Who Supports Trump’s Garden of Racism?

I’m shocked anyone still publicly supports Trump after his most important advisor was confirmed to have been a white nationalist, and after Trump encouraged groping women, and after he botched the pandemic response, causing mass death and economic disaster.

But maybe that’s the point?

Just look at the moment we are in — millions taking to the streets and confronting the racist past of the US and refusing to continue glorifying and enshrining slavers, no matter how visionary they were.

And what does Trump do in this moment? Uses our precious tax dollars to demand new monuments instead of repairing crumbling roads, bridges and a schools?

Trump includes slavers on his list, knowing they condoned ownership of human beings. This is not like saying “nobody’s perfect” to someone who had some unpaid taxes or a DWI, this is systematic, generational kidnapping, false imprisonment, forced labor, torture, rape, murder and crimes against humanity.

It doesn’t matter if “it was normal” back then, you had people saying at the time it was criminal and immoral, and anyone with common sense and decency knows it was pure evil no matter who else was doing it.

Harvey Weinstein produced a lot of popular movies, does that mean we should let him out of jail for rape? No.

ADDING INSULT: To make things worse, Trump tries to launder his list by including famous African-Americans. This tokenization is a cheap attempt at a false equivalence which only reveals his racist hypocrisy. WHY are Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass admired? Because they stood up and fought against slavery. To exploit them by putting them on a list with slavers is yet another racist provocation.

Next, the inclusion of Billy Graham is a naked attempt to pander to evangelical voters and inject religion into this racist proposal, which violates the United States Constitution’s establishment clause separating church and sate.

Trump instead wants to use government money to promote a religious figure.

Finally, you have the inclusion of neocon icon Ronald Reagan which politicizes the whole thing, showing it to be a taxpayer funded publicity stunt. Even if you love Reagan, to make this a partisan exercise should make you vomit as a taxpayer.

This moment in history, with states and cities yanking down statues of confederate soldiers and known racists and beginning the renaming of schools, parks and bridges does not call for the erection of new statutes or monuments, it’s time to change the existence power structure. First, we need to rededicate funding from the police, military and prison state to infrastructure, jobs, healthcare and education.

We have to fulfill the uncashed check of the founders who said all men are created equal (back when “men” or “mankind” meant all people). We can do that, and we can vastly improve this country. But first we need to grapple with the backwards thinking that gave Trump so much power.

I would ask anyone who supports Trump to answer the question — do you not see the racism in his policies, including this garden of evil, and of so, how can you reconcile that with the moral values found in any of the worlds religions?