“I just think you people would be happier in Africa where you came from.”
George Lincoln Rockwell – American Nazi
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?”
President Donald Trump to The Squad
At the end of the day, heading into the most critical Presidential election in US history, one that will determine if America is capable of providing racist authoritarianism a mandate, it gets down to what it’s been from nearly the start: is the Trump Presidency “normal”? Do the policies and comportment of this President fall within the parameters our history and democratic inclinations process as acceptable, or has this Administration, and the party that now ardently supports it, demonstrated a consistent infidelity to what Trump took an oath to protect? That simple. And that critical.
How this question is processed and debated was on display this week when Rep. Joaquin Castro, manager of his brother Julian’s presidential campaign, tweeted a list of Trump donors from his district, publicly accusing them of “fueling a campaign of hate” against Hispanics. Of course both the statewide and federal GOP immediately screamed foul, labeling Castro as the real hater seeking to stoke division and actually incite violence and retaliation against citizens merely participating in our electoral process. House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, expressed GOP outrage from the highest levels, charging Castro with “targeting and harassing Americans because of their political beliefs.” Castro rejoined he was doing no such thing, merely posting publicly available information for the benefit of his constituents, who deserve to know of business leaders in their district who finance overt racism and policies aimed at terrorizing Latinos.
Bloomberg’s Ramesh Ponnuru nicely synthesizes what is really the whole ball of wax in an Op-Ed today. Taking Castro to task, Ponnuru argues Trump 2020 is not David Duke 2020, or even Corey Stewart 2020, and treating an incumbent President’s campaign and supporters in a similar vein is outrageous and divisive. Ponnuru draws a distinction between what supporting an unabashed Klan or Nazi candidate and supporting Trump says about the advocate’s character and societal inclinations. Equating the two is inappropriate, according to Ponnuru, and amounts to slandering those you are outing as Trump partisans, impugning their character and weaponizing legitimate disagreements about policy. “…Supporting the Nazis today is an aberrant practice and a mark of a vicious character,” Ponnuru asserts, but supporting Trump “is neither.”
There it is in a nutshell. The line in the sand is Nazism, since Trump hasn’t yet descended that far down his supporters no more deserve to be “shunned or harassed” than Warren or Sanders backers. In branding Castro’s tweet a scarlet letter and destructive hypocrisy, Ponnuru clarifies better than most before him the equivalence position. Of course he conveniently omits the entire history of Trump’s behavior since he launched his campaign with a screed about Mexican rapists and murderers invading from the south. It’s simply an article of faith that our President is no Nazi. How could he be? Surely millions would never have voted for him if he was. That’s all the proof you need. And that’s all the evidence Ponnuru provides. Nothing to see here.
But what if we took the entire bias issue off the table? What if, for the sake of argument, we just accept the President’s pronouncement he is “the least racist person in history!” A regular freedom rider. Is there anything else about this presidency that doesn’t jibe with the bare minimums of acceptable? Anywhere else Trump paddles against the drift of historical norms for basic competence and decency? After all, there is a 448-page report nobody seems interested in reading that outlines not one, not even five, but ten compelling instances of obstruction of justice. Moreover, the refusal of this Administration to cooperate with Congress in its fully appropriate investigative role would make Tricky Dick, himself, blush.
Tell you what!…. Let’s be even more agreeable and take the Mueller investigation off the table as well! Let’s accept Trump’s word, and the constant whining of his continuous diatribes on the subject. No collusion! Nothing but a big hoax! Anything else we need to be concerned about in the way of new normals? Remember, historic Dow highs. Record low unemployment. Yet and still, there is a few trillion in new debt. Moreover, didn’t we learn with Smoot-Hartley and that nasty Great Depression that tariffs and trade wars are big no nos? And what of this ridiculous repeated nonsense of claiming tariffs aren’t passed on to US consumers and simply pad the US Treasury with Chinese revenue? Surely any POTUS, who would keep claiming such a thing, must be off his rocker… right? What about using tax dollars to protect specific industries from the policy’s ruinous effects. Is that normal?!
You know what? Let’s forget all of that as well, assume he is the business genius he claims to be. The economy is a MAGA miracle! Mr. Art Of The Deal has reasserted our rightful place at the top of the food chain. For our purposes here we’ll now only consider foreign affairs, which at the end of the day is the prime responsibility of a POTUS anyway. Is the Trump foreign policy and his international statesmanship within the bounds his predecessors established? Is the national interest being attended to?
Perhaps it’s most efficient to take the President’s word for it on say a preeminent concern such as North Korea. How is that going? Oh! Look he tweeted just this morning! Trump’s own words can reassure us….
“In a letter to me sent by Kim Jong Un, he stated, very nicely, that he would like to meet and start negotiations as soon as the joint U.S./South Korea joint exercise are over. It was a long letter, much of it complaining about the ridiculous and expensive exercises. It was also a small apology for testing the short range missiles, and that this testing would stop when the exercises end. I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un in the not too distant future! A nuclear free North Korea will lead to one of the most successful countries in the world!”
What the hell were we worried about?!! BC