Today I’m going to resort to that lazy blogger’s device that I have used only very occasionally in the past: a link to a highly recommended post, with minimal commentary of my own.  The poster is TPM’s josh Marshall.  His main point is the media’s failure to deal with the reality that one of our two major party presidential candidates is a vicious hate monger:

Hate speech is rants meant to inflame, inspire fear or rage or violence against a particular class of people. The precise vocabulary is not the heart of the matter. There’s no question that what Trump’s Wednesday night speech was was hate speech, a tirade filled with yelling, a snarling voice, air chopped to bits with slashing hands and through it all a story of American victims helpless before a looming threat from dangerous, predatory outsiders.”

I don’t think it is possible to over-emphasize that Donald Trump is in no way a “normal” US presidential contender.  His candidacy is a uniquely ugly, dangerous development in American politics, and we all need to be calling it out as such, repeatedly, with anyone who is inclined to believe otherwise.

PS

I just learned of this remarkable additional indicator of the abnormality of the Trump candidacy. All volunteers for the Trump campaign are being required to sign a non-disclosure agreement that bars them from criticizing Trump or his family or his brands for the rest of their lives, or from disclosing anything personal about Trump. Another provision, most likely illegal, prohibits volunteers from employing people who work for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Weird! Why would anyone sign such an offensive pledge? Evidently, this isn’t just a presidential candidacy; it’s a cult following its Great Leader. The Trumpites must assume that there are enough willing cultists to power a campaign.