KADNER: Ignoramuses in the Age of Trump

Our president may be mentally unbalanced, seems to be a racist and is certainly an ignoramus.

Donald Trump defended a protest rally of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and Ku Klux Klan members in Virginia by suggesting they included “some very fine people” who were there for a lawful protest.

Very fine people do not rub shoulders with individuals who march at night chanting, “Jews will not replace us” while carrying Confederate flags and banners featuring the swastika.

The president said that the “very fine people” in Charlottesville were merely protesting the removal of statues of former Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson.

To illustrate how important it is to take a stand on this issue, President Trump suggested that in the future statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson might be taken down by the government.

They were both slave owners, the president noted.

The implication is that black outrage over the official portrayal of Southern generals as war heroes is so out of control that it could spill over to even the founding fathers of this country, threatening everything that is good, true and American.

In the view of the president, this is how the world changes when black lives actually matter.

When Mexicans are allowed to cross the border, rape our women, take our jobs and, end up as federal judges, monuments to really great Americans will fall.

Follow this logic and you can see Sharia law replacing the Bill of Rights as Muslims, probably working with Jews, undermine the Christian values this nation was built on.

This may seem nutty to many people, but it is the belief system of the alt-right, the people Trump has been courting since he planned his campaign for president by suggesting Barack Obama was not born in America.

As for those Confederate generals, Trump would defend, they were guilty of treason.

Does Trump even realize that some of the people he was defending can be seen on YouTube trashing his son-in-law as a “Jew bastard” and ridiculing the president for his “beautiful daughter” marrying a Jew?

Does Trump even realize that some of the people he was defending can be seen on YouTube trashing his son-in-law as a “beautiful daughter” to marry a Jew?

Trump’s supporters would like us to believe he is a modern day Voltaire, the type of fellow who might not agree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.

But this is the same man who has said that journalists are the “enemy of the people” because they contradict his false statements and denounced Sen. John McCain as a “loser” for daring to oppose him.

I have no idea what Trump stands for at this point or whether he means anything he says. I’m not even convinced the president always knows what he’s saying.

I can’t shake the feeling I’m a crew member on the USS Caine watching as Captain Queeg obsesses over missing strawberries, using geometric logic to prove someone must have stolen them (forgetting he ordered the mess steward to bring him some extra portions).

Like Queeg, who was in command of an American fighting ship during time of war, President Trump’s imagined enemies loom larger than those who pose an actual threat.

I find myself wondering how people in South Korea, Japan, and Guam feel watching Trump fret over neo-Nazis and the fate of Civil War statues as a potential nuclear war with North Korea looms.

Ignoramus is the title character in a 17^th Century play. He’s a lawyer who fancies himself shrewd but is actually foolish and ignorant. Ignoramus in Latin literally means “we do not know.” And that defines the Donald Trump era.

Email: philkadner@gmail.com

Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com.