CNN has done America a great service by cataloging what it is exactly that the anti-Trump protesters want now that The Donald has gotten himself elected president.
Most of these same people were baying about accepting the results of the election when Donald Trump hinted he might not want to concede. Well, these folks not only don’t want to concede that Trump won fair and square, they want an entirely different result.
Many demonstrators have used “Dump Trump” as a rallying cry.
What does that mean exactly? It’s a slogan that first gained traction as some Republicans pushed for the party to cut ties with Trump. But now that the election results are in, it’s taking on a different meaning.
For some, it’s a catchy way to sum up their rage about the President-elect. But others are taking things a step further, signing an online petition and writing letters to members of the Electoral College, asking them not to vote the way their states did at the polls.
Could that happen? The Internet rumor debunking website Snopes.com describes the prospect as “extremely, extremely unlikely,” noting that it would be “wholly unprecedented in American history and would require a sudden and drastic change in the United States’ political traditions.”
When did “tradition” ever matter to these mountebanks? Watch what happens in the next few weeks. I’ll bet someone gets around to publishing the names and addresses of the electors so that the demonstrators can pay them a visit and “persuade” them to change their votes.
Trump made immigration a focal point of his campaign, and it’s a key issue for many protesters who are against Trump’s vows to deport undocumented immigrants.
“I’m out here for my undocumented friends,” protester Spencer Smith, 19, told CNN in Atlanta.
At protests in Miami, demonstrators held signs that said, “build bridges, not walls,” taking aim at Trump’s oft-touted plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.
Is there any chance the wall plan could come off the table? Don’t hold your breath, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of Trump’s advisers on immigration, told CNN affiliate KWCH this week.
“There’s no question the wall is going to get built,” Kobach said. “The only question is how quickly will it get done and who pays for it?”
For people who claim they care more about “social justice” than anything, they don’t care much about social justice.
The waiting list of people around the world who want to enter the U.S. legally is more than 4 million (1.4 million Mexicans alone). That’s 4 million people who take the time and make the effort to fill out the paperwork, jump through the numerous hoops the U.S. government has set up, and then wait patiently until it’s their turn. To be sure, it’s a process that cries out for reform. But how is anyone’s reasonable concept of “justice” served if people who sneak across the border, jumping ahead of them in line, demand and receive the exact same treatment as those who do what’s necessary to come here legally?
Protesters in Iowa this week had two main goals, said Rachel Walerstein, who attended protest in Iowa. First, they wanted to let people know that rhetoric-fueled violence against people of color, immigrants and LGBT people won’t stand, she said.
“The second is to make a statement of political instability to render it difficult to govern, and in particular, to make it impossible for Trump to implement his policies in the first 100 days,” she said. “For me, it’s important to make these statements known and visible.”
“Making a statement” is very fashionable and has been a very popular pastime for liberals since the 1960s. But just imagine a conservative saying he or she is demonstrating to foment “political instability.” You can bet the FBI and Homeland Security would be on that person in a flash.
“He needs to really address all the divisive, hateful things he’s said in the past and recant them, denounce them,” protester Nick Truesdale told CNN in New York on Friday.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal this week that he doesn’t think his rhetoric on the campaign trail went too far. But he also said he wanted people to come together, according to the newspaper.
“I want a country that loves each other,” he told the Journal this week. “I want to stress that.”
Most of these jamokes couldn’t tell you anything specific Trump said that was “divisive” and “hateful.” They just know what they’ve read in the media and what their intellectual betters have said on TV.
In truth, Trump is a lout and had many hateful, hurtful things to say during the campaign. And, in a very real way, some of his rhetoric was divisive. But why should he “denounce” and “recant” what he said? He won.
Finally, there’s the “Not my president” crowd:
“No to Trump and no to any future leaders who prey on our fear and lie to us plainly, be they dressed as friends or foes. No to a president that wants to ban all Muslims. No to a president who calls Mexicans rapists,” the Facebook invite for an Atlanta protest says. “No to rape culture. No to a president that not so subtly romanticizes white supremacy and mourns its loss though we all know it has been alive and well. No to leaders who propagate the destruction of our environment.”
The only people playing on your fears are the people who are ginning up this artificial narrative that electing Trump has somehow made the U.S. a more dangerous place. It’s giving the snowflakes on college campuses the vapors and scaring America’s school children half to death because it suits the political purposes of people who do not care if Donald Trump is president, only that they can manipulate the gullible into destroying his presidency.
To be fair, numerous conservatives said in 2008 that Barack Obama was not their president either. But I don’t recall any riots when John McCain lost. Nor do I remember any disturbances when Mitt Romney was defeated.
But then, I’m getting old and the memory is the first thing to go.
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