The student voice of Highgate Wood, seventh edition March 2017
Trump: normalising the abnormal
EDITORIAL Faye Heron and Patrick Morrish “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.” Three months into Donald Trump’s presidency, we risk becoming desensitised to his rhetoric. We must remind ourselves that his manner, speeches and offhand comments show a fundamental disregard for basic human dignity, and the progressive society to which we have been striving. He claimed last week that his administration are “getting along great,
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and getting major things done”. But his vision of making “America great again” is fuelled by misogyny and misconceptions. On International Women’s Day, he wrote on his twitter feed that he has “tremendous respect for women”, but on the campaign trail dismissed inciting sexual harassment as “locker room talk”. An executive order was passed to fulfil his promise of a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”. He has embarked on an eerily Orwellian battle against “the fake news media” who are the “enemy of the American People”. That is not to say that other presidents haven’t been misogynistic, racist, or hungry for power. Eisenhower told Chief
Justice Earl Warren he could understand why white southerners wanted to make sure “their sweet little girls [are not] required to sit in school alongside some big black buck.” Richard Nixon broke into the Democratic Party headquarters to better his chances in the forthcoming election, and resigned after the succeeding Watergate scandal. Yet it remains unprecedented that the current head of state should take to social media to accuse his predecessor of “tapping my phones”, without consulting the country’s intelligence agencies, adding “this is McCarthyism!” We cannot overestimate the hegemonic shift in perception that has meant we cease to be surprised by a lack of respect from our leaders. Continued on page 8
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