Like Waco Needs Another Wacko

 

 (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

On Saturday, Donald Trump is going to Waco, Texas.

    But he's not going on just any day. It's yet another example of that despicable calculation that politicians and wouldbe politicians make while trying to send dog whistle messages that are better left uttered sotto voce.

    We saw one of the most shameless calculations 43 years ago when Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential bid in a little burg named Philadelphia, Mississippi. Philadelphia's only claim to fame up to that time was when three young civil rights workers were brutally murdered by KKK members that even included the county sheriff. He could've kicked off his campaign in his native Tampico, IL or in Sacramento, where he'd served as Governor of California. But he didn't. He chose little Philadelphia, MS.

    So there Reagan stood, his collar open and his shoes caked with red Mississippi clay, trying to pass himself off as some long-lost son of their soil, delivering a speech almost surely written by the late Lee Atwater, who the year after had proudly decoded for a journalist what states' rights really meant. In fact, this is probably the most revealing paragraph:

    You start out in 1954 by saying, “N-gger, n-gger, n-gger.” By 1968 you can’t say “n-gger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N-gger, n-gger.”

     Reagan's campaign kickoff, in which he successfully passed himself off as a shit-kicking son of the soil just like them, became notorious for its dog-whistling. It was nothing more or less than a new phase of evolution in 1968's Southern Strategy used by Nixon. And the Southern Strategy (barely) worked for Nixon in '68, just as Reagan's despicable dog-whistling worked for him in '80.

     Enter Donald Trump, looking to blow that same dog whistle in heavily conservative Waco, Texas, in a county he carried by 20 points in 2020.

The 30 Year Itch

Waco, obviously, is one of those places that's distinguished on a national map by big, red push pins in conservative households. Ruby Ridge is another and, up to a point, conservative anger is justified. The FBI did indeed set fire to the compound in Waco by using incendiary tear gas canisters and they did vent the main building by punching holes with tanks. Vicky Weaver got half her head blown off while holding her baby when sniper Lon Horiuchi fired into a dark building. In fact, Randy Weaver, Vicky Weaver's husband, got a good chunk of change from the government.

    But much more reprehensible than the government's overreach in both affairs is people like Donald Trump trying to make hay over it barely after the wounds from 1993 had healed. There are hardly any coincidences in politics and it's no coincidence that Donald Trump is planning on going to Waco almost exactly 30 years to the day after the 51 day siege began.

    Yet, unlike Reagan who sought to stoke even more division across racial lines with his purely cynical choice of Philadelphia, MS, Trump's choice of Waco seeks to exploit divisions along lines that don't really exist. He's always proved to be anti-government despite his ceaseless attempts to get elected as head of it these past eight years. It's a cynical calculation that's almost pre-destined to fail if the pathetic pre-indictment clown shows at Mar a Lago and Manhattan are any indication.

    Trump's cynical ploy to stoke bad memories of the burning spectacle of Mount Carmel is designed to do one thing and one thing only- To cobble together enough support for him to successfully stave off indictment from Alvin Bragg's grand jury, which is suddenly looking a lot more problematic that it had six days ago.

     But as we all learned from Dallas in 1963 or Memphis in 1968 or even at Kent State in 1970, all it takes is a handful or even one armed man in a place of concealment to make a horrible difference in human history. Maybe the next political sniper won't be stupid enough to announce his intentions so law enforcement can scoop him up before he loads his long rifle in his car. Maybe the next one will be egged on by Donald Trump at Waco.

     Of course, Alvin Bragg's office in Manhattan is hardly the federal government but the polemics that Trump will obviously deliver in Waco this Saturday will be hot enough to blur the lines for anyone who feels they still have an axe to grind against the government over the Branch Davidian siege or a prosecutor whom Trump just called an "animal" who's unfairly trying to keep him from seeking federal office.