This is some serious shit, people, and you should be scared shitless. Our civil rights and freedoms are under attack and the leader of the attacks is sitting in the White House. He has branded Mexicans who cross the border illegally as rapists; thereby stigmatizing all Hispanics as criminals, citizens or not. He has attempted to ban ALL Muslims from entering the country, and relegating all Muslims to terrorist status. He has labeled journalists as the “enemy of the people.”
This is not what our founding fathers intended.
Example:
Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, reportedly slit the throats of two passengers on a commuter train in Portland, OR. The two died while trying to intervene and stop Christian from hurling anti-Muslim slurs at two young women. A third passenger was seriously injured.
Example:
A Republican candidate for congress grabbed with both hands around the neck a Guardian reporter and body-slammed him to the ground punching him.
Example:
From a piece published in The Guardian on May 27, 2017:
“On Friday Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, brandished a gun during a visit to a shooting range and said: ‘I’m going to carry this around in case I see any reporters.’ “
Example:
USA Today article published Jan 5, 2017:
“A burst of hate incidents and crimes reported in the days following Donald Trump’s election in November has
eased, but hate activity remains above pre-election levels, the Southern Poverty Law Center says.”
Example:
Politico article dated May 21, 2017:
“There were 56 hate crimes reported in New York City as of Sunday, Feb. 12, up from just 31 incidents over the same time period last year, according to figures released by the New York Police Department.
The increase was led by a rise in anti-semitic crimes, which jumped from 13 to 28. No other category of hate crime was in double digits.
The uptick follows a national trend, in which activists and police are fielding more reports of hate crimes, which began last year. In early November, New York City police officials reported 314 hate crimes to that point in the year, surpassing the 309 that had been reported in all of 2015. (In one incident, an off-duty NYPD officer and Brooklyn native, who is Muslim, was attacked, along with her teenage son.)”
Example:
From The Guardian published May 27, 2017 regarding emails they received in response to their reporter being attacked:
“In the wake of a Guardian reporter being body-slammed by Greg Gianforte, some people have been emboldened to condone the attack – as emails show.
Take the email from Mary from Montana with the subject line: ‘You sissy, Ben Jacobs.’ In the body of the text, she wrote: ‘I was raised in an orphanage … and broke other kids glasses; it’s part of living and surviving with jerks like you in the world.’
Then there was the offering from Mark from Pennsylvania, who declared that it was ‘great your reporter got body slammed. I’d punch him in the nose.’ Or Dennis from Dallas, Texas who said that Jacobs was at fault as he ‘shouldn’t poke his recorder in the face of someone’ – a reference to the question he asked Gianforte relating to the CBO score for the repeal of Obamacare. Dennis went on to say that the Guardian’s reporter ‘was confrontational and got his (_,_) kicked. There is a reason that the public’s opinion of the press ranks lower than that of Congress.’ “
What The Guardian found equally disturbing was the fact that the people who sent the emails were not ashamed to use their real names and, in some cases, their addresses. This bucks the typical long-standing internet trend of using anonymous made-up names.
Example:
From the same Guardian piece:
“Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners earlier in the week that Gianforte was ‘manly’ and ‘studly’ in contrast to ‘Pajama boy’ Jacobs. Conservative provocateur Laura Ingraham likened Jacobs to a bullied school child – denigrating both in the process.”
A quote from Hillary Clinton’s commencement speech at Wellesley College:
“…when people in power invent their own facts and attack those who question them, it can mark the beginning of the end of a free society.”
Whether you like Clinton or not, her statement is valid.
This is not what our founding fathers intended.