Make America Hate Again
Every evening, when walking my dogs, I make sure to clean up whatever poop they have so delicately deposited in the neighborhood. I’m very consistent in cleaning up after them; it’s the right and considerate thing to do.
I notice that not everyone is so good at cleaning up their messes. There are some stretches of sidewalk in which the air absolutely stinks.
Like an irresponsible dog owner, there are certain political individuals who are particularly prone to making a mess and then not cleaning up afterward. Right now, this is a shortcoming shared by hard-right conservatives.
Over the last few weeks I have been receiving emails from teaparty.org. They come bearing titles such as “Must See!” and “Invasion USA”. The fine print on the bottom states, “You have received this Tea Party email because you subscribed to it or someone forwarded it to you.” When doing research for my blog, I have visited Fox News and the National Review, so my best guess is that my contact information was passed along from these sites. In any case, I now have a weird voyeuristic perspective on the conservative mind.
In the past few days, teaparty.org has sent a particular message repeatedly via multiple emails. In the interest of accurate reporting, I cite these emails verbatim.
“Word is coming in from Washington that the DNC has built a massive ‘War Room’ of their own… with the sole mission of impeaching President Trump!”
Note the passive language which omits the need for actually stating what source such information came from. It goes on to say:
“As it stands right now, the Democrats - backed by big billionaire shadow puppets like Tom Steyer and George Soros - have begun to let loose their dogs of war to take over the 2018 midterms and push for the impeachment of Donald J. Trump.”
Here we go: shadow money with evil Jewish conspirators behind it.
Further down, I learn that Democrats are:
“throwing riots in the streets, burning American Flags, kneeling for the National Anthem, openly hurling death threats at anyone they oppose, and trying to destroy President Trump and everything he stands for.”
This is news to pretty much anyone. I don’t think even Fox has reported these events.
And then the kicker:
“And now, we're exposing their ‘Final Solution’!
Top Democrat minds are holding secret cabal-like meetings behind closed doors and arranging a complete take-over of the electoral vote this November.”
I kid you not. Mere days after 11 congregants were murdered in a synagogue by an anti-Semitic gunman, the Tea Party is promoting vicious tropes about shadow financiers and secret cabals--straight out of the lying playbook that has been used for centuries--and then unashamedly using the words “final solution.”
Another teaparty.org email, sent just this afternoon, calls for George Soros to be deported, calling him a “foreign enemy.” This fact-challenge rhetoric asserts that Soros is a "Hungarian citizen" who "thought ahead" and "acquired U.S. Citizenship."
Wondering who these people are, I went to the teaparty.org website. The “About Us” section includes only one name, a “Steve Eichler J.D.”, who is said to be “America’s Legal Analyst and the CEO of the Tea Party, Inc.” The biography states that Eichler “serves on the board of several prominent Tea Party organizations and is a lifetime Minuteman.”
This minimal information makes it hard to discern any evident connection between Tea Party, Inc. and prominent Republicans, from the current president on down. Still, I find it intriguing that over the last few weeks--the same time period that I’ve been getting these Tea Party messages--I have received regular emails from the likes of Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, Martha Blackburn, and Steve Scalise. The messages refer to me as “Fellow Conservative”. I’m anything but that, so I assume there is a similar database connecting Tea Party, Inc. and establishment Republicans.
Moreover, it is a very short step from the incendiary language in the Tea Party screed to that used by mainstream conservative leaders. Just today, a fundraising email from Martha Blackburn talked about the millions that the “coastal elites, led by Senate Democrat ringleader Chuck Schumer and anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, have been dropping.” More Jewish demons. Furthermore, the Republican Party is fronted by a president who proudly refers to himself as a nationalist rather than a globalist and includes unabashed racists such as Iowa congressman Steve King, who has proudly stood with white nationalists and Nazis.
Now I learn that Vice President Mike Pence tried to show his support for religious diversity by inviting a certain Rabbi Loren Jacobs to join him on the stage at a memorial for the 11 victims of the Pittsburgh massacre. This “rabbi” is a Messianic Jew, part of a sect that believes in the divinity of Jesus. In his opening prayer, Jacobs even invoked the name of Jesus at the event.
Either Pence is completely clueless about this, or the only Jew he can bother to associate with is someone whose faith verges on evangelistic Christianity.
A segment of American Jews supports the current president and his party. A major Republican funder is Sheldon Adelson, a Jewish casino owner and multi-billionaire, who was a major force behind the embassy decision. (It’s notable that none of the hundreds of Democratic fundraising emails I receive daily mention Adelson at all, in contrast to the venom the conservatives spew about supposed Jewish liberal cabals.) The current president’s Jewish supporters seem to base their support on the fact that the his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren are Jewish and on his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem
American Jews need to wake up to this fact: the current president and his party are not on your side. Not only do they invoke blatant anti-Semitism through their support for white nationalists and their coded words, but their actions in power go against Judaic values such as caring for the stranger and supporting the less fortunate. A tax cut and an embassy relocation cannot make up for policies that violate cultural mores which have been developed over five thousand years.
In short, there is a vile contagion taking hold of many in the conservative wing. They are empowering people with hate in their hearts and leaving a frightful mess for the rest of us to clean up. If we cannot, we all risk drowning in their noxious excrement.
