Shitholes

Our president decided to call other sovereign nations "shitholes", put in context he was complaining about immigration from places like El Salvador, Haiti, or a number of African countries, where, to be fair, life is pretty shitty for a lot of people.

So, not too good, but not actually as terrible as it could have been, I mean, what president hasn't referred to another country as a shithole or something similar during his tenure? I mean, probably not where a couple dozen people could hear usually, but I am sure it happened, however the followup question of "why can't we get more people from countries like Norway?" Sort of puts the icing on the cake, and that icing is being suuuper racist.

As Americans I don't expect us to know much about other countries, but we do have a pretty good idea of the racial makeup of the countries named above, and hint, there aren't a ton of black or brown folks in Norway, unlike the population of Haiti, to pick a name out of a hat.

Now Norway isn't a shithole by most standards, which is presumably why not too many people want to immigrate from there, whereas the other places do have a few issues that no one would blame people for wanting to get away from. But anyone coming to the States, from anywhere, is likely doing it because they think they can find a better life here, and if that is their motivation, then where they come from shouldn't be a major issue unless your problem with them has nothing to do with their motivation for immigrating.

What I am trying to say is our president hates non-white people, actually I don't know if it that precisely, it's more... he doesn't think of them as people in the first place, he may not hate them, he will certainly use them, Mar-a-Lago has a fair number of Haitian staff, but they are just tools to him, tools or obstacles, and he can't even comprehend why we should care what happens to them or their "shithole countries". He doesn't even know why people keep telling him he has to think about them, if he could manage it he would never even talk about a majority non-white country in any terms other than that of an enemy. They don't register as more than something to be used to him.

That meshes pretty well with what we know about The Toddler in the first place, he doesn't really think of people who aren't like him as people at all, the closer you are to rich, white, and male, the more you register, because he doesn't look at anyone through any lens other than what he is, to his mind rich, white, old, and male is the ideal because that is what he is, the further someone diverges from that the less he cares about them.

The problem, other than no one having smacked him in the face yet, is that he normalizes this language, his statement never directly addresses race and functions more as a dog whistle than anything, or it will once the usual suspects get their hands on it, but the KKK and other white supremacists know what he meant, they see another crack in the level of discourse, another degradation of people with different skin colors. And the literally millions of people in the USA whose families originated int he countries of discussion get another piece of knowledge hammered into them that those in power don't care about them, at best.

I can't even comprehend how this man got elected, I mean yeah there are the news bubbles and what have you, but once upon a time we demanded our racists at least act like they know what they are doing, and pay lip service to the idea that they aren't in it to fuck millions of people. It's gonna be years before we have subdued the fucking Nazis again after this because they are constantly learning how many people in this country are willing to elect someone who supports their views, the only bright spot is that if we manage to return to "normality" there are going to be a shitload of racists exposed for what they are with a lot of explaining to do.

So there is that to look forward to.