Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Donald Trump Is A Racist. Donald Trump Is Evil

And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light ~ The Christian Bible, 2 Corinthians 11:14.

Evil

People have been speculating if Donald John Trump, the 45th person to occupy the White House (as the alleged duly-elected President), is mentally ill. Also, whether or not he could be removed from office due to mental illness (under the 25th amendment). A March 2017 Slate article by Steven Reisner, however, says he isn't mentally ill, but evil.

Stop Saying Donald Trump Is Mentally Ill [article excerpt] If we are to combat Trump, we must understand how he has elevated and manipulated certain American values, like greed and exceptionalism, to undermine so many others, like truth, justice, and the American Constitution.

This is not madness. And the impulsivity, threats, aggression, ridicule, denial of reality, and mobilization of the mob that he used to get there are not symptoms. It is time to call it out for what it is: evil.

Arendt [explains in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism] that we in the West are susceptible to such evil precisely because we cannot conceive of it. We prefer to believe that people are innately good, and evil is some kind of "fall from grace", an anomaly, a madness perhaps, but one always "explained by comprehensible motives". We are at a loss to confront Trumpism, because his strategy is evil for its own ends, and thus reflects, as Arendt described, "a system of values so radically different from all others, that none of our traditional legal, moral, or common sense utilitarian categories could any longer help us to come to terms with, or judge, or predict their course of action".

The "Arendt" referred to in the article is the Jewish political theorist Johanna Hannah Arendt (10/14/1906 to 12/4/1975) who was born in Russian, emigrated to Germany, and later "escaped from Europe during the Holocaust, becoming an American citizen" in 1950.

Arendt's first major book was titled The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), which traced the roots of Stalinism and Nazism in both antisemitism and imperialism. In it, Arendt argues that totalitarianism was a "novel form of government", different from other forms of tyranny in that it applied terror to subjugate mass populations rather than just political adversaries.

Wikipeida notes that "the book sold out on Amazon in January 2017, as part of a bump in interest in books about totalitarianism around the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Racist

Following the violence (including one murder by a Hitler admirer using his car) in Charlottesville the predisent blamed "many sides" and did not specifically call out the Alt-Right (whom Bannon's Breitbart is a platform for). "Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa" an extremely pleased David Duke tweeted after Trump walked back his condemnation of White Supremacists.

This would be the condemnation (2 days after his initial "many sides" comment) that he was obviously urged to make by his advisors and did begrudgingly. It did not take him long to go back to blaming "many sides" and the mythical "Alt-Left" in a display of #bothsidesirism that the side that is really to blame loves.

"Hispanics and African Americans have lower average IQs than whites and are more genetically predisposed to commit crimes" according to Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer. He also "wants America to become a White ethno-centric nation". Despite this, Spencer says the Alt-Right is not racist. Because racism is "irrational hate".

If your hate is "rational" it's A-OK. "They're not racist; it's just that they hold beliefs that members of other ethnicities or religions are inherently inferior and universally hold immutable characteristics that determine their behaviours" (Link).

I doubt Trump believes he is a racist. Yet he clearly is. Self delusion seems to be a trait common among racists. They rarely identify as such. The Imperial Wizard of the KKK says "We don't hate people because of their race, I mean, we're a Christian organization". Evil does not admit that it is evil. That would be a warning to the rest of us and could hamper recruiting. Evil deludes itself into believing that it's good and what it's doing is good and being done for rational reasons (see: the banality of evil, a term coined by Arendt).

Trump's Birtherism, hiring of Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, love for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (who believes Israel Planned 9/11), his running for the presidency on a platform of keeping out the evil Muslims and rapist Mexicans (Link)...

Also his call for the police to bash heads to quell violence perpetrated overwhelmingly by Black thugs. I refer to Trump's decision to reverse Obama's move away from the use of private prisons (hellholes where corruption and abuse run rampant), AG Sessions desire for maximum prison sentences, Trump's endorsement of police brutality, lifting of Obama's ban on the sale of military equipment to the cops, pardoning of the Constitutional Rights violating racist Sheriff Joe, etc. The message is that we need to get tough on the criminal minorities.

Given the fact that racism and bigotry are evil (and Trump is a racist and a bigot), the obvious conclusion is that Trump is evil. Does it mean anything specifically that more self-identified White Evangelicals supported Trump (81%) than any past Republican president? It's too soon to know yet if Trump's evil is something more than banal. If Trump's "actions were motivated by a sort of stupidity which was wholly unexceptional" (how Arndt described the evil of Adolf Eichmann) or if there is something else going on (something more in line with the quotation at the top of my post).

Image: Trump smooches Pepe. Other images can be found of Trump as Pepe, Pepe in a red MAGA hat, etc. Pepe is a symbol of the Alt-Right. Trump HIMSELF retweeted a Pepe meme (Pepe as Trump)! It is in his twitter feed (10/13/2015). He hasn't deleted it, proof that he didn't retweet the meme mistakenly, not knowing the meaning of Pepe. This tweet was another shout out to the Alt-Right. Something he did (and continues to do) because Trump supports the Alt-Right. Because Trump is a White Nationalist. Or a fellow traveler at least. This can NOT be denied!

See also: Shitposters of Free Kekistan WYM #15 for more on the Alt-Right #trumpdupes who refer to themselves as residents of Kekistan (a fictional country). These are a-holes who engage in "shitposting" (act of being a proud a-hole online).

SWTD #388

1 comment:

  1. Trump is just about irrelevant. Only 16% of Americans think his behavior is presidential, many who voted for him are disgusted and disappointed with his irratic behavior and constant lies, his unending need to be worshipped and adored. He's been pegged as a malignant narcissist, and his visit to non-disaster area outside of Houston enforced that further when, with his usual shyte-eating grin, looked around at the people who were standing in front of him and said "What a crowd! What a turnout!"

    What an asshole!

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