Letter to the Editor 12/24
Editor:
As Trumpers realize that Trump has really lost this election, all of Trump’s tweets and fake lawsuits are not going to overturn Joe Biden’s election and he will NOT be returning to the White House in January, their number of verbal and physical threats of violence are increasing across the country.
Just today, an armed group of Trumpers gathered outside the home of a Health Department official in Idaho, yelling threats and knocking on the door with her 12-year-old son at home alone. She was in a meeting with Health Department officials and had to leave abruptly and go home to make sure her son was safe.
Another armed Trumper group surrounded Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson’s home, yelling threats as she was finishing decorating their Christmas tree with her 4-year-old son and trying to put him down for the night.
On the order of Republican governor DeSantis of Florida, the former state Covid Data Scientist, Rebekah Jones police crashed into her house brandishing and pointing guns at her, her husband, and young son, demanding her cell phone and computer. Jones had been fired by DeSantis for reporting the real infection, hospitalization, and death numbers when DeSantis wanted to alter, downplay and hide them.
The Arizona GOP is asking Trump supporters if they are willing to die to overturn Trump’s election loss.
In Michigan, armed men stormed the state’s Capitol building and anti-government militias plotted to kidnap and potentially kill the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
Several days after the presidential election, while vote-counting was still taking place in Pennsylvania, police arrested two men on weapons violations near the convention center in Philadelphia. A decal on the back of their vehicle featured QAnon, the conspiracy theory the FBI has labeled a terrorist threat.
In one of the hundreds of tweets Trump has posted since the election in an attempt to undermine the will of the voters, he declared “I WON THE ELECTION, VOTER FRAUD ALL OVER THE COUNTRY.” By trying to convince his supporters that Democrats stole the presidency, Trump is actively delegitimizing the Biden administration and, in the process, condoning all forms of civil disobedience and public unrest related to the election results.
The result of Trump continuously attacking the pillars of American democracy could be four years of durable disorder, with semi-regular acts of violence that become banal. We could respond the same way Americans have adapted to mass shootings — we stop and notice but barely flinch. Also, when a person or group is repeatedly demonized in public, it drastically increases the chance that someone will be incited to carry out a violent act against the individual or group. It happens over and over around the world.
It looks like we are in for a potentially very chaotic and violent period in the next weeks and months and Trump, in his embarrassment and rage at losing continues to incite his followers to embrace his delusion and act out his frustration by violent means.
William E. Conti, PhD
Honolulu, HI
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