Some compare Trump to Nixon, but I think we should go a little further afield to the Balkans and Slobodan Milošević, a nationalist Serbian president later tried for genocide and crimes against humanity.
For political purposes, Milošević began dehumanizing Muslims, deriding them, calling them animals among other derogatory names. He kept ratcheting up the hate speech and then one morning the paramilitaries came. They entered towns, blocked exits and went house to house, separated the men to be killed, dragged the women and children into the streets to be raped, and burned the houses behind them.
Thus began the four-year long “ethnic cleansing war.” More than 100,000 people were slaughtered and another two million displaced. The area remains shattered still today and although the hatred simmers, there can be no more war as there are not enough men to fight one.
Like Bosnia, our country has many ethnicities and cultures and since our Civil War, we have lived together in an uneasy alliance. Now Trump is driving wedges between neighbors, friends and families. His goal is a white America. Of course, that is not what our country was founded as, nor was it meant to be one. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty carries our motto of inclusion and compassion.
Last week Trump and his new “brain,” Stephen Miller blasted out a spot showing one of our Muslim Congresswomen as indifferent or encouraging the terrorists of 9/11 with the obvious intent of making her a target of hate assassins.
So, the question is: What is Trump’s end goal? Civil War? Distraction from his treason? Whatever it is, Stephen Miller is the perfect partner. Miller (who looks much like Joseph Goebbels of Hitler’s regime) and his family immigrated to this country during their distress. Rather feeling gratitude for good fortune; Miller loathed anyone who lived his experience.
Ours is a nation of many cultures. We individually may have been born here; but other than Native Americans, all our families came from somewhere else.
To be American is to bond together as One Nation, Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All.