I want to apologize to Gamereg, who authored this terse and astute Comment of the Day for getting it posted so tardily. Fortunately, the foolish (but disturbingly typical) sentiments he was generous enough to thoroughly rebut remain evergreen and ever destructive even though the election has come and gone.

Before I turn it over to Gamereg, I want to express particular disgust at the first line. There is nothing racist about the Republican Party, its elected officials or Donald Trump, and yet this claim—not even claim now but official Big Lie—remains a staple of progressive, Democrat, Trump Deranged cant despite my efforts and those of many others to demonstrate beyond dispute that it is untrue. When I confront the “Trump is a racist” chanters and insist that they tell me what they think is their smoking gun, their answers range from “Oh, everybody knows he’s a racist” to “He said mean things about Barack Obama/Kamala Harris/ Colin Kaepernick/”The Squad” to “He called the white supremacy protesters in Charlottesville “very fine people “to “he called nations with ‘people of color’ ‘shit-hole countries'” to “huminiahuminahumina.” The most substantive response anyone has come up with is the October 1973 DOJ civil rights lawsuit against Trump, his father Fred Trump, and their real estate company, Trump Management Inc., alleging systemic violations of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in New York City. The Trumps settled the lawsuit in 1975 by signing a consent decree without admitting any wrongdoing or liability. The Justice Department’s evidence was strong; undeniably, the Trumps engaged in racial discrimination. Also undeniably, the episode is fifty years old. Fifty years ago Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama opposed gay marriage. I stipulate that when a public figure’s last racially discriminatory act was a half century ago, the “racist” label cannot be sustained.

I also want to respectfully challenge Extradimensional Cephalopod, our esteemed missionary of effective and civil discourse with immovable ideologues who have adopted an unshakable belief and are inclined to disrespect anyone who attempts to dislodge it regardless of the evidence offered. I would like to read a non-fantasy formula for convincing a progressive shill that the first first line is the utter bias and counter-factual smear that it is.

He/She/It has been especially smug of late with the now familiar “Oh, you poor dim Earthlings, if only you could learn the skills I bring you, the talking past each other that has resulted in such bitterness and enmity in our political disputes would be no more!” I am reacting particularly to our recent debate on this thread, which contained a reference to my post seeking the most ethical way to treat a neighbor who tells me she cuts off anyone who doesn’t sufficiently oppose Donald Trump and support the Democratic Party.

Update: I invited her to dine out with me for Thanksgiving, since my family is dead or will be elsewhere, and she is estranged from hers. She was thrilled. We will not talk politics.

Here is Gamereg’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Scary Trump-Deranged/Wokified Facebook Friend Update”…

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