of his cowardly enablers.
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"His scripted condemnation on Monday of white supremacy was, at least, a condemnation."
Gee, Bret, you almost had me believing you were sincere in your refutation of Trump's invective. Then you go and give some degree of credence to an "apology" that came only from his mouth, with no hint of his heart and brain being involved. There wasn't a scintilla of remorse.
He said nothing of value and, as usual, nothing with even the faintest scent of unity. He attacked El Paso's leadership BEFORE he left to allegedly console the survivors and credit the first responders.
I'm sure it's hard to walk off the plank of conservative support. If you're going to try you need to take the last step.
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How about "Obama founded ISIS"? And then, days later, when in a soft-ball interview they tried to explain his comments as meaning Obama created the conditions for ISIS to emerge. He interrupted and emphatically doubled down: "No! Obama founded ISIS!"
What do I do with that and the myriad of other horrific & damaging things he's said? Where do I put that in my mind while I come to grips with 5 more years of him & the fact that Schools & Navy Vessels will be named after him?
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How can congress not act to get Trump out of office when he very clearly and deliberately inspires some of his supporters towards terrorism?
Cesar Sayoc, Who Mailed Pipe Bombs to Trump Critics, Is Sentenced to 20 Years
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/nyregion/cesar-sayoc-sentencing-pipe-bombing.html
“After the sentencing, Ms. Wasserman Schultz said in a statement that Mr. Sayoc “was admittedly inspired by the president’s hateful rhetoric.”
“This president’s words have consequences,” she said.”
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It is beyond disheartening that Mr. Stephens's words and 'instructions' will not be read (and would not anywise be heeded) by the "Conservatives" who are most in need of instruction … to wit(less), the not-in-the-least conservative (except in their desire to conserve some 'pale' and 'privileged' power and station) "Conservatives" in office and 'on' the airways. And it goes w/o saying that trump won't read or heed them.
P.S. I saw too much trump t.v. while watching MSNBC yesterday. (Hence, Electric Prunes-like -- but 'with politics' -- I had too much 'become-a-nightmare' to dream last night.)
Now I know that carlson, hannity, the "Fox & Friends" clarions of sycophancy and stupidity, and their 'like' on the radio side, are more frightening (some might say "insane") 'trump-white' conspirators than I had thought or imagined. (Scarier, in a sense,Mr. Stephens and readers, than arafat ever was -- whereas and at least, the source of arafat's 'ill-wishing' could be understood by all ... no matter any one's or every other's disagreement).
Incredible? No longer. (Look it up, trump. Just kidding ... over a bowl of veil-of-tears cereal.)
s/ Broken hearted "white" male retiree in NYC
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I have to point out that Mr. Stephen's prior column (Aug 2) suggested that diversity leads to "anti-excellence".
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