When I showed up 15 minutes early for a weekly meeting with one of my professors, I plopped down on a chair outside of his office and whiled away the time as so many in this day and age do -- gluing my eyes to my phone. After glancing through my Twitter feed and shooting off a couple of birthday wishes on Facebook that I would have otherwise forgotten, I decided the day was off to an overly-pleasant start, so I decided to balance the scales by immersing myself in the latest news on the 2016 presidential race.
Opening my the Politico app, I gave the perfunctory eye rolls needed for the latest on O’Reilly’s speculation on the eventual VP pick, and Harry Reid’s plans to bring Nevada into the Democratic column. But then I saw an article that caught my attention -- reports of Republican delegates receiving death threats from Trump supporters if they did not support the businessman’s bid for the presidency.
I’ve written at length on Trump’s demagogic tendencies, and I stand by those words. The man is a master at playing on peoples’ fears and emotions in order to benefit himself. Now we are seeing the results of that.
Threats of violence aren’t something new to American politics. There have always been crazies on either side of the aisle that resort to these sorts of tactics to shape the debate. But what is concerning is Trump’s tacit approval -- or at least willingness to look the other way -- of his supporters that engage in this kind of behavior.
While I hesitate to go so far as to say that Trump actively endorses political violence, you don’t have to look hard to find instances of his rhetoric that any reasonable person would blame for encouraging it. From offering to pay the legal bills of any supporters who beat up protestors at his rallies, to his campaign manager shoving a reporter, the real estate magnate has a propensity for engaging in the type of behavior that cultivates a culture of aggression and violence. At best, his rhetoric is dangerously careless, the kind more befitting a thuggish political machine boss than a potential leader of the free world.
This behavior has no place in American politics. I’m not advocating for some idealistic “Great Debate,” I know that politics can be bare-knuckled and mean. But there has to be a limit -- and that limit is where you begin edging into physical violence. Violence and intimidation are the weapons of the small minded and power hungry. Attempting to restrict a citizen’s freedom of speech with threats is an affront to the founding principles of this great nation. The fact that Trump and his supporters are utilizing this rhetoric and engaging in these tactics should be sickening to all supporters of democracy, no matter their political party.
As a nation, we cannot allow this to go unnoticed and unanswered.
