A Liberal
Dose
October 13,
2022
Troy D.
Smith
“We as a
society need to put on the brakes”
My wife and I spent last weekend at Gatlinburg. The
mountains are beautiful this time of year- which is why that place is so
clogged with tourists you can’t turn around. I hate crowds, but we got a good
deal, so there we were.
We were struck by how much Donald Trump merchandise
was everywhere: in the gift shops, in the general store, even in several
restaurants. It was like the many “Trump Stores” that went out of business
after the last election had dumped all their leftovers into this one little
touristy town. “Let’s Go Brandon” stuff out the wazoo, chintzy paintings of
Donald Trump embracing Jesus and/or Ronald Reagan, T-shirts denigrating Obama,
Hillary Clinton, and Biden, and so forth. A persistent theme seemed to be
T-shirts referring to Biden and VP Harris as “Deez Nuts,” which made me wonder
how many of the senior citizens buying them got the reference. A lot of mentions
of “liberal snowflakes” and how overly sensitive they are, the irony of which
always seems to go over the heads of those conservatives who are whipped into a
frenzy by their outrage at every little thing that doesn’t conform to their
worldview.
The thing that got me the most was a T-shirt worn by a
guy in the crowd. It said “Let’s Go Brandon” (code for “**** Joe Biden,” for
those that don’t know), and underneath those words was the silhouette of an
AR-15 assault rifle.
On the one hand, all that pro-Trump merchandise was
just capitalism at work. Those merchants know where they live and what the
prevalent political feeling is there. They know what sells. I believe most of
them also sincerely believe in the message they are promoting, as well.
It was the Ar-15 that stuck with me, though… and a
handful of slightly less overt shop items that equated pro-Trumpism with
(heavily) implied violence. It reminded me of the last several columns I have
written, about the dangers of dehumanizing people who think differently than
you and adding to that violent rhetoric that has, in fact, already led to
violence and loss of life in the U.S. I’ve given examples in the past, but more
recently there was a report that online references to a second civil war have
increased by 3,000% since the FBI executed a search warrant on Trump’s Florida
resort and found a slew of illegally retained top secret documents. Last week,
due to the fact Mitch McConnell has supported legislation that would more
securely close loopholes that might allow bogus claims like those made by Trump
leading up to the January 6th insurrection, Trump said the Senate minority
leader “must have a DEATH WISH!” This led to increased security being put in
place around the Republican senator because of the very real possibility that
Trump supporters might take that as tacit approval by Trump for them to murder
McConnell.
It is a tragic statement about the state of modern
American society that I would ever even have to write a sentence like that.
Listen, I know that liberals, too, can be crude and
offensive in how they talk about their political opponents, and that some
liberals have advocated or practiced violence, but A) they do it much less, and
B) it’s wrong, no matter who does it. Last week Marjorie Taylor-Greene told
constituents that Democrats are coming to kill them. Trump adviser Mike Flynn
said (incorrectly, as usual) that governors have the right to declare war and
we will see it happen soon.
This level of othering, fear-mongering, and
justification of (or outright promotion of) violence… to hate your neighbor so
much you want to kill them, because they are coming for you… is taking us to a very
dangerous place. And we don’t have to go there… because most of this rhetoric
is not remotely based on fact. We need to put on the brakes, now.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
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