The most straight forward is a salient element of President Donald Trump's modus operandi and one that his supporters love: the best defense is a strong offensive.
The attack occurred on Trump's watch and since U.S. presidents are quick to claim credit for anything good that happens to the country during their term of office, they are likewise ultimately responsible for anything that goes wrong.
"The buck stops here," a sign on former President Harry Truman's desk famously declared.
That is not, however, Trump's attitude. The dust had scarcely settled in lower Manhattan when Trump took to Twitter, blaming Schumer for what happened.
Back in 1990, Schumer, then in the House of Representatives, sponsored a bill to create what is now known as the Diversity Visa Program -- a special immigration lottery that allows up to 50,000 persons a year to enter the U.S. from countries that haven't been characterized by high levels of emigration to America. The man who executed the attack in Manhattan is said to have entered the U.S. through this program from Uzbekistan and then brought in as many as 29 other people.
Schumer's proposal was ultimately incorporated into a larger immigration bill that cleared Congress and was signed by Republican President George H. W. Bush.
Somewhat ironically, Schumer was apparently also involved in an effort to end the Diversity Visa Program -- a 2013 effort that failed to clear Congress.
Somewhat akin to former Senator and presidential candidate John Kerry (D-Mass), who got in trouble for "flip-flopping" on funding for the Iraq war, Schumer, like Kerry, was for it before he was against it.
In any event, Trump has declared he wants Congress to quickly get rid of the Diversity Visa Program, which brings me to my second topic: the notion that the U.S. is currently a country of two narratives and a culture war associated with that.
One narrative is that with strong immigration over past decades and changing demographics as a result, white Americans are steadily falling toward minority status and the country's power structure and culture will change as result of that. Diversity advocates hail this as a good thing and argue it should be embraced.
The other narrative is that the U.S. should remain a country dominated by white power and white culture more or less indefinitely. Trump's call to "make America great again" is interpreted by many as code words for that notion. Mainstream conservative supporters of this idea aren't White Supremacists in that they don't argue that whites are superior to other races. They just believe that America is a country founded by whites and should remain that way.
The Manhattan incident has turned into instant fodder for the second of those two narratives, especially since the alleged perpetrator, now in police hands, is a Muslim who is said to have subscribed the orthodoxy of the radical Islamic group ISIS.
The diversity-centric notion of political correctness has facilitated the advance of people intent on changing or even destroying traditional America, many adherents of the second narrative believe.
Political correctness constitutes language or policies aimed at avoiding offense to societal groups deemed to be disadvantaged, often because they are minorities of one description or another, such as by race, religion or gender.
Trump believes this constitutes excessive deference and has served to undermine American society.
In the wake of the Manhattan attack, Trump termed U.S. immigration laws and manner in which the criminal justice system handles of terrorism suspects "a laughingstock."
“We have to get much tougher,” he said. “We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. We're so politically correct that we're afraid to do anything.”
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