Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, March 21, 2024 "Trump Promises a Bloodbath for the Country"

March 21, 2024

Troy D. Smith

“Trump Promises a Bloodbath for the Country”

As I write these words (four days before you will read them), everyone is talking about some controversial statements made yesterday in Ohio by Donald Trump (imagine that). One of those statements concerns undocumented immigrants:

“I don’t know if you call them people,” Trump said. “In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”

Well, it is a terrible thing to say. About anybody. Because claiming that some people don’t count as people -similarly to calling groups of people “vermin,” as Trump has done repeatedly -is something authoritarians have frequently done throughout history (one authoritarian in particular, a little fellow with a funny mustache). It is a tactic to dehumanize members of that group -to “other” them, as sociologists and anthropologists say -in order to make it easier to hate them. And to kill them. It wouldn’t REALLY count as killing, you see, since they are not human.

But his next statements are what people have been talking about the most. While discussing the future of the auto industry, he said, “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”

The media, and Trump’s political opponents, have pointed to these words as a dire warning: that Trump is predicting, and even calling for, violence if he loses. Trump, and his defenders, say those complaints are taken out of context and twisting his words, that what he meant (in his colorful way) was that the auto industry would be destroyed by Biden’s policies. And, looking at it in context, that very well may have been what he was trying to say.

But, gee, why would people be prone to take him at his literal word with things like this?

Maybe it is because of the strong tendency he has shown to issue dog whistles to his most violent followers, phrased in such a way as to have plausible deniability but clearly evident to his intended audience. And sometimes it is bullhorns, not dog whistles: promising to pay the legal expenses of his followers if they beat up protesters (when, as we know, he doesn’t even pay his own legal bills), suggesting that the police intentionally injure people when they arrest them, calling for the U.S. military to shoot down peaceful protesters in the streets. And, whether it’s Trump or his cronies saying it… people listen.

Remember the guy who shot up a pizza place because right-wing media claimed that Hillary Clinton was running a child prostitution ring in its (nonexistent) basement? The guy who broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house and cracked her husband’s skull with a hammer? I don’t know, the couple of thousand people who stormed the Capitol threatening to hang Mike Pence?

Some Republican senators privately admitted that they did not vote to convict Trump in his January 6^th impeachment because they literally feared for their families’ lives from his supporters. So have some judges. Anyone who opposes him gets massive amounts of death threats… and we’ve all seen evidence it is not hyperbole.

Study after study has shown that political violence is on the rise in this country. The Anti-Defamation League reported there were 450 murders committed by political extremists in the U.S. in the last decade -20% by Muslim extremists, 4% by people on the left wing… and 75% by right-wing extremists. This is backed up by studies done by the FBI, the Global Terrorism Database, and other sources.

Just like on January 6^th, Trump does not physically do anything (he rarely does, come to think of it, in any context)… but his words have done a LOT. And still do.

Donald Trump’s mouth has already created a bloodbath in this country. And he keeps ratcheting it up.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE