If this isn’t fodder for an open line, I don’t know what is. But any topic welcome.
Donald Trump. Now he’s gone on Twitter to call civil rights legend, Rep. John Lewis, ” all talk, no action” for saying he wouldn’t attend the Trump inauguration. Lewis believes Trump won office illegitimately, thanks to Russian interference.
Trump is man who demeaned war hero John McCain, who made fun of a disabled person and who bragged of sexually assaulting women. But he still won election, though a loser in the popular vote. His appeal to racists isn’t likely to be hurt by trashing a civil rights hero. Just the same, I think John Lewis can handle it. Imagine Donald Trump putting himself in John Lewis’ shoes. No. Right. You can’t. They didn’t have Twitter in the 1960s.
PS — My pessimism about whether Trump’s words against Lewis will harm him are somewhat reflected in a column by Judge Wendell Griffen that compares Trump with Barack Obama.
The truth is that Donald Trump resembles more people in the United States than many people thought were around. Some of us, however, have always known that the talk about the United States entering a “post-racial” era was hogwash. We knew what people were really saying when they embraced the Tea Party and signed on to its rhetoric about “wanting my country back.” Our elders warned us that “smiling faces tell lies.”
….
As the nation prepares to observe the holiday marking the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the last time during President Obama’s presidency, we should remember what Dr. King wrote about racial and social inequality in an essay published after his death. …
And from now on, whenever someone asks how the US came to be led by a President named Trump after having been led by a President named Obama, quote these words from Dr. King: “Despite its virtues and attributes, America is deeply racist and its democracy is flawed both economically and socially.”
Donald Trump is proof that Dr. King was a prophet.