Trump's love of Nazi rhetoric and symbolic gestures is becoming a habit

 Heil, Boss Trump. Trump's love of Nazi rhetoric and symbolic gestures is becoming a habit, as well as his dog whistles to white nationalists and supremacists. This should not be passed off as a tongue slip or an intern goof. Watch how frequently he uses the Aryan fist. It is a closed fist, turned forward and sometimes pumped from a bent arm. Once the symbol of black power, it has become currently the symbol of white power as the fist becomes white and the background changes to black.

Reports and polls indicate that more racial minorities are toying with supporting Trump. They need to get a grip on reality that a second Trump term will not treat them fairly or the same as his friends since the cultish body of his supporters contains so many racist white nationalists and their sympathizers. The white supremacists get the message, even if you look the other way.

Add this Aryan fist pump to his lists of Hitler worship references: dog-whistling to white racists using terms like: "immigrants poisoning our blood", and "Reich" as a goal like Hitler's goal of establishing a Third Reich empire (oops, blame the intern) neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville are "fine people," too, which was the epic false equivalency that inspired Biden to run for president, and the call to activism of the white supremacist Proud Boys on January 6 to riot. Trump has been heard to call white supremacists "my people".

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/09/donald-trump-white-supremacists-my-people

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4676368-donald-trump-truth-social-video-references-unified-reich

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/

Below from https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/aryan-fist

ALTERNATE NAMES: White Power Fist, White Fist

The upright clenched fist has long been used as a symbol (both graphically and as a hand gesture) to represent themes such as defiance, unity, and power.  In the 1960s and 1970s, black nationalist groups in the United States and elsewhere often used a dark-skinned clenched fist gesture or image as a "black power" symbol.  By the 1980s, white supremacists in the United States and elsewhere had appropriated this symbol, substituting a white fist.  White supremacists frequently claim that they use the symbol to represent "white pride" or "white power."

_______________________________continuing with my post:

A friend of mine, a Hispanic immigrant with newly acquired documents, was bemoaning Denver becoming such a destination and transit point for those migrants without documents. He himself said, "Trump will fix it," indicating if he could vote, he would vote for Trump. I took that to mean Trump will put such migrants in concentration camps and deport them. If that is the fix, then those who made it have little sympathy for their compatriots coming later. If that puzzles those who think birds of a feather should flock together, they should not be surprised. That is not the first time I have encountered that. I once asked a dear Asian friend of mine to explain this lack of sympathy to me about why those who went to the pain and effort to get to the US looked disdainfully at those later arrivals of the same race. He told me that this was common and that those like him, a descendent of Japanese-Americans imprisoned in World War II, did look with disdain at new arrivals they called "hot off the boat." I thought about it later and wondered if it was because new arrivals competed for jobs with them or that they should not have it easy, too, or they were somehow culturally inferior late-coming refugees? Any ideas? What I do know is if you are required" to show me your documents" to prove to a law officer demanding this because you look Hispanic, that will get an indignant reaction and a revolt against such anti-civil rights infringements and racial profiling. By then, if Trump wins, it will be too late because, as he promises, he will also control the Justice Department and the super majority of the Supreme Court.

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/supreme-court-reinstates-arizona-show-me-your-papers-law-strikes-down-three-other

Peace on earth, goodwill to men sorely needed this Christmas season but so hard to achieve

Peace on earth, goodwill toward men, one of the messages of Christmas, is sorely needed in our troubled world. This year has been less about major wars, but more about individuals gone berserk and sudden rise of terrorist jihadists acting in regions or as lone wolves anywhere.  Modern media has been both the messenger and the tool of the perpetrators that give acts of violence world-wide impact. We have yet to find a consensus for the best response.

 In the United States there are two schools of thought. One is always to meet violence with violence and the other is to search for peace. President Obama seems determined to leave office with a more peaceful world by resolving some nagging conflicts and addressing recent explosions of violence both at home and abroad, but he faces some tough challenges.

 Since he cannot run for re-election, he at least is freed from the consequences of a political backlash if he takes controversial measures. Using his executive powers, he is burying the hatchet with hostile regimes and bringing together those who feel they have been treated unfairly.

Beginning with dialogues with Iran and historic reverse of a fifty year policy toward Cuba, Obama has taken steps to bring Peace on Earth.  Obama had already stopped torture of prisoners immediately when he took office and he is consistent in condemning past torture practices brought to light by a Senate report.

Our country is plagued by riots and police assassinations from Ferguson to the boroughs of New York, heated by racial tensions and angry speech from by both sides of the racial divide. The violence is an accumulative effect of high profile incidents of apparent racial profiling by police  ending in death of Black men and youth.  Obama is threading the needle between empathy with minority communities and finding ways to bring communities and policing together.  It is a delicate balance, but it is a uniquely credible opportunity given he is the first Black president.

The case for peace is as much a matter of pragmatism as it is a moral imperative. Violence begets more violence. One kind of violent action becomes a template used by others who are, or who are not, fighting political causes. Some fueled by personal revenge, hate, or mental health issues copy the latest violent techniques so they, too, can go down in a blaze of publicity.

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Abroad, we have learned that using military force works only in the short term.  Our ultimate goal should be to win over hearts and minds so that jihadists lose fertile ground in which to plant their flags. Otherwise we will be involved in a never ending or reoccurring warfare. Sadly, Iraqi villagers seem willing to exchange ending strife for ISIS order no matter how cruel and oppressive.  Oppression eventually breeds revolt and a search for a better way. The very difficult challenge for Obama is to craft policies that appeal to the better angels in the long term while helping Iraq halt ISIS’ military advance and doing it without our full military engagement. 

Weighing in on the Trayvon Martin tragedy

_{Weighing in on the Trayvon Martin case…}

_{I am the grandparent of a 17 year old teen.  He is white, over 6 feet tall,  and he lives in a neighborhood which is, to put it mildly, not diverse.  He occasionally walks around wearing a hoodie.  I doubt sincerely that some self appointed neighborhood watch vigilante would ever have followed him to see what bad he would be contemplating doing.   To deny that racism was an element in the actions of George  Zimmerman is to deny that  many   racially profile a black face wearing a  hoodie, a disguise favored  by many a  bank or convenience store holdup perpetrator.}

_{Thanks to the Florida Stand Your Ground law,  in spite of what  former Governor Jeb Bush believed, that it was to allow homeowners to use weapons to defend their  own homes and lives if they  felt threatened, there has been unleashed untrained, unscreened, unauthorized  neighborhood vigilantes to do what Zimmerman did.  It is a fact, documented in the 911 call,  Zimmerman ignored the orders of the police  and continued following Trayvon Martin with the inevitable confrontation, documented almost to the fatal end by eye witnesses, the 911 recordings,  and Martin’s own cell phone conversation with his girl friend.   Both Zimmerman and Martin felt threatened. Both could have invoked the Stand Your Ground Law  broadly interpreted, but Zimmerman had the gun that killed the teen.}

_{The police themselves gave Zimmerman a pass from arrest because they believed him and that it was his word against a black kid with  no other witnesses, though they made no effort to find witnesses.  Their role in this is certainly worthy of  scrutiny.  They  tested Martin alone  for drugs, again a profiling assumption that a black kid with a hood was up to no good and was the threatening party that the Florida law protected.}

_{I have served as a homeowners association president and I am now the chair of the executive committee condo association. I have spent significant time in a gated community in southwestern Florida within the past year.  I also once  headed a district attorneys’ investigative unit and I can claim familiarity with working with police and enforcement of criminal law.}  

_{The neighborhood of which I was the association president was a large, not very diverse suburban type and it had been plagued by an infamous, illusive  burglar,  dubbed the Southmoor Cat Burglar by the press.  We found homeowners leaving doors unlocked and garage doors left open, only assisting the criminal.  We ourselves were victims when he jimmied open a basement window.  Alert police grabbed him in a nearby shopping center after his long career.}

_{Instead of arming a well meaning   resident or even having a unarmed resident patrol our neighborhood,  we hired a guard service and increased assessments to cover it.  In the Florida gated community, a uniformed guard service patrolled the area, screened the visitors, and made frequent swings through the local streets.  An armed vigilante was not designated.  Neighborhood watch means exactly that: a watch.  It does not mean cruising around with a powerful pistol.  Even supervised and trained law enforcers have their problems with racial profiling, but an amateur with an itchy trigger finger is even more of a potential  problem.}

_{In addition to the investigation by those outside the police department and to reform/retrain the Sanford  police department, what should  be done is to rewrite or overturn such poorly written laws as the Florida one. Revisions should  exclude from its protection   action outside of a person’s own home, just as Jeb Bush thought it originally intended . Uniformed and trained guards should be hired to patrol neighborhoods.  Anyone with any color  walking through a neighborhood that does not reflect his race should not wear a hoodie.  It is a sad commentary on our times, but that is  reality.}