Donald Trump and the GOP Sickness

It doesn't matter at this point whether Donald Trump (R-Trump Towers) gets the Republican nomination to be President of the United States.  I don't believe he will, but I don't discount it as not possible given the racist elements in parts of the GOP base, and given so much of the ignorance that this base has shown.  (In the latest example, a new Bloomberg poll shows that about 55% of Republicans actually think that unemployment has gone up during the Obama Administration.  The reality is that unemployment has dropped from 7.8% down to just 5.6%.)

The point, though -- whether he gets the nomination or not -- is that on Thursday Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate, made numerous statements about the government watching mosques in the United States and having Muslims literally register with the government...and thus far, not a single Republican candidate has expressed head-exploding outrage at a suggestion out of the pages of Nazi Germany.

To be clear, I don't easily throw around such comparisons.  And I am not hinting that Mr. Trump is a Nazi, nor are his fellow candidates for not slamming him.  But Mr. Trump himself was directly asked about the comparison to 1939 Nazi Germany by an NBC reporter, wondering whether such a comparison was apt, and the best that the leading GOP candidate could reply was not horror that anyone could say such thing, but rather merely, "What do you think?"  Further, the spokesman for a Jewish organization, referring to the concept of registering people for their religion in Nazi Germany, was quoted as saying, "We've seen this before.  And it didn't end well."  Ibrahim Hooper, national spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said, "What else can you compare this to except to prewar Nazi Germany?"  And Rabbi Jack Moline, executive director of the nonprofit Interfaith Alliance, told NBC News, ""My father was in World War II, and he fought to preserve America against what the Nazis were doing, This is exactly why there is an America, to not be like that."

(Note: If Rabbi Moline's name sounds familiar, that's because he's on the corporate board of Elisberg Industries, as VP of Telecommunications.  Hey, we're illustrious here...)

So, my comment is, sadly, appropriate.  Because the Trump suggestion to register people for their religion -- anathema to all that is decent in the world against atrocities and against every sacred principle at the core of the United States of America -- is now on the table, no GOP candidate has yet eviscerated it, and from such outlandish, pathetic, sick, off-handed comments come the disastrous breakdown of society, unless slammed shut immediately, repeatedly and endlessly.

"Never again" is a long-standard Jewish mantra, and it's not just for Jews. It's for everyone.  And by "everyone," I mean you.  Really.  Whoever you are.

There's a cruel, galling, maniacal virulence to the Trump comments which help fuel the racist reaction we're seeing swirl in the Republican Party.  And if anyone doesn't think it's racist, or if anyone doesn't think "everyone" means you, consider --

What if a pandering, attention-seeking demagogue suggested registering all members of a religious group out of fears for its relentless terrorist acts that have killed countless innocent Americans...and that group was Christians.  And lest you think that I'm being bombastic, I am pointing -- not to Christianity, but  -- to the terrorist acts of Christian extremist groups, to the terrorist White Supremacist groups that are based in twisting the tenets of the Christian religion, to the terrorist acts of the Ku Klux Klan that was founded in the debasing of Christian beliefs.  But all in the very public name of Christianity.  Acts like the Oklahoma City bombings of Timothy McVeigh.  Terrorist killings like bombings of abortion clinics acting against the Bible.  Mass terrorist murders like  -- well, honestly, I don't have the heart to name them all and their sick, terrorist brutality, but just do a web search.  You'll find numerous listings like, "10 of the Worst Terror Acts by Extreme Christians" here and "Christian Terror: 12 Examples of Terrorism from the Right" here and on and on, and horribly continuously on.

None of these terrorist murders and mass murders and bombings and lynchings over the decades were done as actual Christian acts, nor in any way indicative of the teachings Jesus and the New Testament.  None of them.  But that's how they were committed by Christian Extremists and Christian White Supremacists.  Just as none of the terrorist acts by ISIS and Al Qaeda and other such terrorist groups are acts by actual faith-based Muslims, but by jihadist terrorist extremists, twisting the Muslim religion and the Koran for their own terrorist ends.  These are acts of terrorism by terrorists, not acts of religion by the faithful.

And if you disagree with that, and even attempt to say, "Yes, but...", I can only refer you back to my unthinkable suggestion about Christian extremist terrorist groups acting, so they say in their perverted minds, in the name of Jesus and the Bible.

And what if that aforementioned pandering, attention-seeking demagogue -- let's give him a name, say, "Donald Trump," though not necessarily the one you're thinking of -- said that we should watch all the Christian churches and register all Christians because of all these Christian terrorist groups?  And no other Republican Party leaders cried out against him in outraged horror.

In fact, what if the only political leaders who expressed their fury at this attack against Christians were the liberals and the Democrats?

And if you don't think it could happen -- sorry, but it has.  Donald Trump merely changed the name "Christian" to "Muslim."

I understand people's serious concern over terrorism.  But the fear, the issue is over terrorists, extremists, jihadists.  Not people of religion practicing their faith -- something, you may recall, that is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution as the very First Amendment.  The First one.  So important, so critical that it's right before that Second Amendment one about guns, even.

What Donald Trump said -- whether or not he gets nominated -- is sick, dangerous, racist, pathetic, viciously anti-American, anti-humane, and any other like words you can think of.  All the more so because his fellow Republican candidates have remained silent.

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