Steve Salerno

Of all of Candidate Trump's sins — there are many contenders, each uniquely exasperating — the greatest may be that his combustible rhetoric sabotages credible issues and ideas. Thoroughly reasonable positions are tainted by mere association with Trump's over-the-top intemperance.

The man is a distraction from his own campaign. He'll take an issue that's long overdue for resolution — say, immigration reform — and vituperate in such outlandish fashion that people find the entire discussion loathsome. Or worse — surely from the GOP's standpoint — voters flee to the opposite position simply as a reaction to Trump's excesses. Worse yet is that cooler heads are wont to conclude that because Trump voices his platforms in such a mean-spirited, bigoted-sounding fashion, his followers must necessarily be mean-spirited bigots. Hence, “basket of deplorables.”

All of which is most unfortunate, for Trump's unhinged demeanor overshadows points of view that deserve to be considered. You'll hear it alleged that Trump has normalized racism, xenophobia and lying, but just as troubling is that he has “abnormalized” concerns embraced by tens of millions of Americans who have every right to feel as they do.

Take Trump's campaign-long bungling of questions about his personal taxes, now punctuated by The New York Times' release of a 1995 Trump return showing a $916 million loss; IRS's loss carry-forward provisions would've allowed Trump to offset some $50 million a year in taxable income for the next 18 years. There's no crime in paying the minimum taxes legally possible, though in Trump's case you do wonder whether someone who loses $1 billion qualifies for the “genius” tag hung on him by spin-doctoring surrogates.

This came on the heels of Trump's dismissive handling of the entire matter during the debate, when he suggested it's no big deal if he's dodging his tax liability; after all, the government would only waste the money anyway. Here again, few would deny there's ample fat in the federal budget. One remembers (Democrat) Sen. William Proxmire's Golden Fleece awards, which annually “celebrated” the most outrageous waste of tax dollars. Conservatives resent the notion of an ever-expanding tax burden that funds frivolous or unpopular causes. Such was the thinking behind the Hyde Amendment, which limits taxpayer funding of abortions. But invoking Proxmire and/or Hyde proactively would've been far better ways of driving home a bona fide point, rather than hiding behind snarky one-liners while waiting to be outed by a major newspaper — then serving up unconvincing alibis after the fact.

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A week earlier, Trump found an equally tone-deaf way of observing that cities like Chicago have serious problems that often stem from lack of respect for the rule of law and the entitled complacency of the Democrats who mostly run America's major cities. Addressing blacks directly, Trump had an Aleppo moment about slavery, informing blacks that their lives are “in the worst shape that they’ve ever been in...” And while Trump is hardly alone in objecting to Black Lives Matter's enthusiasm for thugs like Michael Brown, his oratory sounds so strident and insincere that it naturally lends itself to cries of “racism.”

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In the same vein, a nationalist/non-interventionist lens on foreign affairs has survived in certain conservative precincts since the so-called Old Right of the prewar era. Granted, the prevalent belief is that today's geopolitical realities have rendered nationalism naïve and unrealistic. But we seemed on the verge of having a reinvigorated debate about America's appropriate degree of global leadership — until Candidate Trump opined that the best way for Saudi Arabia and Japan to handle their own regional problems might be to build nukes.

Then we have Trump's thoughts on the glacial progress of the war against ISIS and terrorism — a legitimate critique in these anxious times that was reduced to the realm of the silly by Trump's suggestion that he alone can fix what West Point's finest minds have not.

Finally, let us end where Trump's campaign started. It is neither radical nor xenophobic to propose that borders exist for a reason, and that people in this country illegally shouldn't be hailed as folk heroes. Of course, that argument might've received a more enthusiastic reception had Trump not opened it by labeling illegal aliens rapists and drug runners.

Let me be very clear: This is not a defense of Trump, the candidate. By no means am I arguing that the validity of some of his ideas means that we should overlook the shortcomings of the man. That said, it does a great disservice to society to stigmatize the ideals of a goodly chunk of America just because those positions are articulated (if that word even applies) by one Donald J. Trump.

We are killing the message along with the messenger. In the process we are subverting the adversarial give-and-take that underpins our multi-party political system.

Steve Salerno is author of the book SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless. He blogs on social issues at www.shamblog.com. Follow him on Twitter @iwrotesham.

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