Right? It felt like someone saying something racist to see how people would respond to something racist. And in that sense I feel like we acquitted ourselves fairly well but not brilliantly: we said this is a mixed neighborhood where people of different political persuasions live side by side. We did't get drawn in to saying anything anti-Trump. On the other hand, we didn't exactly *defend* the notion of people of different political persuasions living side by side, and we didn't defend the Trump supporters.

And why, really, should we? Racism is [among other things] a set of contemptuous feelings for people for something over which they have no control. No one chooses the melanin content of their skin. But people choose their political views, and as their political views get more and more hurtful to everyone except themselves, why should the rest of us defend them?