The Un-American Essentialism of Donald Trump
The Republican candidate’s attacks on a federal judge directly undermine the principle on which America was founded.
.. what is deeply un-American about it, is its essentialism. Trump is saying that because of who you are, in an ethnic or hereditary sense, he will make judgments about what you think and what role in society you can play. The related assumption, as Garrett Epps explains to irrebuttable effect, is that people’s public roles cannot separated from their ethnic or religious identities. A “Mexican” judge will think and act as a Mexican, not as a judge.
There is no more un-American concept.