Is Trump a Racist?

I have answered this essay’s title question before — I said Trump is not a racist — but the latest brouhaha he has caused with his “go back to where you came from” tweets seems to warrant a revisiting of the issue. Today, I received an e-mail from a long-time reader, asking a question I have seen a lot over the past twenty-four hours: Why should telling people to go back to their countries if they don’t like America be considered a racist remark? After all, wasn’t “go back where you came from” a common remark people used to make in criticizing ungrateful immigrants?

In answer to the main question: What he said was not racist on its face. In fact, I am hesitant to apply the “racist” label to anyone, in any context, because I have yet to see, anywhere, a clear, rational, consistent definition of the term which would allow me to apply it correctly. Of course, I know the absence of a clear definition is the special value of that label (like “fascist,” “homophobe,” and other handy smears), so not only have I never found a clear definition, but I know that no such definition will ever be forthcoming, since that would defeat the whole purpose of such labels.

What Trump said, however, was, as I pointed out yesterday, idiotic, since he was not telling “immigrants” to go back to their countries. He was telling four Democratic congresswomen to go back to their countries, oblivious to the fact that three of the four were born and raised in the United States. 

See the problem? Maybe I should spell it out.

Not only was his remark stupid and callous — yes, as everyone is arguing in Trump’s defense, people used to say “go back where you came from” all the time; but that doesn’t mean it was ever a clever or rational thing to say — but the remark was also, more importantly, suggestive of a mind that instinctively identifies and categorizes humans as “American” or “non-American” by their “ethnicity.” He flippantly, knee-jerkingly assumes that three born-and-raised American citizens are immigrants who can “go back” somewhere, just because they have names and/or skin that is not Euro-white.

Yes, they have ancestors that came from other countries, as does Trump himself, naturally. But you are not likely to see him tweeting about Paul Ryan, “If he doesn’t like the way I govern, then he can go back to Ireland (Ryan’s paternal ancestry) or Germany (maternal).” Why not? Because he doesn’t see Ryan as a non-American. And why not? The answer is obvious.

So to everything else that is so dreadfully wrong with this orange punk in an ill-fitting suit, we may add — not surprisingly given his enormous IQ — that he manifests the lowest and stupidest form of collectivism. This punk would just be a waste of space if he were not presently doing everything his establishment handlers can squeeze out of him by way of destroying any last vestiges of a great republic. “But Hillary” my a — er, rear end!

One further comment: Trump obsesses over the media reaction to everything he says, partly in order to figure out what they think he was doing, so that he can then claim that that is indeed what he was doing. Thus, in this case, he followed up on his idiotic “go home” claptrap aimed at born-and-bred American citizens, by pretending, after the fact, that his moronic comments really were part of a brilliant strategy to force the Democratic Party to embrace and defend the four congresswomen with their socialist views.

The Dems were trying to distance themselves from the four “progressives,” but now they are forced to embrace them. That means they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for the Democrats!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2019

In other words, as I explained yesterday, “It worked, didn’t it?”

Apart from everything else that is stupid about that “theory,” even if it were a true account of the matter, there is also the fact that the man proudly declaring that he has forced the Democrats to embarrass themselves by embracing “Socialism” (capital S, of course, because Trump remains illiterate) is…

…the same Donald Trump who defended socialized medicine during his presidential run, said it worked well in other countries, and has repeatedly promised to break with his own party and guarantee universal health care in America.

…the same Donald Trump who supported the Clintons for a generation, and said, the year before starting his own political campaign, that Hillary did a great job as secretary of state and would make a good president.

…the same Donald Trump who believes in centralized manipulation of the economy, and bailouts for favored groups harmed by his own anti-free-market trade policies.

…the same Donald Trump, who when he was in his sixties — more than twice as old as the youngest of the three American-born women he told to “go back where they came from” — publicly endorsed the Bush-Obama bailout bills, and said that he would have supported going much further, even to the point of “nationalizing” the banks, i.e., a basic plank of Marxist revolutionary politics.

…the same Donald Trump who has spent two years praising the most brutally oppressive and hardcore communist rulers currently active on Earth, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, as great and beloved leaders of their respective nations, and his own sincere and honorable friends.

But oh boy, he really tricked the Dems into embracing the socialists, didn’t he? Didn’t he? Genius!