White House sends a ho-hum message to haters
The third hero, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, survived with knife wounds described as serious but not life-threatening. Fletcher, 21, is a Portland State University student and poet who won a 2013 competition, ironically with a poem that opposed prejudice against Muslims.
His mother on Saturday described his condition as "really bad" with a broken jaw and a long puncture wound in his neck that barely missed a jugular vein.
The suspect in this deadly mayhem was identified as Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, of North Portland, Ore., who police and civil rights advocacy groups described as having a history of racist, Islamophobic and other extremist remarks.
Conservatives have taken some comfort out of reports that Christian was a Bernie Sanders supporter. But, as the Southern Poverty Law Center's profile of him notes, Christian's Facebook page shows "an individual all over the political spectrum" who also holds some racist and other extremist beliefs.
In video posted on Twitter by Oregon freelance journalist Mike Bivins, Christian can be seen prancing around at an April free speech march in Portland, wearing an American flag like a cape and waving Nazi salutes while yelling racial slurs and threats about Muslims, Jews and "fake Christians."
Other participants at that march, which was organized by conservatives, can be heard disavowing association with him. That's fair. But it took some cheek, in my view, for white nationalist alt-right leader Richard B. Spencer to try to distance himself from Christian, too.
"The #PortlandStabbing was a saddening event," he tweeted, "and I condemn the actions of Jeremy Joseph Christian."
Sure, Spencer sounds more rational and articulate than Christian, but that's not saying much. Both have advocated breaking up the United States into separate regions for different races in a bizarre white nationalist version of the late Honorable Elijah Muhammad's dream of a black nation for his Nation of Islam.
This is the company that President Trump also keeps, whether he realizes it or not. He should learn from the Portland heroes. When he responds more quickly and passionately to victims of Islamic terrorism, for example, than he does to domestic anti-Islamic terrorism, he becomes less of a problem solver and more of a problem.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
