Response to The Major Minor

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Major Minor)

This recent Star-of-David thing is just more evidence that maybe half the trouble Donald Trump gets himself into could be summed up this way: “Once again, the twit hits the fan!” Every promise he makes to pivot to “looking presidential” is belied moments later when he launches himself onto social media.

I tend to agree with James Fallows on this, when he says…

So you can take your pick: negligence, or malice. Either a presumptive major-party nominee is spending his time, as he “pivots” toward the general election that happens just four months from now, sending out personally insulting tweets without having anyone check their provenance and implications, or someone in the campaign is doing this on purpose, dog-whistle style. I think the former is more likely, but either one is bad.

And I have to admit, I never quite understood this particular argument about Trump’s birtherism, this time from Paul Waldman:

"President Obama might be the beneficiary of a decades-long conspiracy to conceal the fact that he was actually born in Kenya. If you’re wondering whether that’s just stupid and crazy, or if it’s inherently racist, let me clear it up for you: Yes, it’s racist.”

So if it turns out Obama was actually born in Kenya, does this mean (gasp!) that our president … is actually a black man? My God! All this time, we’ve been fooled into electing someone who’s ...

Hey, wait just one gosh-darn minute! Obama is black! Nobody’s denying that! Even if he was born in Hawaii, he is black! So now, which is supposed to be the racist part?

I’m not saying Trump's not a racist, but birtherism doesn’t seem to be proof of that. And if he is, his racism would still just be part of something even bigger — that this candidate for American president is “just stupid and crazy” -- and being at least one of those things would disqualify him from buying a gun, so I would think being both should disqualify him from being president.

So as for that sticky question that cable newspeople keep asking pundits, “Is Trump a racist?” — the question for which the answer often seems to be, “Well, I’m not really in a position to know what’s in his heart” — that puzzle might be solved with a paraphrase from Forrest Gump: “Racist is as racist does.”

In short, if Donald Trump ever does something "racist”, then I guess we would have our answer, wouldn't we?