As you probably all know by now, billionaire presidential hopeful Donald Trump has made some suggestions about temporarily banning Muslims from entering the USA until the latest spate of Islamic terror killings dies down, placing his ideas squarely in the realm of such beloved American hero presidents as Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who issued an executive order suspending naturalization proceedings for all German, Japanese, and Italian settlers in the US during World War II) and Jimmy Carter (who banned Iranians in 1979 during the hostage crisis).

Or, if you prefer to get your news from the likes of Cracked, Salon, and your idiot friends on Facebook, German antichrists like Hitler.

Either way, as there is a completely-unrelated-to-the-US-presidential-race Trump Tower under construction here in Vancouver, Trump’s remarks gave a pretext for Vancouverites to take part in their most favorite of hobbies: taking things out of context, declaring differing political opinions as racist, and doing meaningless things to demonstrate their own righteous opposition.

Which is to say there’s a petition, signed by over 50,000 of our least bigoted citizens, to make the developers take Trump’s name off the tower that his organization is lending its brand name power to and will be putting in the effort to operate, with nary a word about whether they plan to reimburse said effort or simply benefit from the company’s work without allowing his name on it.

And the latest to hop on the bandwagon is Vancouver’s own (allegedly) two-timing mayor, Gregor Robertson, who declared Trump’s positions “hateful” ones that must be “forcibly challenged.”

What gets left out here is that Trump actually is advocating for more stringent vetting that would keep out terrorists while allowing in peaceful Muslims, and the proposed ban is only a stop-gap procedure until the US government can figure out how to implement that. Also conveniently swept under the rug is the whole bit where the Islamic State has declared war on the West and explicitly stated this past summer that they were sending an army embedded with the mass migration into Europe, some of whom later took part in the mass murder attacks in Paris on November 13th. A larger number, as many as 10% or more, won’t take part in such atrocities but still have a favorable view of the Islamic State and its antics.

But never mind those “hate facts,” because we all know that protecting the feelings and economic interests of foreign nationals is far more important than protecting the safety and lives of citizens and residents.

As a side note, whatever happened to “put your money where your mouth is”? If all the holier-than-thou bandwagoners who want Trump’s name off that tower downtown really want to avoid the potential horror of local SJWs getting the vapours just knowing something in Vancouver bears that awful Mr. Trump’s name, why don’t they pony up and buy him and his company out? Are they willing to pay to reimburse his company for its investment in Vancouver in order to make him go away, or do they simply expect him to put in a whole bunch of effort into our city with no recognition for it?

Trick question. We all know the petition-signers have no interest in putting themselves out to any degree greater than typing their name into an online petition and hitting the “share to Facebook and Twitter” button afterwards.

The tower is apparently a $360,000,000 project. Ignoring the fact that most of these things go over budget, that works out to about $7200 per petition signer, which isn’t actually all that expensive… if one really and truly believes in the cause of removing Trump’s horrid name from our fine city.

I’m sure the money will be raised in no time. I’ll wait.

In the meantime, Trump needs to ramp up his offensiveness, lest Vancouverites lose the will to complain about him. If only Trump would throw in a few comments into his next speech about yoga not being real exercise, soy lattes being for losers, and the Canucks sucking, we could reach peak Vancouverite outrage-gasm.