As this extraordinary election cycle now winds down to a conclusion, it is important to take stock of what the future could hold under a Donald Trump presidency. In Donald Trump's America, we would be in an even more heavily energized police state replete with agenda-driven population control. Consistent thoughts of purging would constitute a thickly tangible undercurrent. It is important to note exactly what that would mean, and as a result, what it is that you would be voting for in this election. "Making America great again" has consequences, and if you have not thought them through, you are not being a responsible voter. In fact, you will be complicit in what follows the election. Hatred never results in anything good.
In Donald Trump's America, minorities will be targeted in ways we have already begun to see in the wake of the violent rhetoric heard at Trump's rallies. And when the undercurrent of population purging that drives the police state filters down to all the John Does who "want to help" make America great again, the result could mushroom into actual genocide. Have you considered what the reduction of America's minority populations could look like? Fortunately, you do not have to look too far to see what it could be like. Philip Gourevitch has written about what a wave of genocide looks like in his award winning book, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with our Families: Stories from Rwanda.
Or perhaps you don't think a comparison of the United States with little Rwanda is appropriate. Genocide could never happen in today's world, you claim. I must be thinking of the 1860s, you say. You feel that today's Americans would never stoop to that. Americans are above that sort of thing, superior and separate from such goings on in some African countries. But that assumed superiority is exactly what brings about the ugliness of bigotry that can, in fact, develop into genocide.
Trump's hateful rhetoric encourages separatist elitism. It promotes the notion that minorities are inferior and have become a problem for the "greatness" of America. What we need, Trump says, is to make America great again, and that includes the suppression of all these troublesome minorities. Where does that line of reasoning lead? What outcome is logical for a plan that disenfranchises identifiable populations? And while genocide might not happen, there is a chance that it could. So let me show you what that meant in the world's most recent and completely unambiguous genocide. The year was 1994, only 22 years ago and very much in today's world. Through the compelling words of Philip Gourevitch, Read about the ugliness that is the end product of a bigoted hate rhetoric on a national scale. Read his words, and think.
"[M]ass violence . . . does not occur aimlessly. Even mobs and riots have a design, and great and sustained destruction requires great ambition. It must be conceived as the means toward achieving a new order, and although the idea behind that new order may be criminal and objectively very stupid, it must also be compellingly simple and at the same time absolute. The ideology of genocide is all of those things. . . . For those who set about systematically exterminating an entire people . . . blood lust surely helps. But the engineers and perpetrators of [such] a slaughter . . . need not enjoy killing, and they may even find it unpleasant. What is required above all is that they want their victims dead. They have to want it so badly that they consider it a necessity.
"The dead had seen their killers training as militias in the weeks before the end, and it was well known [what they were training for]; it was announced on the radio, it was in the newspapers, people spoke of it openly. [Those who openly opposed the pending genocide] were publicly denounced as 'accomplices' . . . and were among the first to be killed as the extermination got under way."
Compellingly simple: Make America great again. Consider it an absolute necessity, the means toward achieving a new order. And silence those who would stand against you.
In Rwanda, at least 800,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered in just a few months of organized hatred. Think. Please. And then vote.
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