Trump, Tulsa and Gratuitous Misogyny

Perhaps I cannot fully escape my Catholic upbringing that stressed that the difference between good and evil and the call to treat others as one would want to be treated.  The Church turned out to be full of evil itself as demonstrated by the still ongoing sex abuse scandal that touches literally every part of the globe.  Yet the concept of good and evil remains relevant as does the so-called Golden Rule. Donald Trump embodies evil and a shredding of the Golden Rule.  Fanning hate, division, and never ending lies are the norm for Trump as is the denigration of others, especially non-whites and non-heterosexuals. What is most appalling about Trump and his supporters is that they know the are guilty of misogyny but simply do not care.  Selfishness and in Trump's case, narcissism, are a defining feature as is a desire to trumpet a white supremacy message even as the majority of Americans are facing the reality of the nation's historic racism and the brutality many blacks have suffered at the hands of whites. Trump's decision to hold a MAGA rally in Tulsa underscores the evilness of Trump's agenda. While moving the rally date to the day after Juneteenth, Trump knows precisely the message he is sending by holding a rally in Tulsa, the site of one of the worse massacre of blacks in the 20th century.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Trump's sick message to his followers.  Here are highlights:

Trump has decided to push his first post-pandemic campaign rally to the day after Juneteenth. Known as Freedom Day, Juneteenth commemorates the date in 1865 when the last remaining enslaved blacks in Texas learned, two years late, that the Emancipation Proclamation had set them free. He was wise to listen to his African American friends and advisers on that score.

But he is still plowing ahead with a rally in Tulsa, the wrong city for a “Make America Great Again” event in this incendiary moment for our country. Tulsa was the site of one of the most vicious acts of racial violence in U.S. history. In 1921, an angry white mob attacked homes and businesses in a thriving community known as “Black Wall Street,” killing some 300 people and leaving thousands homeless. In another time, and perhaps with a different president, a trip to Tulsa could be an occasion for absolution or remembrance, a chance to talk courageously about healing America’s gaping racial wound.

But for this administration, the decision to hold a rally in that city constitutes an act of diabolical irony. A man who rode to the White House on a hot gust of racial grievance will be visiting a place where white resentment exploded into two days of epic terror, wiping one of history’s most prosperous black communities off the map.

All these years later, they are still trying to find where the bodies of black victims were buried in Tulsa, still trying to calculate the loss of property and income, still trying to determine who set the fires and flew the planes that dropped burning balls of turpentine onto black-owned buildings, still trying to piece together the full history because there was a concerted effort to erase that, too, from news archives and history books.

[T]he voters who allegedly want to make America great again already know Trump is their guy. He doesn’t need to send up a dog whistle to win their approval. But he does crave their roar of affirmation. Why else hold a rally in the midst of a pandemic?

Trump’s office has reportedly been crafting a speech on race. That’s a complicated exercise for a president whose default is to divide and demean.

If this president wants to visit Tulsa on the day following Juneteenth, let’s follow that city’s lead and make sure everyone in America knows about the Tulsa massacre and Juneteenth history.

This would also be a very fine pulse point to talk about the racial bitterness toward black financial success that led white people to burn a prosperous Oklahoma community to the ground. White violence against black aspiration occurred elsewhere: Rosewood, Fla., in 1923; Springfield, Ill., in 1908; and Elaine, Ark., in 1919. It happened after both world wars to returning black servicemen, whose military rank and training conflicted with America’s subordinate station for black men.

The birtherism movement that challenged the fact of Obama’s citizenship was fueled by those who had difficulty accepting a black family in the White House — a backlash that elevated the person who lives there today. This is not to say that racial resentment percolates in everyone who voted for Trump. We know that is not true. But we also know that a number of studies have shown it was a factor for a large percentage of voters. Trump’s appeal was not just about economic anxiety.

[L]et’s make sure that we accept the tragic message from Tulsa: Black success matters, too.