Racism without Shame

Morning Dispatch

For years, decades even, corporate media has been normalizing Donald’s worst behavior. But he himself has also normalized the most despicable behavior of his followers in part by modeling that behavior for them. He’s lowered the bar for members of the Republican party, public figures in general, and anybody in this country who continues to support him, his racism, his misogyny, and the rest of his multifarious bigotry.

Last week, Politico uncovered text exchanges between leaders of Young Republican groups from around the country. These messages contained casual jokes about Nazism and rape, as well as many derisive slurs about black people, Jews, and women. Nobody in the Trump regime come out to denounce these heinous comments. Didn’t address this issue at all or, like Vice President JD Vance, made excuses for the offenders:

After accusing those who were horrified by the revelations of “pearl clutching,” Vance said:

[T]he reality is that kids do stupid things. Especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.

See what he did there? Vance made it seem like children wrote those vile texts. I personally think that that would still be worrisome, but here’s the thing: everybody in those text chats was an adult and the majority of them were in their twenties and thirties. These were not children. As far as I’m aware, nobody is talking about ruining anybody’s life—instead, we think there should be accountability and a shift in attitude that makes this kind of discourse unacceptable in any context.

They should they lose their jobs. At the very least they should apologize publicly. But most of them, but this is now mainstream Republicanism and because the people in those chats are members of the fascist Republican party, they’ll likely be rewarded with jobs at Fox or Newsmax or maybe some of them will become staffers to congressional Republicans.

In the end, Vance didn’t actually condemn the comments. He suggested that they were merely tasteless jokes because he shares the beliefs that make it possible for somebody to think it’s ok to talk so openly about putting people they consider sub-human in gas chambers.

In a recent opinion piece in The New York Times, David French wrote:

[O]ne, the most powerful and successful politicians of the past decade is an immoral man who is dishonest, cruel, and illiberal at the fundamental level. It creates a situation, especially in his own party that rewards all the same vices. The result is a push-pull dynamic that pushes people of good character out of the party and pulls in new leaders and new people who share the leader’s ethos.

I would argue that this transformation of the Republican Party has been in progress for decades. Ronald Reagan, a virulent homophobe who allowed gay men to die from AIDS was also racist to his core. Back then, however, he kept his racism slightly undercover, engaging in dog whistles instead of using the bullhorn through which Donald screams his hatreds.

Is it worse now than it was then? In some ways, and one of the reasons it’s worse is that there is there is no shame anymore. People in the Republican Party feel perfectly comfortable being openly, loudly, and proudly misogynistic, antisemitic, Islamophobic, racist and anti-immigrant. There is no longer a quiet part.

Recently, Paul Ingrassia, a deeply unqualified 30-year-old whom Donald nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel, was found to have sent racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic texts in private Republican group chats. Notice the pattern here?

In the messages, Ingrassia called Martin Luther King Jr. the 1960s George Floyd, and said his holiday should be tossed into the seventh circle of hell. In addition to mocking Black holidays, he used numerous racial slurs. His racist remarks were not confined to private exchanges. In 2023, he posted this on Twitter:

Exceptional white men are not only the builders of Western civilization, but are the ones most capable of appreciating the fruits of our heritage and are conversely hurt the most at a spiritual level by its destruction.

Anybody who would write such a thing, in addition to being a racist, is also deeply ignorant of history. America, for example, was not built by exceptional white men. It was built by the people that white men enslaved. As far as heritage is concerned, how much of the heritage of other races and cultures have white Americans stolen and taken credit for?

The only shocking thing about this incident is that Ingrassia was forced to withdraw his nomination after these posts came to light and a handful of Republican senators withdrew their support. The vast majority of Republican senators, however, would still have voted to confirm him.

In a statement, Ingrassia wrote:

I will be withdrawing myself from Thursday’s HSGAC hearing to lead the Office of Special Counsel because unfortunately, I do not have enough Republican votes at this time. I appreciate the overwhelming support that I’ve received throughout this process and will continue to serve [Donald] in this administration.

There are a couple of things that are telling about that. One, Ingrassia apologizes for nothing. Instead, he highlights how much support he has. Also, it seems pretty clear to me that he’s not going anywhere because, although he does not have “enough Republican votes at this time” [emphasis mine], he knows he likely will in the future; just as we should know Donald will find another way to elevate this despicable racist. After all, it takes one to know one.