"[If Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Let's break this down for anyone who really feels like Donald Trump is discussing the power of voting and political action.
You can't vote or use political action of any kind to unseat Justices or overturn their rulings. Trump clearly implies here that should that happen, the only way to solve the problem of Justices with whom we have ideological differences is the use of 2nd Amendment arm-bearing.
This isn't mis-speaking, and it's not a matter of semantic interpretation. He is either suggesting or joking about the coercion or shooting of either Clinton or the Justices she chooses.
This is possibly one of the best examples to-date of the way Donald Trump uses cleverly-worded and seemingly ambiguous rhetoric and offhanded comments to bolster his candidacy. Trump supporters who are horrified at the thought of political violence will defend him and insist that he was not suggesting violence...Trump supporters who are advocates of violence against the state or their political enemies will feel like he is the candidate for whom they've been waiting all their lives.
It's the Megyn Kelly "blood coming out of her wherever" comment on an even more dangerous scale. Every misogynist in the country knew exactly what Trump meant when he implied that his examination by a journalist was made more hostile by her menstruating. Every Trump supporter who wants to willfully believe that they don't intend to vote for a womanizer can hide behind the fact that he didn't explicitly say she was on her period.
There's a phrase for this. "Dog Whistle Politics." This is Richard Nixon's promise to restore "Law and Order" to Southerners who were fearful of social change, this was Ronald Reagan's use of "Welfare Queen" to stigmatize blacks on social assistance. This is each and every use of the word "thug" to describe a young black man whose political beliefs convince him to take to the street in protest. It's the use of an innocuous phrase to resonate with what is worst and most prejudiced in people without their realizing it.
Needless to say, black people aren't strangers to Dog Whistle Politics. We see (and see through) Trump's nonsense. It's just a slightly less artful and more broadly applied version of the same bile we've been on the receiving end of ever since the Federal Government decided once and for all that States didn't have the right to block our vote.
We're just wondering why it's taking the rest of you so painfully long to figure it out.
No comments:
Post a Comment