When I was in high school, I wrote an op-ed for the school paper that was, in retrospect, my first stab at putting to paper maybe the one certain foundational principle of my own (still) wildly incomplete morality. As I recall, the piece was a jumbled mess--a failure of an essay, overlong before being chopped to bits to fit the limited space allotment and just generally unsuccessful at translating the certainty I possessed in my mind to meaningful or convincing words on the page. And it just wasn't any good. Somewhere in a bin in the basement is a copy of that essay, which might as well have been headlined "Stereotypes are Real Bad, Mmkay"--and, no, I'm not going to dig it out and read it and be mortified by my young self all over again.
But it is a moral that feels as simply and fundamentally true now as it did then, even if it did take me another ten or fifteen years to figure out the words to properly express it. It's not particularly profound, which is appropriate for something that felt true to a teenager, but it is no less correct for its simplicity. Here it is, then.
There is nothing intelligent or moral to be said about an individual based on the (perceived or actual) characteristics of any group to which the individual is said to belong. The reverse is also true: there is nothing intelligent or moral to be said about a group based on the characteristics of an individual member of that group.
(You can imagine that with that as a guiding moral truth, I carry with me some healthy skepticism about the moral utility of basically all the social sciences. And psychology. And marketing. And mass commerce. And maybe, really, any attempt to understand or account for or control human behavior outside the bounds of my own skull, come to think of it. But that's neither here nor there!)
Anyway! Why am I bringing up my rather marble-mouthed complication of the grade-school snowflake maxim Everyone is Unique and Should be Treated As Such? Because I think it matters that the President is a racist cockbag. I think it's important to point out the awful ways that he continues to be a racist cockbag, because his most debased and malevolent instincts and behavior are dangerous to civil society both because he is the most visible individual on the planet and because those instincts and behavior are mirrored by a distressingly high percentage of the population. Who is reflecting whom is probably irrelevant, a pedant's question for another essay. The point is *it matters* that the President is a racist cockbag. This is something that should be remarked upon, from time to time.
I used to work with someone (more than one someone) who would say something like: Look, there's a difference between a black and a nigger. I have nothing against black people--it's niggers I can't stand.
I used to work with someone else (more than one someone else) who would say something like: Oh, he's one of the good ones.
When the President says: Let's see the birth certificate!
The President means: Who does this nigger think he is?
When the President says: Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!”
The President means: Get these ungrateful niggers off the field.
When the President says: Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!
The President means: Get a load of these ungrateful niggers.
And his supporters, some of them, they hear what he actually means, and they don't think it's racist. They don't think it's wrong. They think, instead, I have nothing against black people, it's just these niggers I can't stand.
When the President says: Get a load of this Muslim, beating up a crippled white boy.
When the President says, like some fatwa-issuing zealot: Get a load of this Muslim, desecrating the Virgin Mary.
When the President says: Get a load of these Muslims, beating this kid to death.
The President means: Muslims are violent, and not to be trusted, and we have to do more to keep them out of our country.
We know this because when someone asked the President's Press Secretary, what does the President mean, when he says these things about Muslims, some of which aren't even specifically true--the Press Secretary says, whether specifically true or not, it doesn't matter, because the Muslim "threat is real." It's true enough, she says, because that's how those people are. (https://youtu.be/3x6x3GC1mtQ)
It doesn't matter how often it turns out that your bigotry is proven predictive. It doesn't matter how many examples of human failing you can point to in an attempt to justify your hatred, blind or peculiar. Generalized or specific. There is nothing intelligent to say, no moral weight to anything that can be said about a person based on what group it is you've decided they belong to. The reverse is also true. There is nothing intelligent to say, no moral weight to anything that can be said about some perceived group based on the actions of an individual.
Conflating the individual with the perceived *rest* in this way is attempting to draw understanding (and sometimes policy!) from the tribalistic and endocrinic thumps and squirts that govern and acquiesce to fear--where there is no understanding to be had. There is nothing to be gained from such an attempt. There is plenty to be lost.
The patterns you see, the numbers you cite, the feelings you have--they can be real, they can be accurate, they can be true--and still they are utterly meaningless. They are absolutely inapplicable to a single human being with whom you might come face to face, should you be so lucky. To encounter one. To befriend one. To find in them nothing more than you.
It matters that the President is a racist cockbag. It matters. Holy shit, it matters.
I don't know the point, or the usefulness, of this essay. I doubt there is any. This essay is a failure, too, like the one I wrote in high school. I have nothing to offer that isn't offered by a million, million other people. I have nothing to offer that I didn't already feel in my bones twenty or more years ago, that I didn't already know to be true with hardly any interrogation for as long as I can remember. I have nothing to offer that you don't already know. But I feel compelled to say something, anyway. So long as the capacity for shock and horror exists within me, as long as I recoil and react with anger and hatred and sadness at the unabashed, proud immorality laid bare before me--before I am numb to it--it feels worth saying.
