Time to stop being politically correct

Giving a formal address about Sunday’s ghastly terrorist attack on an Orlando nightclub, Donald Trump said: “I refuse to be politically correct.” Good.
Because after 48 hours of listening to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee effortlessly make a tragic situation worse - including a period of time I’ve dubbed Trump’s Maniacal Monday - I also refuse to be politically correct.
More than 13mn Americans have voted for this man in the primaries.
And a growing list of Republican politicians is falling in line behind him, making him the face of their party.
That means that, at this moment, more than 13mn American voters and a slew of politicians are embarrassed, nuts or wilfully ignorant.
Some of Trump’s earliest comments about the deadliest mass shooting in American history included this tweet: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.”
The 49 Americans murdered in that nightclub had not even been identified yet, the details of the shooter’s motivations remained cloudy and this narcissist is spending Sunday high-fiving himself on Twitter.
But that’s just the tip of the sickening iceberg.
By the next morning - the start of Trump’s Maniacal Monday - he was floating the vague idea that President Barack Obama sympathises with Muslim terrorists, pandering to the lowest form of idiot conspiracy theorists this country can offer.
In a Fox News interview, he said of Obama, ominously: “He doesn’t get it, or he gets it better than anybody understands.”
Asked about those comments on the “Today” show later Monday morning, Trump said: “Well, there are a lot of people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it.”
Ah, yes.“There are a lot of people.” If true, he’s referring to a lot of tinfoil-hat-wearing lunatics who don’t have brains enough to rattle.(Sorry if I’m not being politically correct. Trump told me political correctness is destroying America.)
Later Monday, the vulgarian candidate gave a formal speech in which he doubled down on his past promise to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, expanding the idea so it would halt all immigration “from areas of the world when there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies, until we understand how to end these threats”.
He spoke of waves of Muslim immigrants and refugees pouring into America unchecked, something that is true only in the minds of paranoid fear mongers.
He suggested that Muslim-Americans - whom he referred to as “they”, because apparently “we” would’ve made them seem too American - are out to get all non-Muslim-Americans and are hiding terrorists like the Orlando shooter: “They have to work with us. They know what’s going on. They know that he was bad.”
No evidence provided, of course, because when you’re busy demonising an entire swath of the population based on its religion - an act our Founding Fathers notably frowned upon - who has time for facts?
He went off-script and said the Orlando terrorist was “born in Afghan”, which isn’t a place and, even if it was, isn’t where the terrorist was born.
He was born in New York to parents who came from Afghanistan.
Trump said: “The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place, was because we allowed his family to come here.”
That makes sense if: a) you’re crazy; b) you’re terrible at math; or c) you want to blame the attack on Ronald Reagan, who was president at the time the terrorist was born and this apparently three-decades-long plot was hatched.
Wrapping up Trump’s Maniacal Monday, the man who has mocked a disabled reporter, suggested a female news anchor was asking him tough questions because she was menstruating and routinely referred to journalists as “scum”, announced that he was revoking The Washington Post’s press credentials.
Why? Because the newspaper reported - accurately - on Trump’s suggestion that Obama might sympathise with Muslim terrorists.
Trump said the newspaper reported “very inaccurately”. That is verifiably false.
It is nonsense. It is a temper tantrum by a 70-year-old man-baby who cares more about his personal brand than he does about you or me or democracy or anyone on this planet.
Generally speaking, when an authoritarian-minded figure comes along and singles out an entire religion as inherently evil while attempting to stifle the press, bad things happen.
If you don’t recognise that, read a history book.
We have the wealth of human knowledge at our fingertips.
There is no excuse for not knowing when you’re being lied to, and you, the 13mn or so voters, the throngs of people who slavishly cheer at Trump rallies, the weak-kneed politicians still praying for the man to pivot toward sanity, are being lied to at a rate without precedent.
And you are complicit in this figure’s rise.
You share blame for the damage he is doing to this country’s values and its image abroad and to the hurt he is inflicting on your fellow citizens.
You’re aiding and abetting him as he hands the real terrorists recruiting material and affirms their twisted vision of America.
Trump’s Maniacal Monday can’t be shrugged off with a, “He tells it like it is. I like that!”
It can’t be ignored for political expediency. This is dangerous rhetoric.
And if you refuse to acknowledge that fact, you are, if you’ll pardon my political incorrectness, out of your damn mind.

- Rex Huppke is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Readers may e-mail him at [email protected]