The personal and the political

When we engage in political discourse in the United States, we confront a fundamental problem. I will outsource much of this discussion to Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, which as you may know is a conservative think tank. First:

[H]owever awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.

I might add -- as Ornstein does elsewhere -- that the party mobilizes racism, homophobia, misogyny, and other forms of prejudice as a fundamental electoral strategy. Here's Gilad Edelman:

[R]ecognizing the rising tide of white extremism means grappling with its origins, and that in turn would require American conservatives to deal with their own complicity. The Republican Party is now run by people, including the President and members of Congress, who endorse conspiracy theories about, for example, George Soros paying Central American migrants to “storm” the United States border and vote in our elections. The party’s full-time propaganda network, Fox News, devotes its primetime programming to whipping up its viewers’ fears of a migrant “invasion” stoked by Democrats.

And, one might well add, the current occupant of the office of president of the United States got his start promoting the racist lie that Barack Obama was ineligible to be president because he was born in Kenya, and then announced his candidacy with a racist screed about Mexicans.
 
So, here is the difficulty. People don't like to be accused of racism, even when they are in fact racist. People don't like to be accused of ignorance, even when they are in fact ignorant. So what are we to do?  I do not denigrate the personhood of people with whom I disagree. However, I do have to tell it like I see it. Nobody can approve of Donald Trump's performance in office without implicitly endorsing racism, ignorance, lies, authoritarianism, extremism, misogyny, and incitement to violence. If you don't want to be called a racist, don't be a racist. If you don't want to be called ignorant, learn something. If you don't want to be accused of condoning violence, don't condone violence.

Sorry, but Donald J. Trump is an evil, repulsive, profoundly sick human being, who represents what the Republican Party and the conservative movement have become. Anybody who can't see that has a problem that I will not refrain from identifying.

Update: I'm not going to publish comments that completely ignore what I actually wrote and make irrelevant, straw man arguments (which are in themselves idiotic). If you want to respond to anything I have ever actually said, go ahead.

Update II: I've said it many times but I will now add it to the side bar. Comments under the name "anonymous" or "unknown" will not be published, no matter how cogent or wise. Choose a unique handle and stick to it if you want your comments published.