Trump is not the root of our problems. He is the distillation of centuries of man's inhumanity to man, sharply focused by the European Age of Empires since 1492, when Columbus began enslaving and murdering the Taino of Hispaniola, his first New World discovery. Although many Caribbean islanders are of mixed Taino-Spanish-African descent, the Taino language has been lost, along with most of their culture.
One side of the problem is the assumption that certain classes of people are, by birth and by nature, inherently superior to others, and that this is the Will of God. The other side is the existence of inconceivable amounts of loot in every land the Imperial invaders encountered: land itself, gold, silver, jewels, pearls, exotic fruits and other crops and birds and animals, tobacco, spices, dyes, tea, silks, and especially slaves. And now coal, oil, and gas, and for-profit health insurance, and mortgage-backed securities, and tax cuts and deregulation for the rich, and other bankster shenanigans, and so much more.
None of this originated with Columbus. Slavery and loot and privilege are the story of all ancient civilizations from Egypt and Mesopotamia to China, plus the empires of Africa and the Americas. It should also be noted that slavery is still legal in the United States under the 13th Amendment, for duly convicted felons. The South took full advantage of this loophole, as seen, for example, in the movie Cool Hand Luke, where the slaves were all white.
In the British colonies in North America, the problem began with Spaniards selling Native Americans as slaves, and was then sharply focused by the introduction of African slaves in 1619.
To come to our main point about Trumpists, our focus today is African slavery as the cause of the Civil War and all that followed, and in particular, What, to the slave, is the 4th of July?
I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
This is a shortened version. There are many others of the whole speech. I listen to one or another every July 4th.
It is not light that is needed, but fire.