Tafsheen Malik and Syed Farook, a Pakistani immigrant and her husband, the Illinois-born son of Pakistani immigrants, attacked a large holiday gathering of Farook's coworkers, reportedly using semiautomatic rifles to kill 14 people and injure 21 more. The pair were married, and early details of an ongoing investigation suggested both were "radicalized" Muslims who had embraced the concept of jihad as an Islamic fundamentalist war with Western society.
This mass shooting occurred as the federal government is grappling with decisions about admitting to the United States thousands of refugees from strife-ridden Syria, where the Islamic extremist group ISIS controls large areas of the country, now engulfed in civil war.
Mr. Trump called for a ban on any further immigration of Muslims into the United States until the federal government can "figure out what the hell is going on."
This was just the latest in a series of provocative statements from the candidate during a months-long campaign in which he has distinguished himself from others seeking the office in many ways, perhaps most notably a complete rejection of any notions of political correctness. Trump has shown that he is ready, willing, and able to offend absolutely everyone.
In other parts of cyberspace, although not yet in the blogosphere, I have characterized Trump as jingoistic, xenophobic, nativistic, racist, and homophobic. I have said he appeals to the basest impulses and the ugliest prejudices to be found in the American psyche. His attractiveness as a candidate, I believe, relates to the fact that there is a segment of the electorate that is incoherently angry about many changes going on in the world around them.
[No, I am not a fan.]
His demand for a suspension, as he later qualified his call for a ban, of immigration by any and all Muslims until our government figures out "what the hell is going on" stems, I believe, from the simple fact that Mr. Trump himself does not know what the hell is going on. Geopolitics and foreign policy are, and will likely remain, well beyond his ken. What he sees is that there are Islamic extremists whose intentions toward Western society in general and the US in particular are malevolent. Therefore, he insists, until some foolproof test is devised whereby it can be determined whether an individual Muslim who wishes to come to the US is, and will remain, no threat to Americans, we should allow absolutely no Muslims to enter the country.
Anti-immigrant sentiment has been with us for a very long time. Before the Civil War, these tendencies were already very much with us. American society went from 1.6% foreign born in 1830 to 9.7% in 1850, and the us-versus-them view of immigrants by the native-born was sufficient to provide the foundation for a strong nativist current in US politics in the second quarter of the 19th century.
That this phenomenon is not new, however, makes it no less repulsive. America has always been a beacon of freedom - political, religious, economic, social - to the rest of the world, and that necessarily attracts immigrants. That is a fact of which we are justifiably proud. We are inspired by "The New Colossus," the famous poem by Emma Lazarus that is inscribed in a place of honor at the base of the Statue of Liberty, a poem that concludes with the words
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!Mr. Trump has declared that ISIS, and Islamic extremists like Malik and Farook, along with the terrorists who killed over 120 people in Paris last month and others who have carried out attacks around the globe, have proven that all of the world's billion or so Muslims are suspect and must be viewed through a prism of presumptive guilt.
Words such as repugnant, appalling, reprehensible, and disgraceful can only begin to describe this kind of public pronouncement and the rationale that underlies it.
So what? you may be asking. We live in a country in which freedom of expression is guaranteed. People can think and say whatever they want, with few exceptions: no shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre or making other utterances that could pose an immediate danger to the public safety, for example.
Yes, freedom of expression is guaranteed - against abridgment by government. If someone who finds Trump's public utterances opprobrious punches him in the nose, that person has not violated the candidate's First Amendment rights, although he will likely be charged with battery.
This also means that the press has no obligation to report Mr. Trump's declarations. They may do so if they think what he has to say is newsworthy. They are equally free to choose not to report, although they risk losing audience share if they don't report a story that is sure to interest the public.
What would Trump have to say to get the news media to decide it doesn't bear repeating? Can we assume that no matter what he might say, no matter how outrageous, they will tell us, because it's news? Probably so.
Then, at what point is there an obligation on the part of the press to say, here is what this fellow said, and these are the ravings of a madman?
Oh, no, they can't do that. That would be interpreting. They mustn't do that. They can only report the interpretations of others. So they can tell us other Republican candidates have condemned what Trump said.
Let me tell what I think of that: Baloney!
The news media have a great deal of control over what and how much we learn about candidates.
Here is an example. You've all seen how news organizations commission polls because of the public interest in the "horse race" aspect of the presidential campaign. Within the last week, three polls were commissioned by news organizations: CNN, MSNBC, and USAToday. All three looked at how Hillary Clinton matched up against Republican candidates in hypothetical general-election pairings, Clinton versus Trump, or Cruz, or Rubio, or Carson. (MSNBC included Bush; the others did not.)
Missing from these polls, as reported by the superb political website realclearpolitics.com, was any match-up between the Republican candidates and Bernie Sanders. Oh, well, that must be because Sanders doesn't match up anywhere nearly as well as Clinton. After all, the conventional wisdom is that he's unelectable because his image is that of a crazy left-wing socialist.
Not so fast. A poll conducted last week by Quinnipiac University (not on behalf of a news organization) looked at exactly those Sanders-versus-Republican-candidate match-ups, and ... well, waddya know? Bernie does even better than Hillary, leading against Trump, Carson, Rubio, or Cruz.
The media have reported this campaign season's news as if Bernie Sanders is barely worth a mention.
Well, let me tell you something. There is a candidate in this race who is barely worth a mention, and his name is Donald Trump. Trump is a disgrace to this great nation. Remember Ronald Reagan, who famously said Republicans should never speak ill of each other? This was known as Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment." Now consider this: Senator Lindsay Graham and former Governor Jeb Bush, two other Republican candidates, described Trump as "dangerous" (Graham) and "unhinged" (Bush) in the wake of The Donald's call for a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslim immigration.
The news media do not have an obligation to report, breathlessly, the ravings of a madman who has been characterized by his fellow Republicans as "dangerous" and "unhinged."
Not when they have clearly made a deliberate decision to minimize their coverage of the campaign of Bernie Sanders, whose career and whose candidacy have been the most positive and principled this pundit has ever seen in American politics.
Is it newsworthy that we have a candidate who taps into deep-rooted American prejudices and ugly, base, xenophobic instincts? Perhaps. Should that be reported? Before we can answer that question, we must ask another. Does Trump merely tap into those ugly features of the American psyche? Or does he encourage, ignite, inflame them?
I think you know my answer.
Shame on you, Donald Trump. And shame on you, complicit journalists.
The blanket coverage by the media of my "fellow" Quaker legitimizes his raving lunacy and bigotry, thus making it acceptable for his rubes - the angry, xenophobic, racist, uneducated adherents of whom you write - to vent their unreasoned and irrational anger at people who bear no responsibility for our societal decline. Our unprofessional, unethical and irresponsible corporate media that celebrate him are absolutely complicit in the crime that is his candidacy because of the unearned legitimacy they bestow simply with their putatively "objective," non-analytical coverage. Our corporate masters, who control our largely illegitimate and soundbite-driven media, have a vested interest in keeping the middle and lower classes at each others' throats rather than coming for theirs. that is his candidacy in a nutshell.
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