7/23/2019
- Pat Buchanan Townhall.com
"Send her back! Send her back!"
The 13 seconds of that chant at the rally in North Carolina,
in response to Donald Trump's recital of the outrages of Somali-born
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, will not soon be forgotten, or forgiven.
This phrase will have a long shelf life. T-shirts emblazoned
with "Send Her Back!" and Old Glory are already on sale on eBay.
Look for the chant at future Trump rallies, as his followers
now realize that the chant drives the elites straight up the wall.
That 13-second chant and Trump's earlier tweet to the four
radical congresswomen of "the Squad" to "go back" to where
they came from is being taken as the smoking gun that convicts Trump as an
irredeemable racist whose "base" is poisoned by the same hate.
Writes The New York Times' Charles Blow in a column that
uses "racist" or "racism" more than 30 times: Americans who
do not concede that Trump is a racist -- are themselves racists: "Make no
mistake. Denying racism or refusing to call it out is also racist."
But what is racism?
Is it not a manifest dislike or hatred of people of color
because of their color? Trump was not denouncing the ethnicity or race of Ilhan
Omar in his rally speech. He was reciting and denouncing what Omar said, just
as Nancy Pelosi was denouncing what Omar and the Squad were saying and doing
when she mocked their posturing and green agenda.
Clearly, Americans disagree on what racism is. Writes Blow:
"A USA Today/Ipsos poll published on July 17 found that
more than twice as many Americans believe that people who call others racists
do so 'in bad faith' compared with those who do not believe it."
Republicans and conservatives believe "racist" is
a term the left employs to stigmatize, smear and silence adversaries. As one
wag put it, a racist is a conservative who is winning an argument with a
liberal.
In the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton famously said of
Trump's populist base, "You could put half of them into what I call the
basket of deplorables ... racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic."
More than that, "Some ... are irredeemable, but
thankfully they are not America." To Hillary, Trump supporters were not
part of the good America, the enlightened America.
Her defamation of Trump's followers meshes with the media's
depiction of the folks laughing, hooting and chanting in North Carolina.
Trump supporters know what the media think of them, which is
why in Middle America the media have a crisis of credibility and moral
authority. Trump's true believers do not believe them, trust them, like them or
respect them. And the feeling is obviously mutual.
While raw and rough, how does the 13-second chant,
"Send her back!" compare in viciousness to the chant of 1960s
students on Ivy League and other campuses: "Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! The NLF
is going to win!" This was chanted at demonstrations when the NLF, the
Viet Cong, was killing hundreds of American soldiers every week.
How does 13 seconds of "Send her back!" compare
with the chant of the mob that shut down midtown Manhattan in December 2014:
"What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!"
This past week revealed anew what we Americans think of each
other, which portends trouble ahead for the republic.
For a democracy to endure, there has to be an assumption
that the loser in an election holds a promissory note that new elections are
only a few years off. And if the losers can persuade a majority to support
them, they can reassume positions of authority and realize their agenda.
Trump's 40-45 percent of the nation is not only being constantly
castigated and demonized by the establishment media but it is also being told
that, in the not far distant future, it will be demographically swamped by the
rising numbers of new migrants pouring into the country.
Your time is about up, it hears.
And most of the Democratic candidates have admitted that, if
elected, the border wall will never be built, breaking into the country will
cease to be a crime, ICE will be abolished, sanctuary cities will be expanded,
illegal immigrants will be eligible for free health care and, for millions of
people hiding here illegally, amnesty and a path to citizenship will be
granted.
America, they are saying, will be so unalterably changed in
a few years, your kind will never realize political power again, and your America
will vanish in a different America where the Squad and like-minded leftists set
the agenda.
Will the deplorables, who number in the scores of millions,
accept a future where they and their children and children's children are to
submit to permanent rule by people who visibly detest them and see them as
racists, sexists and fascists?
Will Middle America go gentle into that good night?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White
House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America
Forever.
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