‘Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?’

[applegrove]

https://politicalwire.com/2016/08/01/have-you-no-sense-of-decency-sir/

SNIP...........


Harold Pollack: “Of course, history doesn’t repeat itself… But history does sometimes rhyme.”

“Like McCarthy, Trump derives political advantage from sheer shamelessness, his willingness to wildly attack others. Yet shamelessness creates vulnerabilities and blind spots, too. Trump’s words betray a strange, indecency toward two Gold Star parents grieving the loss of their son.”

“Millions of voters are tempted to embrace sweeping rhetoric directed against Muslim Americans and other minorities. That’s a reality of American life. But these attacks lose their potency when they’re directed not against abstraction but particular, sympathetic human beings. Americans saw for themselves that Khizr Khan is the better man, the better American, than Donald Trump ever will be.”


..........SNIP

[unblock]

1. of course this is the heart of bigotry. are they gold star parents or are they muslims?

the goal of the bigot is to lump people wholesale in with the worse stereotypes and ignore the particular, even the redeeming qualities. his supporters are right there with him in seeing the khans as nothing more than muslims, who in turn are nothing less than terrorists.

mccarthy's shamelessness wasn't exactly this kind of bigotry. he vastly overstated the "red menace" and falsely equated interest in lefty politics in america with support of the soviets. but as you say, history sometimes rhymes.

the ultimate question is, when people look at the khans, will they see gold star parents, or will they simply see muslims.

one thing is for certain, the media, if not the population at large, is certainly not capable of seeing them simultaneously as both.