In this post titled “A Nation of Assholes: The Ultimate, Undeniable And Crucial Reason Donald Trump Must Never Be President.” I explained why a Donald Trump presidency would corrupt and warp American culture to a tragic, dangerous, and perhaps incurable degree. The post did not deal with policy issues, or Trump’s incoherent and ever-changing positions. because those are only tangentially in the realm of ethics. The post was about character and societal standards, as well as the importance of ethics, which are central themes here.
That post was written and published on September 10, 2015. If I ever deluded myself that what I write here has any more significance than a lone pigeon feather tossed in the breeze, this should disabuse me of that notion. Nevertheless, the post was correct, and subsequent events have validated every assertion, which, I have to say, were already fully obvious to those capable of paying attention six months ago.
The events of last week have helped enlighten a few more, and I guess that’s progress.
Cokie Roberts gets it, though her example wasn’t the best. On MSNBC, she cross-examined Trump, who, as usual, blabbered incoherently:
ROBERTS: Hi Mr. Trump. There’ve been incidents of children, of white children, pointing to their darker-skinned classmates and saying “You’ll be deported when Donald Trump is president.” There have been incidents of white kids at basketball games holding up signs to teams which have hispanic kids on them saying “We’re going to build a wall to keep you out.” Are you proud of that? Is that something you’ve done in American political and social discourse that you’re proud of?
TRUMP: Well, I think your question is a very nasty question. And I’m not proud of it because I didn’t even hear of it, okay. And certainly don’t like it at all when I hear about it. You’re the first one that’s told me about that. But I would not be proud of that at all.
ROBERTS: It’s been reported in many newspapers.
TRUMP: — and that’s what not the purpose of it. We want to make America great again. We want to bring back our industry, we want to bring back our jobs from China and Japan and by the way Mexico which have taken so many of our jobs, and that’s what it’s about —
ROBERTS: But, but, but, but isn’t it, but when you talk about deporting people and you talk about building a wall and you talk about banning Muslims.
TRUMP: I talk about deporting people who are here illegally. And I also talk about people coming in.
ROBERTS: Doesn’t that have an effect on children; doesn’t that have an effect on their whole discourse?
TRUMP: I talk about deporting people that are here illegally. They’re here illegally.
ROBERTS: Yeah.
TRUMP: We either have a country, or we don’t. I talk about deporting people that are here illegally.
ROBERTS: But what about the affect on children?
TRUMP: Cokie, I also talk about building a wall and oftentimes I’ll say “there’s going to be a big beautiful door in that wall and people are going to come into our country because we want people to come in.” We want people to come into our country, but we want them to come in legally.
ROBERTS: But what about the children, Mr. Trump? What about what the children are hearing from you and how they are responding to it?TRUMP: Well I think people are responding very positively.
Roberts could, and should, have been clearer. There is nothing wrong with arguing to adults that illegal immigrants should be deported (other than the fact that it is irresponsible and intellectually dishonest), but the crudeness and contempt with which Trump does it is bound to be misunderstood by children, especially since Trump speaks and behaves like a child. She could have referenced Trump’s various bully-routines, his mockery of the disabled, and of short people; she could have mentioned his encouraging violence against protesters at his rallies. Never mind: she understands that the longer Donald Trump is traeted seriously, the more our children will transform into assholes before our eyes. She was mocked at Newbusters as a “Think of the children!” scold, but the fact that people use that refrain to avoid substantive opposition to their position doesn’t mean that we should never think about the children, or sound the alarm when the children, and hence our future, are at risk.
Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields has filed a police report against Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who she alleges grabbed her from behind and tried to throw her to the ground while she was asking Trump a question. First Lewandowski explained the incident by saying that he didn’t recognize her as a reporter from [outrageously pro-Trump-biased website that has almost certainly made a “deal” to bolster him] Breitbart—as if it would be fine to physically assault any reporter—then, along with Trump himself, denied the incident ever happened.
This is the culture of the Trump campaign and its supporters, signaled by Trump himself in multiple instances where there have been violent confrontations and he has egged on his security staff and his supporters to rough up protesters.
“There may be somebody with tomatoes in the audience,” Trump said at a rally in Iowa last month. “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.” On Feb. 22, he said of a protester, “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell ya.”
There is no question that Trump accepts violence and intimidation as legitimate tools of discourse and governance. Trump surrogate Omarosa appeared on MSNBC and dismissed the abuse of protesters with this: “You get what’s coming to you.” This is the message being sent out by Trump to his followers, the culture, and, yes, the children. What message do they receive if it works?
Now the standard has been set. There is video of a Trump supporter sucker-punching an African-American man, Rakeem Jones, who was protesting against Trump at a recent rally. The assailant was 78-year-old John McGraw, who was charged with assault and battery. In an interview, he said he “liked … knocking the hell out of that big mouth.”
“The next time we see him, we might have to kill him,” McGraw added.
Nice.
If we elect Trump President and allow him to promote barbaric conduct as he wears the mantle of Lincoln and Washington, we will spawn a generation of John McGraws. I can conceive of no justification for any patriotic, ethical, sane American not to do everything within their power to prevent this from happening. That includes Marco Rubio, who has a patriotic obligation to drop out now; the news media, which is, disgustingly, trying to push Trump over the line because they, in their infinite and infallible wisdom, are absolutely certain this will guarantee Hillary Clinton’s election—you know, like she was going to crush a crazy old Communist-loving coot like Bernie Sanders (when I am chained in one of Trump’s dungeons next to Carol Costello awaiting execution by being beaten to death with Trump steaks, I plan on spitting in her smug face as one of my final acts of defiance); and most of all, the Republican Party, which must accept its responsibility for allowing Trump to get this far and refuse to nominate him, as it can, whether it splits the party, destroys the party, hands Hillary the election or causes the earth to hurtle out of orbit and collide with Mars.
If the United States of America is going to become a place where the character and values of people like Michael Savage, Matt Drudge Sarah Palin, Scott Brown, Sarah Palin, Tom Brady, Johnny Damon, Ted Nugent, David Duke, Omaraosa, Ben Carson, Rep. Virgil Goode, Maine Gov. Paul LePage, Chris Christie, Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaio, Robert Kraft, Duck Dynasty star Willie Robertson, The national Enquirer, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Gary Busey, John Rocker, Dennis Rodman, Latrell Sprewell, Mike Tyson (Could you name four more despicable athletes?), Conrad Black, Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones, Phyllis Schlafly…you get the idea, I hope, for these are Trump backers all, we should have the dignity to just huddle together and sing “The Star Spangled Banner” as strategically planted bombs tick away until they blow us, and the greatness that once was the United States of America, into atoms.
_____________________________
Sources: Mediate1, 2, Huffington Post
Ethics Alarms 
I couldn’t disagree more with you here. When a citizen is charged criminally they do not escape penalty because they have children. Your logic is severely flawed. If you feel an obligation to an illegal immigrant or their offspring make it your responsibility not mine. Neither you or they have a right to my property or labor. Which is exactly what you demand when tax dollars are used to feed, shelter, educate and provide medical care for them.
“Christian Charity” begins with you not your neighbor’s wallet true collective taxation expenditure.
Wow! That had nothing to do with anything I wrote, or the discussion of children, or culture, or anything germane at all! So I gather you are an ethics-crippled Trump supporter, incapable of coherent thought, and dumb as a box of slugs. Good to know. We don’t get many of your sub-species here.
Huh?
jvb
My eyes are bleeding from the terrible grammar. Please learn to use commas. Also please actually read the post before commenting.
The latter is really starting to bug me, maybe even more than the technique of reading the post and pretending it says something else to justify flogging a progressive talking point…
I hate to even delve into Mr. Steele’s muddy thinking here, but just for the record and even if any of the rest of the post makes sense (which it does not) for all they know, the children’s targets could be descendants of John Pedro (1623-1674), as legitimate an American as they are, and longer established as such; the bullying Trump is promoting among the current generation of youngsters is just flat-out racist.
Very well said Jack and I completely agree with you. And if by chance he gets elected I hope he is ready for the booing he will get at his inauguration and along the parade route. Trump is the scum of the earth and anyone who votes for him or supports him is a disgrace to this country.
The way I see it, Jack, this is the radicalism of fifty years ago that percolated up to the top with Obama coming home to roost. Many’s the lefty who still thinks abu-Jamal didn’t do it, that the Berrigan brothers were moral giants, and that the only thing the Weathermen did wrong was the Greenwich Townhouse explosion. For fifty years those of us who are somewhat right of center have had to listen to this crap, and for the last seven and change we’ve had it shoveled into our mouths like it was pudding.
Enough is enough, and at this point I frankly have no problem with someone smacking down a self-important liberal journalist and telling her she’s an idiot or clocking a would-be Ron Kovic. Barbaric? Maybe so, but barbaric was also walking up to a cop just doing his job and shooting him before he even saw the bullet coming to “off the pig.” Barbaric was also setting a fire in an ROTC building that was scheduled for demolition anyway and then assaulting firefighters. Barbaric was turning institutions of higher learning into riot pits and places like Woodstock and Althorp into open-air latrines. No more, I say.
Calling us a nation of assholes isn’t going to do it, because we’ve already been called every name in the book every day and twice on Wednesdays and Sundays. We no longer give a damn because when you’re already a racist, sexist, homophobic bastard, you really have nothing left to lose.
This isn’t name-calling. If you have a better name for that list, please enlighten me. I’m talking about being a nation of assholes, whatever you call it. You know exactly what I means, and I have been very clear. You’re ducking the issue.
Wonders will never cease. Once more I agree with you.
It was because of this stuff that I was never on the Left, despite agreeing with most of their intended results.
Now you’re saying the Right has become just as bad. Not just some amorphous “Right” but the actual GOP, or at least, a third of them.
One wonders whether you ever did have a problem then.
For me, yes, I have problems, whether it’s some Leftist thug or Rightist thug doesn’t matter as much as the fact that they’re a thug. There is no “free pass” just because I might agree with the cause they claim to espouse, because whatever side they’re on, include me out.
Bingo.
The thing is, when thugism is rewarded, then the only people willing to oppose thugs are other thugs.
Tell that to Ghandi or Martin Luther King.
Ghandi doesn’t get to be the great example of peaceful protest he always is used as. The entire movement that he supported had violent factions and violent groups that, though Ghandi distanced from, his own objective was achieved just as much through their violence as through his “peaceful protests”.
Hence the thuggish shutdown of the Trump Rally in Chicago.
Sorry, no excuse. I criticised Steve-O-in-NJ for “frankly having no problem” with political violence when it was his side doing it. I’d be a damned hypocrite if I condoned in any way the same when it’s my side doing it. Provocation is no defence, because if you go back far enough, everyone provoked everyone at some time. It’s got to stop.
As an “activist” I’m all too aware of Nietzche’s warning – those who fight monsters must beware that they too don’t become monsters thereby.
It’s a constant temptation to fight fire with fire.
All sides have to be better than that. Starting with mine.
If I abandon my ethical principles when the going gets tough, I never really had them anyway.
Barbaric was turning institutions of higher learning into riot pits and places like Woodstock and Althorp into open-air latrines.
Barbaric? No. At least not on the part of the initiators who were either deadly serious of intent, rebelling against strictures of the previous decade and generation, or just out to have fun. Juvenile, yes. But the barbarism occurred primarily on the side of repression.
Riots occurred mainly where response was irrational (Kent State, 1970, in particular). Woodstock, 1969, was an anomaly caused by Lang’s bad planning (now surmised as deliberate). Altamont (1969) — if that’s what you were referencing instead of a formal literary festival at a 500-year old gracious and somnolent stately home — was an outgrowth of Woodstock-fever and bi-coastal jealousy, largely a case of thugs vs. thugs. And “off the pigs,” by the way, was a Black Panther (ex-con David Hilliard’s) lyric of 1970 booed by its audience, thereafter blown hither and yon by the press. No “pig” was ever “offed” under that slogan.
So my mother told me, the Thirties were full of even more “surprisings” — constantly surprising uprisings — that were either under- or over-reported, depending on their newsworthiness and almost never with any background done. I’m sure there were other periods in American history of which the same could be said.
For fifty years those of us who are somewhat right [and left]of center have had to listen to this crap, and did nothing except steam about it, but who really need to put it aside as history to debate some other time in order to deal with what’s happening now.
This belonged up by Steve-O-in-NJ’s post. I really can’t figure out the system here.
I just made the mistake of posting something gently critical of Trump in a Breitbart comment section. I know, I know… I don’t know why I tried. I know, it’s my own damn fault…. But some of the responses….
Oorah
“No school today?”
I am pleasantly surprised he could spell school. And it was almost witty. Gold star.
witnesstothecarnage
“Nice new ID. Who were you trolling as yesterday?”
My Discus ID is actually five years old, and I’ve never changed it. He didn’t even click to look.
Canon Fodder {Ftooomch}
“Why don’t you go jack off to furry porn deviant?”
Uh…. huh…. However did he know?! I chuckled.
But yeah, comment sections have gotten crazy lately. I don’t even browse at Turley’s blog anymore, how such a smart guy has such a toxic comment section blows my mind.
ANNOUNCEMENT: I just banned the commenter known as bonibrai, Too bad…he has on occasion been helpful and intelligent. Here was his gem:
“It’s David Duke not Dukes.And he didn’t endorse Trump NOT that that would make any difference to a slack-jawed moron such as the likes of yourself..There are probably many more errors but I can’t be bothered to point them out to you.”
1. Because I know about more than just politics, I will always tend to get the late actor David Dukes and the racist fool David Duke mixed up Sorry. I could not care less.
2. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/david-duke-trump-219777 Duke clearly supports Trump, I didn’t say the list was of official endorsements, and go screw yourself.
3. Was I unclear about the “Don’t call me a slack-jawed moron” rule?
4. Bye.
“There are probably many more errors but I can’t be bothered to point them out to you” means ‘there aren’t actually any errors but I want to make myself look superior.”
Also: “in fact I’m the one making errors, but I’m a rude, arrogant jerk, so I’ll insult you anyway.”
Why do not these safe spacers and anti-“racism” protestors in those universities just go all in for Donald Trump?
They are hardly different.
Or maybe they already have…
As if you needed more proof that Trump is damaging the Republican brand, here is a blog posting lamenting Republicans about Trump’s, and Trump’s supporters’, obnoxious and boorish behavior: http://dlhalperblog.blogspot.com/
It is almost too late for the Republicans to repair the harm he and they have caused to the party.
jvb
Well this is what happens when you go to a Mussolini rally and shout “Long Live Stalin”. Some 78 year old guy is likely to clock you! So the only alternate is I see it, is to go out and vote for somebody else and try to convince your neighbors to do likewise. Perhaps send one of the other candidates a fat check instead of being indignant and doing nothing.
Wayne,
I have read Donna Halper’s blog and other postings, and frankly, they drive me nuts. By way of background, she is a bit of a folk hero in the Rush community – she gave the band their first big push in the US in 1974 by played their first album in heavy rotation when she was a DJ at WMMS, 100.7 FM in Cleveland, OH. Being a Cleveland boy, Rush was always extremely popular there and my favorite band. I have became a Rush fan in 1976. The Rush Community holds her in pretty high esteem, which she uses to promote her blog, etc. I find most of her writings give superficial treatment of topics and are clothed in reasonableness, when in actuality, they are hard Leftist dogma: universal health care; redistribution of wealth; higher taxes on the wealth; gun confiscation masquerading as gun control; Title VII and Title IX; anti-war/military; etc. That being said, her way left of center positions pretending to be moderate/centrist leanings are too much to take at times.
I linked to her blog to show that the Democrats, the media (but I repeat myself), and the Left (I re-repeat myself) paste the entire Republican party with the actions of idiots and Trumplodytes (is that a word?), giving them fodder to say, “See?! All those mean Republicans are merely Klan members in disguise. What they really want to do is deport any non-white, heterosexual, Christian male. Just look at how they treat Blacks and Muslims and Women!” For its own sake, the RNC needs to jettison Trump but it is probably too late.
jvb
If it’s not a word, it damned well should be!
Wait, John. Are you implying that the Democratic leadership is intellectually dishonest?
Eureka! I was hoping to bait some genuine Trump supporters into coming on here…sadly. all such comment have required instant banning, so they haven’t made it through moderation. Here’s one, from a charming Trumpite named “Sir Lynchalot.”:
“Good for the Trump Support. Don’t want an ass whooping? Don’t chimpout at a private event.Trump and his supporters are not that decrepit old man Sanders. We will not stand their while an obsess sheboon hijacks the event to ook “black lives matta”.
“Sir Lynchalot”? That sounds like an awfully coincidental name. I wouldn’t be surprised if Clinton or Sanders supporters are trolling websites to make Trump look bad, as if that is even possible or necessary.
jvb
Impossible to tell. Poe’s Law applies here.
Poe’s Law. Is that Edgar Allen or Po from Kung Fu Panda?
jvb
(PS: I know what Poe’s Law is; I was trying to be pithy.)
Tong Po (see if you get that reference); as in please beat me until my brain is mashed enough that I no longer care. 😐
Friends don’t let friends watch Van Damme movies.
Possibly Poes as in the video game enemy.
Sounds like ban-bait.
The banned Sir L asks why he was banned, since he didn’t use vulgarity or profanity. Other than the racist slurs, there wasn’t a smidgen of content relating to ethics, and a first time commenter has to show he or she will be serious and trustworthy.to make it through moderation.
Glad I could help.
This occurs to me as well….and then a lot of Trump supporters ARE bad.
Yup. Many are idiots.
Many of them, for example, believe that a public university’s code of conduct overrides the First Amendment, that itvis okay for the government to abrogate an individual’s Second Amendment rights due to mete suspicion of terrorism, that it is sex discrimination for universities to require proof and allow cross hex animation in rape cases, that government officials have the religious right to refuse to work…
And many are bad people.
I just want to say “Pax” so I can follow this post’s comments. Pax.
pax potest esse victoria
Try this one:
sine victoria non est pax
http://forums.bowsite.com/TF/bgforums/thread-print.cfm?threadid=448145&forum=1