Amy Louise Wood published a book in 2011 called, "Lynching and Spectacle," about the Jim Crow South during the 1950's--that halcyon time in America to which Mr. Trump would like to return us.
She makes a number of surprising observations, based on the data she managed to collect about who was doing the lynching, where it happened most often and why.
But, the central insight is that lynching was about spectacle. It was a "warning to the others."
And that is really what Mr. Trump is all about, with the call to re open Alcatraz, with his urgings to the dictator of El Salvador to build new torture chambers to receive all the bad guys Mr. Trump intends to send him, not just illegal immigrants, but "home grown" nasties.
What Mr. Trump really is doing is simply a neo-lynching, the new wrinkle is it is not done by the local hooded vigilantes. It is the government who is the vigilantes--no trials, just string 'em up quick as we can.
We are living the Ox Bow Incident every day now.
Doesn't matter if we make a mistake now and then, stringing up the wrong guy, because they are all guilty of being Black or from shit-hole countries and we need to send a message.
When you look at the post cards made of the lynchings, there are often children grinning into the camera with a Negro hanging by his neck in the back ground.
It was just a fun Sunday diversion--go hang the Negro.
Sometimes done before church, a ceremony of dominance, fire and brimstone.
Now it's send the immigrant to the gulag.
That's the point of Mr. Trump's current mob: a spectacle of cruelty.
