God save the Republic from Demagogues and Rioters

My social media is suddenly full of white nationalists crowing over a coming race war.Why? Facing protests, Donald J. Trump with a history of racial problems, has had to cancel a speech in Chicago. Protesters and Trump supporters began to fight on the floor of the hall.

Video from the event shows both sides engaging in violence.

Every day white nationalist supporters of Donald J. Trump  fill social media with slurs, insults, and vile racism. They provoke and some fringe African-American groups have answered with equal violence. African-Americans, after centuries of slavery and decades of Jim Crow, find such provocation hard to stand.

Trump himself is no white nationalist and he “disavows” their support, but they flock to his bully boy rhetoric and his irresponsible claims about the most sensitive area of American life. When Trump says 81% of whites who are killed are killed by “the blacks,” he is wrong, but he is not just wrong. He is playing into racial fears and stereotypes that for hundreds of years have gotten people killed. 

There is no excuse of shutting down the speech of even a demagogue. There is no shock that violent speech, kidding about beating people up, has  bred violence.

Donald J. Trump is not right. Protesters inside his venue were not right.  Lawful protest of Trump (speech) must be allowed, but a rally is a private event. Donald J. Trump must be allowed to speak. That is a fundamental right in our Republic and shouting him down in the event is wrong.

The protesters have almost surely helped Mr. Trump in the short term, but Trump must realize that the nation does not wish four years of internal civil war. Outside the venue, one saw a young man with a sign that said: “I am not a rapist.” Careless rhetoric has made that man a protester and saying  “the Hispanics love me” is a lie.  Donald Trump must take responsibility for his rhetoric. He has sown the wind and now he is reaping the whirlwind.

America has a horrible racial divide. No matter what I say it will be wrong. Why? There are four hundred years of hurt and four hundred years of suffering.

God have mercy.

Of course, nobody is perfect. There is sin by now on all sides, but one side still faces daily racial discrimination. White citizens who do not know this truth are lying to themselves. White Evangelicals must sit down and listen to what happens daily to their African-American brothers and sisters. Racially tinged rhetoric isn’t funny or acceptable in a nation where African-Americans were burned alive in Texas in the twentieth century.

Yes.

The protesters were wrong.

Yes.

But Donald J. Trump wishes to be President of the United States. He is not a bully boy loud mouth in a bar. What he says matters more than his own crowds or those who oppose him and Donald J. Trump has used his platform irresponsibly in the most sensitive area of American life.

Here is what is irresponsible to the point of madness: race is the original sin of America. Donald J. Trump has gone into America and picked at the scab. He has sent coy signals about race. He has played games with race and race is a topic about which America cannot play games.

Donald J. Trump has an absolute right to political speech, but he has come into a room of dynamite and played with matches.

God save the Republic from demagogues and rioters.