Occam's Razor

If there was every any doubt (and it’s hard to imagine how there could have been), at his news conference yesterday Donald Trump essentially admitted he was a racist. This means we have the first openly racist president since Woodrow Wilson. Trump definitely has the ability to keep astounding us, just not in a good way. His statement on Monday explicitly criticizing neo-Nazis and white supremacists involved in the violence last Friday and Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia sounded insincere. In fact it took a teleprompter for him to give the statement at all. Yesterday we were back to the real Donald Trump who pretty much disavowed everything he had said on Monday. He also invented a new term: the Alt-Left.

The Alt-Right supposedly consists of people on the right who are quite radical but not necessarily racists or Nazis but don’t see themselves as traditional conservatives or Republicans. In fact you would have to beat the Alt-Right bushes pretty thoroughly to find someone that honestly isn’t a racist. Its founder Steve Bannon is clearly a racist and is one of Trump’s principal advisers. Much of Trump’s staff is part of the same ilk. Now we know that Trump is too, although he has something of a blind spot when it comes to his anti-Semitism. It doesn’t seem to include his Jewish son-in-law Jared who he has probably folded over in his mind as a WASP.

Trump engaged in a lot of false equivalences in his news conference yesterday. Of course details escape him. Yes, the protestors did have a permit to protest, but it was for Saturday. It did not include Friday. On Friday this basket of deplorables marched outside a church and shouted Nazi slogans to those who gathered to oppose them.

Because of their actions, it inflamed both sides bringing them to protest and counter-protest on Saturday. They were hardly civil about it and it was obvious they were there to push people’s buttons. Yes, open carry may be legal in the state of Virginia but hundreds of racists don’t come loaded to the gills with semiautomatic rifles and other weapons, not to mention shields and helmets in many cases, as a demonstration of benign intent. Their intent was clearly to dominate, inflame and intimidate others.

Their foul language and openly Nazi-like chants and Nazi salutes (“Heil Trump”) made their intentions quite clear. Sorry to say one of them was unhinged enough to use his car as a weapon of terror, murdering counter protester Heather Heyer and wounding nineteen others. In this disturbing HBO documentary you get to watch the event and later the protest’s leader Christopher Cantwell say alleged killer James Fields’s actions were “more than justified.”

If you are a “new” Nazi, presumably you share most of the views of Germany’s Nazi Party. Unless you were asleep in history class, Nazis did far more than advocate for their views. When they had power they put them into practice. They killed millions of people they judged not like them, and it was far more than the Jews, but non-Aryans of all stripes plus plenty of people who they just didn’t like, such as homosexuals. Nazis spawned a world war that claimed the lives of tens of millions. So by definition if you are a neo-Nazi you advocate violence and are willing to kill and maim others to get your way, as James Fields’s actions attest.

Is there really a tangible difference between a neo-Nazi and a white supremacist? Both believe that “whites” are superior to other races and must govern the rest of us. You would think that because white supremacists enslaved people and started a world war would mean just the opposite. I made the case recently that based on the evidence white males should be ethnically profiled as they perpetrate the majority of these crimes. Police everywhere should ethnically profile all those protesters in Charlottesville.

The HBO documentary though does prove that these people, though likely small in number, are very dangerous. They don’t share the values of a civilized society. The democratic process requires compromise but they will not allow it. It’s clear that they don’t believe in nonviolence and are looking for opportunities to cause violence and civil strife. They are hoping for a new civil war resulting in a new nation where whites are clearly in charge and any non-whites who live among us have a second-class status. Violently causing confrontations around symbols like statues of Robert E. Lee they see as key to starting a chain of reactions to begin this new revolution. They are essentially rebels and insurrectionists. Any of their actions that cause or inflame violence are treasonous. They are a direct assault on the rule of law and our democracy.

Yesterday Trump essentially admitted he championed their cause. He has shown that he will put their priorities above those of the rest of us. This essentially disqualifies him from office. The president swears to uphold the constitution of the United States but he will do so only when it benefits white people.

I am hoping that his remarks will at least put backbone among Republicans. Trump must go. Whether through impeachment and conviction or the 25^th amendment he is not qualified to be our president. It’s in their self-interest. Whether they can summon the nerve to do so remains to be seen, but the political case for his removal is now very clear. Let’s hope they will do it.