Forget the eclipse. The biggest astronomical event of the past 10 days has been nothing short of a spectacular, once-in-a-lifetime sighting of presidential time travel. Some 72 years after this country and its allies defeated Hitler’s fascism, Donald Trump saddled up to the neo-Nazis. And, 152 years after Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army surrendered at the Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the Civil War, our president embraced and saluted those who fought to preserve slavery – past and present.
For us aging boomers, this has been a time warp from hell. We grew up with daily news of murdered civil rights workers and KKK lynchings, of frightened black children escorted by armed troops into previously all-white schools. We remember the pain, the fear, the hate. We also remember the powerful forces for change: Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Very slowly, things got better. Bigotry never disappeared, but it seemed to move off center stage, and into the fringes and dark reaches of a netherworld most of us rarely saw.
Yet, there they were, more than a half century later, hundreds of them, all white and mostly male, marching through the streets of Charlottesville, waving Confederate flags and Swastikas, shouting vile chants against Jews, blacks, gays and immigrants. It was a convention of wickedness: the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, the so-called “alt-right” and white nationalists, all united in a common bond of white supremacy. Once confined to whispering their bigoted messages through code words and dog whistles, Trump’s election unleashed these hate mongers from their caves and ushered them into the daylight of a world unprepared for a relitigation of basic human rights, dignity and decency.
It was a rare moment of totally unambiguous moral clarity. The bigots represent an evil world view, long ago dismissed as despicable by decent people everywhere. A high school student council president could have easily delivered that message. Donald Trump, however, neither could, would, nor did. Those marchers are part of his cherished base, and he spent days entangled in linguistic gymnastics, trying desperately not to lose the love of those who hate.
It was a huge turning point in this presidency. Trump has always been obsessed with branding, from luxurious high-rise condos, to wine, steaks, neck ties and bottled water. Let the history books note, with unequivocal clarity, that the Trump brand now stands for neo-Nazism, the KKK and white supremacy. Unlike all of the other political issues he has botched with his utter incompetence, petulance and arrogance, this one has legs. The president’s post-Charlottesville moment called for a simple, clear-cut, binary, which-side-are-you-on choice. Trump picked the wrong side. He will forever be the president who brought the Nazis, the Confederacy, and the KKK back from the dustbin of history. He will spend the rest of his life paying for that decision. Rest assured, it will be part of his obituary.
In fact, the ramifications of the president’s moral weakness and waffling have been mounting daily. For example:
• News magazines – in the U.S. and Europe – produced covers showing Trump in either a Nazi salute or some version of a KKK hood.
• Republican officials at every level have repudiated the President’s handling of the Charlottesville march, including at least 23 members of Congress and eight current or former GOP governors.
• So many major business leaders resigned from two presidential commissions over Trump’s remarks that he was forced to abolish both groups.
• All 16 members of the President’s Committee of the Arts and Humanities resigned, telling him: “Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville.”
• More than 15 large charities have canceled scheduled fundraising events at Trump’s Mar-a-Largo Club in Florida, all concerned with losing major donors as a result of Trump’s embrace of the hate groups.
• For the first time since the Kennedy Center Honors program started in 1978, neither the president nor first lady will attend, nor will there be a pre-show reception at the White House. That move was made after some of the honorees talked of boycotting the event because of Trump’s recent comments.
Of course, the country has been sharply divided over Trump since election day. Some saw him as the only hope for a very sick system. Others saw him as an emblem that went to the very heart of that sickness. Both sides made credible points. Workers and the middle class have been losing ground for decades, and their needs have been ignored by too many politicians – from both parties. One view had it that only an outsider like Trump could turn that around. The counterpoint: Trump was way too self-absorbed, inexperienced and rich to successfully navigate a meaningful redistribution of wealth. Or so the arguments went.
Charlottesville totally changed the game board. It removed all of the gray, leaving behind only black and white. As the late, great Pete Seeger sang, “Which Side Are You On?” There are no nice Nazis, vintage or neo. There are no good Ku Klux Klansmen. White supremacists spewing hatred toward Jews, blacks, gays and immigrants are worthy of nothing but our deepest scorn. What they represent is, simply and purely, evil. That’s one side. The other side, filled with olive branches for hateful hooligans bearing Swastikas, is the one that Donald Trump chose. That choice tarnished the White House so badly that repair can only come from a new occupant. Until that happens, more than a century of human rights’ gains hangs in the balance. Seeger’s question has never been so easy to answer. Choosing a side right now means moving forward or backward. It’s the difference between right and wrong.