Donald Trump might not be racist…

… but he is an amoral user, and that is so much worse.

Photo by Parker Coffman on Unsplash

Racists are, generally, immoral people. Their actions violate the wider moral landscape because they believe that their racialist morality is right and the morality of others is deficient, or even wrong. They might believe, or have been taught, that both slavery and white supremacy are repeatedly justified in the Bible and by other religious writings which they consider authoritative. They believe that they are the thin slice of racial righteousness (‘many will be called but few will be chosen’) and, therefore, the sheer amount of popular will turned against them is, perversely, all the proof they need to double down on this racists position.

The immoral are people who, believing themselves to be moral, are in tension with others who similarly believe they are moral.

But this is no different, really, than most people. Morality has never really been concretized — that’s why we can argue about it so vociferously — and, so, there will always be some measure of differentiation between your morality and mine… or between your notion of morality and somebody else’s notion. This is, perhaps, the saving grace for the immoral: there is, always, with the immoral the possibility, however slight, of a ‘come to Jesus’ moment: the possibility that, if we…