Response to The Wall Just Got Higher

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Wall Just Got Higher)

Today, some observations on (a) unpredictability and (b) racism.

So almost the entire roster of Republican officialdom has now climbed aboard the campaign bus, even after suspecting the driver is drunk, and now they're complaining about his erratic driving? Maybe they shoulda just stood at home.

One of his prominent characteristics the Republicans take issue with is something Trump brags about -- his unpredictability:

"I like to be unpredictable," he said in an October debate, explaining why he carries a concealed weapon. In September, Trump said he likes to stay unpredictable when dealing with foreign foes. "You want to have a certain amount of, you want to have a little bit of guesswork for the enemy," Trump said.

Can't pin him down! He flies all over the place! Maybe the reason Donald Trump seems to defy gravity is that he has so little of it.

And if you think Trump means he can be counted on to be unpredictable, don't bet the farm on that, since he's also been heard several times to say something like this:

“If somebody hits me, I have to hit them back. I have to. I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘I’m wonderful, I’m a president.’ I want to win."

A trait that, I'm sure, will not escape the notice of our nation's friends and foes alike, and who will all, I'm quite sure, take the occasional opportunity to play him like a fiddle.

Washington Monthly’s David Atkins confirms that:

His reaction to being criticized is to immediately engage in childish and petty personal attacks against his critics. ... 

So it is that when a judge with a Hispanic surname ruled against Trump in the ongoing scandal of his fraudulent Ponzi scheme “university,” Trump’s reaction wasn’t to suggest that all the facts had yet to come out, or that the judge had misinterpreted the data, or even that the judge had a politically motivated agenda as a secret liberal. These are the sorts of defenses that people who aren’t egomaniacal narcissists might make. 

But not Trump.

In fact, what Trump does respond with borders on the mysterious, and is such a non-sequitur, it would certainly have immediately snuffed out the campaign of even the most milquetoasty non-egomanical, non-narcissist candidate. To Jake Tapper's dogged questioning (over twenty times!) of whether his citing a federal judge's ethnicity as justification for recusal from a case was "racism", Trump repeatedly presented this answer:

"He's a Mexican. We're building a wall between here and Mexico." ... 

At the end of a lengthy exchange, Tapper asked: "If you are saying he cannot do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?" 

"No, I don't think so at all," Trump said. ... "If he was giving me a fair ruling, I wouldn't say that," Trump told Tapper, pointing again to Curiel's background. ... 

"I'm building a wall."

So the question is now this:

Is it racist to argue that some American judge should recuse himself from a case on the grounds that his ancestors were Mexican? To which our next president's unequivocal answer is, "I'm building a wall."

Does that make sense? No? Good. Let's move on.

But the question still is, yes, but is that really racism?

Well, maybe not technically -- but yes, it certainly is. Here's my online dictionary's definition of racism:

rac*ism |ˈreɪˌsɪzəm| noun 

the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. 

• prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief

So by that reading, what Trump is doing -- albeit possibly unknowingly -- is indeed racism.

Trump is figuring that, because he plans to someday build a wall at the Mexican border, then any judge who has any Mexican blood whatsoever flowing in his veins is a member of a whole race of people who can be assumed to be biased against Donald Trump (despite that fact that he does very well with the Mexicans), unless, of course, the judge gives Trump a "fair ruling", in which case, never mind.

But in summary, overlooking all the nonsense parts: Yes, Trump is being racist.

Except, of course, that biologists don't technically recognize "races" of humans anyway, do they? Same Dictionary:

Although ideas of race are centuries old, it was not until the 19th century that attempts to systematize racial divisions were made. Ideas of supposed racial superiority and social Darwinism reached their culmination in Nazi ideology of the 1930s and gave pseudoscientific justification to policies and attitudes of discrimination, exploitation, slavery, and extermination.

Theories of race asserting a link between racial type and intelligence are now discredited. Scientifically it is accepted as obvious that there are subdivisions of the human species, but it is also clear that genetic variation between individuals of the same race can be as great as that between members of different races.

Instead of human races, scientists nowadays tend to differentiate between people of different "continental origins". Here's Stanford University biologist Dr. Marcus Feldman, who's done lots of research in the area of what we might call "race":

Many biologists have replaced the term “race” with “continental ancestry.” This is because such a large fraction of the world has ancestry in more than one continent. The result is hyphenated nomenclature, which attempts to specify which continents are represented in one’s ancestry. 

For example, our president is as European in his ancestry as he is African. It is arbitrary which of these an observer chooses to emphasize. Obama’s opponents overtly and by implication denigrate him because of his African ancestry. But he is equally European.

Which is to say that Barrack Obama is not technically an "African-American", he's really an "African-European-American" (or maybe, just as accurately, a "European-African-American".)

Still, "Mexican" is not, in itself, a race, it's a nationality, right? So doesn't this mean Trump's not a racist after all?

Not so fast. Take another look at my dictionary:

race 2 |reɪs| noun 

each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics: people of all races, colors, and creeds.

• a group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc.; an ethnic group :we Scots were a bloodthirsty race then. 

• the fact or condition of belonging to such a division or group; the qualities or 

• a group or set of people or things with a common feature or features : some male firefighters still regarded women as a race apart. 

• Biology a population within a species that is distinct in some way, esp. a subspecies :people have killed so many tigers that two races are probably extinct. 

• (in nontechnical use) each of the major divisions of living creatures: a member of the human race | the race of birds.

So while scientists may not believe in this stuff, lexicographers still do, and therefore, they get the last word.