By David K. Shipler
Making America Cruel Again, Part 4 of an
Occasional Series
Donald
Trump might not drink alcohol, but he is fueled by another addiction, probably
more dangerous: the roar of the crowd. After every brief period of detox in
Washington, surrounded by sober aides and Congressional Republicans who try to
contain his craving, he needs his fix. So he breaks loose and explodes into a rally
of avid worshippers in a carefully picked niche of the country where his cult
of personality thrives on loathing the rest of America. They adore him
feverishly, wrote the columnist Richard Cohen, because “he hates the right
people.”
Legitimizing
political hatred predated Trump, fostered by such propagandists as Rush
Limbaugh, who for years has been vilifying liberals, Democrats, blacks,
immigrants, the “drive-by” media, and “feminazis” who advocate for women’s
rights. Limbaugh’s name-calling has caught on with enough conservatives to make
its way into the White House and now prospectively to the Supreme Court if Brett
Kavanaugh is confirmed. Accused of sexual assault as a teenager, Kavanaugh showed
more judicial temper than temperament by attacking Democrats on the Senate
Judiciary Committee and raging against an imagined conspiracy of “the left” on
behalf of the Clintons. Trump loved it.
Whatever it is that Trumpist
conservatives want to conserve, it’s obviously not the civil discourse that has
lubricated the machinery of American democracy.
