If anyone says that a campaign that states that black lives matter causes black people to kill policemen, could it be possible that they are saying that if you don’t want people to kill policemen you must believe that black lives don’t matter?

In my view, it is not only possible, it is probable.

The truism embedded in the campaign ceases being a truism when it seems black lives are indeed expendable, that black people can be shot and killed in broad daylight, and on camera, by police officers, and nothing is thought of it. If a truism is something that is so obvious it needs no restatement, then this one is clearly not one.

What Donald Trump is saying, basically, is that if you are black and you get yourself in a situation where a cop can shoot and kill you even though you have done nothing wrong, it’s just tough luck, bite the bullet and take it.
Don’t go about saying dangerous things like black lives matter, because they just don’t.

Trump’s logic is that, if people had not organised rallies and protests at which those dangerous sentiments were aired, other people wouldn’t have taken up guns to shoot those courageous officers who are daily putting their lives on the line to defend and protect the citizens. That is Trumpthink.

That is the higher logic than we come across on a regular basis. A more mundane logic states that when people feel under threat they will defend themselves, and that when they are struck, they strike right back.

That is the logic that led Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to form the Black Panthers, a militia group that advocated the use of revolutionary violence by blacks against the violence visited on them by racists, be they cops or civilians.

And yet the campaign Trump accuses of instigating cop shooters does not even advocate violence; it just states that black lives are lives too, nothing else. That individuals who have been angered by police executions of black people should go out and shoot policemen has not necessarily been caused by those who state that black lives are human lives.

Trump’s state of mind must be informed by a long past age, on the slave farms somewhere in Virginia, where if a slave had dared say words like “Black lives matter” he would have been lynched, just to prove the falsity of that claim.

There is a fascistic logic to the man and his movement. We have seen the swearing in ceremonies that he has been carrying out, with Nazi-style pledges of allegiance.

Which poor Ted Cruz failed to recognise when he addressed the GOP convention and unwisely refused to endorse Trump, suggesting instead that people vote with their conscience for someone who will defend their freedom and respect the Constitution.

How dare he even think of those silly notions when the assembly is busy installing a Fuhrer? His wife was apparently threatened with some form of violence before she was rushed out by security. Cruz has clearly never been told not to underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

Or, maybe he did not see that the convention hall was full.

More such thuggish scenes are likely to be played out on our screens before the election, and after that it is likely to be even more dramatic as the man with his finger so close to the nuclear button will also be the man who says if there is anything the US needs, such as the oil in Iraq, say, all America has to do is go out there and take it.

What the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan suggests is the thug in the man, is coming out.

Despite all the hesitations and misgivings that some senior Republicans had about Trump, they will now have to accept that he is their candidate. They will have to choose between voting for a man many of them detest and a woman many of them loathe.

Or, as some have suggested, they may have to stay at home so they do not have to decide which one they hate less.

Who will win between Hilary Clinton and Trump come November? I do not know, but at least we’ll know how much less black lives will matter.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]