In a darkly appropriate demonstration, America has now witnessed (as of 12 Noon on Thursday) a real life iteration of Trump.45’s incendiary political rhetoric made flesh.
Ten Little Indians
Those of us of a certain age were entertained and taught to count in public school kindergarten by memorizing and repeating a simple rhyme.
From the Wikipedia entry:
‘Ten Little Indians” is an American children’s counting out rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 13512. The word Indian usually refers to Native Americans. *
The modern lyrics for the children’s rhyme are:
One little, two little, three little Indians
Four little, five little, six little Indians
Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians
Ten little Indian boys.
Ten little, nine little, eight little Indians
Seven little, six little, five little Indians
Four little, three little, two little Indians
One little Indian boy.
Today’s version is not so innocent.
2018 Ten Little Indians
Since Monday America has been greeted with 10 separate mail bomb package deliveries. On Monday it was to George Soros in New York. On Tuesday, a package was sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton (a twofer, don’t you know) in New York.
On Wednesday, it started with a mail delivery to President Obama in Washington; then another to CIA Director John Brennan incorrectly addressed to TV network CNN (where Brennan does not work; he is a consultant to NBC networks), a second twofer; another to Attorney General Eric Holder (also misaddressed and returned to the Office of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (name misspelled) in Florida; and then two separate packages to Representative Maxine Waters in Maryland and Los Angeles, yet a third twofer target wise.
On Thursday, America awoke to a further domestic terrorism assault as additional mail bomb deliveries were found to Robert DeNiro in New York; and two more to Vice President Joe Biden in Delaware (the fourth bomb target twofer).
The current State of Play is that in the last 72 hours, we have seen 10 live bombs sent to nine prominent America figures in a significant domestic terrorism attack on our country. Those attacked include two former Presidents; three former Senate confirmed cabinet officials: the U.S. Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the CIA Director; a former Vice-President; a serving Member of the U.S. House of Representatives; and two prominent private citizens, a billionaire philanthropist and major film star.
So far, whether by successful security screening measures long in place for current and former senior political officials, good luck, heads up police work after Monday, or bomb maker incompetence, none of the devices has exploded, and none of the intended targets has been physically harmed.
That good fortune does not lessen the seriousness of the attacks. On the contrary, the number of unexploded bombs will provide a ‘treasure trove’ of forensic data that will likely drastically reduce the time required until law enforcement bomb experts in the FBI, ATF, JTTF, state police, and law enforcement officials such as the NYC police to catch the perpetrator or perpetrators.
The Trump Reaction So Far
On Wednesday morning as the major news unfolded live on cable news television, Trump.45 was largely Twitter silent, except for a vapid Mike Pence re-tweet. Trump.45 got his Presidential leadership chance as a White House Opioid Crisis event Wednesday afternoon, and he read a scripted comment calling on the country to unite, and condemn all forms of political violence. It came across to many as a somewhat wooden performance, but it was not inflammatory, and avoided the worst sort of 2017 Charlottesville false equivalence of ‘both sides do it’-ism he is prone to espousing. Good for him.
Nonetheless, he was not to be deterred from his sworn partisan Presidential duty to attend yet another political rally last night in Wisconsin. He played ‘nice’, in his own words, and muted his hyper partisan railing against critics, leaving out the typical list of named individual suspects, but warning off the Media, as usual, for causing all the ruckus.
And by this morning, Trump.45 was at it again on Twitter, blaming the FAKE NEWS for, and calling on them to stop the negativity. Meanwhile, Sarah Sanders told everyone that Trump.45 bears no responsibility for his own rhetorical incitement of rally crowds because words aren’t actions, and Trump.45 didn’t pack or mail the bombs. Thank goodness.
We are so weary of the constant assault on past Presidential leadership norms forced upon us in the last two years, such a low bar has become almost routine. One doubts whether any crisis would divert Trump from his closing drive; not a Category 4 hurricane, the deliberate murder of an American journalist by a sovereign foreign ally, or the largest mass political bombing attempt in American history.
Oh, well. Let Trump.45 be Trump, as his aides insist.
Has the Fat Lady Sung?
There is nothing the least bit funny in all this erosion of leadership, moral standards, and lack of empathy shown by our current political officials. Sometimes you may laugh bitterly instead of crying or pounding your fists in frustration.
We don’t know for a fact who is actually responsible for this outrage. It could be a Middle Eastern person who came in from Mexico; it might be a 400-pound Fat Guy on a couch in Jersey; it could even be a False Flag operation by Democrats to discourage Republican voters or goose turnout. Well, it could be in some alternate universe, maybe.
We do, however, have some plain facts to look at after 72 hours. 10 bombs and 9 individual American targets. Lo and behold, 10 out of 10 are notable critics of President Trump.
Actually, the target list reads like a Who’s Who child’s grammar of persons mockingly named by Trump.45 repeatedly at his recent heated rallies, and in his continual Twit storms: Obama, the Clintons, Brennan, Waters, Biden, Holder, Soros, and DeNiro. Couldn’t be much clearer.
Perhaps of some mild interest is the fact that every one of them is a Democrat or former Democratic official, or private citizen supporting Democrats. 100% of the actual bomb targets, no exceptions. Not a single Republican miscreant in the bunch. Since Republicans are somewhat less than half the voting pubic, and Trump had plenty to say about some of the 16 others running against him just two years ago, such as Lying Ted, Low Energy Jeb, Little Marco, Ugly Carly, etc., it stretches credulity to think the bomb target selection is a mere statistical coincidence.
But the current Target List for Mail Bombs on that basis is hardly complete. Most folks know about a Baker’s Dozen, 12 of something to buy. In Cajun country, we have a little more generous concept, known as lagniappe, where a Baker’s dozen is considered to be 13 items, not 12.
The wacko bomber planner may already have three more candidates in sight: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Elizabeth Warren. All are serving elected officials, each is a Democrat, and all are frequent repeated targets of Trump.45’s mocking references in rallies and in his Twits.
So the wacko terrorist bomber may not be done in his own mind. We can all hope that competent law enforcement officials catch him before he can fulfill his fantasy.
Summary
Americans have waited in vain for the day and time whenTrump.45 would show he is President of the whole United States, and not just the minority who voted for him and thrill to his bombast and crude verbal and political behavior.
It could happen. Stranger things have happened. Nixon went to China.
Just don’t hold your breath.
In the meantime the 2018 Elections occur in 12 days. For God’s sake, whatever side you identify with
GO OUT AND VOTE!!
* In this time of language crudity and dog whistles, even children’s rhymes are freighted with racist imagery. It turns out that the Little Indians is a cleaned up derogatory version of the original language intended to refer to America’s largest minority of color, America’s former African slave population, in the tumultuous period just after the Civil War.
From the Wikipedia entry:
In 1868 songwriter Septimus Winner adapted it as a song, then called “Ten Little Injuns”, for a minstrel show. Another version of this song is “Ten Little Niggers”, and this has also been adapted and published as a book for children.
Songwriter Septimus Winner created an elaborated version of the children’s song, called “Ten Little Injuns”, in 1868 for a minstrel show.
Ten little Injuns standin’ in a line,
One toddled home and then there were nine;
Nine little Injuns swingin’ on a gate,
One tumbled off and then there were eight.
Eight little Injuns gayest under heav’n.
One went to sleep and then there were seven;
Seven little Injuns cuttin’ up their tricks,
One broke his neck and then there were six.
Six little Injuns all alive,
One kicked the bucket and then there were five;
Five little Injuns on a cellar door,
One tumbled in and then there were four.
Four little Injuns up on a spree,
One got fuddled and then there were three;
Three little Injuns out on a canoe,
One tumbled overboard and then there were two
Two little Injuns foolin’ with a gun,
One shot t’other and then there was one;
One little Injun livin’ all alone,
He got married and then there were none.
It is generally thought that this song was adapted, possibly by Frank J. Green in 1869, as “Ten Little Niggers”, though it is possible that the influence was the other way around, with “Ten Little Niggers” being a close reflection of the text that became “Ten Little Indians”. Either way, “Ten Little Niggers” became a standard of the blackface minstrel shows. It was sung by Christy’s Minstrels and became widely known in Europe, where it was used by Agatha Christie in her novel of the same name, about ten killings on a remote island. The novel was later retitled And Then There Were None (1939), and remains one of her most famous works. The French and German titles of Christie’s novel today are still “Dix Petits Nègres” and “Zehn Kleine Negerlein”, respectively.
Variants of this song have been published widely as children’s books; what the variants have in common is ‘that they are about dark-skinned boys who are always children, never learning from experience’. For example, it had been published in Holland by 1913; in Denmark by 1922 (in Börnenes billedbog); in Iceland in 1922 (as Negrastrákarnir); and in Finland in the 1940s (in Kotoa ja kaukaa: valikoima runosatuja lapsille and Hupaisa laskukirja). The Bengali poem Haradhon er Dosti Chhele (Haradhon’s Ten Sons) is also inspired by Ten Little Indians.
Because of the use of the racist words, modern versions for children often use “soldier boys” or “teddy bears” as the objects of the rhyme. The unaltered republication of the 1922 Icelandic version in 2007 of Ten Little Negroes by the Icelandic publisher Skrudda caused considerable debate in Iceland, with a strong division between people who saw the book as racist and people who saw it as “a part of funny and silly stories created in the past”
And so we have another linguistic twofer in 2018: Trump’s Ten Little Indians evokes Trump.45’s not so subtle racist dog whistles of his nickname for Senator Warren (Pocahontas), and the his conflation of dark skinned boys of all sorts, whether Indian, Black, Hispanic, or Muslim. What do you know?
That’s not progress for America. It’s the worst kind of #MAGA retrogression, it seems to me.