How Trump is ‘defining deviancy down’ in presidential politics [View all]

[applegrove]

How Trump is ‘defining deviancy down’ in presidential politics

By Jonathan Capehart at the Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/11/23/how-trump-is-defining-deviancy-down-in-presidential-politics/

"SNIP............

“Defining deviancy down.” That was the provocative title of a 1993 essay on crime written by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.). He explained his concept succinctly a few months later at a breakfast of civic-minded New York City movers and shakers. “I wrote that there is always a certain amount of deviancy in a society,” Moynihan told the Association for a Better New York. “But when you get too much, you begin to think that it’s not really that bad. Pretty soon you become accustomed to very destructive behavior.”

Again, Moynihan was talking about the tolerance of crime. But as the 2016 Republican presidential contest drags on, his diagnosis fit politics in general and the campaign of Donald Trump in particular. Just when you thought the Big Apple billionaire couldn’t sink any lower, he does. He gleefully dances through the nativist, racist, misogynistic slop as if he were Gene Kelly in “Singing in the Rain.” And to make matters worse, Trump is rewarded for it.

[“Cheryl, what do you think a Trump presidency would look like?” Cheryl said, “Like classy.”]

Trump launched his campaign in June saying, “When Mexico sends its people, they are not sending their best. … They are sending people that have lots of problems,” he said. “They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” He retweeted and then deleted a contemptible comment from a follower in July who wrote, “@realDonaldTrump #JebBush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife.”


.............SNIP"