Anti-Donald Op-Ed: ‘The Trump Effect’ Is Contaminating Our Kids – And Could Resonate For Years

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By P. Dvorak

Think we’re in for a disastrous four years if Donald Trump is elected president?

You’re being optimistic. Given what some of our children are learning from him, it may take an entire generation to recover from the hateful rhetoric he’s aimed at immigrants, Muslims and Blacks Lives Matter protesters.

Trump’s vitriol is making it off the campaign trail and into the lingua franca of children at an alarming rate. Just watch coverage from Trump rallies to hear the next phrases kids will be slinging at school.

“Build the wall!” was the chant at a high school basketball game in Indiana last week, directed by kids from a majority white school who held up Trump signs and yelled at the opposing players and fans, who are from a predominantly Latino school.

“Get ’em out!” is what Trump screams at every rally when he sees Black Lives Matter and other protesters, even silent ones. This is not far off from what some third-graders allegedly said to two of the brown-skin classmates in their Northern Virginia classroom. The mother of one of the children posted an account on Facebook:

“I just got a call from my son’s teacher giving me a heads up that two of his classmates decided to point out the ‘immigrants’ in the class who would be sent ‘home’ when Trump becomes president. They singled him out and were pointing and laughing at him as one who would have to leave because of the color of his skin. In third grade . . . in Fairfax County . . . in 2016!”

Fairfax County school officials have not confirmed the account, but a spokesman said they are looking into it. The mom, whose name has become a hashtag on Twitter even though she removed the post from her Facebook page, called it the “Trump Effect.”

“We’ll be banned,” predicted Daisy scouts when they talked to me before the Virginia primary about their futures. Not “I want to be a rocket scientist” or “I want to be a doctor” or “I want to be a teacher.” They are afraid they will all be rounded up and deported. They are all Muslim.

The televised Trump rallies are becoming like “Lord of the Flies” set pieces. Nightly, televised “Hunger Games.” With each new video, we have a new group of angry white people pointing, yelling and chanting at brown-skin people being escorted out of a crowd, with the booming Trump refrain of “Get ’em out.”

It’s like all of those horrible school integration photos of screaming crowds surrounding black students in the 1960s are being reenacted.

We see decorated war veterans shoving and screaming at young, black college students. We see peaceful protesters being pushed and pinballed through the yelling masses.

You think kids aren’t going to play this out on the schoolyard?

Even if they’re not taking their phrases directly from Trump’s playbook, his guided free-for-all has unleashed a growing atmosphere of hate.

I don’t know whether Trump was the inspiration for the kids on an all-white Annapolis-area hockey team who singled out the black players on my son’s team, calling them the N-word and harassing them throughout the game. But they heard those words somewhere. They learned that cruelty somewhere. And I don’t think it’s a stretch to blame their behavior on the nation’s growing tolerance of open displays of bigotry.

(Our kids beat them, by the way. And the player who said the worst things and the coach who did nothing about it were both disciplined by the hockey association.)

And I don’t know that the kids at the University of Southern California who threw eggs and hurled racial epithets at a student from Hong Kong over the weekend were acting directly on Trump’s orders. But there’s an anything-goes recklessness in the air that is certainly emboldening them.

After all, coded racism has now been rebranded as “telling it like it is” thanks to Trump and the people who think he will be the strong, decisive character they’ve watched on reality TV if they elect him.

He won’t renounce white supremacists who support him, he won’t acknowledge that the Ku Klux Klan is a hate group and, in an eerie display of flashback scenes, he recently asked his followers at a rally to raise their right hands, Nuremberg-style, and pledge their loyalty and votes to him.

In New Orleans last week, Trump was frustrated that guards didn’t remove the black protesters who were peacefully standing among the crowd at his rally quickly enough.

“It’s taking a long time, I can’t believe it,” he said. “See in the old days it wouldn’t take so long. We’re living in a different world.”

We were living in a different world.

We were in a world where it was moral, not political, to be inclusive.

We were in a world where genitalia were not discussed in presidential debates.

We were in a world where children could look up to their leaders and emulate them, and it would make others proud.

We were in a world where everyone agreed to “Never forget.”

And somehow, we forgot. And this new world we’re in seems frighteningly and dangerously like the old one we were finally making progress leaving behind.

(C) 2016, The Washington Post · Petula Dvorak 

{Matzav.com}


10 COMMENTS

  1. Why publish this totally Leftist screed? The idiot author is worried about Black Lives Matter goons being offended?!!!

    It’s full of lies like Trump supports KKK etc. Why spread this garbage on the public media?

  2. Wear your Donald Trump hats proud people. Gan Eden is likely not filled by anyone who supports Donald.

    Factor in the Purim season. Lets hope we do not have to make Trumpentaschen. He is that bad.

    Dream of a careful America. We must have a plurality for human hope.

    This is a very scary feeling that the man in office could be a hate monger for power. We must be careful.

    A confluent society does not espouse hate terror valued blame for choice of indignity. Trump is the Third Reich reemulated.

    Different times than my childhood. They are now making jokes about ‘seig hail’ on facebook as if it just meant ‘have a good time’. Focus more on the davening. This may be the most evil time in modern America history. C’vs.

    G-d is good. I mean it when I say there are no trump supporters in Gan Eden. Not with their hats.

    G-d bless America. A woman can do it and Angela Merkel is an example of how it was done.

    Davening learns more serious undertones.

    Shalom.

  3. Why do you keep posting anti Trump rhetoric articles that defend illegal immigrants,Radical Muslims and Blacks Lives Matter radicals. The truth is if the country got rid of all the social welfare programs like food stamps Medicaid and free schooling for illegal children, it would solve all of these problems. The Frum community should be demanding this as well It would be a lot easier to pay for yeshiva tuition if my taxes were not so high.

  4. This is jewish because Donald Trump is antagonistic to American Voice and Value. The jews posting above about “leftist” media and other ideas of concealing the “criminality” of a changing culture are very poor minded jews who do not understand chesed and tikkun olam. It is horrifying to see that Israel has members who do not see evil in the midst of a popularist agenda of hate.

    The black lives movement is a nasty commodity. Illegal immigration is not a greater due good and radical islam is very scary. But we must stand up for a confluent society by which we can agree that Time has value and our voices matter in America.

    A man who wants to downplay the human ordeal and the human voice of liberty is not a man who should lead this country. This article is fair and we should welcome the concerns of our families in this time of very annoying and difficult political posturing.

    Still, one wonders how an Israelite can see a man who uses hate rhetoric in any day become a man to defend for any role in history. We have learned too much from popularist hate in the past and we are well aware that it can happen again.

    Still, Donald Trump is not a creative mind looking for an innocent future. His tactics are blame, hate and blame again. There is no greatness in his values and his destiny is likely to be very scary in or out of any office we have in America.

    G-d is blessed and any jew who questions the popularist approach to hate is a Jew who will earn merit. The sanity is to question why we are going through this age and ask what we can do for our country.

    The terror of Mr. Trump is the constant barrage of claims of present perfection and the irregular speech deficits of human voice and value.

    This is a man who will not lead our country, may start a war with even Mexico or else and we can not spare our budget, personage or any human hope for a negative future by which all ages will be judged in the future.

    Hitler, ym’s did not do it for Germany and a popularist of Trump’s proportion will not do it in America.

    The hate issues he espouses should be tallied and evaluated and more formative reasonable values employed to ascertain how a feasible direct solution can be applied to American living today.

    The black lives movement can be curtailed by democratic aim. The idea of illegal immigration can be improved if we place tariffs on Mexico and as them theirselves to patrol the border.

    This is a terrible time for many and I pray that our yidden can be leaders today in finding a better voice in America. Our lives, families, friends and country depend on learning history should not be repeated in hate and our favor must be with G-d who rules above.

    This is so absurd that I wonder about the sanity of many of our frum yidden today.

    G-d bless America. If Trump wins, wait on the most horrible era of American political futures.

    Scary in all ways.

    Trust in G-d.

    Shalom.

  5. And I don’t know that the kids at the University of Southern California who threw eggs and hurled racial epithets at a student from Hong Kong over the weekend were acting directly on Trump’s orders.
    You don’t “know” that they were acting “directly” on Trump’s “orders”? Nothing like rhetorical excess to completely destroy the point you’re trying to make.

  6. #4 if the government cancelled most of the benefits that the illegal immigrants use, like Medicaid and food stamps, and cheap housing, it would have a huge detrimental effect on kollel families.

  7. next they will blame him for global warming or something. NEWS FLASH: TRUMP ISN’T THE SATAN. HE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING THAT GOES WRONG.

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