Paul Krugman: No, Donald Trump, America Isn’t a Hellhole

What is Trump's pivot to crime all about?:

No, Donald Trump, America Isn’t a Hellhole, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: ...When the Trump campaign started, it was, at least nominally, about economics. Foreigners are stealing your jobs, the candidate declared, both through unfair trade and by coming here as immigrants. And he would make America great again with punitive tariffs and mass deportations.

But the story changed at the Republican convention. There was remarkably little economic discussion on display... Instead, the focus was all on law and order, on saving the nation from what the candidate described as a terrifying crime wave.

That theme has continued in recent weeks, with Mr. Trump’s “outreach” to minority voters. His notion of a pitch to these voters is to tell them how horrible their lives are, that they are facing “crime at levels that nobody has seen.” Even “war zones,” he says, are “safer than living in some of our inner cities.”

All of this is really strange — because nothing like this is actually happening. ...

Let’s talk specifically about violent crime. Consider, in particular, the murder rate... Homicides did shoot up between the early 1960s and the 1980s... Conservative writers assured us that soaring crime was the inevitable result of a collapse in traditional values...

But then a funny thing happened: The murder rate began falling, and falling, and falling. By 2014 it was ... back down to where it was half a century earlier. There was some rise in 2015, but so far ... it’s barely a blip in the long-run picture.

Basically, American cities are as safe as they’ve ever been...

So what is all of this about? The same thing everything in the Trump campaign is about: race.

I used scare quotes when talking about Mr. Trump’s racial “outreach” because it’s clear that the real purpose ... is to reassure squeamish whites that he isn’t as racist as he seems. But..: Even when he is trying to sound racially inclusive, his imagery is permeated by an “alt-right” sensibility that fundamentally sees nonwhites as subhuman. ... In the mental world he and those he listens to inhabit, blacks and other nonwhites are by definition shiftless burdens on society.

Which brings us back to the notion of America as a nightmarish dystopia. Taken literally, that’s nonsense. But today’s increasingly multiracial, multicultural society is a nightmare for people who want a white, Christian nation in which lesser breeds know their place. And those are the people Mr. Trump has brought out into the open.