The problem with being ‘in’ on Trump’s joke

He’s not Hitler, but vitriol is real

I admit I was among those who assumed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was a sideshow and that he would flame out before long. I figured he would be remembered more like Drunk Uncle (though a sober version) on Saturday Night Live than as a serious candidate, his outrageous statements making you half-wince, half-smile rather than triggering genuine alarm.

So I don’t blame the media (of which I was a part until 2006 as the industry began capsizing) for guessing so terribly wrong. They should be trying to figure out how blatherings that would sink any other candidate elevate him in the polls. Events may yet show they weren’t completely wrong: It seems even Trump recognized it is possible to go too far when he retreated from comments Wednesday to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who get abortions.

But one popular theory why Trump has remained viable so long is that his supporters are “in on the joke.”

They “know” he doesn’t mean all that silliness about Mexico sending us rapists or building a wall on our border. There’s probably a bunch of men — though I can’t picture many women — who thought his quote on abortion was just a riff, too. As long as he’s a tough-talking outsider who will turn Washington upside down, that’s all that counts.

The funniest jokes, as any good comic knows, are the ones with an element of truth, or at least perceived truth. I remember as a kid in the late 1970s how jokes about various racial and ethnic groups, even jokes with the “n-word,” sadly were commonplace. Heck, you could even catch old Tom and Jerry cartoons from the 1940s and ’50s being rerun that would startle you today with racist depictions of a “mammy.” How did these jokes and caricatures persist? Because even after the civil rights turmoil of the 1960s, large numbers of people at the time — large numbers of white people, that is — retained the misguided thought that it was funny and, even at some subliminal level, carried an element of derogatory truth. That’s why sitcom “All in the Family” exploded (a/k/a went viral) in the ’70s by exposing stereotypes to light — think black-Jewish entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. planting a kiss on the cheek of main character Archie Bunker.

You can still find an eyeful of crass jokes that target blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, or any other group with a Google search. But is such humor commonplace? Not for decades. As a country, we’ve progressed to where these jokes are generally considered what they are — revolting and injurious.

Some would say we’ve become politically correct. I call it growing up. We’re evolving.

Still, the polls show vast numbers of Trumpists who apparently believe they are “in on the joke” about Muslims and Mexican rapists and shipping out immigrants who arrived illegally.

However, others have the opposite view. They have gone so far as to compare Trump to Hitler in regard to his stance on Muslims. The Philadelphia Daily News even put out a front cover that spoofed Trump with the signature Hitler pose, his right arm extended in a “Heil” salute.

While Trump seems to have no issue with roughing up reporters (see the bruises on Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields’ arm, allegedly courtesy of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski), or having “undesirables” regularly removed from his rallies, I wouldn’t characterize him as a Hitler in the making.

But might President Trump try to follow the lead of FDR, who put Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World War II, when it comes to Muslims? Right now I don’t think so, but if ISIS ever strikes the United States as it did Paris and Brussels, I might hedge my bets.

In the mid-1920s, Hitler wrote an accusation in Mein Kampf that Jews murdered 30 million people in Russia during the Communist revolution; he said defending himself against the Jewish “parasite” was “the work of the Lord.” I imagine even a lot of ordinary Germans figured they were in on the “joke,” too, and would never act on such ideas. The Holocaust, in reality, teaches us that we’re best served taking a person’s words at face value. So when Trump says we need to ban Muslims or we have a Mexican rapist problem, who am I to argue what he actually means?

The United States has a long way to go, but if you look back at the so-called truths that once seemed funny but no longer do, you see the country has grown up quite a bit. Trump will turn 70 in June. I don’t think he’s in a phase he’s going to outgrow.

I may have considered Trump’s candidacy to be a joke at the beginning, and an entertaining one at that, but I’m not laughing now.