Legislatively Speaking
By Senator, Lena C. Taylor
Lena C. Taylor
This week a number of suspicious packages containing potentially explosive devices were mailed to former government officials as well as the headquarters of CNN at the Time Warner Center in New York. The packages were addressed specifically to former President Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-California), former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Eric Holder, longtime Democratic Party supporter George Soros, and most recently we learned even to actor Robert DeNiro.
While many of us watched the national news coverage in fear of what was happening and how many of these devices might be in play, we also wondered why was it happening? I believe it’s fair to lay some responsibility at the feet of Donald Trump. It is reasonable to connect his use of inflammatory rhetoric, divisive and often-hate filled speech to include Horse Face, Pocahontas, Crooked Hillary, Lying Ted, labeling CNN as the “enemy of the State”, and every other childish, immature insults he can think of to get an applause line or a giggle.
This is not funny and I’m not laughing. Trump is reckless and dangerous, and the chickens are coming home to roost. There are fringe elements in our society that only need the smallest nudge to go straight over the edge. Trump is pushing them, daring them to leap to violence. Remember when he said, “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell…I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise,” on Feb. 1, 2016?
Or how about March 11, 2016, when in response to having protestors thrown out of his rally, Trump said “Part of the problem, and part of the reason it takes so long, is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right?” And since then, the rhetoric has only gotten worse.
Yet, to keep a job, get a Supreme Court appointment, remain in elected office, or get an extra dollar on a tax break, people have accepted this inexcusable behavior as the new norm in American politics. The question that the mail bombs have forced them to ask themselves, is what is the social, moral, and communal cost of a Trump presidency. Whatever their answer, the cost is too high.