Over the past few months I have heard late-night comedians ask why this current presidential race is even remotely close. In 2017, I heard an answer to that question, given by British columnist Brendan O’Neill. Essentially, he said to the left:

“It happened because you banned super-size sodas, smoking in parks and offensive ideas on campus. You branded people who oppose gay marriage ‘homophobic,’ and people unsure about immigration ‘racist’ … You thought correcting people’s attitudes was more important than finding them jobs. You turned ‘white man’ from a description into an insult and used slurs like ‘denier’ and ‘dangerous’ against anyone who doesn’t share your eco-pieties. Dissent is treated as hate speech and criticism of Obama as extremism. People talked more about gender-neutral toilets than about home repossessions … You policed people’s language, rubbished their parenting skills, took the piss out of their beliefs. Some cried when someone mocked the Koran but laughed when they mocked the Bible and criticizing Islam is Islamophobia. You kept telling people, ‘You can’t think that,’ ‘you can’t say that,’ ‘you can’t do that’ and you turned politics from something done by and for people to something done to them, for their own good. … Trump happened because of you.”

Is this really true? Share this statement with a Trump-supporting family member, friend or coworker and ask them.

Rev. Jim King
Cape Elizabeth