“Shithole countries” controversy shows how we don’t agree on what is truth

The word has spread throughout our society about how President Donald J. Trump used a vulgar expression to describe certain countries around the world, many of which are on the African continent, as places where we ought to be discouraging the residents of even dreaming of immigration to the United States.

DURBIN: Speaking out against president

Trump made the so-called comments during a meeting he held last week to discuss potential immigration policy reform with members of Congress.

YET A MOVEMENT that has cropped up just as quickly, and one that is being taken up vehemently by some of an appropriate ideological bent, is a claim that Trump said no such thing.

There are those people in full support of this Age of Trump we’re in who say Trump didn’t say it. He didn’t say any such thing. It’s a fairy tale coming from people who can’t get with the program that Trump wants to present for our society.

The effort to discredit has become just as strong as the claim that Trump really was such a buffoon. Although perhaps not as intense as those neo-Nazis who, on the one hand, deny that the Holocaust ever occurred, but then engage in their jokes about how the ovens of Auschwitz were a fate too good for Jewish people.

My own thought, having not been present when the comments supposedly were made, is to admit that it is totally in character with Trump’s persona and past trash talk about so many issues to think he would use such a crude term – and probably really would think such a thing.

IF THAT MEANS I’m siding with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. – who in recent days has become the most outspoken politician insisting that Trump really said it – then so be it.

Although I’m sure the kind of people who want to believe Trump are the ones who want to be critical of Durbin (who was present at the Trump session with Congressmembers) because he has long been a proponent of having our federal government do a significant overhaul of our national immigration policy.

The one that has so many glitches that can make it nearly impossible for some people to make it all the way through the naturalization process to U.S. citizenship.

TRUMP: Are his pants on fire?

Of course, those glitches are appreciated by the nativist element of our society – the ones who really don’t want anyone else being able to gain U.S. citizenship and are amongst Trump’s strongest supporters.

SO DID HE, or didn’t he, say “shithole?”

The ideologues amongst are going to insist he didn’t. I’ve lost track of the number of Facebook dialogues where people try to discuss the issue, only to have someone barge in with their rant that “It didn’t happen” as though they expect to be taken as the final word that ends the discussion.

The second-most common response I’ve encountered is for people to respond by saying the United States has portions that could be classified as “shitholes.” The only point for debate on that aspect is whether a “shithole” is Detroit, Baltimore or South Side Chicago.

Or rural Mississippi, Arkansas or West Virginia?

I’M CURIOUS TO know how long this particular debate will last. And will it be strong enough to be the major debate point of 2018? Or can Trump say something more absurd later this year that will overcome this. I find it hard to believe anything could top this.

Then again, when it comes to partisan political rhetoric, I suppose there is no limit as to how outrageous the cheap talk can get.

It may turn out that the Gallup Organization is the best barometer of public feeling. In their presidential approval rating, Trump had a 57 percent disapproval (compared to 38 percent approval) rating from the public.

So I suspect a majority of our society is inclined to believe Trump really could be that crude. And that there’s nothing anyone could say or do to convince Trump backers that he really did say it.

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