"Trump Tries To Drag America Backward On a Very Different July 4th
In a jaw-dropping speech that amounted to a culture war bonfire, the President framed protesters as a nefarious left-wing mob that intends to 'end America'
On a very different Fourth of July holiday, when many Americans are wrestling with the racist misdeeds of the country's heroes and confronting an unrelenting pandemic with surging cases, their commander-in-chief is attempting to drag America backward - stirring fear of cultural change while flouting the most basic scientific evidence about disease transmission.
Above, the President arrives at Mount Rushmore on 3 July.
Below, the President's improved plan for Mount Rushmore...
In a jaw-dropping speech that amounted to a culture war bonfire, President Donald Trump used the backdrop of Mount Rushmore Friday night to frame protesters as a nefarious left-wing mob that intends to "end America." Those opponents, he argued, are engaged in a "merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children."
On Saturday in the nation's capital, the Trump administration has planned July 4 celebrations that ignore Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser's concerns about public health guidelines, although at least there'll be some of the social distancing measures at the White House that were ignored in SOuth Dakota, where the President largely acted as if the coronavirus didn't exist.
Instead, when Trump spoke on Friday night of a "growing danger," he was talking about an entirely different threat than rising coronavirus cases. He referred to a threat to America's "heritage" - rhetoric intended to rev up his base at a time when many Americans are attempting to relearn the nation's history with greater attention to the wrongs inflicted on Black and Native American people.
Repeatedly using vague pronouns like "they" and "them," Trump sought to play on the fears of a minority - that appears to be shrinking, according to polls - who view the rise of Black Lives Matter as a threat to the historical dominance of White people. He described the goals of protesters who are attempting to right the wrongs of history as "alien to our culture, and to our values."
One of "their political weapons," he said, is "cancel culture," which would drive people from their jobs, shame dissenters and "demand total submission" from anyone who disagrees.
"We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation's children, end this radical assault and preserve our beloved American way of life," Trump said. He mysteriously described those who would tear down statues of racist leaders from the past as "a new far left fascism that demands absolute allegiance."
"If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished," Trump said. "It's not gonna happen to us," he said to cheers, as he revived his familiar "us versus them" language. "Make no mistake. This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution."
"To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol and memory of our national heritage," he said.
Trump and his third wife (the porn star, who was admitted to the US on
an Einstein visa) at Mount Rushmore
A pandemic all but forgotten
It was spectacle that unfolded before thousands of people, most without masks, who were seated close together in bleacher seats and on black folding chairs that were zip-tied together because of a local fire code, making physical distancing impossible.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, a Republican and close Trump ally, set the tone earlier this week during an appearance on Fox News where she said there would be no social distancing as spectators gathered to celebrate freedom.
Like Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month - where at least eight Trump campaign staffers came down with the coronavirus and dozens of Secret Service agents were forced to quarantine - the South Dakota event ignored many of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for large gatherings. The lack of any visible effort to keep people safe was effectively an act of sabotage against Trump's own public health officials, who fear that crowds gathering this holiday weekend could lead to frightening surges in cases and an increase in America's death toll from the pandemic.
For days now, numerous experts, including the nation's top infectious disease expert Dr. ANthony Fauci and White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, have warned that Americans should not attend crowded gatherings as cases surge in 36 states, with alarming positivity rates in parts of Florida, Texas and Arizona.
Trump, however, has continued gas-lighting Americans about the rising number of cases, insisting they are due to increased testing. In a late Thursday night Tweet before playing golf on Friday morning, Trump inaccurately said that the rise in coronavirus cases is "because our testing is so massive and so good, far bigger and better than any other country."
"This is great news, but even better news is that death, and the death rate is DOWN," Trump tweeted. "Also, younger people, who get better much easier and faster!"
The President's appearance at the non-socially distanced event in South Dakota came at a time when the virus creeps ever closer to him. Before she was set to attend the SOuth Dakota event, Kimberly Guilfoyle - the girlfriend of Donal Trump Jr and a top fundraiser for the Trump campaign - tested positive for coronavirus, according to a top official for the committee she leads.
And while some of his closest allies are urging Trump to take a greater leadership role on masks, and even Trump himself told Fox News Business this week that he has noting against masks, the President has refused to wear one publicly in front of the press.
***** Personal note from BND - That's because it would ruin his spray-on orange make-up. The mask would rub patches of the make-up off and leave him looking like a white and orange pinto bean. Remember the orange ring of make-up inside his collar when he departed Marine One on his return from Tulsa? *****
Native Americans protesting on a road to Mount Rushmore yesterday
before being pepper sprayed by the National Guard and forcibly removed
Protecting statues
Just like he does on his Twitter feed, which is dominated by dismay over the toppling of statues of racist figures from America's past, Trump minimized the dangers of the pandemic Friday night in South Dakota, expressing more concern for the safety of statues than of the American people.
"Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities," Trump said. "Many of these people have no idea why they're doing this, but some know exactly what they're doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But, no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history and culture to be taken from them."
He also waded into the controversy over the legacies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two presidents etched into Mount Rushmore. He delivered his own history lesson of sorts on each of the White men chiseled into the South Dakota mountain. Earlier this week, Trump threatened protesters accused of throwing red paint on a Manhattan statue of Washington - who owned more than 300 enslaved people until he freed them in his will at his time of death - with 10 years in prison.
The President suggested that the monument towering above him, which includes the faces of Washington, Jefferson and former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, was also at risk as America reconsiders its past. "I am here as your president to proclaim before the country and before the world, this monument will never be desecrated," Trump said.
The Black Hills, where the monument stands, are a sacred place to Native Americans who live in the area. Sioux tribes roamed the area for thousands of years, but tribal ownership of the Black Hills was officially guaranteed by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Sioux were soon forced off the land after the discovery of gold in the area. Native American activists have called for the lands to be returned. In 1980, the Supreme Court upheld that the seizure of the Black Hills was illegal under the Constitution's Fifth Amendment. The legal battle continues to this day.
The dream of a different mountain-scape
In this moment of racial reckoning, the racist past of Gutzon Borglom, the sculptor who created Rushmore and was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan, has also drawn national attention. Borglum was also appointed to carve the giant relief of three of the most prominent Confederate figures, Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson on Georgia's Stone Mountain.
In recent days, the President has suggested that a 2015 Obama housing program, which was intended to rectify decades of discriminatory practices, has been "devastating" to the suburbs. On Wednesday, he called the words Black Lives Matter a "symbol of hate." He has also threatened to veto a must-pass defense policy bill because it includes an amendment that calls for the removal of the names of Confederate leaders from all military assets within three years.
Trump has doubled down on those race-baiting tactics even as he has fallen far behind his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in the polls and a majority of Americans across racial and ethnic groups are expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, according to recent polling by the Pew Research Center."
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The Six Grandfathers was named by Lakota medicine man Nicolas Black Elk after a vision. "The vision was of the six sacred directions: west, east, north, south, above, and below. The directions were said to represent kindness and love, full of years and wisdom, like human grandfathers." As stated above, the Lakotas and other Native Americans, and their ancestors, had roamed over, lived on, and hunted across the Black Hills area for thousands of years. The granite bluff that towered above the Hills remained carved only by the wind and rain until 1927, when Gutzon Borglum began his assault upon the mountain at the behest of the US government.
The Black Hills Expedition was a US Army scouting group led by Lt. Colonel George A Custer; it set out from what is now Bismarck, North Dakota, but was then Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory. The group had orders to travel to the previously uncharted Black Hills of South Dakota, which had been given to the Sioux in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Its mission was to look for suitable locations for a fort, find a route to the southwest, and to investigate the possibilities of gold mining. Custer and his unit, the 7th Cavalry, arrived in the Black Hills on 22 July 1874, with orders to return to Fort Abraham Lincoln by 30 August.
The Six Grandfathers
Custer laid claim to the discovery, bringing miners, prospectors, and white settlers to the area. The US government constructed roads and railroad lines within the Great Sioux Nation lands, breaching the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. These treaty breaks sparked several conflicts with Custer and the US Cavalry; it culminated with the Battle of the Greasy Grass (or the Battle of the Little Bighorn, for whites) in June 1876 - less than two years after the first illegal excursion into tribal lands.
When the Sioux and their allies defeated Custer and the 7th Cavalry, there was a call for swift retaliation. Two months later - in August 1876 - the United States enacted "Sell or Starve" which withheld promised food rations from the tribes that had defeated Custer. The US wanted the Black Hills - its gold and other resources. After much suffering and starvation, the Lakota relinquished their claim to their sacred lands, the Paha Sapa (Black Hills). The following Act of 1877 was another breach of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie: a Congressional Act forced the tribes onto reservations and the US federal government took ownership of the Black Hills.
Within the next few years, the Lakota and neighboring tribes faced the genocide of their culture, traditions, and land - everything was gone. Sacred places like Wind Cave, Devil's Tower, Black Elk Peak, and the Six Grandfathers were now in the of the Euro-Americans. Nothing was left to them.
*** The Six Grandfathers was named Mount Rushmore in 1885 by the whites, after a wealthy New York lawyer. ***
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