Welcome to the Shithole

Imagine Donald Trump has proposed a big new foreign aid proposal to be focused on Haiti and other poor countries in the Caribbean. And imagine that while speaking informally with legislators, Trump says something like this: "Look, these people come here in large numbers, but it's not because they particularly want to live here. It's because their countries are shitholes with no good jobs. We should try to bring them up to decent living standards so they don't have to choose between leaving their families to work here and letting their families starve."

You could quibble with this, of course, and it would certainly be a diplomatic incident, but the sentiment itself would be basically decent. If you were to argue against it, you would argue that it is pretextual, that in fact Trump has baser motives. You would not say that a wish to improve "shitholes," if expressed in good faith, is somehow racist.

Of course that's not what he said. In fact he questioned why the U.S. should accept immigrants from "shithole" countries and expressed a preference for Norwegians. And:

Sources tell @kasie and me that in addition to Pres Trump’s ‘shithole’ comment, he also said “Why do we need more Haitians, take them out.”

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) January 12, 2018

The New York Times reported basically the same thing in its piece.

Anyway I bring all this up because the word "shithole" is a bit of a distraction. The problem is not that he labelled Haiti a shithole (it is a shithole!), it's that he clearly thinks Haitians are inferior as a people, and he wants to exclude them from the U.S. on that basis.

This actually matters less than it first appears, though. I think a lot of people intuitively understand that the remark was racist, and even if they focus on the word "shithole," they are not actually outraged about profanity.

That said, because people always amplify the most entertaining part of the story, it does leave an opening for the anti-anti-Trump left to jump in with idiotic garbage like this:

“shithole” is definitely a term I’ve heard elites use to describe socioeconomically dilapidated areas of the United States

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 12, 2018

Right, right, calling Alabama a shithole is just like wanting to exclude Haitians from the country while welcoming Nordics. Tracey is enough of a moron that I suppose I shouldn't get worked up, but he's parroting the party line that much smarter people will also adhere to. It is maddening.

[UPDATE: I am not good at quantifying these things, but a lot of people on Twitter, both on the anti-anti-Trump left and throughout the right, are taking the Michael Tracey line. So I think it's important to draw the distinction I outlined above. Otherwise it will be yet another idiotic exercise in missing the point. Sigh.]

[FURTHER UPDATE: The legitimate reason you might criticize the "shithole" phrasing is that it is disrespectful, and the President's job is to convey respect to our friends and allies around the world. This is a serious point, and in any other administration it would be a telling one. But of course, this is Trump, and disrespecting our allies is something he does casually for fun.]