Okay, fine, so we're supposed to pretend to take Donald Trump seriously and continue to indulge this fantasy so narcissistic that Kanye West has called him to take that shit down a notch. Well, then, let's do it. Let's say that Trump actually has proposals worthy of consideration beyond "Are you fucking kidding?" If you go to his website and click on "issues," there is still only one: immigration reform. That's it.
And if you read it, you'll see that Trump fully believes (or doesn't - it's hard to tell what shit he actually believes and what shit is just expediency for the moment) that "solving" the problem of undocumented workers will solve pretty much every other problem in the country, from terrorism to poverty. It's so fuckin' miraculous that no one ever thought before to scapegoat one group and order their purging. It cures all that ails a nation, no?
Beyond actual, seriously-stated proposals like that we should economically sanction and diplomatically isolate Mexico until that nation pays for a 2000 mile border wall, what's most fascinating are the links to articles that make up the "research" that's gone into the plan. No less than half a dozen times, Trump cites the conservative news port-a-potty, Breitbart, which means either he's paying good money in exchange for blow jobs and clicks or he just doesn't give a shit what his sources are.
'Cause, see, for example, Trump offers the kind of proposal makes stupid people smile stupidly because they think it's common sense: "Use the monies saved on expensive refugee programs to help place American children without parents in safer homes and communities, and to improve community safety in high crime neighborhoods in the United States." And he links to two Breitbart articles. For "high crime neighborhoods," he sends us not to crime statistics or even a report of criminality. No, we get to click over to an article that is a summary of a caller to Laura Ingraham's radio ear bleeder. No shit, it's a woman claming to be black and living in Baltimore who says she wants asylum from crime in her neighborhood, which may well be true, except if you're passing it off as news, you motherfucking confirm that it is a real person with a real opinion and not some fucknut who wants to hear their bullshit on the radio. But for a presidential candidate to use that as a demonstration of the effects of high crime rates is laughably absurd, if we still had the capacity to find all this absurd anymore.
On it goes. Another link is to a Breitbart article that is, shit you not, a reprint of an abstract of a study, along with the first paragraph of the introduction. In other words, the article's "writer" didn't even bother to read the fucking study about how immigrant workers affect native workers in the United States. One other frightening thing comes out of looking at Trump's "research." Most of these articles are about the effects of documented and undocumented workers. In other words, it's not just an attack on "illegals." It's an attack on immigrants coming here and taking our jobs or some such fucked-up lie.
This isn't an indictment of Breitbart. If you go to the circus, expect to see heaps of elephant dung. But it is an indictment of Trump, who doesn't give a fuck who his "experts" are. You been on TV saying shit Trump likes? You're hired. Who the fuck cares if you're associated with white supremacists. And it's an indictment of the knuckle-dragging yahoos and racist opportunists who see in Trump their idiot god who says what they really want said.
Sure, sure, we can pretend that these are serious proposals. But if we do, we have to seriously contend with the hatred from which they spring and the hatred that they provoke. We have to seriously understand that a large contingent of the Republican Party is no longer hiding its racist anger. Instead, it's out in the open. We thought that would make it less frightening, if we could see its face and hear its awful words.
It doesn't.
