Well, this is helpful and not at all scientifically correct. As the controversy over Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks continues to roil, she’s already moving on to dehumanizing others. That seems to be a favored pastime of hers. You’d think after taking a victory lap over the Democrats’ watered down “anti-hate resolution,” she’d try practicing a little of the “not hating” part, but nah.
Fox News’ Guerin Hays asks Ilhan Omar about last week's Politico article: “Do you think President Obama is the same as President Trump?”
Omar: “Absolutely not. … One is human the other is not”
Omar's dehumanizing remarks come after she was slammed last week for anti-Semitism pic.twitter.com/zFvi4KoicY
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) March 12, 2019
Donald Trump is a lot of things, good and bad. I think we can confirm that being human is among his traits (further testing is needed on his hair though).
For my part, this kind of rhetoric doesn’t cause me to lose any sleep at this point. I know who Ilhan Omar is by now just like I know who Donald Trump is. To be sure, he has had plenty of his own foot-in-mouth episodes over how he addresses people he doesn’t like. Washington is not a nice place and I’m not going to pretend it is or ever was.
I do think it’s worth noting the double standard that exists here. Imagine if Donald Trump were to call Ilhan Omar “not human.” It’d be national news for days, the House would vote to censure him, and Don Lemon’s head would literally explode from saying the word “racist” so many times. But because it’s Trump, anything goes and this will only get a passing mention on Twitter. Perhaps he’s brought that on himself, but that’s not an excuse for a Congressional member to say the President is not human to a news network. At least be discrete enough to leak it from a private meeting or something.
While Democrats are constantly railing against Trump’s rhetoric, they seem equally determined to one-up him and Rep. Omar is helping lead that charge. She’s formed a habit of adding more gasoline to the fire. Since being elected, she’s become one of the Democratic party’s most volatile voices, whether it be her repeated anti-Semitic remarks, calling Barack Obama(!) a murderer, or supporting socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro over the pleas of dying Venezuelans. As a Somali refugee, Omar was welcomed and shown the charity and freedom America has to offer, not because she was entitled to it, but because that’s simply the kind of country the United States is. Unfortunately, her response has not been gratitude but denigration at every turn and she shows no signs of slowing down.
I’ll end this with a prudent suggestion from Mollie Hemingway.
This is a bipartisan problem, I've observed, but a recommendation that we refrain from dehumanizing our political opponents. https://t.co/CNdyz4jCNc
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) March 12, 2019
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