Why does he refuse to condemn them?

[*PhilHos*]

(10-09-2020, 02:17 PM)Dill Wrote: Well I said "Hitler" while we were talking about Trump, but I didn't jump straight to a "Hitler comparison"--

if by that you mean some direct comparison of Hitler's statements with Trump's.  There is no such comparison at all. I find that Hitler references are about as incapacitating as people want them to be, so do me the favor of hearing me out.

I also used Jefferson as an example, and the point of that was not to compare his views of slavery or equality to Trump's. etc.

The defense of Trump so far on this thread and others is based on a dubious linguistic analysis--what Trump means when he says "people of Minnesota" is just plain and unqualified English meaning all ***** sapiens residing within the territorial boundaries of that state, not just "all white people" or "all non-Africans." And that must be so because he says nothing about non-whites IN THAT ONE PASSAGE and no one can prove what was in his mind at the time. To assert otherwise is to "twist what Trump 'actually' says." 

But that analysis requires me to believe that after all the nasty things Trump said about African-Minnesotans throughout that speech up to that point, he suddenly, warmly, accepted them in that moment as "people of Minnesota," and so also as the bearers of "good genes," not so different from Trump himself. It also requires me to think that he was not referencing "the racehorse theory" outside its conventional eugenic import in this one instance.  (I believe my view on this is stronger than Hollo's; It's a stretch to suppose Trump's meaning now "ambiguous"; there are no special grounds for caution in this one instance.)

Since I'm unwilling to believe that Trump changed his views of Minnesotan Africans for just that one moment, and then returned to form later, I challenged the assumption upon which the "plain English" argument seems to rest--namely that the words and sentences mean what they mean independently of surrounding context, independently of the whole speech, as if in that moment, for that moment only, Trump meant exactly what Philhos or Bfine or Mickey would have meant, had they used those words in one of their posts. Because the meaning is just there in the words. 

Best way to challenge that assumption is by analogy to other texts for which my fellow forum members would likely agree that the "plain meaning" is not the plain meaning. Probably could have used a Biblical example as well, but I think Mein Kampf  works best.

If, in a passage from Mein Kampf  , Hitler claims the "the German people" are superior to others, not because they are the smartest people, but because they are the most ready to sacrifice for the nation, no one of my forum friends would agree if I claimed that in that passage, Hitler meant all German-speaking people living and working there as citizens because he does not add "except the Jews" in that moment. They would disagree (I hope) because Hitler had previously argued that Jews were not true Germans, but a stateless parasitic race, etc. From that point forward they are not included in any reference to "the German people."

In so doing, my friends would be granting that the meaning of one statement in a text can be delimited by things said before and after it. So one cannot just extract it from that text and say "Now it means what it would mean in any other context." And my friends would have to grant that this is a GENERAL PRINCIPLE, not limited only to Hitler's text. And not limited to texts with racist views, or views we don't like.  Same for Jefferson's use of "man" and "equality" in a text most of us like, written by a man most of us admire. 

At this point, in a rational discussion, the onus should be on Trump defenders to explain why and how Trump's speech should be excepted from this general principal. If none of us can know what is in Trump's mind, then what ground for a claim that he is suddenly all-inclusive in his definition of Minnesotans and praise for their genes? Why is THAT not "twisting"?  Could someone refute the general principle I just described via another example? If someone couldn't shake the feeling there was somehow an unfair comparison of Hitler's views to Trump's lurking somewhere in my example, he could ask for a different analogy, perhaps from the Bible, which I'd be happy to supply. My point is to refute the "proof-texting" fundamentalist approach to Trump statements, which isolates those his defenders like from those they don't.

I am assuming that rational discussion is the goal here, and not just partisan attack, defense and obfuscation, which requires far fewer words.

I'll be honest, I didn't read any of this.

Look, it should be clear that when Trump told the crowd they had good genes, he was literally just telling them they were a good looking crowd. Now, YOU may think Trump is very intellectual and such a deep thinker, that he's capable of making a comment that to the average person is him just telling a crowd they look good but in actuality he's subtly saying "white people are better" but I don't like to give Trump more credit than he deserves.