On Aug. 27, the Trump reelection campaign sent this message to its supporters in a fundraising email: “The President is calling on you at this critical time to remind (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and Democrats that this is our country, not theirs.”
This cannot — and should not — be dismissed as an “over the top” fundraising message. It is a declaration that a substantial portion of Americans are, in the eyes of Trump, not Americans at all because they don’t support Trump. Whether you calculate that percentage of Trump opponents based upon the 2016 presidential election, the 2018 congressional elections or the numerous polls from Jan. 20, 2017, up to the present that show at least a plurality, if not outright majority, of the people in this country do not support Trump, the message is clear. If you don’t support Trump, this is not your country.
In the Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that African-Americans “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Now Trump has said the same thing: If you are a Democrat, this is not your country; you have no rights which he, or his supporters, are bound to respect.
The Dred Scott decision, and Taney’s words, made the Civil War inevitable. Now Trump has issued what amounts to a declaration of war against half (or more) of the American people. Simply because those people don’t support him.
Think about that. This is not the “usual” Trumpian outrage. This is horrifying. No more, no less.
Eric Falk
North Huntingdon