COUNTING ON PEOPLE’S WORST INSTINCTS — AND CHEATING, OF COURSE — IS ALL HE HAS.

IT’S ALL HE’S EVER HAD.

Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 28" x 36", Richard J Van Wagoner, Courtesy of Van Wagoner Family Trust**

I reread an Op-Ed by Dara Lind, published in Vox after Trump’s 2016 acceptance speech: Donald Trump’s RNC speech turned his white supporters’ fear into a weapon.

https://www.vox.com/2016/7/22/12254212/trump-rnc-speech-racist

The same Op-Ed, which focused on “Trump’s message to white Americans: Your worst instincts can save your lives,” could have been written after his latest acceptance speech. Same divisive playbook to dehumanize and stoke fear over, by percentage, growing segments of the population in the United States. Same dog whistles. Same rants. He’s just expanded his, and therefore his base’s, list of enemies and people to fear in his image of America, the one his mind’s eye has segregated by race and religion.

The fear Trump stokes is of his America, the one he has set out to create. Those with an IQ easily recognize the America — from which, he claims, only he can save suburban housewives — is the one under his watch. The latest outrage over the epidemic of killings of Black and Brown Americans at the hands of law enforcement could not have come at a more opportune time for the racist president who, “presiding” over the Trump-fueled health and economic catastrophes, the worst in a century, has nothing else of consequence to run on. It falls squarely within his incurious, inflexible, self-absorbed, racist psyche.

Thank you Kellyanne for saying the quiet part out loud.

The Biden/Harris Campaign purchased the domain http://www.keepamericagreat.com That cite addresses many of Trump’s broken promises and failures, including those that concern the economy and jobs, Covid-19, immigration, foreign policy, national security and defense, farmers, law and justice, government accountability, health care, infrastructure and technology, education and veterans. It’s worth a look, if only for the fact that the Trump campaign, which is running on the not so subtle white nationalist slogan “Keep America Great” as the racial demographics continue to shift, didn’t have the foresight and wherewithal to purchase the domain.

Then there are the Qs which embody Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories and have Trump’s full-throated support.

Trump hasn’t drained any swamps. “Deep state” prosecutors are doing that for him but not nearly as fast as he populates it.

Trump’s latest projection is to call racial sensitivity training “un-American” and “divisive” — which is true under white supremacist theory — and to discontinue any government contracts that reference “white privilege.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/04/white-house-racial-sensitivity-training/

My latest hope is that the highly credible revelations of Trump’s complete disparagement of America’s brave soldiers, those “losers,” “suckers,” “dopes,” “non-heroes,” who risked and risk life and limb so Trump can pursue his own personal Viet Nam will cause at least some among his base finally to recognize the unimpeachable truth:

Trump is the worst person in the United States.

*My brother the very talented fiction writer and novelist, Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner and https://lastamendment.com. Rob’s next novel, a beautifully written suspense drama that takes place in Utah, Wyoming and Norway, will be published by Signature Books this fall. This novel, The Contortionists, the story of a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community, is a beautifully written, psychological page-turner.

**Richard J Van Wagoner is my father. His list of honors, awards and professional associations is extensive. He was Professor Emeritus (Painting and Drawing), Weber State University, having served three Appointments as Chair of the Department of Visual Arts there. He guest-lectured and instructed at many universities and juried numerous shows and exhibitions. He was invited to submit his work as part of many shows and exhibitions, and his work was exhibited in a number of traveling shows domestically and internationally. My daughter Angela Moore, a professional photographer, photographed more than 500 pieces of my father’s work. On behalf of the Van Wagoner Family Trust, she is in the process of compiling a collection of his art work. The photographs of my father’s art reproduced in https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner and https://lastamendment.com are hers