The New Yorker:

The ex-President is promoting the idea that his hateful propaganda comes from Heaven itself.

Susan B. Glasser 

Wading through the latest dreck from the 2024 campaign, it seems that a racist congressman from Louisiana has demanded that the mythic dog-and-cat-eating, “vudu”-practicing Haitian immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, slurred by Donald Trump on the national debate stage earlier this month, “better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th.” Or else. Under pressure from colleagues in the House on Wednesday, the congressman, Clay Higgins, deleted the social-media post. Then hours later he told CNN that he stood by it anyway: “It’s all true. . . . It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off.” Asked about the controversy, House Speaker Mike Johnson called Higgins “a dear friend of mine” and a “very principled man.” As for the tweet, Johnson, an ostentatiously devout Christian, replied, “We move forward. We believe in redemption around here.”

Outrage is an impossible emotion to sustain in this age of manufactured political outrage. I know it; Higgins and Johnson surely know it, too. Indeed, they are counting on it. Who, after all, will remember this particular bit of hate speech next week, when there will undoubtedly be so many newer, fresher outrages to be upset about? But still. Maybe pause a minute on this one. While Democrats agonize over the proper levels of policy detail required to prove Kamala Harris’s suitability for the Presidency, Trump and his acolytes have gone deep into the racist recesses of the American psyche to run a campaign meant to stir the passionate hatreds and deepest insecurities of their followers.

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