By Dr David Laing Dawson
I have not written about Donald J. Trump for some time. Would that he fade from political life and disappear from our consciousness.
But for all the press, the airwaves, the media, the commentators, the criticisms, the interpretations of his words, there is something I think being overlooked.
He gets away with lies and bombast, for sure, over and over again. But we have become inured to this, and his acolytes are there to explain it away, to spin it, or distract. He even gets away with felony convictions. But of course, that was all political persecution.
But this is puzzling to me: No one seems to be calling out certain phrases he uses, for what they really are, their real meaning. They aren’t just insults.
When he distorts the name Kamala, to emphasize the middle syllable, or make it a singsong phrase, and when he says, “She is a low IQ individual”, he is saying, in code, “Kamala Harris is a ……”
I leave you to fill in the blank, but the word starts with N, perhaps with the word “dumb” in front.
It is the same code when he says, “Barack Hussein Obama”, emphasizing the Hussein and implying by doing this, that Barack Obama is a….
And when he says, of a sexual assault accuser, “She’s not my type” and “She wouldn’t be the chosen one”, he is admitting to a willingness to commit sexual assault if the woman is sufficiently attractive to him.
I also note that when he talks about illegal immigrants coming from prisons, jails, mental institutions, and insane asylums, he is lumping the mentally ill and convicted criminals into one category, denigrating the hospitalized mentally ill of Central and South America, and further stigmatizing mental illness.
I suppose they are dog-whistles to a certain base of prejudice, ignorance, and hate. But lets call him out on it. At least until he disappears and stops roosting in my brain at night.
#Perspectives #Presidential #Debate
