Trump's garden party was a wicked carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism but also a preview of what the country would be if he's elected, by Hal M. Brown, MSW
This is the coverage (from Google News) of the Trump rally. Click image just to enlarge the titles just from the top of the page.
This is the first article, on the bottom left above) that I clicked on:
I’m a U.S. Navy veteran. Here’s why I’m protesting Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally
Next to the photo I used to illustrate this blog he wrote:
In February 1939, over 20,000 Americans gathered at MSG to support Hitler in a shocking display intertwining American nationalism, swastikas, and images of George Washington. Hijacking Washington’s birthday, they advocated for a “white-only America” and included a Pledge of Allegiance, posters stating, “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America,” uniformed stormtroopers, and speakers denouncing Jewish refugees and praising American racism like the anti-miscegenation laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Jim Crow policies.
“It’s always been American to protect the Aryan character of this country,” declared one speaker, Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze.
Does any of this sound familiar? It should. Trump’s rhetoric echoes the same dangerous themes. He frames immigrants as invaders, journalists as enemies, and political opponents as existential threats to America’s future. This is the same playbook authoritarian leaders have used for centuries.
He wrote this prior to the rally. Not ony did everything the author, Ken Harbaugh, predicted would happen actually happened, it was worse than I would guess he thought it would be.
By now if you have been watching MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and watched some of the coverage last night, you have seen discussions about how the rally was replete with offensive and racist comments.
The New York Times (which unlike The Washington Post and the LA Times) has endorsed a candidate) published this article (subsription):
Here's how it begins:
Donald J. Trump’s closing rally at Madison Square Garden on the second to last Sunday before the election was a release of rage at a political and legal system that impeached, indicted and convicted him, a vivid and at times racist display of the dark energy animating the MAGA movement.
A comic kicked off the rally by dismissing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” then mocked Hispanics as failing to use birth control, Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock-throwers, and called out a Black man in the audience with a reference to watermelon.
Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers.” A third called her “the Antichrist.” And the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Ms. Harris — the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father — with a made-up ethnicity, saying she was vying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.”
By the time the former president himself took the stage, an event billed as delivering the closing message of his campaign, with nine days left in a tossup race, had instead become a carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism.
The article didn't go into what Trump actually said beyond this: "Mr. Trump took the stage two hours after scheduled — was often infused with more self-indulgence than political strategy. It was about what they called a closing carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism. I would add that it was a preview of what a Trump administration would look like.
I have a feeling that when the Trump event was called a carnival the writers were thinking of Ray Bradbury's classic novel "Something Wicked This Way Comes" because it is about a wicked carnival with a menacing villian named Mr. Dark. Note the subtitle: The inflammatory rally was a capstone for an increasingly aggrieved campaign for Donald Trump, whose rhetoric has grown darker and more menacing. Mr. Dark is described in Wikipedia as follows:
"Mr. Dark", who seemingly wields the power to grant the townspeople's secret desires. In reality, Dark is a malevolent being who, like the carnival, lives off the life force of those it enslaves.
I could go on to draw a parallel with Trump and Mr. Dark, and the secret desires, though not so secret desires, of the people who are the townspeople who support him, but I am sure you can do this yourself.
Addendum: Here's an article that you may have missed.
