So just like that news of pipe bombs threatening Trump critics was proved true only days after the president's supporters had called it a hoax. The arrest of a Florida man charged with five federal crimes made clear that the mail bomb plot was real.
Business as usual
One of the naysayers accusing the press of fake news even up to the very day of the mad- bomber's arrest, Fox business anchor Lou Dobbs held that when news organizations report the bomb threats, it's their way of diverting attention from the bigger story – the caravan of migrants head to the southern U.S.
border, which he contended is driven by Democrats.
As he tweeted, “Fake News has just successfully changed the narrative from the onslaught of illegal immigrants and broken border security to 'suspicious packages. Let's get back to Left-Wing driven caravans and the Dimms who encourage them.”
Does racism drive this country's great divide?
Another notable Trump supporter who got the story wrong, movie actor James Woods, pooh-poohed the rash of pipe bomb mailings as “an obvious political stunt.” Given Woods' history as a longtime Democrat, the actor's lockstep allegiance to Trump seems off script. In a tweet last August, he explained his switch in party loyalty saying that he quit the Democrats when Clinton was impeached for lying to Congress about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and “every Democrat without exception stood behind a convicted perjurer.
That was the end.” One may wonder how Woods reconciles the 5,001 false or misleading claims made by Trump which the Washing Post noted last month.
Making American great again
On second thought, the bigger question that this story raises may be one of racial bias. Coming to mind is Woods tweet in 2013 saying that “Obama was a threat to the integrity and future of the Republic. My country first.” Isn't that last part code for Trump's Nationalism -- a white-only America? Is Woods, famed for playing bad guys, playacting off screen now?
Going against the waves of grain
Not that Woods is the only movie actor who sounds like a racist. I'm thinking of the All-American hero John Wayne. Last year the Huffington Post cites his answer to a question about discrimination in a 1971 Playboy interview: ”I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.
I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.”
How many think like Wayne? Can it be that racism is the American way and the effort to change is going against the grain? If that's even is a little bit true, watch the Amazon series “Man in the High Castle” based on Philip Dick's 1962 novel, which envisions an America that lost WWII to the Nazis and Japanese and Nationalism and racial purity are the rules of law.