On the EDge: President a stranger to eloquence

January 15, 2018 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — The fact that the president has a foul mouth is neither shocking nor appalling to me.

He will never be regarded in terms of Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln when it comes to his oratory.

His linguistics are simple, terse, often crude, as we have seen during his long tenure in public life.

He is a stranger to eloquence and has yet to explore the nuance and beauty of the English language.

Thus, our expectations are rather low.

He isn’t the first of course, to fill the White House with expletives, and it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination a partisan trait. The walls have heard more than their share of salacious repartee, vitriolic spasm and angry invective. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon come to mind for their foul, bigoted language. And, of course, Harry Truman’s famous quote about why he fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur as the supreme commander for the Allied Powers in Korea – “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the laws for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail,” he said – would certainly not have gotten his point across as strongly.

But, it’s one thing to wage one-on-one verbal warfare and quite another to demean, disparage and denigrate an entire race of people, which is why the lines of decorum and decency were crossed the other day when the president insulted Haitians and the African continent during a discussion about immigration.

“Haitians? Why do we need more Haitians?” he said, according to sources at the meeting.

Later, as the discussion veered into the area of the diversity lottery, the president referred to people coming from Africa as coming from “s—hole countries” and wondered aloud why there aren’t more people from Norway interested in coming to the United States.

That, folks, whether you like it or not, is racism.

Of course, I hardly expect agreement here particularly in light of the result from a recent Gallup Poll that revealed that in terms of job approval among people who identify themselves as members of a religious organization, 61 percent of those who claim membership in the Mormon faith think he’s doing a good job. Protestant and other Christian faiths came in second at 48 percent, Catholics gave him a 38 percent approval rating, those from the Jewish community offered 26 percent approval, 23 percent of those with no religious affiliation or who claim to be atheists or agnostics gave him a thumb’s up, those from other non-Christian religions came in at 22 percent

And, not surprisingly, Muslims were at the bottom of that approval list, with only 18 percent approving of his work. The latest overall Gallup Poll had him at a general across-the-board approval rating of 39 percent.

Of course, this was before the latest comments about Haiti and Africa.

As I recall, Utah and members of the LDS faith were quick to respond when a horrific earthquake struck the nation eight years ago. I remember planeloads of supplies – from food and water to medicine – being airlifted to help in the aftermath. It was a generous outpouring of humanitarian aid.

And, of course, Utah is home to Mia Love, the first Haitian-American woman elected to Congress. Although she flies under a very conservative banner, she was emotionally distraught at the president’s comments. In a statement posted on her Twitter account she said: “The President’s comments are unkind, divisive, elitist and fly in the face of our nation’s values. This behavior is unacceptable from the leader of our nation. My parents came from one of those countries but proudly took an oath of allegiance to the United States and took on the responsibilities of everything that being a citizen comes with.

“They never took a thing from our federal government. They worked hard, paid taxes and rose from nothing to take care of and provide opportunities for their children. They taught their children to do the same. That’s the American Dream. The President must apologize to both the American people and the nations he so wantonly maligned.”

How long the president’s support lingers in Utah, where 52 percent of the entire population approves of his efforts, remains to be seen.

My guess is it will remain strong as long as there is an “R” next to his name on the ballot.

Apologists have claimed that the president was simply being “authentic,” as Fox News talking head Sean Hannity said; that “…this is how the forgotten men and women in America talk at the bar,” Jesse Waters, another Fox News pundit, said. In fairness, it must be noted that the regulars on “Fox and Friends,” the president’s favorite cable news program, called him on his words and suggested he walk back his comments.

The thing is, however, that once words are uttered, they cannot be taken back.

They are out there.

You can’t erase them.

You can try to spin them all you wish, but their meaning, especially in a circumstance like this, is clear.

And, we get the message.

This is yet another layer of the character of a president whose words have been supportive of the neo-Nazi movement; a president who has scorned the Constitution and 1st Amendment by excoriating professional athletes who participated in peaceful protest; a president whose blatant misogyny and disregard for women has been dismissed as “locker room talk;” a president who has disparaged Mexico claiming the country only sends rapists and drug dealers to the United States, then punctuated it when he threw shade on a federal judge of Mexican heritage who was presiding over a class-action lawsuit against Trump University.

It goes back farther than that.

In 1973 his housing management company came under the microscope of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. He and his father were accused of keeping black and Puerto Rican people out of their apartments. The lawsuit was settled out of court.

There was the ridiculous “birther” attack on President Barack Obama, an unfounded piece of racist detritus that he milked for years in his run-up to his second attempt at the White House – his first being in 2000 when he tried to secure the Reform Party nomination.

Look, the greatness of the United States is not measured in the whiteness of the United States.

It is measured by the heart and soul of the United States, which for centuries gave it a rightful stance of moral authority among nations.

We embraced, for the most part, a greater world, even when we had to cloak our own cultural and racial prejudices, and extended a hand to our neighbors. Although we didn’t always practice what we preached, there was an understanding that the effort, the basics of equality that were not fully placed into motion, were a part of our moral fabric; that although we do not all share color or creed we all share a common humanity.

We have lost that.

We have become a nation short on inclusion and heavy on exclusion as we dive into a white nationalist isolationism that has taken root.

With statements such as his most recent defamation of Haiti and Africa, the president is sowing those seeds of separatism and a false elitism that places us in grave danger as a nation.

No bad days!

Ed Kociela is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: edkociela.mx@gmail.com

Twitter: @STGnews, @EdKociela