The Radical De-Contextualizion of Donald Trump

As some of y’all may be aware, our ever delicate President recently caused one of his signature firestorms of controversy and resurrected very accurate, deeply merited accusations of racism by describing countries in Africa as “shitholes” and speaking about Haitians in the kinds of withering, hateful terms he generally reserves for women he ranks in the 3s and 4s. 

And, as usual, the White House and Trump’s weasel army of sycophants and apologists rushed to contextualize Trump’s pre-school tantrums as the steely, authentic expressions of a bold iconoclast who not only understands the issues of the perpetually apoplectic working class like no politician before him, but also speaks their language, complete with vigorous, constant profanity. 

According to the White House and Trump’s various representatives, Trump’s profane, humiliating verbal blunders represent his deep connection to the forgotten working class people who are the life blood of our nation. Noted moron and Fox contributor Jesse Watters said all of the following about Trump’s “shitholes" comment:

“This is how the forgotten men and women in America talk at the bar."

"This is how Trump relates to people."

"If you are in a bar in Wisconsin you are thinking they are bringing in a bunch of all Haiti people or Salvadorans or people from Niger, this is how some people talk. Is it graceful? No. Is it polite or delicate? Absolutely not. Is it a little offensive? Of course it is, but you know what, this doesn't move the needle at all.”

The White House, meanwhile, didn’t explicitly deny Trump uttering the shitholes line but blandly framed it within a self-aggrandizing framework of Trump profanely insulting other countries in an explicitly racist fashion as yet another stirring instance of his bold, politically incorrect patriotic, America-first leadership, issuing a statement blandly crowing, “Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people.”

This is a variation on Trump and his team defending “grab em by the pussy” and “I moved on her like a bitch” and “big fake tits” as the kind of salty “locker room banter” literally every man in the world who’s not a giant pussy uses every day, and the kind of thing only a butthurt snowflake living in a fantasy world could ever genuinely be offended by when that scandal broke during Trump's tragically successful Presidential run. 

We got a lot of that “Eh, back off! He’s a man of the people who speaks the salty, sometimes disrespectful vernacular of the common man, like a modern-day Damon Runyon character! He’s everybody’s plain-talking buddy at the end of the bar, saying what we all think!” talk with George W. Bush, which is insane for several million reasons, one being neither Trump nor W. would ever be at a fucking bar because one’s a teetotaler and the other an alcoholic with decades of sobriety to his name.

Here’s another reason that narrative is all kinds of screwy: Bush and Trump are just about the biggest creatures of privilege imaginable, the pampered sons of a fucking President and racist real estate multimillionaire mogul respectively who rose to great heights despite being famously dense largely by virtue of whose testicles they began life inside of. 

Trump is the average straight-talking guy at the bar about as much as Howard Hughes was. He represents the voice of the disgruntled average forgotten American man about as well as Charles Manson. Trump would never be in a bar in Wisconsin with a bunch of stereotypically typical “average Americans” because he doesn’t consume alcohol and I’m sure would rather bathe in acid than spend unstructured time with the people who voted for him, yet Watters, and the Trump-sycophantic media he represents, keeps scrambling to create a context in which it’s okay for an Ivy League-educated son of privilege with a gold elevator and a third trophy wife to say things much of the public finds reprehensible, like, you know, it’s okay to grope women’s genitalia if you’re famous enough, or that black countries are “shitholes” whose immigrants should be rejected en masse in favor of people from European countries. 

So the folks locked into this ridiculous narrative of Trump as the voice of the common man have decided that we should stop judging him by the standards of previous Presidents and lower the bar to “racist, unemployed steelworker blowing off steam at the bar after his job was taken by a Nigerian man.” 

Not only is this lowering of the bar insulting to the public and to the institution of the Presidency, it’s insulting to the working class, “forgotten” people it’s pandering to. I’m from Wisconsin, and only racist pieces of shit talk like that. It’s not acceptable for actual poor, struggling working people to talk that way. I’m a working class white man and we don’t get a pass to describe countries as shitholes because they’re black and poor or talk about how you can get away with grabbing women by the pussy if you’re a star. I’m not really sure why the standard should be so much lower for someone with the most important, challenging, difficult job in the world. 

So let’s stop letting Trump apologists even pursue this ridiculous re-contextualizing and de-contextualizing of Trump as the voice of the common, forgotten man he never was, and never could be, for all our sakes, even Trump’s. Let’s eject this phantom Trump who speaks the crude dialect of the common, forgotten man due to his complete lack of pretensions from our vivid imaginations because this mythical Working Class Hero version of The Donald has never existed,  does not exist and cannot exist, and even if he did, it would not excuse the awful, hateful and clearly racist things Trump has not only said but done. 

Trump's profane blurts about grabbing women by the pussy and Africa being the land of shitholes aren’t just below the standards of a sitting American President. They’re below the standards of our blue-collar bars and YMCA locker rooms. Let’s not let Trump get away with this, or the literally 3000 other awful, unforgivable things he’s said and done. 

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