The Moistening

I don't even really want to write anything about the Donald Trump immigration policy and Mexico trip whirlwind hullapalooza of the last week or so. I just find it all so distressing. Instead, I'm just going to open up with this link to a timeline of the events leading up to the trip and the Big Sweaty Speech* wherein we were all comforted by the reappearance of Trump the Unambiguously Panicked Xenophobe in the place of the schizophrenic pod person of the previous several days who kept insisting on using the word "softening" over and over again.

I mean: "softening." Yuck. I know some people get creeped out by the word "moist" for some reason. I never really got that, but now I feel like I do. I have an involuntary and intensely negative response to the word "softening" now, characterized by slight nausea, a tendency to flinch, a heightened sense of an imminent threat and, I'm a little embarrassed to say it, no small amount of actual "softening." Not going into any further detail than that.

Any response to all the public and repetitive talk of hardening and softening could be written off to my usual default emotional level of about 14 years old, but given Donald Trump's record of public statements on the matter of his genitalia, I don't think the disturbing associations are completely unjustified or my fault this time.

The timeline linked in the first paragraph is already in bullet points, but the TL;DR version, as far as I can tell, goes as follows:

1. Trump before last week: "Mexicans are mostly criminals, except the ones who are American judges of things, who are instead just either incompetent or traitors."

2. Trump last week: "Well, maybe they're not all rapists." American press: "TRUMP LOVES MEXICANS NOW YOU GUYS." American racists: "WTF, bro?"

3. Trump: "Yuuuge speech coming in Colorado! Except hang on, no."

4. Trump: "Yuuuge speech coming in Arizona! Except... oh, yeah, still a go. BUT FIRST...!"

5. Trump goes to Mexico to meet with President of All The Mostly-Non-Rapists. Trump later: "Wall? Funny, didn't come up." Mexican president: "The fuck it didn't."

6. Trump Arizona speech: "HA! WALL WALL WALL DEPORTATION RAPISTS AND KILLERS LIKE I SAID BEFORE WALL WALL MORE WALL SO MUCH WALL!" American press: "Wow, what a softening, just like he has been telling us!"

Two things about this are really interesting. One is the dispute between Enrique Peña Nieto and Trump over whether they talked about the stupid wall or who was going to pay for it. Trump's words from his speech just a few hours after this meeting between them are really interesting: "Mexico will pay for the wall, 100 percent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it." If they don't know it after you spent a few hours alone with their president, when are they going to know it? And are you completely certain nobody exists who could have translated that part of your speech from American to Mexican? I think word might have gotten back.

The second thing is that, six days before this dumb, predictable speech and typical Trumpian clusterfuck of obviously disprovable lies, Trump spokesgoblin** Katrina Pierson laid it all out, not just the skeletal framing of the incidents but the whole (and I use the quotation marks knowingly) "strategy" involved here: "There's not a different message. He's using different words to give that message." Ah, so, summing up the summary: we're here to trick you, but fuck subtlety, that's for homosexuals and the disableds.

This seems like a tone-deaf variant on the old trick often attributed to Yasser Arafat, where it was said he would give one speech extolling peace and negotiation in English for westerners and a totally different one calling for bloody resistance in Arabic to Palestinians and other Arabs. Except I think maybe Trump forgot that he doesn't actually speak Arabic, so both messages are being given in English, to essentially the exact same audience. I almost feel like I should take the whole campaign aside and let them know, as delicately as I can so as not to embarrass them, that we can all hear them when they think they're talking to just themselves.

The problem isn't really one of policy here because there actually isn't one. He's explicitly said he's going to do exactly what Obama and Bush Jr. did in re illegal immigration, but with "more energy." Forced repatriation, sure, but with a smile and a hearty "get the fuck out of my country, you wetback" on the way out, even if they're Russian or Gabonese.

The real problem is that he's proposing a nationalist/corporatist division of the American population, starting with the first criteria of race. Trump's language is often awkward and lazy, so it can't help but betray his awkward and lazy thinking. "I happen to have a tremendous feeling for Mexican Americans," he says, because "Mexican Americans" are all one thing we can universally apply a single feeling toward, especially a "tremendous" one. He sees us all as groups, to be categorized and shuffled around to serve whatever silly purpose his unsophisticated apparatchiks cobble together after a panicked Wikipedia search for whatever point of social or economic policy they're supposed to be addressing. The goal seems to be to keep filling up rooms with the right kind of people, who will cheer and adore as required, so at least it seems (to him alone) like people like it when he shouts at them violently or announces more plans to have his name painted on things in giant gold letters.

As with his secret policies (described by adjectives like "so fast" or "totally" or "completely" rather than with actual proposals with budgets and enforcement plans or any other boring nerd shit), there's nothing really here. I honestly think he thinks the disaffection for him amongst Latino voters will go away with mass deportation because he's convinced deportation will apply to all of them, even the ones who are U.S. citizens. But math and demographics are sciences and sciences are for squares. Trump's going to keep on focusing on the one important thing*** and let the rest work itself out, hardening or softening however it wants.

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*Sweaty due to the vigor of the air-slashing vitriol and the weird choice to do anything remotely physical in Arizona in August

**Miss you already, Larry Wilmore

***Yes, this is a reference to his dick