Philly Inquirer: Trump's Puerto Rico potshots make his racism morally impossible to ignore

[kpete]

http://media.philly.com/images/1200*800/dixon-181504-f-wp-content-uploads-2017-10-836168_b31abf32c7abba3-e1506866892482-1200x801.jpg
Camera icon GERALD HERBERT / AP PHOTO
Marta Sostre Vazquez reacts as she starts to wade into the San Lorenzo Morovis river with her family, after the bridge was swept away by Hurricane Maria, in Morovis, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2017. The family was returning to their home after visiting family on the other side.

by Will Bunch, STAFF COLUMNIST

It’s kind of a cliche to say that sometimes you can see a disaster coming from miles and miles away. ......
.........

Trump’s international embarrassment of a presidency seemed to reach a new valley one weekend ago, when huge chunks of Puerto Rico were submerged and the full extent of its total loss of electricity and the absence of potable water, food, cash, and gasoline was becoming clear. The president flew on a Friday night to Alabama for a campaign rally for his preferred candidate in a GOP Senate runoff, where he made scant reference to the suffering of our fellow Americans but instead — in a state that had once defined state-sponsored racism with biting police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham — went on a not-even-dog-whistle rant against black athletes who kneel during the national anthem as “sons of a bitch” protesters.

Then he flew back to his upscale golf club in New Jersey, where — as the Washington Post reported this weekend in a remarkable “tick-tock” recounting — he completely ignored the Puerto Rico crisis right at the moment it required high-level attention. It was telling that Trump did hold a cabinet meeting during those critical days in Bedminster, N.J. — not to talk about the thirsty, starving Americans on the Caribbean island, but on how to continue banning people from primarily Muslim countries from entering the United States. He tweeted up a storm, against black athletes from the NFL and the NBA, while ratcheting up the risk of a nuclear war in North Korea, and, incredibly, even dropped by a gathering of local BMW dealers, the kind of guys that The Donald feels comfortable around.


But Trump has also made it clear, during his White House stint, whom he is not comfortable with: Anyone who criticizes him who happens to be black, brown, or female — or some combination thereof. This is a presidency, after all, where officials called for the firing of a black woman, ESPN’s Jemele Hill, who dared to use her platform to criticize Trump, but didn’t seem too worked up when a late-night TV host such as Stephen Colbert who isn’t black or brown or female bashed the president in terms that even many Trump disparagers thought went too far.

So when San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz appeared on cable TV news — the only reality that matters in Trump World — after wading through sewage-laden floodwaters with her bullhorn looking for survivors, and stated what has become painfully obvious in recent days, that the federal response has been both inadequate and poorly managed and that more help was needed to “save us from dying,” the president’s response — condescending, bitter, narcissistic, and larded with racism — managed to be both outrageous and tragically inevitable

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/will_bunch/trumps-puerto-rico-potshots-make-his-racism-morally-impossible-to-ignore-20171001.html

[malaise]

1. Love this jab - starving Americans on the Caribbean island

and not in the middle of a very big ocean

[KY_EnviroGuy]

2. Consider the likely response if...

A. PR's population was mostly middle-to-billionaire class white folks, or
B. Mercer Estate's helipad was submerged and unusable, or
C. The Koch Plantation security team was mostly disabled in the storm, or
D. Dozens of yachts were stranded, low on fuel and no shore power.

Some people were just asking....

All speculating aside, please consider helping the relief effort at:
http://hispanicfederation.org/media/press_releases/a_hurricane_relief_fund_for_hurricane_maria_victims_in_puerto_rico/