Yup. The USA has actively created plenty of shitholes - in places where the faces are not pure European white - and that gets zero public reaction.

The current POTUS uses the word shithole to describe a group of countries and he's X, Y and Z.

Yeah, Trump is a moron. But the hypocrisy of the press and the public is a moral violation.

The USA has contributed to the development of plenty of flourishing economies. Panama is a rich nation thanks in large part to international cargo shipment. American tourists spend heavily in several other Latin American and Caribbean economies. South Korea is one of the most highly developed nations in the world, despite having been relatively poor prior to the Korean War. Canada and Mexico have benefited for years from NAFTA. World War 2 would have been very different for the Allies if it weren't for American weaponry and involvement. NATO may not have withstood the Cold War were it not for American might.

Maybe you can give some examples to support the narrative of Americans creating poor conditions in non-European countries. It's certainly not Afghanistan, which had been a warzone for a long time before 9/11, which provoked American involvement. And though it's possible, it's hard to argue that Iraqi instability was the sole result of American invasion, as Saddam had massacred several hundred thousand of his own citizens and was trying to change the ethnic makeup of northern Iraq to dampen Kurdish separatism.

So I'm not sure to which countries you are referring.

America's track record in South-America is pretty poor. For a long time it was a proxy battle ground for the Cold War.

And Trump just cut most of the relief funding, so a lot of social welfare programs are being cut short.

Making countries rich is part of geopolitical strategy (for instance, West-Germany vs. East-Germany). For every country that the US "made rich" is a country where life expectancy went way down due to US involvement.

America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t start after 9/11.

the first gulf war was in 1990 and the US was a party to it

In 1955 the US was part of the creation of the Baghdad Pact. In the 1970s the US supported a Kurdish uprising against the Iraqi government.

Iraq comes to mind.

I'd like to add, I never said there were no positives. My point is, shithole is a word. And if the use of a word is going to draw this kind of fire then the actions (that create shitholes) create 10x the amount of attention. But that doesn't happen. And obviously that is wrong.

While I agree that Trump is not the stable genius he thinks he is, the drone war existed before. We are speaking of a nobel peace prize winner who seemingly did not have either the ability to recognize the hell he helped create or the b----s to stand against his military advisors to stop it. You can blame Trump for a lot but even when there were smarter people in power, it wasn't much better. I want to believe that Chealsey Manning can change something but do not really believe in it.

Correct. Trump says "shithole" and the MSM lathers the public into a frenzy. Yet, the previous administration(s) actively created shitholes - which btw taxes dollar also go to fixing - and the response to that has been crickets from the MSM and the proles.

Trump can be a fool. But there is quite a bit of truth to his perception of the MSM, and how that impacts public opinion. Fake News isn't just about facts. Fake News is also about what the MSM highlights v what it does not. Not everything that gets report is news. Unless of course it fits a narrative, drives advertising dollar and/or masks the need to report on something more important.

I do not think that the media is really the problem, its just somehow the topic does not get all the traction it needs to succeed politically. 'Collateral murder' was all over the media but still nothing happened. The NSA affair was all over the media and nothing happened. Maybe at this point politics does not really care anymore as long as its not to their own political benefit.

Isn't the sentiment expressed by that word essentially "country with a lot of problems"? Is it much worse than saying "ours is the best country in the world"? Both are pretty insulting.

The sentiment expressed by the word is essentially "country with a lot of problems", yes. But the sentiment expressed by the statement as a whole is "We don't want people from those countries, we don't want to help them, we don't want them to access the American Dream. Despite our part in screwing up the world, we're not interesting in putting forth effort to help the people who have gotten screwed".

And the "we" in that statement is Trump, who speaks for the nation as its president.

There is a plausible alternative motivation of wanting to protect the American Dream (for those already here in the country) rather than an evil desire to deny it to others.

Of course reasonable people can disagree on the degree of the threat posed by immigration. But you have to admit that if every person on earth moved to America overnight, life as we know it would be changed for the worse forever. Therefore it is reasonable to question where on the scale from 0% to 100% of the world population should be welcomed with open arms at the border. And it's not a huge leap to go from that question to the idea that not every single applicant for admittance poses the same threat (if any) as another -- so some discrimination between them is not only logical, but just.

If you accept the above conclusion, then it's quite possible for that word he used to be a reasonable idea expressed in an uncharitable manner.

I don't quite understand your argument here. You posit that a reasonable position on immigration for America is that we should not have one hundred percent open borders, welcome all comers. And furthermore, since a reasonable position is that we should not welcome all comers, whoever they may be, we obviously need some way to establish who in particular is welcome, and who in particular is not.

I agree with you as far as that goes.

But then you go further to say that it's possible that Trump was trying to express the position you just described, albeit in an uncharitable and rude way, and that's where you lose me.

It's possible that you could theorize a hypothetical person who expresses that sentiment in that manner, but is that hypothetical person Donald Trump, with all the context of his previous comments and decisions? Because we're not talking about a hypothetical here, we're talking about actual sentiments expressed by an actual person, with a history racial insensitivity (to put it lightly) and heavy-handed bans that have no legal basis (again, to put it lightly).

It's not meaningful to come up with hypotheticals unless you attribute that hypothetical to Trump, and attributing this one to him means that it needs to be squared with his previous actions and positions. In my opinion, it seems fantastically unlikely that he was trying to express your position; if you believe differently, I'd be interested in your reasoning.

Think we agree on all the important points then. At least so far.

For the record I'm no fan or defender of Trump. But whatever we think of his obvious character flaws, he's really nothing without supporters.

What I have been trying to do is understand the people who do support him and articulate the best possible interpretation of events that I can make for how someone can support him.

That's not to pretend he doesn't have some racist supporters, he does.. but I think they are a very (very) small percentage of people who hold their nose at him personality and yet give him their support.

What I hear from the Left, over and over, is charges of racism and attributing the worst possible motives to most his supporters -- a strawman argument which they can then knock down with moral indignation.

So back to our discussion.

I don't think it pays to continually be outraged at Trumps never ending provocations. What I think needs to happen is to have an honest discussion -- where people on the left have to say "Trump is an idiot, but we understand that there are problems with unfettered immigration, and we respect the people who are worried about protecting America. We recognize them as patriots, not racists. We understand that many people support Trump not because they are attracted to his personality, but because we have not been willing to properly balance our desire to help people of the world with our need to protect our fellow citizens (regardless of political stripe)".

I am no expert on what the proper level of immigration should be, or how to vet appropriate applicants. But until we take responsibility for our blind spots, and at least be willing to acknowledge the other side as legitimate, we're going to keep talking past one another.

If we keep going the way we're going, Trump is going to get elected again. The entire culture is currently focused on the wrong thing -- and that isn't Trump's fault, it's ours.

> I don't think it pays to continually be outraged at Trumps never ending provocations.

I don't think that everything Trump does deserves the ire it inspires, but I think there's a cost to just accepting outrageous things without being outraged. What's happening is not normal, and I don't want it to become normal. If people stop getting outraged for valid reasons, and I believe that this is a valid reason to be upset, then this behavior becomes accepted and that's not something I want.

There's a way to have a conversation about immigration. That conversation does not start with the President saying "Why do we want people from these shithole nations, we want more people from great countries like Norway", and I think it's reasonable to hold the President to the standard of starting the conversation in the appropriate way. Doing that is literally his job, and just because he and some of his supporters think it's funny to "LOL triggered yet libs?" doesn't make it appropriate, doesn't make it right, and doesn't make it just.

Well you'll just be preaching to the choir with people who already agree with you. Changing the narrative, truly reaching across the isle has a better chance of effecting real change.

You're aware that the alleged sentiment of a word pales in comparison to actual actions that need no bias interpretation in order to be upsetting to anyone with a moral compass, correct?

Put another way: Stick and stones and MIC drones are breaking non-white bones and you're worried about the alleged sentimate of a word? Turn off the MSM and get a new less rose coloured filter.

What does your argument even mean?

I'm reading it as "since there are drone strikes, it is not worth criticizing an American president for referring to poorer nations as 'shitholes'."

Why can't you say "we want fewer drone strikes, and also more dignified and respectable leaders"?

How are the two issues of drones and Trump's foul comment linked in any way?