So on Sunday, Donald Trump
tweeted the following…
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly......— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019
....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019
....it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019
…and within minutes everyone was
sure 1) who he was talking about and 2) it is racist.
For instance, Chris Cillizza of
CNN wrote an entire piece at CNN making both claims on both points. At the website,
it gives the following headline “Donald Trump’s racist tweets show he doesn’t
understand America,” while the preview on this tweet
says “Donald Trump’s Vision of America isn’t American.” Cillizza states that the tweets were
definitely “directed at freshman Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.)”
and then, says:
Let’s start with
some facts. Of the four people Trump told to go home to their own country, 3 of
the 4 were born in the United States. The 4th -- Omar -- was born in Somalia,
spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya, arrived in the US at age 12 and is
a naturalized US citizen, according to the New York Times.
So, telling them to
go back to their “totally broken and crime infested placed from which they came”
makes very, very little factual sense. But Trump isn’t terribly concerned with
the facts here. It’s the sentiment that matters to him.
And that sentiment
is racist. Again, this is not an opinion. This is a fact.
But hold on for a moment.
How does Cillizza know Trump is talking about those four? As Cillizza admits, Trump “did not name” whom
he was talking about. So how does
Cillizza know Trump was talking about them?
It’s bad logic.
Indeed, the best way to take Cillizza's analysis apart is to treat the issue like an old school logic game. Lawyers all know about these, because almost
all of us had to take the LSAT, which includes Godawful questions
like this:
An athlete has six
trophies to place on an empty three-shelf display case. The six trophies are
bowling trophies F, G, and H and tennis trophies J, K, and L. The three shelves
of the display case are labelled 1 to 3 from top to bottom. Any of the shelves
can remain empty. The athlete’s placement of trophies must conform to the
following conditions:
J and L cannot be on
the same shelf
F must be on the
shelf immediately above the shelf that L is on.
No single shelf can
hold all three bowling trophies
K cannot be on Shelf
2
Question 1
If G and H are on
Shelf 2, which of the following must be true?
1. K is on Shelf 1
2. L is on Shelf 2
3. J is on Shelf 3
4. G and J are on
the same shelf
5. F and K are on
the same shelf
Jesus, I just gave myself a
flashback.
Still, if we want to figure out
who Trump is talking about, you have to start with what we know. So let’s review what he said about them:
1.
He called them Congresswomen. That means:
a. There
are at least two of them.
b. They
serve in the House of Representatives or in the Senate.
c. They
are women—I mean that is obvious, but needs to be said.
d. They
are citizens—because you cannot be a Congresscperson if you are not a citizen
under the Constitution.
2.
He called them Democrats.
3.
He called them “progressive” but the quotations
marks indicate that maybe he doesn’t think they are really progressive.
4.
They are immigrants—but remember they have to be
citizens, so we are talking first generation Americans.
5.
They are originally from countries that I will
paraphrase as being a “mess”—at least in Trump’s mind (a “complete and total
catastrophe, the worst,” etc.)
6.
They put down America (how I summarize the bit
about viciousness)
So, can we logically figure out who he was talking about? Well, actually, we can’t. Too many of the terms are subjective. But we can at least narrow it down to
four Congresspersons he might have been talking about, and only one of them are
on the list that Cillizza gave: Ms. Omar.
Allow me to show my work.
First, this page
from Pew Research counts the number of Congresspersons who are immigrants. They are counting both immigrants and the
children of immigrants, but fortunately they mark which is which, so we can
sift through them. We will also sift out
any men or Republicans, and if we do that, we get the following first
generation American Democratic Congresswomen, as well as their countries of
origin:
Mazie Hirano (Japan)
Pramila Jayapal (India)
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (Ecuador)
Stephanie Murphy (Vietnam)
Norma Torres (Guatemala)
Ilhan Omar (Somalia)
Now can we whittle that list down more? Well, with some educated guessing, we can.
Trump said that the women he was talking about came from countries that are a
mess (my word). And, bluntly, there is a
great deal of subjectivity in that—even if you believe the country is run well,
Trump might feel it is not. So, the only
country I feel absolutely confident that Trump would not believe is a mess
would be Japan, so Ms. Hirano is eliminated.
I admit that is a little subjective, but I feel safe in that assumption.
Also, Trump said that the Congressperson was a “progressive,”
with scare quotes around the word. So,
you don’t know how progressive they are, and indeed he might be suggesting that
they are phony progressives. But let’s
try to find people who he is likely to call Progressives, even recognizing that
there is a lot of wiggle room in all of that.
A little googling tells me that Pramila Jayapal is
co-chair of the progressive
caucus and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is a member. Ms. Torres has said that some of her policies
are progressive,
so she might be perceived as progressive regardless of whether she sees herself
as one, or most progressives would call her one of their own. On the other hand its not clear from googling
around if Ms. Murphy, who was born in Ho Chi Min City is likely to be seen as
progressive. Maybe growing up in a
Communist country moderated her. So,
recognizing that this is a debatable move, let’s eliminate her. I’m not saying its definitely not her, but I think
I can make an educated guess it isn’t her.
That leaves us with:
Pramila Jayapal (India)
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (Ecuador)
Norma Torres (Guatemala)
Ilhan Omar (Somalia)
The only other factor remaining is whether they made
vicious statements, but, to be blunt, that is too subjective to make any
headway with that. To quote Michael
Creighton’s classic lecture
on Global Warming: “The only way to work the equation is to fill in with
guesses.” I think I could previously
make educated guesses eliminating two possible candidates—Ms. Hirano and Ms.
Murphy—but I don’t feel comfortable eliminating anyone else.
So, what we are left with is a plausible alternative
explanation. Maybe Trump was talking
about at least two of the following: Pramila Jayapal (India), Debbie
Mucarsel-Powell (Ecuador), Norma Torres (Guatemala) and Ilhan Omar
(Somalia). I will make one final
educated guess and say my gut says Omar was definitely on Trump’s mind. But beyond that, I can only guess.
But Aaron, you
might say, we know he meant congresswomen
of color who, in actuality were born here, because Trump is a racist and that
is something racists think: that certain ethnicities are “perpetual foreigners”
even if their family has been here for generations.
Except the problem is that this argument cannot prove
Trump is a racist, because it relies on the assumption
that he is a racist. The syllogism goes
like this:
1. Trump
is a racist.
2. Racists
tend to assume that certain ethnicities are “perpetual foreigners.”
3. Therefore,
Trump was probably talking about Ms. Ocasio-Cortez,
Ms. Omar, Ms. Tlaib and Ms. Pressley.
4. Only
one of those four women were born in a foreign country.
5. Racists
tend to assume that certain ethnicities, like theirs, are “perpetual
foreigners.”
6. Therefore,
Trump is a racist.
Except that doesn’t prove Trump is a racist. Instead, it treats his alleged racism as a
given, a premise you build off of. In
other words, you can’t prove X using a syllogism that assumes X is true.
And there is another problem with this. One thing the syllogism gets right is that
some ethnic groups get stereotyped as being “perpetual foreigners.” I have talked about it here
and the stereotype is described well, here:
No matter how long
they or their families have lived in the country, they are still not seen as
True Americans, they are still seen as foreigners. That is why people are
surprised at how good their English is and ask them, “Where are you really from?”
– where New Jersey does not count as an answer.
This is a bit of a personal issue to me because my wife is
a lovely Asian American who has to deal with people assuming because she is of
Asian descent that she must not be American.
But if you know about the history of this stereotype, you
know that it is a problem attached mainly to people who are not white or black. If you are black or white, and don’t speak
with a foreign accent, most people generally assume you are American. Its people
of Latino, Middle Eastern, Asian, and South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, etc.)
descent that are assumed to be foreigners.
And I think if a white or black person dresses in a way that is overtly
Muslim or Sikh, they are stereotyped that way.
So, I can’t figure out why any racist would assume Ayanna
Pressley is a foreigner. I mean I pride
myself as being able to put myself in the shoes of people I deeply disagree
with (a good lawyer develops that skill), and, googling around, I don’t see
anything indicating that she is anything but an ordinary black American. She is not listed by Pew Research as either
an immigrant or the child of immigrants. No website seems to list any ethnicity but
American or African-American. I watched
a video of her talk, and I detect no accent other than a mainstream Northern
accent—the kind of accent Southerners wrongly think is not an accent at
all. I see no indication of what
religion she belongs to, except she made a statement on Twitter that she was a
woman of (an unstated) faith. I haven’t
seen her wear anything outside of mainstream American apparel. So even if Trump was a racist, why would he
see her as a perpetual foreigner?
Mind you, it’s not impossible, but it’s also not very
likely.
So, in fact the popular assertion that Trump is definitely
talking about those four congresswomen in particular doesn’t make much sense.
Thus, we see the popular theory that Trump is talking
about those specific Congresswomen take off.
For instance, this New York Times article
doesn’t tell us who they think Trump is talking about, but does say “Only one
of the lawmakers was born outside the country.”
This Politico article
doesn’t quote Trump, but says he was definitely talking about those four, as
does this CNBC article. Most amusingly, this article
from Vox says:
The targets of Trump’s
ire have mostly gone unnamed, but the remarks seem to be clearly addressing
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ayanna Pressley
(D-MA), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Each is a progressive woman of color serving her
first term, and all have attracted considerable attention for their outspoken
critiques of DC politics in general and the president in particular.
But, of course, to assume he is definitely talking about
them is just bad logic as I have outlined above.
In any case, if you can’t establish that he has falsely
indicated that anyone is an immigrant when they are not one, you can’t
establish he is a racist by believing in the perpetual foreigner
stereotype. It is simple as that. So the Tweet cannot prove him to be a racist
that way.
But Aaron, you might say, isn’t
it racist to tell someone person to go back to their country?
Well, it is bigoted, if the only
reason why you are saying it is because of their race, ethnicity or
religion. Like if a man tells a Chinese
American woman to “go back to China” because he believes that she is not a true
American because she is the wrong color, then that is racist.
But on the other hand, it is
downright common in our rhetoric to say “if you don’t like this country, get
out” and that is not racist. Seriously,
every time a celebrity says they are going to flee the country because this Republican or that Republican is elected, there are a few sarcastic responses
of “do you promise?” That is not racist,
because after all, you are judging a person by the content of their character,
not the color of their skin. Indeed,
that sentiment is often aimed at the white people born in this country.
This gets a little bit into the
divide in this country between two conceptions of nationhood, which I
previously talked about here. As I said before, some have believed since
the beginning of this republic that America as a nation is defined by race or
ethnicity, and some believe that America is a nation defined by ideals. The ugly side of the racial/ethnic view of
our nation is then everyone but certain groups and races don’t really belong,
encouraging all manner of discrimination up to and including race-based slavery
and lynching. Thankfully that has been
rejected by the vast majority of Americans and even by the Constitution itself.
But there is an ugly side to the
view that America is a nation of ideas, too: If America is defined by certain
ideas, then other ideas are un-American.
That leads to reactions that range from merely denouncing a person for
what they say, to severe viewpoint discrimination even by the government (which
the Supreme Court has regularly found to be unconstitutional). Think of McCarthy and his quest to root out un-American activities. Mind you, I say that being firmly in the “America
is a nation of ideals” camp, as I hope you are, too, dear reader. But everyone should still be aware of the
danger of excess and guard against it.
In any case, Trump’s comments look
more like the second scenario. He isn’t
saying all foreign-born congresswomen should go back to their country. Just the progressive ones who say vicious
things. That might be in your mind an
ugly sentiment, but it is on its face based on the content of their character,
not the color of their skins.
Or so I thought. Then as I was finishing this, I watched a video
of the President of the United States saying that he knows who is and is not an
immigrant just by looking at them. And
that I can’t defend. There is no logical
way to argue that statement is not racist.
So I finally agree that the President is a racist.
In 2009-2017.
As in, it was not President Trump, but President Obama:
And of course, the point of that patented “Aaron Worthing
Head Fake” is to make a point about media bias.
It takes an illogical interpretation of Trump’s words to whip everyone
up into calling Trump a racist. But
Obama could clearly and unambiguously say the racist thought everyone is trying
desperately to cram into Trump’s mouth, and... there was little reaction. I mean I remember conservative media
mentioning it, but the mainstream media just yawned. What a perfect example of media bias.
-------------------
P.S.:
For extra bonus points, Cillizza writes about Trump’s catch phrase:
The insidious idea
lurking right below the surface of that slogan [“Make America Great Again”] is
this: America was better off before all of this diversity. When everyone knew
their place. When people didn’t question what people who looked like Donald
Trump said.
First, it’s infamous?
Only around your water cooler, Chris.
As for whether it is racist or not, Bill Clinton said it, too,
and I don’t’ recall anyone calling him a racist for it. Of course, it was also denounced more recently
as a racist dog whistle by… [checks notes] …Bill
Clinton.
And when you think about it, who is shocked that Bill
Clinton would call Trump a racist for saying the same thing he said?
So, Bill Clinton and Chris Cillizza denounced Trump for
saying what Bill Clinton said without controversy. It would be more infuriating if it was not so
typical.
---------------------------------------
My wife and I lost our jobs due
to the harassment of convicted terrorist (and adjudicated statutory rapist)
Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a
crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years. I know that claim sounds fantastic, but if you
read starting here,
you will see absolute proof of these claims using documentary and video
evidence.
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for
snark and site updates.
---------------------------------------
Disclaimer:
I have accused some people,
particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is
through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence
against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally wrong,
but it is counter-productive.
In the particular case of Brett
Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part
because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want
that to happen to him.
And for that matter, don’t go on
his property. Don’t sneak around and try
to photograph him. Frankly try not to even
be within his field of vision. Your
behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to
mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not contact his
organizations, either. And most of all,
leave his family alone.
The only exception to all that is
that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with
contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might
report. And even then if he tells you to
stop contacting him, obey that request. That this is a key element in making out a
harassment claim under Maryland law—that a person asks you to stop and you
refuse.
And let me say something else. In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that
any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you
haven’t don’t start.
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