Here’s a picture of Donald Trump and Melania holding a baby orphaned in the Walmart shooting in El Paso:
It bears worth pointing out that this baby was no longer a patient at the hospital. The baby was brought back to the hospital for exactly this kind of photo opportunity. Only the lady on the right appears to betray the fact that this is not a moment of merriment.
Much has been written about Trump’s lack of empathy. Most recently here, and here. That the orphaned boy’s father was, according to the uncle standing next to Trump, a fan of Trump changes little. The fact remains that he, along with his wife and 20 others were killed because they looked Mexican. This is MAGA as it plays itself out in the real world.
MAGA is no longer an empty slogan, it has been weaponized by exactly the people one would expect would take the ideology to its logical conclusion: Trump says Mexican are rapists and drug dealers? Shoot them on sight. Tell the grieving families that their loved ones were killed for any other reason than for being exactly who they were. Through its silence the Republican party has crossed a threshold and revealed itself to be a nativist, xenophobic and racist party.
The grinning imbecile with a red tie that is too long is directly responsible for the slaughter of people peacefully going about their own business. Republicans are not addressing the Trump factor in this massacre, nor the issue of easy access to weapons of war. Instead they focus on mental health and violent video games. The United States is the only country in the world that experiences mass shootings at such a large scale. It is not as if the United States was the only country in the world with people with mental health issues or access to the internet. The key ingredient is easy access to weapons of war.
We could only hope that the El Paso massacre is not a harbinger of future massacres. But this will be unlikely while the source of the sick racist ideology sits in the White House.