For some of us, a wrong-headed answer to a question doesn’t just reveal that we’re uninformed, or stupid, or evil; it reveals that there’s something profoundly dysfunctional about the very mechanism we use for thinking. It can serve as diagnosis, by showing the precise path we take as we travel from Point A to Point Purple.

Donald Trump has just had one of those moments.

Of his plan to bar Muslims, even current U.S. citizens, from the U.S., Trump was just asked by George Stephanopoulous, “You’re increasingly being compared to Hitler. Doesn’t that give you any pause at all?”

Trump cited President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “solution for Germans, Italians, Japanese many years ago” during World War II. “This was a president that was highly respected by all.”

Now, there are any number of things about that reply that are just plain wrong. Roosevelt did not imprison German or Italian Americans en masse; he did not take from their jobs, dispossess them of their homes, or make their children sit out the war behind barbed wire. This he only did to the Japanese-Americans, the ones who looked different from everybody else.

And while history has been kind to Roosevelt in general, this is pretty much universally regarded as the black mark on his record, the awful act of an otherwise largely commendable man, staining his legacy in much the same way that Thomas Jefferson’s continuing ownership of slaves, decades after he trumpeted that the practice was morally wrong, blots his.

But those are simply elements that mark his answer as wrong.

This is the sentence you have to look at.

“This was a president that was highly respected by all.”

Not quite true, actually. Conservatives hated Roosevelt, thought him evil and Anti-American. They questioned his patriotism and generated made-up scandals about him even during World War Two. But let’s not parse the sentence for fact. Let’s parse it for logic.

“This was a president that was highly respected by all.”

Is that a functional defense of the morality of this particular decision?

Consider that Hitler was, within Germany, one of the most adored men of the twentieth century.

That doesn’t work as a defense of the Final Solution.

Apply this to a somewhat lesser offense, the internment (but not genocide, hence “lesser”) of Japanese Americans under Roosevelt.

The love people felt and feel for Roosevelt doesn’t mean that Roosevelt was right.

Apply it to Jefferson.

“This was a president that was highly respected by all.”

it doesn’t mean that his slave-holding was right.

Trump is the man who, a few months back, was asked to respond to a couple of his followers who chanted his name while brutalizing a homeless man. Remember? He couldn’t be bothered to say that they’d done anything wrong. Instead, he said that his supporters certainly had a lot of passion. That was all. He was not moved by the savagery of their act, but by the power of their motivation. He was not bothered that his words resonated with their bloodlust; he was self-congratulatory about the success of his message.

Was Roosevelt wrong to imprison Japanese-Americans? No, this was a president that was highly respected by all.

Shouldn’t we question whether his policies were right? No. People loved him.

A logical leap from Point A that bypasses Point B and lands on another track forever, landing on Point Purple.

This has long been part of the Trump pathology. People ask him about questionable business practices. Rather than answer those questions, he has always said, no, look at my casinos, look at my properties, they’re fabulous. In other words: I make money; I’m a popular figure; therefore, your questions about my ethics are void. Roosevelt was loved. Interning Japanese-Americans didn’t cost him any political points. Therefore, questions about the morality of it of void.

It all translates to: if it sells, if it advances the brand, to hell with questions of right or wrong.

This is something we always knew about Trump, but that answer crystallizes his thinking.

Should those guys have beaten up that homeless man? “What it tells me is that they certainly had a lot of passion.”

As the campaign goes on, as he rides it as far as he can in the direction of the nomination, and God help us, possibly beyond, keep an eye out for this particular form of answer from him. Mr. Trump, isn’t that morally wrong? Heh, heh, look at where I am in the polls! It sells! You will see not just that his thinking has never been much deeper than that, but also more critically that it seems to be limited to that.

This is a man who, if we’re unlucky enough to see him become President, will never stand against the will of the people even if the people are dead wrong; will never stand up and speak hard truths that will cost him, because he believes in them with all his heart; will never make a decision based on right and wrong, only what sells.

This is not a political philosophy. It is a pathology.

But it is Trump.

 

Tags: Adolf Hitler, Assholes, Donald Trump, Fascism, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Politics, Race, Republicans, Thomas Jefferson | Category Commentary, Life Wisdom, Politics