RUTHFULLY YOURS

At this point in the first Trump administration, the Left’s derangement at the election of an NOKD outsider is already well into the red zone. Exhibit A:

At one point during the online streaming of the game last month, two white announcers for a Forest City radio station, KIOW, began riffing on the Hispanic names of some players from the mildly more diverse community of Eagle Grove. “They’re all foreigners,” said Orin Harris, a longtime announcer; his partner, Holly Jane Kusserow-Smidt, a board operator at the station who was also a third-grade teacher, answered: “Exactly.”

For some people, this is as American as it gets.

Mr. Harris then uttered a term occasionally used these days as a racially charged taunt, or as a braying assertion that the country is being taken back from forces that threaten it. That term is, simply, the surname of the sitting American president.

No, really: the surname of the sitting president is now racist.

Last year’s contentious presidential election gave oxygen to hate. An analysis of F.B.I. crime data by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found a 26 percent increase in bias incidents in the last quarter of 2016 — the heart of the election season — compared with the same period the previous year. The trend has continued into 2017, with the latest partial data for the nation’s five most populous cities showing a 12 percent increase.

In addition, anti-Muslim episodes have nearly doubled since 2014, according to Brian Levin, the director of the center, which he said has also counted more “mega rallies” by white nationalists in the last two years than in the previous 20. “I haven’t seen anything like this during my three decades in the field,” he said.

One might point on that there have been plenty of Muslim anti-Christian episodes since 2014, including the recent attempted suicide bombing in Times Square, which was “provoked” by the sight of Christmas posters. This creature, an “immigrant” from Bangladesh, was kind enough to confess that he tried to kill Real Americans “for the Islamic State.” Of course, he had to taunt Trump:

The Facebook post, published by his account on Monday morning, read: “Trump you failed to protect your nation.”

Maybe the Times will take that into consideration the next time it’s tempted to run an inflammatory headline like this:

‘Trump, Trump, Trump!’ How a President’s Name Became a Racial Jeer

And what would a Times story be without quoting a couple of its favorite Morning Joe “experts”?

According to several scholars of American history, the invocation of a president’s name as a jaw-jutting declaration of exclusion, rather than inclusion, appears to be unprecedented. “If you’re hunting for historical analogies, I think you’re in virgin territory,” said Jon Meacham, the author of several books about presidents, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Andrew Jackson.

Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, agrees. “If you’re looking at modern presidents, fill in the blank and see if it can be used in the same way,” he said. “You will see it has not. Hoover? Or Eisenhower? Can you imagine a situation like that?”

Shortly after the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes, published a report called “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the 2016 Election on Our Nation’s Schools.” Based on a survey of more than 10,000 educators, it detailed an increase in incidents involving swastikas, Nazi salutes and Confederate flags.

It is a far cry from wearing a button that says “I Like Ike.”

“The message here,” Mr. Beschloss said, “is ‘Trump is going to come and get you — and we support that.’” CONTINUE AT SITE