Mob behavior cultivates the worst impulses of human behavior. Individuals commit the most horrific acts of brutality, acts that they would never do on their own. There is both strength and cowardice in numbers.
Despite the gas-lighting attempts of the twice impeached, multiple convicted former president and his cadre of angry sycophants, the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol is a violent reminder of how quickly seemingly normal people can devolve into a bloodthirsty lynch mob. One shudders to think what would have happened if Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been caught during the mayhem.
At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump continued to incite his supporters with the debunked claims of pet-eating Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Trump and his sidekick, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, refuse to back down from the obviously racist tropes.
This despite a series of bomb threats, subsequent evacuations, and pleas from Springfield’s Mayor Rob Rue, who told The New York Times that, “It’s frustrating when national politicians, on the national stage, mischaracterize what is actually going on and misrepresent our community.”
Back to the Trump rally in Pennsylvania, where he claimed that immigration is “changing the character of our small towns and villages all over the country … they will never be the same. Do you think Springfield will ever be the same? I don’t think so. The fact is, we have to get ‘em the hell out.”
On cue, the juiced-up crowd began to chant, “Send them back!” They held up signs that urged “Mass Deportations Now!” I guess federal agents would go door-to-door to carry this out. Note that support for this act is strong among the same folks who fear the federal government coming for their guns.
In addition to deporting upwards of 20 million people (more than the estimate of undocumented migrants now residing in the US), Trump has floated the very real plan for his second term of building detention camps for migrants, who he calls rapists and vermin.
Trump advisor Stephen Miller said, “Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown. The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”
Hearing this inflammatory rhetoric, I remembered my late friend Rei Kihara Osaki, the first Japanese American to receive a law degree at my alma mater, the University of Idaho, and only the fourth woman to graduate from that state’s law school. This was in 1943, during one of the most regrettable periods in our nation’s history, the incarceration of 110,000 Japanese Americans during WWII under Executive Order 9066.
After losing their beloved farm in Washington state forever, Rei’s brother and father were sent to Wyoming’s Heart Mountain Relocation Camp. Her mother ended up in a mental institute, suffering a mental breakdown upon seeing her family “relocated.” Rei’s enrollment at the University of Idaho spared her from the same plight as her family. “I was the only one free,” she told me.
After his release, Rei’s father had to start from scratch. Rei said that to the day he died, he never talked about his time in the Wyoming camp. It was too painful. Her brother went into the military and went overseas to defend the very country that had denied him his rights. No bone spur excuses for this patriot.
Idaho had its own camp in Minidoka, where at its peak some 9,861 Americans were held. Idaho’s governor Chase Clark was opposed to the building of the camp, but not for the right reasons. An editorial for the local newspaper explained that Clark was “quite perturbed at the thought that thousands of Japanese might be sent into Idaho and thus probably competing with white Idahoans. For once here…they would multiply at a far greater rate … than the native white population.”
Sound familiar?
I’ve been thinking about Rei and her family as this country again demonizes migrants, legal and undocumented. If Trump and Vance are elected and the purge begins, will Americans stand passively by observing or even, urged by the mob, as in Shirley Jackson’s chilling story The Lottery, commence to gleefully stone their neighbors.
When I interviewed Rei, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 88, she told me, “We wondered if the government would round up all the Japanese and kill us. I felt hope, though, because of the Constitution.”
But the Constitution did not save 110,000 Japanese Americans. It was cast aside in favor of national security.
In perpetuating his stolen election lie, Trump has said, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
If Trump terminates our Constitution, we can say goodbye to everything that we love and hold dear about this nation, a country that has grown and thrived through the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors: immigrants.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.
