Last Word of Trump’s “Shithole” Comments

Here’s  a bit of banter between frequent commenter MarcoPolo and me on Trump’s astonishing “shithole” comments this week:

MP:  No doubt many American’s, including most Trump supporters find the President’s language refreshingly candid and very human.

CS: Yes, that’s true.  They’re called racists, and there are tens of millions of them here, at least five times more than I would have guessed before the Trump was elected.  The white supremacists are riding on clouds right now.

MP:  Craig, four years is a long time to keep being po-faced (ed: means “dour”) and outraged. It’s also too long to ignore the president’s achievements and only concentrate on his many shortcomings. Isn’t it time to realize President Trump might just be the forerunner of a new era in U.S. political life?

CS: First, let me say that though there have been a few minor achievements, I consider 95+% of what he’s done to be fiercely destructive to our country and everyone in it whose net worth is under $5 million. In this category I would throw literally everything he’s done with respect to environmental responsibility, international diplomacy, economic policy, education, civil and human rights, and respect for the U.S. Constitution and rule of law.

Second, if I really believed that Trump’s ideals were a permanent fixture of American life and that the whole nation was on a path towards the mindset of Alabama, I’d move.  Fortunately, his approval rating continues to fall as his acts of hate and betrayal become ever more outrageous. I’m quite confident that the U.S. will find a way to wend its way back to normalcy, starting with a GOP drubbing in the midterms.

Having said that, I do need to keep in mind that Trump himself is a symptom of a disease; he’s not the disease itself.  Accordingly, we have a great deal of work to do in restoring America’s the core values: fairness, truth, inclusivity, decency and reason.

As I just read in my Spanish lesson for the day:

A veces me sorprendo pensando que el mundo no ha progresado mucho desde el tiempo de las cavernas.

Sometimes I find myself thinking the world has not progressed much since the time of the cavemen.