Yesterday, Donald Trump spoke for nearly two hours at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. This was supposed to be about energizing Republican voters and helping the GOP maintain control of Congress, but what I heard was something much more alarming.

Trump urged Republicans to approach the midterms as if he were personally on the ballot. He attacked Democrats as extremists, defended his administration and presented the election as another battle to save America from socialism, communism and total destruction. He even promised a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” to American adults if Republicans keep control of Congress, a proposal estimated to cost more than $1 trillion and one that he could not deliver without congressional approval. (Associated Press)

The Republican Party is facing a difficult midterm environment, with Trump’s approval rating falling and Democrats leading recent generic-ballot polling. Some vulnerable Republican candidates reportedly stayed away from the convention, but the party’s answer was still to place Trump directly in the center and rally the troops through fear. (Financial Times, The Guardian)

What concerned me most was not simply the number of claims that failed to hold up under fact checking. It was the message underneath all of it.

The message was that other Americans are the enemy.

When you repeatedly tell people that Democrats, socialists, immigrants, Black activists or anyone outside your movement is coming to destroy their country, you are not debating policy anymore. You are teaching Americans to fear and hate other Americans. You are giving people permission to view their neighbors as threats.

That made me think about Karlous Miller.

Recently, Karlous has been using his platform to say something that many Black Americans immediately understand:

“Black Americans don’t hang themselves from trees.”

That statement is not about denying that Black people can experience depression or die by suicide. It is about understanding the historical meaning of a Black body found hanging from a tree in America. Lynching was one of the most brutal weapons of racial terror ever used against Black Americans. That history does not disappear simply because someone writes “suicide” on an official report.

When Black people hear about these cases, we do not receive them without context. We remember what trees, ropes and public silence have meant throughout our history. We remember how often authorities failed to protect us, investigate our deaths properly or even consider our lives worthy of the truth.

That does not prove that every official ruling is false. It explains why Black communities demand transparent investigations, independent evidence and serious media attention before accepting a conclusion. When suspicious deaths are quickly labeled suicides and the national press barely touches the story, distrust is not irrational. It comes from history.

Political rhetoric also does not remain inside a convention hall or television studio. It travels.

It reaches social media. It reaches workplaces. It reaches police departments. It reaches small towns. It reaches the field.

That is what makes Trump’s constant language of enemies, invasion, communism and national destruction so dangerous. When the President of the United States repeatedly tells people that certain Americans are destroying their country, someone eventually decides that those people must be stopped by any means necessary.

This is bigger than Republicans versus Democrats. It is about what kind of country America is becoming and whether political power is worth tearing the country apart.

You cannot claim that you are saving America while teaching Americans to hate one another. You cannot keep feeding people fear and then act surprised when that fear becomes hostility. You cannot normalize division at the top and pretend it will not produce consequences at the bottom.

The flag is being pulled apart from both sides, but the loudest voice encouraging the separation is coming directly from the center of power.

They call it politics.

We are watching it reach the field.