Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Trump is so scared that he wants us to dismantle the Constitution

Donald Trump’s xenophobic, paranoid nativist rhetoric was already alarming by now, a few weeks before the presidential election. But the way he and his campaign reacted after a bomb plot and explosion in New York City and New Jersey this past weekend represented an attempt to make a fearful retreat from core American values, like someone tossing children and the elderly off the lifeboat to have more food and water for himself and his cringing cronies.

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This year, we are in danger of retreating from building the America we’re all supposed to be proud of, one that protects all and offers equal opportunity to all. The fact that the fear that sends some of us scuttling away is “unreasoning” and “unjustified” makes us cowards. Cowards abandon principles at the first sign of danger and look for witches to burn — or foreigners to blame. The common wisdom is that we are at our most divisive time since the Civil War, divided by differences in starkly contrasting political beliefs. That’s not true. We aren’t divided by political ideology as much as split between those blindly hoping for a savior and those rationally selecting a leader.

Donald Trump’s xenophobic, paranoid nativist rhetoric was already alarming by now, a few weeks before the presidential election. But the way he and his campaign reacted after a bomb plot and explosion in New York City and New Jersey this past weekend represented an attempt to make a fearful retreat from core American values, like someone tossing children and the elderly off the lifeboat to have more food and water for himself and his cringing cronies.

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This year, we are in danger of retreating from building the America we’re all supposed to be proud of, one that protects all and offers equal opportunity to all. The fact that the fear that sends some of us scuttling away is “unreasoning” and “unjustified” makes us cowards. Cowards abandon principles at the first sign of danger and look for witches to burn — or foreigners to blame. The common wisdom is that we are at our most divisive time since the Civil War, divided by differences in starkly contrasting political beliefs. That’s not true. We aren’t divided by political ideology as much as split between those blindly hoping for a savior and those rationally selecting a leader.

Compassion and courage are what makes America great, not hate and fear.

MORE:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/22/kareem-abdul-jabbar-trump-is-so-scared-that-he-wants-us-to-dismantle-the-constitution/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.e5788d7038db