William Rivers Pitt | The Invisible Man: George W.

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William Rivers Pitt | The Invisible Man: George W. Bush and a Hole in History

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/37208-t...in-history

Friday, 12 August 2016
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

After Donald Trump blew into his dog saxophone and invited "Second Amendment people" to assassinate Hillary Clinton before she could appoint any judges, American politics went into China Syndrome meltdown mode in a way not seen since Preston Brooks beat Charles Sumner very nearly to death in the well of the Senate, 160 years ago almost to the day.

Republicans who had endorsed Trump immediately fled en masse to Outer Mongolia to become anonymous yak herders, and witnesses reported seeing House Speaker Paul Ryan climb a large oak tree while muttering, "I hate this job, I hate this job, there's no place like home, I hate this job."

This flame-decked train wreck has been a long time coming, and the GOP has nothing to blame but itself. Begin with the serial defections from the Democratic Party after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, augment with Nixon's "Southern Strategy" to promote racism and xenophobia within the party base, and then inject that strategy with steroids under Reagan by embracing right-wing fire-and-brimstone evangelical Christianity. Lose a war and collapse the economy in the middle.

Despise the immigrant, demonize the Other. Spend eight years howling THERE'S A BLACK KENYAN MUSLIM TERRORIST COMMUNIST SOCIALIST FASCIST MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE, YOU GUYS, EVERYONE FREAK OUT, season to taste with millions of guns and the paranoia they pack, put it all in a bag and shake it, and what you get when you crack the seal is Donald Trump: a racist, sexist, xenophobic fool who doesn't know that he doesn't know anything, surrounded by a growling herd of loyalists.

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