US President Donald Trump’s latest speech was one of his usual rambling and semi-coherent rants. It was filled with the standard litany of misrepresentations, half-truths, and outright lies we’ve come to expect of him. But one comment stood out as particularly revealing.
Though certainly a falsehood, it wasn’t the kind of falsehood that is confined solely to the tangled mind of Trump or the ignorant worldview of his followers. Rather, it has formed one of the centerpieces of right-wing thought in the US since long before Trump entered the political arena. This shines a revealing light on the fundamental nature of the right-wing mindset that is deeply unsettling. And it raises profound questions for progressives about the obstacles that stand in the way of radical change and how we might work to overcome them.
