A Shithole by Any Other Name Is Still As Exploited By Colonialism and Imperialism

So Trump has said something really stupid and racist again and we're all angry about it (this sentence should probably precede every post I make for the next several years). It was obviously stupid and racist and bad and this is most definitely not going to be some contrarian post about how, like, he wasn't really wrong if you think about it, you know, or some bullshit about how it's good he said it.

Nor do I want to minimize what he said -- calling large swaths of the world "shitholes" and the implications about those places and the people that live there, especially when this comes from the President of a world superpower, has real effects and does real damage to real people. Everyone condemning Trump is right to do so.

Now here is where the obnoxious contrarian "but" comes in. What I can't jibe with is a central feature of many of these condemnations, which is that Trump is violating some great norm or going well beyond the pale here. Certainly his rhetoric is unsavory, but if you think Presidents like, say, Nixon didn't say this exact same kind of thing, then...I dunno. Go listen to the many White House recordings of him saying exactly these kind of things. Maybe not these exact words, but the same sentiment.

But more than the nasty rhetoric, I can't stand the insinuation that Trump's assertion that there are "good" and "bad" nations and that we only want people from "good" nations and those "bad" nations need to quit whining and get their shit together is somehow a viewpoint unique to Trump or his brand of far-right incoherence more generally. As Corey Robin has done a yeoman's job pointing out repeatedly since Trump first entered the presidential race, most of Trump's views (and his actual policies since becoming President) are pretty boilerplate Republican views (even more, they're often pretty traditional bipartisan views). He just doesn't put as nice of a sheen on them. Here's Robin discussing this while Trump was but a candidate, but there's plenty more where that came from and I highly encourage you to read all of his work on Trump.

Even more to the point, though, Trump's castigation of African nations as "shitholes" is, again apart from the course language, pretty much been official US policy since...oh, the founding of the United States. Hell, take a look at the person most often used as contrast for Trump's "unpresidential" ways -- his predecessor, Barak Obama, who is often held up as the eloquent, compassionate statesman we wish the President could always be.

Well, what were Barry's views on these shithole African nations? He told them, basically, to quit whining about colonialism, slavery and racism and to admit that everything wrong in Africa is their fault and they need to get their shit together. From the article: "And yet the fact is we're in 2009," continued the US president. "The West and the United States has not been responsible for what's happened to Zimbabwe's economy over the last 15 or 20 years." (Click on through for more victim-blaming fun!)

The difference between Trump and Obama in their view toward the political and economic problems facing so many African nations is not a difference between compassion and belittlement, it's a shared belittlement divided by using nice or mean language. Eloquence in defense of colonial empire is effectively no different than vulgarity in defense of colonial empire, at least in terms of outcomes.

And really, one could argue that Obama's eloquent defense of empire is more dangerous than Trump's artless bumbling, as empire sure goes down easier with pretty language and thoughtful speeches than it does with the equivalent of a drunk fratboy bragging at a kegger.

So I end this rant as I have many of my Trump-related rants by looking for the silver lining in our current dystopian hell scape; in this case, its that Trump's inarticulateness serves to sharpen the contradictions (as an old Marxist might say) of US policy. At least with this jackass crowing about our foreign policy in the most crude and brash way, people might start to see the problems with what we're doing to the world.

Or to put it in an even simpler way: at least he's admitting how we've always officially viewed these places. And the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem...