Donald Trump’s brand of logic seems to be rubbing off on people. Case-in-point, I just listened to a KUOW interview in which it was proposed by Pat Murakmi that homeless people living unsheltered in Seattle should be “sent back to where they came from.” Their hometowns should be billed for the cost of having sent the homeless people to Seattle in the first place. A la Trump’s claim he’ll make Mexico pay for the border wall he wants built.
First, the vast majority of King County’s homeless people are from King County.
Second, even those who are not from Seattle weren’t sent here by their home towns.
They came of their own free will. Most came not looking for free services, but looking for work — just like most everyone else who comes here.
Third, go ahead. Send the few homeless people we have from, let’s say, Portland, Maine, by Greyhound back to that city. See what happens when you send a bill to the Portland, Maine, city government.
Please do that, and count the days until you get your money back. For every day no money comes, put a penny in a jar.
When you’re done you will have expired and the rest of us who are still living will have one penny for every day that had remained of your life, and we can buy pizza with it. Party!
Mexico’s ex-president Vicente Fox got personal over Trump’s claim that Mexico would be forced to pay for the border wall. In an interview with Jorge Ramos, Fox said “I am not going to pay for the f***ing wall. He should pay for it. He’s got the money.” Trump first demanded an apology from Fox, then announced that because of that remark “the wall just got ten feet taller.”
That exchange would be sheer comedy if it were not for the unfortunate fact that such behavior will rub off on other citizens both locally and across the country.
Trump is inspiring imitators. Monkeys see, monkeys do.
In fact the imitations are so spot on, that it has been forcefully argued that Trump is the imitator, who is simply showing his followers to themselves as they already are.
That may be, but the result is an amplification of stupid. The monkeys get more brazen, as they are taught by Trump that hurling feces is OK. They might have been inclined to hurl feces before, but now they’re proud of themselves for it.
Now Trump has decided to blame the fact that he gets audited by the IRS every year on his being a “strong Christian.”
This is code to the monkeys to tell them if they have any problems at all, blame the problems on non-Christians. There are non-Christians, you know, in control of the IRS.
There are non-Christians responsible for that loan you weren’t approved for. There are non-Christians behind your low credit rating.
If someone cuts you off on the highway, they must be a non-Christian. They did it because they could tell through your tinted windows what a strong Christian you are, and they naturally hate you for that, not because they really can help it, that’s just the way those non-Christians are.
In more upbeat news this week, Australian scientist Frank Fenner made a small splash by predicting that the entire human species will be extinct in 100 years.
I personally think that’s unrealistic. I think that there will be survivors, maybe as many as 70 million.
The good news is that we have such a low bar now. If just 10 or 20 of us are left after 100 years, we’ll have beat the doom-sayers. I’m confident that we can pull it off.
Think of it this way: as the world’s population declines so does the population of Trump-like people. At some point the population of Trump-like people will cease to be at critical mass and the world will become safer. And saner.