A lot of the criticism President Trump is facing these days comes from his slowness to condemn neo-Nazis and White Supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. He corrected this omission on Monday, then kind of took it all back on Tuesday, at a press conference in front of Trump Tower in New York City.
About the only folks defending him now are the KKK and fellow bigots. And Vice President Mike Pence.
It's difficult to tell if Trump really wants to earn the praise of neo-Nazis (though he'd be delighted to take their votes come 2020). What he seems to be doing is not so much championing their cause, as coming to the defense of his own words—his Saturday statement. The "many sides" statement.
Trump has a history of reacting to criticism by doubling down, by not just repeating what he originally said, but by amplifying it.
It's like he can't stand to be wrong. Or to be seen as wrong.
Trump's position is that he is a perfect being, and as such, all of his statements are perfect and beyond reproach. He can't back down because he's never wrong.
As far as he knows.
This is a quintessentially human attitude. Everybody knows the crap in their heads is good stuff, beyond criticism. We know this because everything we see in the world backs us up. We know we're right. End of story.
(Lucky for us, the human brain edits the world we see, drawing attention to those events and conditions that tend to support the nonsense in our pitiful noggins. When nothing out there can be used to prove us right, stuff is made up. Perfectly natural process from a naturally perfect creature.)
Trump's assertion is this: His Saturday statement was correct, and if you don't think so it's because you're not thinking things through properly.
As Trump remembers it, he condemned the violence—on many sides, many sides.
Note, he's talking about the violence itself, not the political or philosophical positions of any of the people involved. Just the violence.
The way he sees it, the alt-left attacked the alt-right, and blame must therefore be shared. (He did not offer a way to split the tab.)
On Monday Trump stated that bigotry is evil. Apparently, violent protest against evil is also evil, and must be equally condemned. Also, it seems only the alt-left can have an opinion about racism. Folks in the middle are excluded from the debate.
Trump is lucky the alt-right folks came armed and ready to mix it up. If they'd marched peacefully—like black folk alongside Martin Luther King—and absorbed the punishment without fighting back, Trump might just have had to bless their martyred hearts. And make holy icons of their bloody shirts.
(It's happened before. Check out the rise of Adolf Hitler.)
By making a point of condemning the violence on both sides, Trump can stand behind his words on Saturday, triumphant in his accuracy and presidential fairness.
And revel in the little picture.
Like Captain Queeg upbraiding an officer for letting a man go with his shirt tail out, blasting away at the fellow about military decorum and proper behavior—all while his ship steams in a circle toward failure. The Captain refuses all interruption from those who can see the problem, because he knows he's doing the right thing.
Trump defends his little words, lest they be found wanting and reflect badly on him.
Let the citizens of the nation wallow in the Big Picture.
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