This week, President Donald Trump spoke unscripted on his version of the events of last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, the location of a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and alt-right march.

It was not a march for peace, or free speech, or climate change. It was not a march for a confederate monument. It was a march to proclaim that Jews and minorities, mostly defined by skin color, are inferior to whiteness.

The march included torches, rifles and semi-automatic weapons, Nazi flags, Nazi salutes and all the hateful accouterments that support the followers of such movements. All in all, it was a collection of dunces and dummies, costumed out in the regalia of ignorance and stupidity.

And our president, Donald Trump, defined them on Tuesday as having in their numbers some “very fine people.”

Mr. President, NO, no, no, there were no very fine people chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” White Supremacist Christopher Cantwell proclaiming, “We’re not non-violent, we’ll ******* kill these people if we have to,” was not a fine person, but a dangerous fool.

Following the president’s obscene claim that some of the neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists are very fine people, business leaders associated with the president began resigning en masse, until Trump was forced to dissolve two business councils to end the resignations.

The response to Trump’s folly did not end there. Fox News, the Trump protectors, could not find a single Republican, according to broadcaster Shepard Smith, to come on Fox News to defend Trump’s amazing statements of support for the hate groups.

Several congresspersons have initiated a move to have Congress censure the president, an act not successfully taken since Andrew Johnson was president. USA Today dedicated its editorial to call for censure.

Internationally, criticism rained on Trump from all sides.

“Trump’s downplayed reaction on Charlottesville is obnoxious,” German Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted Wednesday. “It was anti-Semitism and racism, there is nothing to make relative.”

British Prime Minister Teresa May mocked Trump’s suggestion of equal culpability at Charlottesville, “I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them…”

We know Donald Trump. He has shown he is politically inept, temperamentally unbalanced and unfit to serve, and morally bankrupt. Yet, until Tuesday’s uncontrolled rant, we did not know he would become the defender of racism and bigotry in the form of defending white supremacy as the co-equal of those who went to Charlottesville to stand against racism.

We are left with this unfortunate truth: We are on our own.

Our presidents have served historically, in moments of crisis, to elevate us as a nation, to bring us together by showing our common compassion and reminding us of our shared values. Donald Trump cannot do that, for he stands only to promote Donald Trump, he stands only to trivialize the presidency and mock our values.

It is time for the dead silence of our Congress to end. It is time for Republicans in congress to step forward and stand with the American people and against the unfolding incompetence of this president by speaking loudly against Trump’s empowerment of the haters of Charlottesville.

For to stand in silence is complicity; to stand in silence is to encourage more violence by the haters.

We are Americans, we are better people than this president, and our values will sustain us. But for now, we are on our own.

 

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State