The president is a racist piece of shit

The president is a racist piece of shit. Apparently that is considered somewhat of a controversial position to take at this point in time so just in case there was any confusion where I stand vis a vis the president and all the racism he’s been up to lately there you go. Does it make you feel better to hear it said plainly because another controversy that we’re going through this week – which we go through every other time the racist piece of shit president does or says something racist – is that a significant number of publications and news programs are tying themselves into knots trying to find other words to use besides racist.

This one in particular from the New York Times headlined Trump Fans the Flames of a Racial Fire was especially ghastly.

President Trump woke up on Sunday morning, gazed out at the nation he leads, saw the dry kindling of race relations and decided to throw a match on it. It was not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last. He has a pretty large carton of matches and a ready supply of kerosene.

Ok man.

The Columbia Journalism Review collected a bunch of similar euphemisms various outlets have employed in lieu of communicating clearly which is convenient because I was just about to go searching for them myself and now I don’t have to.

Yesterday the president of the United States “fanned the flames of a racial fire.” According to a panoply of major news outlets, Trump “starkly injected” “racially infused” and “racially charged” words into a morning tweetstorm; the language he used was “widely established as a racist trope” and “usually considered an ugly racist taunt.” The remarks were “called racist and xenophobic”; “denounced as racist”; an “example of ‘racism’” (note the quote marks).

Brian Stelter who usually sucks shit noted how the cable and TV networks tried to avoid saying the president is a racist piece of shit. Many of the anchors attributed the accusations of racism to “critics” which is the preferred technique of cowards. What you do is you say critics or some people are saying something and that way you get to feel like you got the message across without having to risk anything or take any kind of stand no matter how obvious and necessary.

The big three nightly newscasts used the "critics" crutch as well. "Democrats are calling the remarks racist," ABC anchor Tom Llamas said. Later, he said Trump is "being called racist after firing off several tweets..." And the graphic next to him said "RACIALLY CHARGED TWEET."

On NBC, Kate Snow said the "inflammatory" Trump tweet was different than most, "with many decrying it as racist." A package by Hans Nichols quoted various condemnations from Dem lawmakers and said 2020 candidates "piled on" with criticism.

CBS was by far the weakest of the three, never getting close to the R-word. I was struck by this because the correspondent, Errol Barnett, did point out on Twitter that the hashtag #RacistInChief was trending. "President Trump took aim at a familiar target today, Democrats. This time, though, he aimed at four progressive lawmakers, all of them women of color," anchor Elaine Quijanosaid. Quite a nonchalant way to describe a racist rant!

To be fair a lot of other people in the media have started to use the word and that is supposed to make us feel better and I guess it does in a way but that’s a peculiar sort of relief isn’t it? Finally people are appropriately and accurately calling the president what he is which is a big time racist piece of shit. Congratulations to us all (?) It’s like being angry for weeks when your doctor won’t call to tell you what your test results are and then she finally does and it’s cancer and you’re like oh good at least someone is saying it.

Probably the only guy I get madder at on Twitter than Stelter is Jake Tapper.

Tapper is the epitome of the gutless media class I probably don’t need to explain to you and yesterday he topped himself in the Both Sides Olympics by airing a segment of his show that featured a reporter from the Anti-Defamation League talking about Trump’s racist tweets being racist and then followed it up with an interview with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer who said well I don’t care what he said I don’t care what comes out of that guy’s mouth unless it’s his teeth. I can only guess Tapper had Spencer on because he heard how racist he was and assumed he was a cop so he wanted to kiss him on air out of respect.

CNN having a Nazi on to talk about if the president is racist enough is a new low. I'm sorry I know we're not supposed to say things are worse today than they were before but it's true in this and many other cases.

I know we’re not supposed to think all we have to do is get rid of Trump and things will go back to the way they were when we were all unbothered and thriving — I’d be at brunch right now! — and that is true because almost everything that is bad for people now was also bad under Obama but on the other hand I’m also starting to think maybe this guy is in fact uniquely terrible and we need to do something about it fast?

What happens now that we’ve determined who is going to call the president a racist piece of shit and who is not is we instantly and always shift the discussion into a matter of electoral efficacy. How is the president’s racism going to play to voters the people on the news ask and then they bring one guy on to say hm I think the racism is going to hurt him and then they bring another guy on to say I respectfully disagree I think the racism is going to be good for him and then the rest of us watching at home are like what.

I forget if I already quoted this in here recently but Adam Serwer explained how this all works very well recently.

“The tenets of objectivity by which American journalists largely abide hold that reporters may not pass judgment on the morality of certain political tactics, only on their effectiveness,” he wrote. “It’s a principle that unintentionally rewards immorality by turning questions of right and wrong into debates over whether a particular tactic will help win an election.”

Another super normal thing that happened yesterday or the day before I don’t even really have a good grasp on what day it is at the moment is that Kellyanne Conway asked a reporter at the White House what his ethnicity was before she would answer his question. What does that have to do with anything the guy said and I guess he’s Jewish so that also adds another whole layer to it and she said well my people are from Italy and Ireland for some reason which is just about the scariest thing a minority of any kind in America can hear.

Sometimes people say when the president is doing all the racism that calling it racism is bad because then the racists are going to get more racist. You can say racism is bad a certain amount mind you but if you focus on the racism too much I guess the racists get charged up with an additional level of fuel they were keeping in the racist anger tank in case of an emergency? It’s like when Hulk Hogan would be getting his ass kicked in and having chairs smashed over his back and such but then at one point he would be like ok that’s enough and he’d regroup and start wagging his finger in the other guy’s face like you fucked up now and then essentially the other guy was fucked.

I just remembered it turned out Hulk Hogan is racist too. That was bad to have to know.

Here’s an essay I just saw shared on Twitter about bullying from 2015 which is before we even had a bonafide bully as president.

This triangular dynamic among bully, victim, and audience is what I mean by the deep structure of bullying. It deserves to be analyzed in the textbooks. Actually, it deserves to be set in giant neon letters everywhere: Bullying creates a moral drama in which the manner of the victim’s reaction to an act of aggression can be used as retrospective justification for the original act of aggression itself.

Not only does this drama appear at the very origins of bullying in early childhood; it is precisely the aspect that endures in adult life. I call it the “you two cut it out” fallacy. Anyone who frequents social media forums will recognize the pattern. Aggressor attacks. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor ramps up attack. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor further ramps up attack.

This can happen a dozen, fifty times, until finally, the target answers back. Then, and only then, a dozen voices immediately sound, crying “Fight! Fight! Look at those two idiots going at it!” or “Can’t you two just calm down and learn to see the other’s point of view?” The clever bully knows that this will happen—and that he will forfeit no points for being the aggressor. He also knows that if he tempers his aggression to just the right pitch, the victim’s response can itself be represented as the problem.

I guess the point that very serious news-knowers are making is to stop talking about racism so much if you want the racists to stop being racist.