Beneath Contempt

     Move over, Andrew Jackson!  Scoot down, Woodrow Wilson!  Man, the kind of talk coming out of the White House these days would have gotten a guy shushed at a John Bircher meeting, once upon a time.

     This once was -- and not so long ago -- a country where we'd let people fail on their own lack of merits, as individuals, and figure it was that one guy, or maybe him and his criminal associates, not every person who came from the same place.  It was a country where even a man inclined to wave a broad brush at entire groups of people -- like my Dad, along about the late 1960s, with his first few African-American electronic-production workers in the "clean room," training them reluctantly and pleasantly surprised that they were just as good as their predecessor peers.  A few trainees would wash out every hiring cycle and it was no different that time around, but lo, the skills needed for that job turned out to have nothing to do with the complexion of the workers.

     A President who fumes, "Everybody from [foreign nation] is garbage.  They're ruining this country," is talking racist nonsense.  Look, there are people who are harsh judges of character and people who are lenient; that's one thing.  But making sweeping claims about demographic groups is bullshit.  It's flatly wrong -- and so is anyone who overlooks such behavior, no matter what their reason might be.  (Video here -- and my quotes are approximate.)

     We're all equal before the law.  That's the notion this country was founded on and has struggled to live up to.  Presidents ought not try to drown the idea in a ditch.  It's unworthy of the office.