This year is ending as it began, with unarmed black citizens being slaughtered in the streets by police officers in situations where the use of deadly force is wholly unwarranted. 

Various studies show that blacks are 2 to 3.5 percent more likely than whites to be killed by police, and a number of studies say African-American victims are twice as likely to be unarmed.

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is milking the police killings to promote the myth that blacks are responsible for 81 percent of white murders. Never mind that whites kill 82.4 percent of white victims and blacks kill 90 percent of black victims. Never mind that the vast majority of murder victims are killed by someone they know or who lives nearby.

Trump and other Republican presidential contenders are not interested in the facts, but rather in exploiting racist Americans to get their votes. They offer followers the comforting lie that every unarmed black man killed by police gets what he deserves — that the man with the badge is always right and the man with the dark skin is always wrong. They’re promoting a kind of racist McCarthyism in which protesters and sympathizers of Black Lives Matters are un-American.

Recently, Trump and his supporters showed their true feelings when a black protester was punched, stomped and kicked at a campaign rally in Alabama. Unfazed by the violence, Trump hollered, “Get him out of here.” He later told an interviewer the protester got what he deserved.

The recently released video from the Chicago Police Department failed to make a dent in the position held by Trump and his supporters. In it, cameras show officer Jason Van Dyke driving his squad car up to 17-year-old Laquan McDonald and, within seconds, shooting him 16 times. McDonald, who held a small knife, never even approached Van Dyke. About a dozen officers surrounded the teen. Van Dyke’s life was never remotely in danger.

Right-wing commentators and GOP presidential candidates dismissed the video either as having been misleadingly edited or an anomaly.

Running for the highest office in the land brings with it great responsibility. Even before they’re nominated or elected, presidential candidates are in the spotlight. Their words are widely exposed and influential.

Several among this year’s bumper crop of GOP candidates have used the limelight to promote racial and ethnic divisions — the old divide-and-conquer technique, as Scott Walker has referred to it. Rather than illuminating one of our society’s most disabling problems, they’re helping to fuel it. What might this nation become if one of these candidates, lacking in both knowledge and dignity, ended up behind the country’s most visible “bully pulpit.” 

Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and others have tapped into the frustration that bigots have endured under the rise of “political correctness.” The left has successfully made it socially unacceptable to stomp about spewing words of hatred toward blacks, Mexicans, women, Muslims, gays and others. For the haters, The Donald is a liberator, because he refuses to abide by these new rules of civil discourse. His followers view him as honest and courageous, even though he’s spouting the same laugh lines that brought high ratings to the fictional Archie Bunker, the hot-head bigot on the 1970s TV smash All in the Family.

A large part of Trump’s allure is he gives permission for racists to unleash ugly feelings that have been socially unacceptable for at least two decades. But the inevitable effect of condoning racism will be to enlarge it. 

The Republican Party is leading us back to a future of Jim Crow voting laws and public lynchings. People of sound mind and goodwill must counter this pox on our society with everything we can muster or else watch our social fabric tear and unravel. That would ultimately destroy all of us — including the racists.