Charlottesville

What have we come to?

The far-right demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia yesterday wasn't so much a rally as it was a mob.  The white nationalists who marched to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee weren't looking for trouble, they were there to cause trouble.   That they did.  The showed the ugly hatred, bigotry, and intolerance that Donald Trump has stoked for the past two years.  There were Southern Crosses and Nazi flags on display along with the hateful rhetoric against people of color, non-Christians, secular humanists, and anyone else that offends the American far right.  When counter-protesters attempted to be heard, one right-winger responded by driving a car into the anti-Trump crowd, as much an act of terror as flying panes it buildings.  Three people are reported dead.  And all this at the home of the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson as a parting git to his state for the pursuit of intellectual and analytical rigor.      

To think that Bill Maher was cracking jokes about this scheduled rally the day before it took place.  But it's no laughing matter now. 

While Trump has noncommitally condemned the violence in Charlottesville and refused to aim his comments directly at the reactionaries who instigated the melee, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe has declared a state of emergency.  This is happening as Trump plans to face down North Korea and maybe start a war with Venezuela.

Love trumps hate?  No more reconciliation with the alt-right.  "Now is not the time for reconciliation," Martin O'Malley said back in January 2017. "Dietrich Bonhoeffer didn't reconcile with the Nazis. Martin Luther King didn't reconcile with the KKK."

Now we take a stand against the forces of darkness.