There's no need for faux outrage at Trump
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Most presidential elections feature an exhausting series of faux-outrage cycles, where partisans pretend to be outraged by "gaffes" from the opposing party.
You probably remember Mitt Romney's "I like being able to fire people" comment, Barack Obama saying "You didn't build that," or Obama's use of the idiom "lipstick on a pig" when discussing Sarah Palin, among many other tedious examples of things that people were only pretending to be angry about.
One of the few redeeming qualities of this election campaign has been the relative lack of faux outrage — though, unfortunately, the probable reason for the decline is that Donald Trump produces plenty of real outrages to keep us busy.
Yet for some reason, we're having a faux-outrage cycle on Tuesday.
The object of the fake outrage is a comment by Trump on Monday night that Bernie Sanders "made a deal with the devil, she's the devil."
How dare Trump call Hillary Clinton the devil?
It's not exactly unprecedented. A few months ago, John Boehner called Ted Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh." Do you recall being outraged about it?
You probably weren't outraged because Boehner was being metaphorical, and so was Trump. After all, do you think Trump even believes in the devil?
Comparing your opponent to the devil is not nice, and it would be better if Trump hadn't done it. But we need to prioritize our outrages. If we fling every faux outrage at Trump that we can get our hands on, it normalizes him as a candidate, and risks making the controversy over his disqualifying intemperance seem like any partisan controversy over any stupid gaffe.
Trump also had a "dispute" with a crying baby today. Most are talking about only this story because it's amusing, but if anyone is actually acting mad at Trump for ordering a crying baby out of his rally, then that's even worse than fixating on the "devil" story.
Pretending to be outraged at Trump only reinforces his message that his opponents are a bunch of politically correct ninnies, and it helps Trump along in his destruction of the remaining norms of politeness and decency in our society.
Keep in mind, for comparison, an incomplete list of the actually outrageous things that Trump has done in recent days:
- Urge the Russians to conduct espionage that would help him win the election.
- Personally attack a pair of Gold Star parents over their religion.
- Say he might or might not honor NATO treaty obligations.
- Threaten to undermine the legitimacy of the election by suggesting that his loss would be because it was "rigged."
- Retain a campaign adviser who said that Hillary Clinton should be shot.
- Claim that Russia has not invaded Ukraine.
- Say his advice to his daughter, were she to face sexual harassment, would be to "find another career or find another company."
Trump, of course, said that his call for pro-Trump Russian espionage was "sarcastic." If you want to make the — strong! — case that Trump's Russia "joke" was not funny but dangerous, then you probably shouldn't claim to take him seriously about his opponent being "the devil."
Eyes on the ball, people. Eyes on the ball.
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