Just as Donald Trump regularly dehumanizes dark-skinned people, incurring the requisite (and much-desired) outrage from all who claim to be decent, so too is he uncannily proficient at then turning the tables upon the decently outraged.
In typical gaslighting fashion, Trump is calling the outraged media and citizens to account for their coverage of and reaction to his latest "animals" remark aimed at undocumented immigrants. He lambasted the outraged, saying that if they'd been paying close enough attention to his well-known nuanced verbal skills, they would have noticed he was again only talking about the notorious MS-13 gang.
He's technically right about that to a minor degree, but very wrong about it to a truly major degree.. His incendiary comment was, in fact, a response to a complaint by the Fresno County (California) sheriff that state law precludes her from reporting to federal immigration authorities information about undocumented migrants, including MS-13 gang members, being held in her county jail.
"We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country,” Trump responded without referring to MS-13. “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”
He was perfectly OK to let the conventional interpretation of his remarks about "these people" stand for more than 24 hours - more than enough time to rebroadcast his bullhorn of a message that all Latino migrants are animals and criminals - before complaining that he'd been deliberately misunderstood... again.
This has caused a minor corporate media and political frenzy, with some hastily cobbled-together retractions and corrections about the "misunderstanding." So score a win for Trump among his base and his enablers from the Duopoly, and a loss for the coastal elites who pay lip service to the rights of migrants and refugees when it suits their political agendas and party prospects to do so.
And most of all, score more terror and angst for Latinos and other immigrants, who are being torn from their families by the abusive Trump administration.
For the most part, the corporate media are acting like a bunch of wimps in the face of Trump's critique. They should neither have retracted their stories and tweets, like the A.P. did, nor issued even the flimsiest of apologies to the Trump administration for appearing to "coddle" the MS-13 gang the way that they did, nor even "declined to comment" on the issue, as the New York Times safely did.
The media were certainly co-opted by Trump in getting the xenophobic message out to the base, loud and clear, before many outlets took the easy way out and decided that yes, they had indeed misinterpreted Trump's "true" message. The lone exception, strange as it may seem, was the Washington Post, which stands by its factual headline "Trump Refers To Some Undocumented Immigrants As Animals."
CNN, long the profitable subject of Trump's "fake news" wrath, took the low road and sided with Trump, accusing and naming the major outlets which took his "animals" comments out of context. The cable network posted its screed, aptly enough, on its "Money Blog."
Heaven forbid that CNN personalities lose their credentials or "access" to the presidential seat of malevolent power as their bosses and corporate sponsors rake in record revenues by selectively #resisting Trump.
Meanwhile,Trump is having his cake and eating it too, gleefully tweeting today:
"Fake News Media had me calling Immigrants, or Illegal Immigrants, ‘Animals.’ Wrong! They were begrudgingly forced to withdraw their stories.. I referred to MS 13 Gang Members as “Animals,” a big difference — and so true. Fake News got it purposely wrong, as usual!”
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders went even further. At Thursday's daily White House briefing, she read from a prepared statement: “The president was very clearly referring to MS-13 gang members who enter the country illegally and whose deportations are hamstrung by our laws. If the media and liberals want to defend MS-13, they’re more than welcome to. Frankly, I don’t think the term that the president used was strong enough.”
She then went on to gleefully and graphically imagine the press corps getting their jollies over the gang cutting off heads and ripping out hearts.
There were no follow-up questions from the cowed assembled court stenographers.
6 comments:
I trust this won't cause offense, because it says it all so succinctly:
"DNA shows that I’m the Unknown Soldier.
I can’t hear the birds down here,
only politicians shitting out of their mouths."
~ p.65, "Braided Creek, A Conversation in Poetry" by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison,
Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA, 2003.
A boy peddled up to Parliament Hill and parked the bike along a walkway leading to the main building.
A policeman approached and said, "You can't leave your bike here, son. Don't you know the Prime Minister walks by here everyday on his way to the office, as well as the ministers and senators, not to mention all the other MPs?"
"Right. I'll chain it to the iron fence."
Trump is a reflection of the racist attitudes of a significant portion of the American population, such as New York City lawyer Aaron Schlossberg, age 42. I’m surprised no one has commented about Schlossberg. I’m also surprised that neither of the two comments so far to this post, and Sardonicky’s earlier post, address Trumps’ racist comments.
Aaron Schlossberg "shot to ignominy last week with a racist rant at a Manhattan lunch spot" according to the NYT, in a story by Liz Robbins and Maya Salam who wrote, "where a video of his threat to call immigration agents on Spanish-speaking workers had first gone viral." for speaking Spanish as workers in the Manhattan lunch spot.
As an attorney, Schlossberg is an "Officer of the Court". Last week Representative Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat from New York, and Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president filed a grievance with the New York State Unified Court system against Schlossberg. Two different racist rants by Schlossberg have surfaced. The NYT covered the incident in at least three stories, links below. CNN has a video on YouTube:
CNN YouTube: Man to Spanish speakers at New York restaurant: 'My next call is to ICE'
https://youtu.be/GJ8s_W3R-T0
In another Spanish-speaking incident, a CNN video shows a Border agent in Montana demanding ID after the agent hears 2 women shoppers speak Spanish to each other in a Montana store.
https://youtu.be/tvyskN-Kkm0
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/nyregion/schlossberg-i-am-not-racist-lawyer-issues-apology.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/nyregion/anti-immigrant-rant-manhattan.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/nyregion/man-threatens-spanish-language-video.html
Yo' Uncle Ho,
You're right to call out the abhorrent racist core in sociopath Trump and his vicious gangster ilk.
But the toxic ugliness of racism is clearly implicit in "Great White Rant."
And, of course, the abominable evil of misogyny accompanies that depravity so repulsively celebrated by Trump, Pence, and the Fox spewing Koch-topus.
“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.”
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
RE Erik Roth: "But the toxic ugliness of racism is clearly implicit in "Great White Rant.""
Of course, that’s why "I’m also surprised that neither of the two comments so far to this post, and Sardonicky’s earlier post, address Trumps’ racist comments." One was your comment about the unknown soldier.
RE: "You're right to call out the abhorrent racist core in sociopath Trump and his vicious gangster ilk."
I believe it is a mistake to rant about "the abhorrent racist core in sociopath Trump and his vicious gangster ilk". No. Trump is a reflection of the racist attitudes of a significant portion of the American population. Plenty of Democrats are included in that significant portion of the American population, including Hillary Clinton.
Once you turn the offenders into "the other", you give a pass to those who are not part of "the other", which is a significant portion of the American population with racist attitudes.
I don’t get your point on misogyny relative to the "Great White Rant." But again, I believe it is a mistake to rant about the "depravity so repulsively celebrated by Trump, Pence, and the Fox spewing Koch-topus." Once you turn the offenders into "the other", you give a pass to the likes of Democratic supporters like Harvey Weinstein, prior to him being outed, after decades of sexual abuse, that led to #MeToo.
During his lifetime, Martin Luther King, Jr. was reviled by a significant portion of the American population. Now that King has been dead for 50 years, and whitewashed, he is more acceptable to the American population.
Today, what portion of the American population will risk going to jail in support of civil rights? Very few, in my opinion.
Today, what portion of the American population will risk death, and injury through police beatings, mob violence, fire hoses, and police dogs, etc., in support of civil rights? Very few, in my opinion.
This is not a comment on recent postings, but to suggest as a future posting a check-in on the Obama Presidential Center plans (not a library). To me it appears as neoliberal attitudes and privileges brought to bear on a lower income neighborhood in Chicago. One group just brought a lawsuit a few days ago to try and stop it, but Rahmbo Emmanuel is, of course, on board and it will be very hard to stop the project or to prove that all the promises about jobs, not to gentrify the neighborhood, etc., will prove hollow. I expect there was never any consideration of building a more modest center as part of an existing institution.
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