@JLeslie… I know what he said. It just makes me tired. People have been calling on him to denounce the support of groups like the KKK form the beginning of his presidential campaign, and yet he has only publicly spoken against them once, 48 hours after someone died in Charlottesville at the hands of a white nationalist ideologue and the national pressure was too intense for him to ignore… And even after doing that, he doesn’t seem willing to do so again. The closest he got yesterday was to say, “I have condemned neo-Nazis,” a reference to that one time, as if it’s a check-off box and now we should leave him alone about it. I know he’s not known for elegant or careful wording, but the phrasing yesterday seemed deliberate because it fits with his previously demonstrated reluctance to speak out against those groups.
To be clear, I detest violence from any side in protests, if for no other reason than one act of violence taints the entire movement at least a little bit. (Of course, because violence means people are getting hurt, a movement’s “image” really is the least important reason.)
I have a hard time seeing Trump’s focus on the chaotic fallout of Charlottesville as anything but a dodge. (Yet another reason I detest violence in protests; it distracts from the issues at hand.) I think Trump’s leaning on that point because he knows he doesn’t have to really address white supremacists/nationalists, or the ways in which he has enabled them (wittingly or not) to latch onto his name to give themselves a false legitimacy, if he can just say “both sides were in the wrong.” He’s not stepping up to the responsibilities of a president. He’s not trying to diffuse the tension. He’s not trying to offer the nation a better path. He’s not leading. (And none of this requires condoning violence on one side.) He’s just making sure the blame gets spread around, especially if he can make sure it hits groups he doesn’t like.
I guess what I’m really missing in the aftermath of all of this are Presidents who know how to rhetorically move a situation forwards, move it towards a solution… Isn’t that what Presidents throughout our history have done, albeit some better than others? Obama’s tweet is case in point, and its record-breaking number of likes seems to indicate that the country understands the value of that kind of rhetoric, even if our current President doesn’t. And so, I’m just tired.