No one should find comfort in dehumanizing language

No sooner had I ordered the 2011 book “Less Than Human” for a late-summer read than President Trump called Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog” and a “lowlife.” Those two slurs fit nicely into author David Livingstone Smith’s philosophical study of man’s capacity to inflict cruelty by first dehumanizing the “other.”

Trump’s personal template is familiar. He likes someone, then doesn’t, then reduces the object of his scorn to something less than human. Omarosa, whose friendship with Trump began when she appeared on “The Apprentice,” was fired last year from her job as a White House aide.

During the past few days, she has released secretly taped recordings of her firing as well as a later conversation with Trump, just published a tell-all account of her time in the White House, and told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that she’s willing to cooperate with the Robert Mueller investigation.

All things considered, it sounds as if Trump and Omarosa may deserve each other. Recording people without their knowledge, especially in the White House, is certainly un-kosher if not illegal. More important, however, is the risk of having exposed top officials to hackers if Omarosa used her cellphone to record these and other conversations.

Whatever her motivations, Omarosa seems set on exposing Trump as a racist. Trump may not be an N-word-hurling racist, though Omarosa claims to know of a tape from his reality-show days when he used the term.

It’s fair to say that most whites who are racist usually don’t think they are. This is because they don’t use the N-word or actively seek to bring harm to nonwhites. But racism is a pernicious, passive plague. You don’t have to burn crosses in people’s yards. All you have to do is see African-Americans (or Asians or Latinos) in stereotypically demeaning ways. Thus, when Trump became angry with Omarosa, he didn’t say she was a disgruntled former employee — or make some other dismissively neutral comment. Instead, he tweeted:

“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”

Directing such vitriol toward any woman is repellent. But what makes the president’s remarks especially repugnant is that they were aimed at a minority woman and followed a spate of similar insults targeting African-Americans: He recently said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif, has a low I.Q., “somewhere in the mid-60s.” Last week he attacked CNN anchor Don Lemon and Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James, tweeting: “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.”

Did Trump mean for us to treat his comments so literally? Who cares? He’s the president of the United States and should be able to muzzle his schoolyard impulses. He should also know that dehumanization — or “othering,” to use current vernacular — leads to marginalization, which can lead to cruelty (say, separating young migrant children from their parents).

As Smith explains in his book, it’s much easier to hurt, maim or kill another when you no longer see them as quite human. Which is why no one living today should be comfortable with the language of dehumanization, no matter how relatively minor the degree.

Least of all, the president.