As NFL reopens amid altered landscape, Trump resumes attacks on players who demonstrate for racial justice

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President Trump’s attempt to show that the nation is recovering from the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic will clash head-on Thursday with his denunciations of social justice demonstrations when the National Football League kicks off its season in prime time.

Trump has lobbied heavily for sports leagues to restart despite the threat of the virus, but his demands have been incongruous when it comes to the NFL, an $8.8 billion juggernaut whose television ratings dwarf all competitors’.

Ahead of the season opener between the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans, the president and his allies have resumed their long-standing bashing of NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem to call attention to police brutality affecting communities of color. Continue reading.

Trump, Vicar of Fear and Violence

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He continues the old practice of stoking white victimhood for votes.

The use of white fear and white victimhood as potent political weapons is as old as the country itself. Donald Trump is just the latest practitioner of this trade.

As Robert G. Parkinson wrote in “The Common Cause,” his book about patriot leaders during the American Revolution, politicians used fears of insurrectionist enslaved people, Indian “massacres” and foreign mercenaries to unite the disparate colonies in a common fight.

Does this sound similar to Trump’s rhetoric on Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants, Black Lives Matter and supposed anarchists? Continue reading.