Trump’s Madison Square Garden event features crude and racist insults; AP, October 28, 2024

JILL COLVIN AND MICHELLE L. PRICE, AP; Trump’s Madison Square Garden event features crude and racist insults

"Donald Trump hosted a rally featuring crude and racist insults at New York’s Madison Square Garden, turning what his campaign had dubbed as the event where he would deliver his closing message into an illustration of what turns off his critics.

With just over a week before Election Day, speakers at the rally Sunday night labeled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” called Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris “the devil,” and said the woman vying to become the first woman and Black woman president had begun her career as a prostitute."

For authoritarians, stifling the arts is of a piece with demonising minorities; The Guardian, September 22, 2019

Elif Shafak, The Guardian; For authoritarians, stifling the arts is of a piece with demonising minorities

"Art and literature are – and will be increasingly – at the centre of the new culture wars. What might seem like sporadic, disconnected incidents here and there are in truth manifestations of a similar mindset, a growing wave of bigotry...

In country after country, we have seen enough examples to understand that a divisive and aggressive rhetoric against LGBT and women’s rights is intrinsic to the rise of populist nationalism and populist authoritarianism.

Top-down censorship and the control of art and literature are inseparable components of the hatred and discrimination against sexual minorities, as well as against immigrants and intellectuals. Artists and writers cannot afford not to know what is happening to colleagues in other parts of the world. We cannot afford to be silent."

Donald Trump Is Making America Meaner; New York Times, 8/13/16

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times; Donald Trump Is Making America Meaner:

"In Georgia, an India-born Muslim named Malik Waliyani bought a gas station and convenience store a few months ago and was horrified when it was recently burglarized and damaged. He struggled to keep it going. But then the nearby Smoke Rise Baptist Church heard what had happened.

“Let’s shower our neighbor with love,” Chris George, the pastor, told his congregation at the end of his sermon, and more than 200 members drove over to assist, mostly by making purchases. One man drove his car around until the gas tank was empty, so he could buy more gas.

“Our faith inspires us to build bridges, not to label people as us and them, but to recognize that we’re all part of the same family,” the pastor told me. “Our world is a stronger place when we choose to look past labels and embrace others with love.”

This is a wrenching, divisive, polarizing time in America, and we have a major party nominee who is sowing hatred and perhaps violence. Let’s not succumb. Good people, like the members of Smoke Rise Baptist, are reweaving our nation’s social fabric even as it is being torn."