Donald Trump was supposed to be the racist. Yet his response to the murders of five police officers in Dallas was measured and sensitive, emphasizing his support for law enforcement while acknowledging the concerns of the black community. In contrast, Hillary Clinton made Dallas about “systemic racism” and the collective guilt of white people — deeply offensive in the context of an attack where white officers had been targeted, and the very opposite of what a president is supposed to do.
Three separate times — on television, on Twitter, and again via e-mail to her supporters — Clinton made stark, condescending generalizations about white people and their supposed inability to listen to black people.
She spoke as if she had the responsibility, and the authority, to speak on behalf of millions of Americans, defined by race. In doing so, she made no reciprocal requests of black Americans — no need to examine cultural attitudes to police, or the hostile rhetoric of some community leaders.
On CNN, she talked about “systemic racism” — much like President Barack Obama does, condemning the very nature of the society she aspires to lead.
“Systemic racism” is, on the one hand, an easy cop-out for virtue-signaling white liberals, because if the “system” is racist, then no individual is to blame. On the other hand, if the “system” is racist, no one can be free from guilt. And so “systemic racism” is held over our heads like an anvil, compelling political conformity.
The media spent the past week parsing a tweet by Donald Trump to find evidence of a “dog whistle” to the extremists who, we are told, are his political base. And yet here is Hillary Clinton, responding explicitly to Dallas in a way that makes sense only to the radical left.
Dilbert‘s Scott Adams quipped this week that Trump should attack Clinton for having “a race-first view of the world that is corrosive to society.” It was unclear, until now, how he could do that.
Clinton has done it for him.