President-Elect Donald J. Trump finds plenty of time to fire off tweets against his perceived enemies, but has not yet weighed in on the growth of hate speech since his election in November.
Donald J. Trump has kept oddly silent as the level of hate escalates dangerously in the county he is about to govern.
The president-elect finds plenty of time to fire off tweets against his perceived enemies - union leaders, multinational companies, the editors of Vanity Fair and the actors in the Broadway hit Hamilton. But the vileness daily passing for social discourse remains off his radar screen.
The Southern Poverty Law Center reported 1,094 hate-related incidents in the month after Trump won the Electoral College vote, the majority aimed at immigrants, African-Americans and members of the LGBT community.
The threats of violence and intimidation continue. Most recently came news of a planned Nazi march next month, now apparently up in the air, targeting Jews and those who do business with them in the community of Whitefish, Montana.
At one point rally organizers were prepared to bring 200 supporters into town, armed with rifles and unbridled loathing.
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The municipality, population 6,000, is home to Sherry Spencer, mother of Richard Spencer. You'll recognize him as president of the unapologetically white-supremacist National Policy Institute, the folks who executed a Heil Hitler-type salute in Donald Trump's honor after the election.
Although Richard Spencer has since told the local newspaper the rally is now a no-go, by that time a racist and anti-Semitic website called the Daily Stormer had published personal information about the liberals - including addresses and e-mail - prompting an onslaught of venomous mail and Holocaust-related images.
Montana's highest officials, who represent both sides of the aisle, strongly condemned the white nationalist rally.
Did you see Donald Trump's tweet similarly weighing in on the side of sanity and reason? Neither did we.
Another horrifying development involves a relentless, merciless campaign - complete with death threats - against a professor at Orange Coast College in California whose only "crime" was sharing her opinion in class that Trump's election was an act of terror.
A conservative student surreptitiously recorded a portion of her lecture and uploaded it, sending the clip viral. That's when Olga Perez Stable Cox's life veered wildly off course.
"Go out in the middle of the football field, pull out a handgun, put it to your temple and shoot yourself. Or better yet, douse yourself in gasoline and set yourself on fire."
This was about the mildest of the tweets, emails and threatening phone calls the much-respected professor received - and one of the few that would make it past the copy desks of a daily newspaper.
Donald Trump's tweet in support of Cox probably had to wait while he composed the next one patting himself on the back for single-handedly saving Christmas.
Is this really where we are today? Is this what our country is going to look like in 2017? If you're an African-American, a Jew, a Muslim, an outspoken academic, a person with a disability, a member of the LGBT community or just someone who cherishes freedom, the prospects are grim.
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