What Manner of Gaffe?
Once upon a time, the "disconnect" between what a politician said and the reality we exist in didn't seem so great. When I was a kid, the idea that "all politicians lie" had to do with not believing them during election season, but these were still good men attempting good work, so lay off, eh? True, that standard died when Bill Clinton was elected, and Republicans tried hard to ressurect it during George W. Bush's presidency, but much like the iconic comedian Dennis Miller, could only pull it off if everybody ignored the four gorillas and six elephants in the room.
And at the time, the disconnection seemed deliberate, like conservatives were attempting some sort of complicated political maneuver. And, yes, in a way, they have.
But they've been at it so long, it's not a complicated maneuver; it seems as if the disconnectedness of all things reigns supreme in conservative minds. We might look to Donald Trump for a striking iteration:
On MSNBC this morning, Trump himself drew the same WWII comparison. Asked if his proposal goes against long-held American values, the Republican frontrunner responded: “No, because FDR did it!” It led to this exchange between Trump and Mark Halperin:
HALPERIN: Did the Japanese internment camps go against American values?
TRUMP: We have to be smart, Mark, and we have to be vigilant. And if we're not going to be smart and vigilant, and honestly we also have to be tough. And if we're not going to be those three things, we're not going to have a country left.
HALPERIN: Did the internment of the Japanese violate American values?
TRUMP: We're not talking about internment; this is a whole different thing.
Pressed on whether he believes internment camps were at odds with American values, Trump refused to say, telling Halperin, “Mark, what about Franklin Roosevelt's presidential proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527? Take a look at it, Mark.”
Just so we're clear, asked about his anti-Muslim plan, Trump initally pointed to FDR and internment. Pressed further, he insisted, “We're not talking about internment.” And when pressed further still, Trump pointed for FDR's executive actions on – you guessed it – internment.
Think of it this way:
I'm not talking about internment; I'm talking about executive orders.
Kind of like the question whether one tells a rape joke or a gorilla joke. Okay, well, what's the gorilla joke? It's about a gorilla raping a woman, so it's not a rape joke, it's a gorilla joke.
Trump isn't talking about internment? He's just talking about executive orders. Okay, well, what executive orders? The ones interning American citizens for having Japanese ancestry.
This really is an unhealthy disconnection with powerful practical implications. I might think it more normal than it seems had the behavior emerged on a large scale in a different way; that is, I'm only seeing it proximally after years of accentuation in the distal. The chicken and egg question is not exactly simple.
Even as I believe this disconnection, when it occurs among politicians, is cultivated―and, at some valence, accidentally―the question of whether its legitimacy percolates or trickles down is likely inaccurate; the question has to do with the relationship between related groups. To wit, we on the left occasionally refer to dialectics; people on the right largely disdain the
idea of dialectics, but much like the widespread distrust of psychology and the social sciences, the doubters and disdainers still try to use these concepts as if they believed in them.
A simplistic illustration is whether corruption among politicians is an expression of the culture, or an influence thereupon; do politicians behave badly as a reflection of the examples set in our societal communities, or do politicians establish and present poor role models for society? The real answer is somewhere in between, and probably ten miles off the line in some imaginary direction, like Tuesday.
But Donald Trump's rhetorical device on this occasion is
exactly obvious: He's not referring to internment, but, rather, executive orders, and never mind that these particular executive orders are the infamous internment proclamations.
That he leads the GOP presidential field is, at the very least, suggestive of the condition of conservative voters in the U.S. If he actually wins the nomination, that would probably count as indicative.
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Notes:
Benen, Steve. "The wrong historical example to follow". msnbc. 8 December 2015. msnbc.com. 8 December 2015. http://on.msnbc.com/1TyZS4m
