Michelle, my comments are based on facts. Trump’s speech did not encourage violence. The riots were planned long before he gave is speech. The provocateurs of the riot clearly planned to use his speech to incite a mob. And one could argue that Trump was used by these people.
That Trump can be outrageous and a bully is not in dispute. Nor do I particularly care for Trump’s personality. But his personality is not what is tearing this country apart.
What is tearing this country apart is the most divisive issue in US history since slavery… progressive liberalism. Unlike slavery, progressive liberalism does not carry the same “moral” repulsiveness, but it is extremely divisive and no one captured that divisiveness better than Joe Biden in his recent speech.
On one side of this debate are those like me, that me believe our country should strive to insure that every American has the opportunity to succeed… I wish that opportunity were “equal” but it never will be… but we can strive to make it more equal… through laws against systemic discrimination, providing poor children access to better education, and an economy that provides everyone that wants a job… a job.
On the other side of this debate are those progressive liberals that reject the goal of equal opportunity and argue for equal equity. That argument is fundamentally a “socialist” argument that says we can’t trust the “marketplace” to be “fair”, so government will have to take the lead role in determining who gets what. A select group of powerful individuals across the media, academia, industry, and government will collectively decide what you deserve or don’t deserve. I reject that.
Now Trump was never a threat to our democracy… he never imposed any restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble, or the other civil rights that serve to insure we have a democracy. Thomas Jefferson argued that as long as people in our country had the right to debate ideas, that the people could be trusted to sort out the good ones from the bad ones. He even inferred that allowing “hate” speech was an important part of democracy, since censorship will never know where to draw the line.
Let me encourage you to read the Federalist papers and some of the early writings of our founding fathers along with the Constitution. Understand how important it is that we don’t “censure” people, or “cancel” them, or insist on political correct speech, if we want a democracy. Sadly, to many people today have done far to little reading on how we came to be the greatest nation of our time… and it all starts with the free exchange of ideas and an underlying trust that the American people can decide for themselves what is right or wrong…
You seem to struggle with that idea… since this whole thread is about Trump wanting to set up his own organization as a vehicle to project his political opinions in the “marketplace of ideas”. As an aside, you have every right and I expect you won’t listen to them… fortunately, we live in a country where you have that right to ignore Trump… but we don’t live in a country where you have the right to suppress his “free speech” rights…
