How Low Can We Go?

Yesterday Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the chief law enforcement official of the United States of America, giggled as a group of high school students (at Turning Point USA’s High School Leadership Summit at George Washington University) chanted “Lock her up.”  The chant was used as a rallying cry during the 2016 Trump presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton.  Not only did Sessions giggle, but he actually echoed the chant.

What’s wrong with that?  Hillary Clinton has never been charged with a crime.  There is no reason for her to be locked up according to the Department of Justice, which Sessions now leads.  In this country a person, under the Constitution,  is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law—not by a crowd.  That is true for the Clintons, the Trumps, and Jeff Sessions. Yet, Jeff Sessions giggled and echoed the chant rather than reminding the high school students of this fundamental tenet of our democracy.  What he did say was “I like this bunch, I gotta tell you.  You’re not going to be backing down.  Go get ‘em.  Go get ‘em.” This was followed by “Lock her up!” to which Sessions responded “Lock her up,” chuckling at the interruption as the shouts grew louder and louder.  This is recorded on video so we can actually see and hear it.  How low can we go?  I think we can go very low—even lower than we have gone thus far—especially if what we are seeing and what we are reading is not what’s happening!

Yesterday Donald Trump delivered a speech to Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Missouri.  As usual, he struggled to stay on topic and soon began to wander into his campaign rally mode.  He railed against the media. “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news”  “Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” he added.  What?  I just quoted the other day from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.  It was their final, most essential command.”  Just yesterday I quoted the following from Putin’s former advisor, Palovsky: “He [Putin] acts as a professor, as a lecturer.  He [explains] to us what Russia history was like, what values we have, what we should believe in.”  When Trump made his remarks about the media, the crowd roared in approval and pointed at the members of the press covering the event.  By the way, the crowd also howled when Mr. Trump’s bullied Congresswoman Maxine Waters and the Democrats.  How low can we go?  We can go very low—even lower than we have gone thus far—especially if what we are seeing and what we are reading (and what we are hearing) is not what’s happening!