Appeal to U.S. Travel and Tourism Industry professionals: For god’s sake, walk, crawl, run, hike, drive to the polls and vote democratic. This is the message by Geoffrey Weill, president of the New York-based PR and marketing company by the same name. He echoed sentiments by many working in the travel and tourism industry in the United States. After learning about the deadly attack in Pittsburg on a house of worship he said: “When a horror story like this happens is especially harrowing. I am so inspired by how we are making America great again. For god’s sake, walk, crawl, run, hike, drive to the polls on the 8th and vote Democrat.”
Geoffrey Weill continued with a post on his Facebook: I refuse to debase and personalize what happened yesterday as merely an act of anti-Semitism. Which of course it was. But it was much more. It was yet another example of a country gone wild with hatred brewed and nurtured by a Congress and National Rifle Organization that believe that fear empowers them; and by a narcissistic, cruel, ignorant, amoral, psychotic and dishonest president who encourages terror and hatred of the other.
Pittsburgh was a mortifying tragedy – this time it was middle-aged and elderly Jews in a long litany of victims from Sutherland Springs to Charlottesville to Parkland to San Bernardino to Orlando to a parking lot in Las Vegas. And which America exactly are these scoundrels trying to make great again? The America of the 1940’s that herded Japanese into concentration camps? The America of the 1950’s that tolerated McCarthy and segregated lunch counters? The America of the 1960’s and 1970’s that dropped more bombs on Cambodia and Laos than it dropped on Germany in WW2? The America of the 1980’s and 1990’s that gave up on bussing? The America of the 2000’s that conjured up invisible weapons of mass destruction in order that thousands more Americans could die in a pointless war?
Two images come to my mind today: Barack and Michelle Obama weeping with parents at Sandy Hook; and Donald Trump hectoring and kowtowing to his “base” at yet another rally of his Nuremberg-style followers.
Americans of goodwill of all races, faiths, and beliefs have only one option: to vote for any Democrat. It may not be sufficient to change enough, but it will make a statement to the world that there are a majority of Americans who believe in inclusion rather than hatred.
