MARA: MAKING AMERICA RACIST AGAIN

US President Donald Trump's retweeting this week of an atrociously photo-shopped meme of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in Middle Eastern garb with the Iranian flag behind them does little to harm his intended political targets. In fact, they can use it to their advantage in pointing to just how immature, unhinged, unethical and clueless the president really is.

But the problem with this is that Trump no longer represents just the bad-boy Donald of New York real estate infamy, but the presidency (and, hence, the people) of the United States. And the problem with the retweeted meme itself is this: It is racist. It is a racial and religious hate tweet for which other Twitter users might be thrown off the platform. It suggests that all Iranians and all followers of Islam are terrorists. It reinforces his mad-dog base's prejudice against Muslims and it subliminally encourages them to take action against non-Christians and Middle Eastern peoples in general, as well as against Democrats, who Trump surrogates are seeking to link with fanatical Islamist terrorism.

This sort of thing is par for the course for Bigot-in-Chief Donald Trump, but it is totally unworthy and completely inappropriate for the office of the presidency, whose job it is to govern for and to protect all Americans equally. 

The meme's message makes already threatened Muslims still less safe than they were before in the Era of Trump, by clearly demonstrating the president's prejudice against them.If a common citizen were to do something like this at school he or she would be expelled. And if they did it at work, they would be fired. But when this sort of blatant race-baiting comes from the White House (this White House), it's just "Trump being Trump" and gets a pass. Why? Because, over the last three years in the Era of Trump, we have, unfortunately, become all too accustomed to a scandalously low bar that has been set for the presidency. 

There has never been a president like Trump before, a man in the Oval Office who appears to be completely bereft of humanity, of social propriety, of racial, religious and political tolerance, of democratic fervor and of human empathy. The problem is twofold and projects a long shadow, because it sets a precedent for the behavior of future leaders, who, in accordance with the principle of "whataboutism", will always be able to point to "what Trump got away with" in order to justify their own crass disregard for political correctness, for democracy and for the Constitution, and to exonerate them for their own general misdeeds. 

When they do, we will no longer be able to use the argument that this was just "Trump being Trump", because whoever the future bad-actor president might be can always say, "Yes, and this is just me being me. Get used to it!" 

Perhaps this should be one of numerous pieces of evidence on which to base another article of impeachment: Conspiring to incite racial, religious and political violence among Americans.