Another day, another Trump delegate calling for the violent overthrow of the government. This sort of thing used to be frowned upon, I believe, but now is simply par for the political course. The odd thing, of course, is that if Obama wasn’t black, he would be a conservative’s dream. He’s opened up more offshore drilling than Bush, expanded fracking, deported more people than any president in history, killed thousands of Muslims (and is currently bombing seven Muslim countries), raised military budgets, cut federal taxes to their lowest levels in 60 years, cut social programs, spent almost 8 years trying to strike a “grand bargain” with Republicans to cut Social Security and Medicare (until this week when, in his last months in office, he’s suddenly decided we should increase Social Security), worked hard to derail public healthcare in favor of a program drawn up by a conservative think-tank and first used by a Republican governor, put troops on the Russian border, beefed up US military presence in Asia to threaten China, supported right-wing coups in Latin America, gave Wall Street trillions of dollars in bailouts and credits, refused to prosecute any CIA officials for torture (despite admitting “we tortured some folks”), jailed more whistleblowers than any other president, pushed fanatically pro-business trade treaties, and so on.
Yet there is a mass delusion (carefully and methodically stoked by powerful interests) that he is some kind of socialist peacenik “surrendering to terrorists” and giving away “free stuff” to the lazy poor (when in fact the poor and the middle class are sinking, while the rich have never been richer), etc. Now Trump is deliberately drawing the most frenzied and violent of these delusionals into the center of American politics. The “respectable” bi-partisan establishment has already loosed many demons with its “Terror War” (torture, aggressive war, drones, assassination squads, covert ops, mass surveillance, etc.); now Trump is drawing even more evil from the depths. America has drifted deep into terra incognita — and “here be dragons”.