Prejudice pops up like a whack-a-mole rodent, random, shameful, and venomous, violating the precepts of every major religion. People feed on it. It takes the anger felt about a circumstance and channels it in that direction, giving a senseless state of purpose. Politicians use it to paint opponents as corrupters wanting to implode a community.
Politicians of questionable ethics have always existed. Slander marred the campaigns of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, friends only a few years before their campaigns. Republicans labeled Al Smith and John F. Kennedy papists. They were Catholics, but their allegiance to the church never superseded their allegiance to the country. Opponents played to the fear of Islamic terrorists, especially after 9/11, and tagged then-Senator Barack Obama with labels such as Muslim, Arab, and terrorist. The pitch rose so high that Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate running against him, defended Senator Obama and his reputation. The nonsense of bigotry has expanded during this election cycle, and it’s coming primarily from Republican candidates, our Vice President, and President.
Our President, with a small army of public relations experts at his calling, has propagated this folly of reasoning.
“’I won’t say it’s the worst and most horrific ever,’ Mike McGuinness, the Democratic mayor of Pontiac, Mich., said of the Republican attacks on Dr. El-Sayed’s faith and background. “But it is definitely a Hall of Fame contender.’
“The Rev. Horace Sheffield III of New Destiny Christian Fellowship in Detroit said the rhetoric in the campaign felt to him as if it came from long ago in American history,” reported in the New York Times.
He is not the first or the last President to resort to infantile remarks, but in the past, those remarks remained private, frequently said in frustration or anger. They were not for mass consumption and were considered embarrassing if leaked to the press. Today, he will cross any rhetorical line, so long as it serves his agenda. In so doing, he invigorates bigotry with the same vigor used by dictators of the past to denigrate swaths of their societies.
