x As a woman, and daughter of immigrants with an Arabic last name, this is probably the most frightening Trump speech I've heard. — Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) June 13, 2016

From Karen Tumulty and Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post:

Cathy Cuthbertson once worked at what might be thought of as a command post of political correctness — the campus of a prestigious liberal arts college in Ohio. “You know, I couldn’t say ‘Merry Christmas.’ And when we wrote things, we couldn’t even say ‘he’ or ‘she,’ because we had transgender. People of color. I mean, we had to watch every word that came out of our mouth, because we were afraid of offending someone, but nobody’s afraid of offending me,” the former administrator said … The Republican front-runner is “saying what a lot of Americans are thinking but are afraid to say because they don’t think that it’s politically correct,” she said. “But we’re tired of just standing back and letting everyone else dictate what we’re supposed to think and do.” In the 2016 Republican presidential primary season, “political correctness” has become the all-purpose enemy. The candidates have suggested that it is the explanation for seemingly every threat that confronts the country: terrorism, illegal immigration, an economic recovery that is leaving many behind, to name just a few … Cuthbertson, for instance, made a connection between her frustrations over political correctness and the other things she sees going on around her. “I look at what I get every month — and thank God, I was financially savvy and saved. I can’t live off Social Security. And you look at these people who have never worked and they’re having babies and they’re getting free rent and free food stamps and free medical care,” she said. “I couldn’t afford what they have on my Social Security, and I worked 50 years.” “Something has to be done because we’re shrinking, we’re being taken over by people that want to change what America is,” she added. “You can’t say it nicely.”

The above blockquote comes from a story which ran back in January, but the sentiment has resurfaced given the tragedy in Orlando and Donald Trump’s reaction. The final quote by Ms. Cuthbertson stood out to me, since in the president’s statement he markedly points out the issues which surround this incident bring up choices about “the kind of country we want to be.”

If that country is the one Donald Trump described today, then it will be a disgrace. It will be a country where none of candidate Trump’s plans, whether it be his imaginary wall or ban on Muslims entering the United States, would have prevented what happened in Orlando. It will be an America where a presidential candidate decries the supposed fear of using a three-word phrase, but betrays his cowardice and demagoguery in wanting to seal off America and point to foreign brown people who are the source of all of our ills.

Because why have any reflection on what happened? Why express any sympathy to the families of those that lost their lives? Why try to at least be a fucking human being before acting like a self-aggrandizing asshole? It’s a sad statement on the current state of politics that Lin-Manuel Miranda took more time to consider the import of recent events while accepting a Tony Award for Hamilton last night than the Republican nominee for president of the United States.

x The Orlando gunman was born in Queens, to parents who had immigrated to the United States. Just like Donald Trump. — Matt Viser (@mviser) June 13, 2016

But that lack of self-reflection is evident every time we have national tragedies or huge discussions about the kind of country we want to be. When a violent crime is committed by an immigrant, the child of an immigrant, or even American citizens with a Middle Eastern background, we will have national discussions about terrorism and what to do about it. And maybe we should. But then will come the screaming that we should go further. That this is the result of Islam itself, and Muslims need to answer and denounce what’s happening. And people like Trump use it all to stoke fear and give people a boogeyman that needs to be fought by any means necessary, even if those means only will make things worse than they are. So let’s betray our principles, make ourselves feel better, and line up everyone with a weird name against a wall as part of some racial profiling scheme, even if it doesn’t work. So what we end up with is a society where “scary” people need to be watched and kept away, especially if they happen to be a federal judge in the Trump University case.

However, when murders are committed by white Americans, the crimes are considered unfortunate aberrations. We won’t have serious discussions about the state of mental healthcare in this country whereby a school full of kids are murdered, or the racial divisions which fuel an asshole to shoot up a church, or how treating any minority group as an “other” can stoke hate. Instead, we’re left with insane debates about the role of video games, or insinuations the victims share the blame in their own deaths. There were no Trump tweets demanding new security measures or asking white America to explain itself after the Sandy Hook massacre or the Charleston church shooting. And that’s because, for the people who say they support Trump’s arguments and mentality, there’s a tendency to think white killers must have been “influenced” in some way to go bad, where people of color are inherently dangerous. A clear example of this sort of thinking can be seen in the recent controversy over the Stanford sexual assault, and how there was in some ways a search for excuses to explain away a rape. Does anyone really believe that if Brock Turner was a poor black kid, or he was the child of immigrants and named Muhammad Baqir, a court would of given him 6 months?

And therein lies the rub of arguing political correctness. This is not a situation where people are being silenced from expressing an opinion. These are cases where stupid opinions are being called stupid and the stupid people who said them don’t want to own up to their stupidity, or confront the implications of what they actually believe. Because whether we call ISIS “radical Islamic terrorists” or murderous schmucks of the East in official correspondence makes not one Goddamn difference to our overall strategic position. And those that think it does are idiots. Therefore, the failure to use a three-word phrase of choice is not a sign of weakness or political correctness—it’s a recognition that our bombs and special forces are more likely to achieve a favorable result than an asshole with bad hair and small hands spewing nonsense.

x Trump flat-out accused Muslim-American community of disloyalty. Truly a sad day for American values. — Eugene Robinson (@Eugene_Robinson) June 13, 2016