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Every Thing a Nail? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-02

What happened in New Orleans was evil. The perpetrator, once leading a life that seemingly worked, found himself adrift in despair and disillusionment. Reports suggest he may have become radicalized by ISIS, which added a chilling dimension to his final act. In a society that often glorifies violence, his response was horrifying: to take innocent lives before ending his own, like so many other mass murderers.

And predictably, the authoritarian in chief weighed in ahead of the facts. Why bother with facts when they can be bent to fit a narrative? Trump seized on the New Orleans attack, using it as yet another “proof” that immigrant criminals are “far worse than the criminals we have in our country.”

But never mind the facts: Never mind that this domestic terrorist was born in America. Never mind that he served honorably in the Army. Never mind that crime in America has been decreasing over the past two years. Never mind that study after study confirms immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens.

For Trump, everything wrong with America traces back to the border. And the border, for him, is synonymous with people of color—regardless of when they arrived or how. If they were white, the border wouldn’t be a problem at all. And it is not just him. It is Republican ideology, including replacement theory.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow once observed, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

For Trump, the hammer is his singular tool, wielded with the bluntness of a bully. Immigrants? A nail. Critics? A nail. The federal government? A nail. Even America itself? It’s just another nail in need of hammering.

This reductionist view, where complex issues are flattened into scapegoats, tears the fabric of our society. America is not the land of “nails” and “not nails,” with the former awaiting a hammer. It is a diverse weave of challenges, solutions, and diverse people—a reality too nuanced for the simplicity of blunt-force politics.

If we allow this hammer-first mentality to persist, the damage will be more than rhetorical. It will leave lasting scars on the ideals of justice, equality, truth, and freedom. If there is an enemy within, it is Trump and the MAGA cult. We must resist by every means available and imagined. We are not nails! The strangeness of this political chant matches the strangeness of this time.

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