Donald Trump, relativist in chief

No, Mr. President: there was wrong on only one side in Charlottesville. The side that you cannot unequivocally condemn.

Klan members salute during a KKK rally in Justice Park Saturday, July 8, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Let’s get this straight, once and for all.

Donald Trump is not a conservative.

He proved that, early on, through his lifestyle. The conservatives whom I know and respect reject Trump’s way of talking.


My favorite conservatives base their world view on the worship of God, as imbedded in a religious tradition, and know that the worship of oneself is idolatry.

They have no tolerance for squishy ethical thinking, for la-de-da notions that “there are many right ways to look at this situation” or that “many people are at fault.”

They abhor such rhetoric when it comes from the Left, and the best of them equally abhor it when it comes from the Right.

We can only imagine what some of them are now saying about  Donald Trump’s post-Charlottesville anemic condemnation of “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

And, just in case you hadn’t heard that last piece, Trump repeated it for emphasis: “On many sides.”

And, just in case you didn’t get it the first time, the White House doubled down: “The president was condemning hatred from all sources and from all sides. There was violence between protesters and counter protesters today.”

Let’s make sure you got that right.

Trump was saying that there was no moral difference between the thugs who tried to turn Charlottesville into Nuremberg, and those who came out to oppose them.

He was saying that those who hate and resist haters are as bad as the haters themselves.


I hadn’t heard that philosophical move since a tenth grader told me that “you have no right to say that Hitler was wrong, because he thought he was right.”

Welcome to the moral world of Donald Trump.

Imagine him saying…

  • “Ever since Ivanka converted to Judaism, I’ve been doing some research into how Jews celebrate. I asked Stephen Miller to teach me some stuff. He told me about Purim. He even read the book of Esther to me.

“Frankly, I don’t like how King Ahaseurus comes off. And there is a lot of hostility to Haman. I understand that in the synagogue, when they read the story and they come to his name, they make a lot of noise and make it impossible to hear. Very rude.

“There was an egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

  • “I went to that Passover thing at Jared and Ivanka’s, what do they call it, the Seder. And I gotta tell you: while I have nothing against the ancient Israelites getting out of Egypt, nothing whatsoever, you read that book, the Haggadah, and there’s a lot of anti-Pharaoh stuff in there. And a lot of anger against the Egyptians — those plagues, especially the death of the first born.

“There was an egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

  • “They took me on a trip to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington. True — I was at Yad Va Shem in Jerusalem recently, but I could only squeeze in fifteen minutes there. I walked around the museum. Sad! But when I got to the part about the uprising of the Jews at the Warsaw Ghetto, I saw how they fought the Nazis. I’m thinking that many of them were screaming anti-German things at the soldiers. And I know that about three hundred German soldiers were killed there.

“There was an egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

  • “I was recently reading about the Nat Turner rebellion, where a bunch of slaves and free black people had an uprising against slave owners in Virginia. One hundred twenty slaves died. Terrible. And about 65 white people died.

“There was an egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

  • “I recently went to church. Don’t ask me why; I’m really not sure. Frankly, it’s not something that I do all that often. Anyway, there were a few scriptural readings. One was about Jesus. And then they had something from the Old Testament — except Jared tells me that you’re not supposed to call it that — it’s the (let me see if I can pronounce this right) — the Tanachhhhhh, with that back of the throat sound.

“Or, the Hebrew Bible.

“Bannon says that you have to be so PC with the Jews about this; they get very touchy if you don’t call their book by the right name.

“Anyway, the reading was from the prophet Isaiah (5:20) — ‘Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.’

“Isn’t that a bit judgmental? I mean — what if you actually think that evil is good?”

And the scariest part?

The miscreants in Charlottesville are convinced that Trump has their ideological back.

And if that is a false impression, why isn’t he correcting them?

 

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!