When asked to explain what it was like spending upwards of six hours at Donald Trump’s Orlando campaign rally (now referred to by me as “The Donald Trump Vortex of Lunacy”), I tell people about an observation I shared with a friend, Kevin, as I was driving home.
Kevin: “Did anyone call you ‘nigger’? LOL.”
Me: “I didn’t hear anyone say the word ‘nigger.’ But to be fair, that just would have been redundant.”
The xenophobia and racism was palpable. More than that, it was front and center, prancing around the event like it owned the place (it did). It was literally everywhere. It was on the “BOMB the S—T out of ISIS” buttons being sold outside. It was in the idle chatter heard in the mile-long line (An excerpt: “Those people need to stay in the protest box before they get what’s coming to them.”) It was in the voice of each of his opening speakers as they related, to a man, increasingly divisive and hateful anecdotes of how “they” are coming to “take our jobs,” “destroy our country” and “undermine our military.”
It was, to say the least, six of the most anxious, deeply unsettling hours of my life. I became more tense and anxious with each passing minute. There are only so many Confederate flags you can see and “Build the wall!” chants you can hear before those assaults on your senses start to break you down physically. It took several cocktails and hours of fitful sleep before I felt the knots in my neck, back and shoulder uncoil themselves. I’ve never been to war, but I was certainly in enemy territory, and I’d venture to say this is what PTSD feels like. I’m still not really over it.
As for Trump’s speech itself, it’s hard to fully describe how scattershot it was. It was an hour of wide-ranging, ultra conservative lunacy with no hint of continuity of thought or theme. He related a (false) story of how General Jack Pershing drenched bullets in pig’s blood before he used said bullets to shoot “terrorists”—inferring he’d do the same or similar. He asserted he was going to “tax” imported, Carrier-branded HVAC units as punishment for moving a plant to Mexico to the tune of 35 percent per unit. The crowd went wild and cranked up the “USA! USA! USA!” chants seemingly on cue after each inane, bewildering threat he shouted to them.
To try to give a sense of how thinly veiled the hate was, try to imagine sitting in an area packed with 10,000 attendants when your attention is directed to the first speaker of the day, who says that while Trump “loves” the First Amendment, he “loves the Second Amendment, too.” However, in the spirit of having a “peaceful” rally, he asks that Trump supporters not touch or harm any protesters who are being disruptive. Instead, he says, they are to stand up, point at the “offender,” chant, “Trump! Trump! Trump,” and let campus security “get ’em out of here!”
This happened 11 times throughout the rally. Each time a protester was removed (most for simply, silently standing up and ripping “Trump ’16” signs in half), it was punctuated with a crowd refrain of “USA! USA! USA.” In the Donald Trump Vortex of Lunacy, patriotism is most effectively achieved when citizens are threatened with the First Amendment and escorted out of an establishment. Sounds eerily familiar, no?
In keeping with the “eerily familiar” theme, as he closed, Trump asked attendants to stand and raise their right hands to take a “loyalty pledge” so he could be secured in knowing he had their vote. Take a moment and imagine a bunch of white people with their right hands raised in the air repeating words spoken/shouted from their leader from atop a podium. You may now sob into your coffee. I understand. I was there.
I keep telling myself that the same country that re-elected Barack Obama will not allow a Trump presidency. I want to believe the America I live in isn’t in the same space-time continuum as Trump or his supporters. That said, this sentiment and these people aren’t going anywhere. They were here in 2008, called themselves the tea party and made a celebrity out of the entire Palin family (they sunk McCain’s campaign as well, but I’m not complaining about that one). Today, they have largely dispensed with the “tea party” moniker and have now resorted to, for example, dressing up as a concrete wall with “MEXICO WILL PAY” crudely painted on the chest.
The reckoning that takes place between these two Americas will be difficult, but it is necessary if we are to move forward as a nation that claims to be a haven for freedom, justice and the right to live peacefully. If it doesn’t start with us, it ends with them
Dr. Ivan Graham is a dentist and DJ living in Orlando, Fla.