David Pakman (looking as downcast as I’ve ever seen him, and no wonder) discusses the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. 11 people (one of them a hero doctor from the early days of the AIDS epidemic) are dead, and a whole city is in mourning and solidarity with its Jewish community.
Despite the fact that this particular terrorist murderer considered Donnie to be insufficiently antisemitic (note Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism to marry Jared Kushner, etc.), there is still the fact that he proclaimed himself “a nationalist” and “an anti-globalist”. (“Globalist”,
Antisemites are by no means the only terrorists emboldened by Donnie’s vile rhetoric, though. There are also straight-up racists — the Kroger shooter, who was trying to get into a black church right before he shot two black elders in the supermarket, was one of those racists who can’t come right out and say they are, and the so-called “MAGAbomber”, Cesar Sayoc, who seemed to be trying to carve out some kind of right-wing nativist identity for himself (he is half Filipino/half Italian, not “Native American” or “Unconquered Seminole” as he claimed in his tweets), a marginal and mentally unstable individual whose own family are not speaking to him because he has apparently been antisocial and abusive for years already.
When these are the kinds of people who attach themselves to your rhetoric, while stable, sane and upstanding souls are forsaking you, you really have to take a hard look in the mirror. I doubt that Donnie does anything of the sort, however, unless his hair is not covering his bald spots properly. He’s such a narcissist that this was literally his excuse for not responding properly to the synagogue shooting!
And speaking of narcissism, get a load of the factually challenged serial Hatch Act violator, Kellyanne Conway, and HER straight-outta-Bizarroworld explanation for why the shooting happened:
“The anti-religiosity in this country that is somehow in vogue and funny to make fun of anybody of faith, to constantly be making fun of people that express religion — the late-night comedians, the unfunny people on TV shows — it’s always anti-religious,” Conway said, without naming particular hosts.
“These people were gunned down in their place of worship, as were the people in South Carolina several years ago,” Conway continued, referencing the nine people killed at a Charleston church in 2015. “And they were there because they’re people of faith, and it’s that faith that needs to bring us together.”
Conway added: “This is no time to be driving God out of the public square.”
Yeah, NO.
Considering how many devoutly religious believers are out there committing terrorism in the name of God, such as abortion clinic bombings and mass shootings, it’s hard to imagine how it could be a paucity of “God in the public square” that’s responsible. There has been an official separation of church and state in the US of Amnesia for over 200 years, but mass shootings have only been a newsworthy problem there for maybe the last 50 or so. And they arose, not coincidentally, in an age of resurgent anticommunism, increasing injection of religiosity into politics, gun fetishism, and political persecution of unbelievers and “incorrect” believers (atheists, for example, have been barred from public office in that God-happy country, particularly the fundamentalist south, while Muslims are being persecuted quite openly).
Just watch; in the weeks to come, we’ll start to hear more and more about the motives and motivations of these and other right-wing terrorists. And I predict that not a single one of them will have been motivated or emboldened by anti-religious sentiment, but by all the usual real problems: easy access to weaponry, racism, antisemitism, and that odious brand of nationalism that Donnie & Co. are still spouting, with impunity, every damn day of the week.
And it won’t stop until THEY are stopped.
