Remember when Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to make Americans safe, and promised an end to "American carnage" at his inauguration? Yeah, neither does he.
Austin, the capital city of Texas, has been wracked by a series of package bombs that have targeted black and brown people in their homes, killing children and adults.
These are actual, no-fooling terrorist attacks in a capital city in a deep red state that is one of the nation's most populous and prosperous. The victims, survivors and communities affected have not been offered the nation's attention, let alone its sympathy.
It's not just the national discourse that has done Austinites a disservice: official America has been hostile-to-indifferent to these bombings, from the local cops, who publicly mused that the first victim might have been a bungling bomber who blew himself up accidentally, to President American Carnage, who has responded to the bombings with ringing silence, preferring instead to shop for wall samples for his ridiculous border wall.
The connection, said Nelson Linder, the NAACP official, was through the families’ attendance at a prominent black church congregation in Austin. “They have a long history and go to the same church,” Linder said.After the more recent spate of bombings, police finally admit that their evidence shows that House’s killing appears to have been carried out by the same person or group.
Here’s what I know and what makes living in this country so damn exhausting: If the victims were white and the suspects were known to be Muslims, the president of the United States would care. In these cases, however, with no profile of the attacker available and a trail of black and brown victims, it seems like this square peg doesn’t fit into the round hole of Trump’s agenda.
Package Bombs Are Killing People in Texas but Donald Trump Hasn’t Said a Thing. There’s a Reason for That. [Shaun King/The Intercept]
