Notes on an insurrection: violence, magical thinking

President Barack Obama issued a dire warning, saying the fantasy narrative of Trump and his claque “has spiraled further and further from reality, and it builds upon years of sown resentments. Now we’re seeing the consequences, whipped up into a violent crescendo.”

Obama, himself subjected to a decade of false attacks by Trump’s birtherism claims, said Republicans now have a clear choice.

“They can continue down this road and keep stoking the raging fires,” he said. “Or they can choose reality and take the first steps towards extinguishing the flames. They can choose America.”

The problem is that the Trump fanatics, echoing the violent Lost Cause racism of the post-Reconstruction South, are indeed choosing America when seizing upon a strand of the national DNA that elevates fantasy above reality, survivalism above humanism, racial conflict above reconciliation and violence above peace. The least we can hope for is that elected leaders desist in feeding the beast constantly gnawing at national comity. Containment may be the only policy.

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