Take responsibility for inciting violence
The Trump name will come to be regarded in American history as a wannabe dictator who surrounded himself with bigots.
their neighbors. Sound familiar?
Or what about the lost second that was a mere five years between when the concentration camps of Auschwitz were established to when Hitler took his own life? Or who can forget the widespread ethnic cleansing that accompanied the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995?
None of these experiences should be ignored. It is time you take responsibility for your role in inciting this violence. Your time in office has dramatically heightened tensions and damaged our democracy.
Is this the legacy you want to leave behind? Your children’s legacy and your grandchildren’s legacy? On the road you are on, old friend, the Trump name will come to be regarded in American history as a wannabe dictator who surrounded himself with bigots, white supremacists and money-hungry wolves.
If you do not change your course immediately, you will go down in history as the great divider, the destroyer of the environment and the antithesis of everything we as Americans have fought so hard to call ours. You have put in place many people whose mere presence is racially charged. Others who are there only to empower the rich at the expense of the poor.
Everyone has darkness in them and everyone has light. For all of us, this is a constant battle — but the one who wins is the one we feed. You can begin to feed the light. The racist, bigoted movements you are feeding now are gaining power by your words, actions and refusal to hold people accountable for the destruction they are causing in your name.
Racial tensions are rising, as is the resistance. Their clashes have just begun and there have already been casualties such as Heather Heyer on your watch. Tensions are only going to reach more of a crescendo, and more blood will be shed. And the people will blame you, and rightfully so. There are not two sides to a Nazi or a white supremacist, Donald, and you know damn well what you said on Tuesday was horrendous.
The good news for you is you are still in office. You can turn this around. You can beat down racists and bigots, you can stop putting money into coal, stop destroying our environment, stop worsening climate change by empowering the factory-farming industry.
And for the love of all that is sacred, you can stop tweeting threats to North Korea that may get us all into a nuclear war. You can find your highest self. You can become conscious. Scripture tells us the Donald I knew — or an even greater Donald — is still there inside you, sleeping. It is time to wake him the f--- up.
Simmons is co-founder of RushCard and Def Jam Records and founder of Phat Farm.