NYT Editorial: How Can America Recover From Donald Trump?

[cali]

Donald Trump is heading to November like a certain zeppelin heading to New Jersey, in a darkening sky that crackles with electricity. He is fighting crosswinds and trying new tacks — hiring the head of Breitbart News to run his campaign, trying on a new emotion (regret) in a speech on Thursday night, promising to talk more this week about immigration, his prime subject. There’s still no telling what will happen when the gasbag reaches the mooring.

It could be that the polls are right, and Mr. Trump will go down in flames. But while that will solve an immediate problem, a larger one will remain. The message of hatred and paranoia that is inciting millions of voters will outlast the messenger. The toxic effects of Trumpism will have to be addressed.

The most obvious damage has already been done — to the debate over immigration, a subject that is America’s pride but that can also show the country at its worst. Mr. Trump’s solution is to build an unbuildable border wall and force 11 million people out of the country, while letting millions of “good ones” back in. Or maybe not — now he says he wants to bar immigrants from most of the world, except for a few who pass religious and ideological tests. “Extreme vetting,” he calls it, bringing the Alien and Sedition Acts and McCarthyism into the reality-TV age.

Yes, Mr. Trump speaks frontier gibberish. Outright nativism remains a fringe American phenomenon. But there is no shortage of mainstream politicians who have endorsed his message by endorsing the Republican nominee. Anyone hoping to build a serious solution to immigration after this election will have to confront the unworkable ideas and vicious emotions that Mr. Trump, with many enablers, has dragged into the open.

<snip and OUCH>
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/opinion/sunday/how-can-america-recover-from-donald-trump.html?_r=0

[TexasTowelie]

1. Like a bad case of gas

he too shall pass.

[joshdawg]

3. But the methane he leaves behind

will linger for years.

someone light a match

[pampango]

4. But while that will solve an immediate problem, a larger one will remain. The toxic effects of Trump

But while that will solve an immediate problem, a larger one will remain. The message of hatred and paranoia that is inciting millions of voters will outlast the messenger. The toxic effects of Trumpism will have to be addressed.

This year brought the fever dream of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where speaker after speaker presented a vision of foreigners stealing across the border to rob, rape and kill. Cued by Mr. Trump, they scapegoated immigrants and refugees in general and Latinos and Muslims in particular. The crowd cheered for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, brutalizer of Arizona Latinos, and Rudolph Giuliani, who hollered about terrorists and criminals as if running for mayor of Gotham City.

It’s no wonder that the nativists are feeling inspired, the bigots emboldened. The white supremacist David Duke is running for the Senate. Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s chief purveyor of conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant venom, is the natural ally of a candidate who hints that President Obama is a secret Muslim and who insists that Muslims in New Jersey danced by the thousands as the towers fell on 9/11.

Trump supporters have now been promised a nation where non-natives, and their children, are locked outside the borders forever. They have been promised, inside a new wall, new factories where everyone will build things, speak only English and be rich. What will happen when they learn that none of this is real? The challenge to responsible leaders of any political party will be to separate the economic discontent from the bigotry and paranoia that are the key to the Trump phenomenon. The question to future Republican leaders is whether they will even try to do so.
That is the long-term poison of the Trump campaign. Even if he loses what happens to the bigots he has 'emboldened' and the nativists he has 'inspired'?

[cali]

5. Which is why they need to be dispirited by a huge honking Trump defeat

and retreat in disgust from politics.

That might help.

[pampango]

6. That is certainly what we must hope for, though putting that 'genie' back in the bottle may

be more difficult to do than we must hope.

Of course, the nasty 'genies' of racism and nativism (which Trump's campaign embodies) have always existed in the US (and probably always will). It will not go away here where it is more entrenched than it seems to be in Europe where right-wing 'populist' parties are thriving even after initial electoral thrashings.

The best we can hope for is their "retreat in disgust from politics" from a "huge honking Trump defeat". I am with you there.

[Cosmocat]

7. It really isn't about Trump

The things you are talking about existed LONG before Trump entered into politics, and will exists long after he is gone.

My entire adult life the GOP has primed this pump - starting in the early 90s. Back then they did it in a MUCH more layered way. Increasingly over time they have given up the pretense of their bullshit intellectual rationalism like "states rights" and "sanctity of marriage" and given way to lazily bullying post 9-11, then to out and out emotive fits of rage with the election of BHO.

This isn't Trump happening to this country, it is simply the next de-evolution of GOP politics. The issue at hand is this country continuing to indulge conservatism, not Donald Trump.

[pampango]

8. Agreed. Racism and nativism have "existed LONG before Trump entered into politics, and will exist

long after he is gone."

Trump, as the nominee of a major party, is providing them with a degree of legitimacy that they have lacked since perhaps the 1920's.

The issue at hand is this country continuing to indulge conservatism, not Donald Trump.

Agreed. Trump's success to date have embolden conservatism. I hope that his rejection at the polls will help the country to end the "indulgence of conservatism" in the long run.

[Cosmocat]

10. it won't

Its just perverse.

Today, more than ever, they have spun so much bullshit for so long, we have reached this point where these people truly believe THEY ARE THE VICTIMS.

Be it hatred of homosexuality, bigotry, racism. The right has created this festering sore that sucks anyone who gives in to these things to find comfort. These views are seen as patriotic, all american, moral, and for good measure, YOU are the victim because the evil liberal boogyman is trying to impose their morality on you if you can't force everyone else to live how you think they should live.

Pack in the entrenched "liberals just want to tax and spend" bullshit, guns, etc.

I post on a side political discussion board at a sports site I post on.

The board is chalk full of complete "conservative" koolaid drinkers.

keep pointing out the simple fact, based on common sense in that Trump is proposing big spending AND big tax cuts, while Hillary is proposing tax cuts that almost completely off set her spending proposals, that Trump will massively increase the deficit, I keep posting the non-partisan group that has crunched the numbers. It isn't debatable.

BUT, they just ignore that and post some dumb ass gif or something about tax and spend liberals.

If you can't get half the country to get past the truly measurable, you can't even begin to unpack this kind of shit.

[gordianot]

9. Ignore him after the election.

When he says something stupid do not report it. Notice the recent relative absence of Sarah Palin? Trump has sucked all of the stupid oxygen and Palin stupid does not get reported. Something similar would work for Donald Trump.

[underpants]

11. Yes, Mr. Trump speaks frontier gibberish

[BadGimp]

12. Now THIS is the Beast the GOP has been feeding for so long that will soon unleashed on all of us..

.. and will continue to do damage to America long after Trump has sunsetted himself.

We have not seen this kind of ugliest in a long while.

[Coyotl]

13. "The toxic effects of Trumpism will have to be addressed." A generation of young minds ....

"bringing the Alien and Sedition Acts and McCarthyism into the reality-TV age." Let's hope reality T-V is just a pop media fad, not an age! And we sure don't need an age of neo-Nazis. The NYT fails to communicate any understanding that Trump is just the actor, a surfer riding the wave that is the right wing Tea Party Republicanism of today, the vile, racist, Obama-hating, obstructionist, do-nothingness of the minority party that cheats to win a majority in the House and disenfranchises minorities and other liberal demographics for political gain. That they left out, that the USA needed to recover from the Republican minority overthrowing democracy before Trump, in his incipient dementia, though a former reality T-V actor could be the President of the United States. But we already knew that about the NYT.