Or maybe a lot of people find it persuasive and the only thing that kept the Democrats from failing worse is this Trump-is-Racist crusade. It's hard to know how many people watch their liberal friends trash trump on Facebook, and think it's stupid but are too polite to say anything,nd then on election day they quietly cast their vote for Trump, or vote for a third party, or don't vote at all, because they were so put off by the liberal propaganda.
It's not like there aren't plenty of good reasons to trash trump. SlateStar writes,
I think Trump’s election is a disaster. He has no plan, he’s dangerously trigger-happy, and his unilateralism threatens aid to developing countries, one of the most effective ways we currently help other people.I would add that Trump tends to personalize international conflict, he's anti-libertarian in all the wrong ways, he doesn't listen to economists on international trade, and his nationalism separates us from the rest of the world.
And that's what Trump is really about; Nationalism. Of all the isms people accuse Trump of being; racism, sexism, homophobic... ism... it seems like Nationalism, or others might call it xenophobia, is the most likely to be true. I mean, it is true. Unlike the other isms, Trump is allowed to be openly nationalist because nobody thinks nationalism is a sin.
Well that's not quite true. The only people who think nationalism is wrong fell off the left side of the political spectrum a long time ago... oh, and me. Which puts me at odds with all the ra ra America people, and put Trump right in with them. I actually tend to think it's the most important reason he won, which is contrary to what seems like liberal's main hypothesis, "because he was racist."
Whenever I try to find evidence of Trump's racism, I always get this quote,
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. Their rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.I looked at that quote at every angle trying to figure out how it's racist. The only thing I could come up with is that it mentions Mexico, and bad things like crime, and it's said by a Republican, therefore it must be racist! But then I read the words again... Nope, not racist at all.
Which is why I felt a special sort of bond with SlateStar when he wrote,
Note how totally non-racist this statement is. I’m serious. It’s anti-illegal-immigrant. But in terms of race, it’s saying Latinos (like every race) include both good and bad people, and the bad people are the ones coming over here. It suggests a picture of Mexicans as including some of the best people – but those generally aren’t the ones who are coming illegally.What makes it not racist is not the, "and some are good people, I guess" part. It's the, "Mexico is not sending their best" part. He's taking a subset of Mexicans, that is Mexicans that are coming here, and talking about them. It only makes sense to do that if you don't associate Mexicans with all those bad things.
If I said, "those baristas at Joe's coffee shop don't know what they're doing", you wouldn't interpret that as saying that I hate baristas. In fact, you would assume that I think the typical barista does know what they're doing.
We all know that Trump received the endorsement of KKK leader David Duke, and did nothing about it. Shouldn't we take that to mean something?
Anybody can endorse anybody with or without their consent. Did you know that the head of the US Communist Party endorsed Hillary, and Hillary never (as far as I know) “renounced” their endorsement? Does that mean Hillary is a Communist? Did you know that a leader of a murderous black supremacist cult supported Donald Trump and Trump said that he “loved” him? Does that mean Trump is a black supremacist? The only time this weird “X endorsed Y, that means Y must support X” thing is brought out, is in favor of the media narrative painting Trump to be a racist.Silence would have been good enough. You can't disavow every radical hate group. But Trump clearly separated himself in every possible way from the KKK, racism, and David Duke
I actually started to feel bad for Trump after watching the video.
Still not persuaded? Do you think Trump is still secretly racist and you've cracked his white supremacist code?
This gets back to my doubts about “dog whistles”. Dog whistling seems to be the theory that if you want to know what someone really believes, you have to throw away decades of consistent statements supporting the side of an issue that everyone else in the world supports, and instead pay attention only to one weird out-of-character non-statement which implies he supports a totally taboo position which is perhaps literally the most unpopular thing it is possible to think.
And then you have to imagine some of the most brilliant rhetoricians and persuaders in the world are calculating that it’s worth risking exposure this taboo belief in order to win support from a tiny group with five-digit membership whose support nobody wants, by sending a secret message, which inevitably every single media outlet in the world instantly picks up on and makes the focus of all their coverage for the rest of the election.Please read SlateStar's You're Still Crying Wolf for a whole lot more. It's one of his best.
