William Saletan - Slate:
A Morally Empty Man Gave A Morally Empty Speech
Trump’s narcissism and cynicism seemed boundless. He said blacks had stayed home on Election Day “because they liked me.” He implied that the agency in charge of enforcing immigration laws had supported his candidacy: “ICE endorsed Trump.” He suggested that Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activist who died last year, had endorsed him out of sheer opportunism. Trump, speaking of himself, paraphrased Schlafly this way: “I don’t care what exactly he is. He’s like an unknown quantity. But he is gonna win.” Trump said Priebus had made the same calculation. In Trump’s mind, these people didn’t care what sort of person he was. They just wanted power. And he admires them for it.
On Friday, a morally empty man gave a morally empty speech. There was no talk of humility, no acknowledgment of enduring prejudice, no plea for decency. Instead, Trump railed against foreigners and “a small group in our nation’s capital” that “has reaped the rewards of government.” In place of Bush’s praise for mosques, Trump spoke of Islam only as a source of terrorism. The man who ran on a platform of “take the oil” fumed that American wealth had been “redistributed all across the world.” He accused countries of “stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.”
This is why Trump is unworthy of your respect. It’s not because he didn’t win the popular vote. It’s not because of his party or his policies. It’s not because of Russia. It’s because of who he is. For all his faults, even those that turned out to be disastrous, Bush was a decent man. He believed in something greater than himself. Trump doesn’t.
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