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Reid (Seattle)'s avatar

The rot goes much deeper than one man, though. He was simply the right person in the right place at the right time to take advantage of pre-existing bigotry and fear.

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H.H. Rose's avatar

True.

All Trump did was release the genie of hate from the bottle.

Question is, how do you put it back?

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Reid (Seattle)'s avatar

Problem is, there never was a bottle, so there's nothing to put it back into. The virulent hatred is simply now at the forefront, or so it seems to me. Trump is the modern incarnation of Jim Crow, lynching, head bashing on the Edmund Pettus bridge, and slave ownership. The hate remains the same, only the costumes change.

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H.H. Rose's avatar

Trump gave the haters permission to come out of the closet, so to speak. Parading around in public with high powered rifles and nazi symbols is OK. Sedition is OK. тАЬThere are good people on both sides.тАЭ is OK.

There is no turning back.

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Reid (Seattle)'s avatar

Wow! And I thought I was the pessimist around here! I am in the camp of people who think this is the last gasp of the white, male patriarchy and they will wane. The real question is whether their passing will be too late for our democracy and the health of the planet. I fear so.

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Peter Burnett's avatar

The one man, taken in isolation, is NOTHING. As was Hitler. What's deadly is the combination between the voice and its mass following. The voice that utters all the rage, resentment, prejudices buried in what a bitter Nazi-hating German described as those "psychic catacombs in which all our concealed desires, our fearful dreams and evil spirits, our vices and our forgotten and unexpiated sins, have been buried for generations."

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