Tim F

Some folks on Twitter and elsewhere have tried to defend Donald Trump, or at least minimize last night’s impact, by saying we already had all this on tape. He called Mexicans rapists. He called Rosie O’Donnell a pig. He said racist things about a judge, Miss Universe and a thousand other people. But the rest of the world has gone nuts about this? What is up with that?

To me the answer is pretty simple. There are curses that everyone more or less tolerates. Schmuck. Asshole. Turd face. Horse fucker. Even calling someone a murderer, rapist or son of a motherless goat won’t automatically get you shunned by society as long as you stay on the right side of slander and libel laws. But then there is a whole other category of insults. You know the ones. Fag is maybe the only one I can safely print, even just to discuss it. The rest you know by their first letters alone. C-. N-. Unless you are Tyrion Lannister then your reputation will not survive saying those. Something about those words makes them stand out from anything else you can say to someone.

I think an important clue is to look at what happens to a terrible ethnicity-based insult when the ethnicity goes mainstream. At one time being Irish or Italian had real consequences in America. Back in the day a vulgar term for Irish had weight. Those vulgar terms were a way to put someone in their place. It said you have privileges that they don’t. You can shut them out or hurt them. Can you imagine someone getting turned away from an apartment today because they are Irish? Of course not. That has a lot to do with why barely anyone even remembers the old insults. There is no threat there. The Jewish insults still have some weight. In related news, Twitter tells me that there are thousands of people out there who still have a weirdly singular hatred for Jews. Maybe millions. Meanwhile the twentieth century provides an indelible reminder that no amount of assimilation should make Jews feel entirely safe from threats. Saying the K-word today does not have anywhere near the impact of when I grew up (the local ritzy golf club started letting in Jews beyond its token one-family limit when I was in high school, in the early 90s). Nonetheless if you say the k- word today it will mean something, to me and to your reputation.

That is the one thing our short list of unforgivables has in common. They all imply a threat. Black people can still be turned away from a mortgage. In many places a white person can still expect the overwhelming benefit of the doubt if he shoots a black man in the street, where a black man would be convicted before any detective opens the case. A woman can be assaulted or raped at any time, and too often the justice system just heaps on the shame and abuse. I thought I was sufficiently jaded about rape and ‘justice’, until I found about the disgraceful state of rape kits nationwide. These are easy convictions. In many cases the perps are already in custody. In many, many cases catching the perp quickly would have saved three, ten or more women from being assaulted later.

Donald Trump did not ‘insult’ women or make ‘vulgar’ statements about women. He talked about making threats and then acting on them. He bragged that they had no defense against his assaults, and no recourse afterwards. Imagine that Trump called a black man the n- word and then beat him with a cane. Aside from being an anachronism in this age, would it be so different?

Donald Trump committed unforgiveable acts in his life. In 2005 he bragged about it. People may not get that explicitly, but fundamentally they get it. You cannot uncross this line.

The unforgivable curses, a short guidePost + Comments (142)

Here is a fun thought. Whoever leaked Donald Trump’s 1996 taxes likely has more than just three pages from one year. If we learned anything from the Clinton emails*, we learned that a story in drips never, ever dies. It does not even need to have anything interesting in it. But Trump’s tax story is so, so interesting. What business genius loses a billion dollars in the middle of an economic expansion? America was printing money in the mid 90’s. After a revelation like this it sounds a lot more plausible that the guy is effectively broke and keeping up the lifestyle by piling on debt to Russian mobsters and a couple recklessly stupid soon to be ex-managers at Deutsche Bank.

Now it could be that Trump’s mole has just that one batch of papers. You and I have no way to know. But Trump has no way to know either. And I expect he or she has more for the simple reason that the 1996 return is such an obviously crucial year. The near-billion dollar loss apparently set Trump up to live income tax-free for up to two decades. From what I understand any later year’s return would make much more sense if you saw what happened in 1996. The leaked documents would be a very smart first step.

And christ on a cracker do the Trumplings not want to talk about this. Rich people laws confuse and disturb or ordinary voters. Imagine I put all my money on a bet that blows up in my face. It is not hard to explain what happens next: I lose all my money. In a month Ex-football players pull up in a truck and carry away my stuff. The rules are different for rich people. It is like you simply cannot lose as long as you can pay the right accountant. Everyone more or less knows that, but having it rubbed in your face like this is viscerally galling. Frank Luntz’s focus group was utterly appalled when Trump smugly let on that he doesn’t pay taxes. Someone in his camp persuaded him to walk it back literally the moment he finished shaking Lester Holt’s hand. They know it sucks and explaining won’t help.

When you have as much to hide as Trump does, not knowing whether another shoe is about to drop must be agony. I suppose he could release everything right now and at least kill the suspense. The problem is we only have a month left in the race. It would take longer than a month just to digest the things we find in there. Meanwhile some states have already started voting. There is really no choice but turtle up and hope that nothing else leaks.

(*) Bad acts? Not so much. If anyone is still holding their breath for proof of malfeasance, their loved ones should probably intervene.

Live by the swordPost + Comments (200)