By now everyone has jumped on Donald Trump’s remarks, but I want to add to a comment I made on my last Random Thursday post, based on a Facebook comment. I wrote this:
“It used to be that saying “I’m not politically correct” was a way to try to communicate an uncomfortable truth. Now it’s a lame excuse to give in to your dark side. I’m talking to you, Donald Trump.”
Here’s why I wrote it:
During the Fox News presidential candidate debate, Megyn Kelly brought up the names Donald Trump has called women he didn’t like and asked him if that was the right presidential temperament (here’s the video). Trump’s reply was that he was not “politically correct” and if Megyn Kelly had a problem, she’d have to get over it. Trump’s problem is not a lack of political correctness, but a lack of common courtesy. At one time, people who were not politically correct used terms like, for example, “illegal aliens” instead of “undocumented workers,” because they wanted to communicate the uncomfortable truth that these people were violating immigration laws. Trump wants to broaden the term to allow being rude and crude. If I call a woman a “slut” and then say, “I’m not politically correct, that’s how I am, so if you don’t like it, it’s your problem,” does that excuse my behavior? Trump thinks it does. I think it doesn’t.
I set a low bar for my expectations of Trump’s debate performance and he managed to go under it both in his exchange with Megyn Kelly at the debate and his tweets afterwards.
By the way, here’s something I didn’t make clear at the start. Random Thursday is a collection of observations and thoughts that do not necessarily go together. A Facebook comment linked two of the items, which I thought was a very clever observation, but any link I don’t explicitly spell out is unintentional. Starting and ending with a Trump comment led some to believe this was a post about Trump, but it was not my intention to write a whole post about Trump. Until now.
The Feral Deacon 
The popularity of Trump, beyond baffling, is a true object of reflection. It seems to me that his entire rhetoric is based on how stupid or wrong someone is. Why is that so appealing? Some of his ideas do sound fresh and out-of-the-box which is fine, but in all the examples I can think of they are explained by someone else being an idiot (or similar).
Why is that acceptable to so many? Can you imagine what kind of society we would have if that kind of speak was the every day mode of communication? The left and right already beat each other up. You can watch Glenn Beck or Rachel Maddow if you want to see polarized news commentary. Or you can just read Facebook! But Trump takes it to a whole new level (and calls it anti-political correctness, which I agree David, is not an accurate description at all!). Many of those who support him are people of Christian or other “mainstream” value systems and are in the normal course of their lives, “nice” people. How can they rationalize Trump’s language with the models of Jesus or any other moral hero/compass?
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I was more concerned about the applause Trump generated than Trump’s comments.
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