Wielding 9-11 as a Weapon

The still-pinned professionally produced political attack by @realDonaldTrump against @IlhanMN does more to insult America and spit on the memory of 9-11 than any comment by her. https://t.co/CW6OTY1fof #IStandWithIlhanOmar

— ***Dave Hill (@Three_Star_Dave) April 13, 2019

The still-pinned professionally produced political attack by @realDonaldTrump against @IlhanMN does more to insult America and spit on the memory of 9-11 than any comment by her. https://t.co/CW6OTY1fof #IStandWithIlhanOmar

It’s the terrorists — the forces of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’eda — who intended their 9-11 attacks as a weapon, as a means of dividing and weakening the US and its society, of fomenting a war between East and West, between Christian and Muslim.

It didn’t quite work. There was war, but it was — with the help of people like (yes) George W. Bush — not framed as a war between East and West, between Christian and Muslim, but against the specific factions, forces, and individuals ostensibly behind the attacks (with an opportunistic veering off into Iraq, but that’s another story).

The rise of Donald Trump and his nationalism, his continuous invective against the Other — the Muslims, the immigrants, the exploitative allies and trading partners, the city-folk, the gays, “socialists,” the transgender, the women, the non-white, the poor — has all too easily picked up that weapon of fear and resentment and ignorance and tribalism.

And now, with a Twitter attack not just in passing, but pinned to the top of his stream, Donald Trump has picked up that 9-11 weapon that Osama bin Laden laid out for him and is using it as a weapon against someone who represents everything he stands against: a Democratic woman of power who has been democratically elected to oppose his agenda.

In doing so, Donald discredits any reverence America still feels for 9-11. He turns it into a cudgel to use against his opponent. He politicizes it, hugs it to himself like he hugs the American flag, not because it really means anything to him, but because he can weaponize the gesture against others. He diminishes that attack’s significance far more than Omar’s in-passing reference to it in an address that wasn’t even about 9-11. He makes it all about him and his political position and his nationalistic movement.

And he does it at a moment when self-avowed fans of his are being arrested for making death threats against the person he’s continuing to so prominently attack.

Yeah, Donald, I can recognize the real enemy of America here.