Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:49 pm
On Saturday in Kansas City, anti-Trump protesters got a special reward from Kansas City police for embracing their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble and express themselves: Pepper spray.
For some reason – no trigger has been identified – police began moving along the line of protesters and spraying pepper spray in their faces. This included journalists.
One witness, @stokith, tweeted this video:
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As you can see, we were far from what happened and were not involved but he in walked up spraying us pic.twitter.com/f22WB5FAAG
— Chris (@stokith) March 13, 2016
Inside, Trump was interrupted and people were kicked out, including, prominently, and to no one’s surprise, black lives matters protesters. Trump, demonstrating again how he is manufacturing these incidents, claimed Kansas City officials wanted him to cancel the event, but those very same officials revealed that to be another Trump lie, like when he lied about Chicago officials asking him to cancel his rally in that city:
No. We did not ask him to cancel. https://t.co/ASUi1V0XlV
— KC City Manager (@KCMOManager) March 13, 2016
Norm Chomsky told Boston activist Simone Chun of the Republicans that, “I have never seen such lunatics in the political system.” And he wasn’t even speaking specifically of Donald Trump.
His words ring true, and more so when you read about Donald Trump’s increasingly irrational behavior and rhetoric, for example, saying of demonstrators in Kansas City,
“I don’t want to ruin people’s lives. But the only way we’re gonna stop this craziness is if we press charges. Because then their lives are gonna be ruined, they’re gonna know their lives are gonna be ruined. So I’ll just tell you folks, from now on, if you do anything, we’re pressing charges, okay?â€
Actually, the madness could end today if Trump would stop spewing it. It’s all coming out of his mouth, after all. As Rachel Maddow pointed out, it’s impossible call what happened in Chicago an accident. What happened in Kansas City was also certainly not an accident.
Donald Trump is engineering these violent displays everywhere he goes. He is the one, after all, who promoted the idea of punching people in the face, a response his followers have taken to heart.
And now he wants to make an arrest record your reward for embracing your First Amendment rights of free speech.
Welcome to Donald Trump’s America.
Image: Twitter screen capture
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
