On those murdered South African farmers ...
The Oval Office has become a punch and judy stage where Trump is Punch, and all of humanity is his unwilling victim.
One of the first things anyone in South Africa ever told me was a story involving five or six “guys” (euphemism for a black South African man), a pile of leaves under which several people could hide, a broken down car, and a family of white farmers driving down the road. The story develops with an attempt at killing the white farmers in a surprise ambush, but the farmer, being smarter than the “guys,” manages to run over and kill the black South Africans. This was not told as a story about whites killing black, but rather, a story about an bungled attempt of blacks killing whites. Also, and importantly, the story had happened to the story teller’s close relative, just recently, very nearby where I was told it, and it was told as evidence of the dangers of a post-apartheid uprising among blacks and the overall threat to whites.
Within a few weeks a different person, in a different part of the country, felt the need to tell me a story about violence between blacks and whites in South Africa. Astonishingly, it was the same exact story, but it could not have been the same exact event because it had just happened, in a very nearby location, to a close relative of the person telling the story. And the two different story tellers were people who did not know each other. Wow.
That visit to South Africa was a short one, but over the next few years I spent many months, usually in longer trips but sometimes in shorter trips, in South Africa and adjoining countries. I heard the same story again and again. In fact, if I was hanging with a group of white South Africans, either on a farm in a remote area, in a restaurant in the city, at an airport, or a tourist destination, it would feel wrong to not have heard this story (unless I was hanging with my usual crew, who were anti-apartheid well educated humanists). Also, there were four or five other different stories of violence and aggression of blacks against whites that I would also hear; in every case the same story, just happened, just down the road, to a close personal friend or relative.
So yes, it was all made up. But it wasn’t just made up, it was ritualized. The stories were like prayers in a Catholic mass, or a shamanistic extraction ceremony, or the opening coin toss of a football game. Always the same, always the same, always the same.
This is not to say that South Africa does not, and has not, had its problem with crime. Crime rates in South Africa are high, akin to Venezuela and other high crime countries (but on the lower end of the worst places). In crimes per capita, South Africa is about 15th among nations; the United States is about 22nd. In one study of murder in South Africa, 19,000 documented homicides happened over the years 2016-2017, with the majority of the victims being young black men. And yes, there was a rising trend of attacks on farmers, but that trend reversed about 6 years ago and has been trending down; the rate of murders on farms is much lower than the rate of attacks, and has dropped as well. Not all the victims are white; an increasing number are black, and counting employees and the actual farmers, it is not clear that white farmers are more likely to be victims than are black individuals.
If you saw the appalling Oval Office documentary of murder in South Africa, you saw that line of white crosses alongside a road that the Lair in Chief, Trump, claimed were graves of murdered farmers. That was an obvious lie. Those crosses are dragged out for ceremonies by white supremacists, sometimes just strewn around like dead bodies, sometimes stood up like gravestones. If you know South Africa, you will know why they are more often strewn around than stood up!
I have over the years known a lot of white farmers in South Africa. They generally don’t get murdered. But many have left South Africa. Why? Usually, thunderstorms, drought, or a lousy supply line. If you are a grape farmer in the Cape Province, there is something like a one in five chance in any given year that your crop will be destroyed or severely damaged by a storm. Insurance rates are very high, but at least when your crop is destroyed, you can still make something back in insurance payments. Of course, your labor force suffers from being laid off. Most of the farmers I’ve known or heard of left South Africa (to Australia, commonly) because of this sort of problem. And they are mostly not white supremacists. They are just grape farmers.
Donald Trump is a fraud and a snake oil salesman. Elected Republicans are all member of his cult. (Are there some exceptions? If you thinks so, name them and prove it.) He is an embarrassment to this country. He is not playing three dimensional chess, he is not a brilliant deal maker. He is simply a man addicted to power, and happens to be the most powerful person that has ever existed on the planet. Since he really can’t get more power than he has, he has to resort to his second addition for daily fulfillment: Abuse.
I wonder when the various world leaders that might be invited to the Oval Puppet Theater in the near future will realize what is going on and stop showing up?