Thursday, January 18, 2018
Political Mayhem Thursday: A Tumult in Pittsburgh
On January 14--Martin Luther King, Jr. Day-- the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a staff editorial titled "Reason as Racism: An Immigration Debate Gets Derailed." You can read the whole thing here. This is how it concludes:
Did the president use a crudity in a private meeting? He says he did not. No one who was there has said he did on the record. But if he did, so what? So what? America today is a sadly crass place where many of us use vulgar, corrosive language we ought not use in private and work conversations. How many of us would like to see and share a transcript of everything we have said in private conversations or at work?
And how many presidents have said crass things in the Oval Office in private meetings? Think of Kennedy, Clinton and Nixon, to name three.
If the president is wrong on immigration — on merit, on finding a balance between skilled and unskilled immigrants, on chain migration, on the lottery — let his opponents defeat him on these points, and not by calling him a racist. If he is to be removed from office, let the voters do it based on his total performance — temperament as well as accomplishment — in 2020. Simply calling him an agent of the Russians, a nutcase or a racist is a cowardly way to fight.
We need to confine the word “racist” to people like Bull Connor and Dylann Roof. For if every person who speaks inelegantly, or from a position of privilege, or ignorance, or expresses an idea we dislike, or happens to be a white male, is a racist, the term is devoid of meaning.
We have to stop calling each other names in this country and battle each other with ideas and issues, not slanders.
There is a lot wrong here, in my view. But I will hold my tongue for minute-- what do you think?
Comments:
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Trump did say it, and finds it uncomfortable to be released. His temper overrode his restraint. And as president, he believes if he now says he did not say it, then the past is erased! His and his staff's understanding of "executive privilege is so expansive as to be the rationale for dictatorship.
His only morality is "what Trump wants, Trump gets".
His only morality is "what Trump wants, Trump gets".
# posted by 
: 6:29 AM
: 6:29 AM
Trump aside, I am wondering what people think of some of the statements in the editorial-- for example, that only people like Dylann Roof or Bull Connor-- should be considered racists.
It's not like this statement was made in a vacuum, with no previous indication that 45 is, in fact, a racist. The Central Park 5, the housing discrimination case, birther movement, the rapists from Mexico, the list goes on and on (and there are lists floating all over social media to this effect). To defend these particular comments without any context to his previous character is intellectually dishonest at best.
This editorial is so unworthy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has won Pulitzers for its journalism, that I looked up who runs the paper now. It's John Block, a conservative who reportedly ran the obtuse editorial over the objections of newspaper staff.
Mr. Block:
1. Cussing isn't the problem. The problem is the substance of the remarks. The man occupying the Office of the President of the United States declared in a policy meeting that the U.S. doesn't need people who come from Haiti or African nations, predominantly black and brown, but instead should welcome people from places like Norway, predominantly white. That he used a profanity ("shithole" or "shithouse") to describe those countries only matters insofar as it conveys an additional layer of disrespect for those countries and their people. He is comparing them to excrement.
2. Disagreeing with the substance of Donald Trump's remarks, as Senators Durbin and Graham did after they heard them at the meeting, as antithetical to American values is not cowardice. It is patriotism.
3. Why would confining the word "racist" to only a few people restore "meaning" to the word? Wouldn't it rather drain the word of meaning to say we cannot apply it to an elected official who, as Jonathan Scheib correctly observes, has shown over and over his animus based on race?
Mr. Block:
1. Cussing isn't the problem. The problem is the substance of the remarks. The man occupying the Office of the President of the United States declared in a policy meeting that the U.S. doesn't need people who come from Haiti or African nations, predominantly black and brown, but instead should welcome people from places like Norway, predominantly white. That he used a profanity ("shithole" or "shithouse") to describe those countries only matters insofar as it conveys an additional layer of disrespect for those countries and their people. He is comparing them to excrement.
2. Disagreeing with the substance of Donald Trump's remarks, as Senators Durbin and Graham did after they heard them at the meeting, as antithetical to American values is not cowardice. It is patriotism.
3. Why would confining the word "racist" to only a few people restore "meaning" to the word? Wouldn't it rather drain the word of meaning to say we cannot apply it to an elected official who, as Jonathan Scheib correctly observes, has shown over and over his animus based on race?
# posted by : 2:28 PM
: 2:28 PM
1. Racism is a powerful word (often accusation) generally thrown around too loosely. For a growing number of Americans it is fast losing its meaning. For many young people it is literally a joke.
2. The discussion of racism is now too often almost completely attached to politics; that is, "my opponent is clearly a racist" or "my opponent is calling me a racist to distract from his logically deficient position on the issues." Or racism is trump card in a public policy debate (more politics): we need this housing policy because racism, we need this regulatory reform because racism, or we need to continue this longstanding ameliorative program because racism.
3. The people who are consistently called racist unfairly for policy beliefs (and I think many of the immigration hardliners fall into this category) are growing more and more frustrated with this dynamic--and are making common cause somewhat inadvertently with people justly accused of racism (generally a much smaller segment of society, by the way).
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2. The discussion of racism is now too often almost completely attached to politics; that is, "my opponent is clearly a racist" or "my opponent is calling me a racist to distract from his logically deficient position on the issues." Or racism is trump card in a public policy debate (more politics): we need this housing policy because racism, we need this regulatory reform because racism, or we need to continue this longstanding ameliorative program because racism.
3. The people who are consistently called racist unfairly for policy beliefs (and I think many of the immigration hardliners fall into this category) are growing more and more frustrated with this dynamic--and are making common cause somewhat inadvertently with people justly accused of racism (generally a much smaller segment of society, by the way).
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