Back in the old days of
television, comedian Red Skelton was a self-promoting “patriot” who lectured
television audiences about, well, “patriotism,” and such things as the meaning
of the “Pledge of Allegiance.” But his “patriotism” could be of a singularly
avaricious nature; for example, he opined against the act of charity, because
giving to the less well-off means “taking” from you, and what is yours is not
yours to give away. In effect you are “stealing” from yourself. The irony of
his “Freddie the Freeloader” character is that if he didn’t rely on the
“charity” of others, then how exactly did he live? But we shouldn’t be too
surprised by this insular ideology; Skelton claimed as a “dear friend” John
Wayne, who revealed an ugly strain of racism in an infamous Playboy interview. The reputation of
these two “icons” of the entertainment world have remained untouched by such
views, but then again they were not politicians and never ran for public
office.
For some people, “patriotism” and
racism has always been synonymous concepts. We saw this today in a Portland
courtroom, where a white supremacist charged with killing two men shouted that
he was a “patriot” and not a terrorist, but this has been a part of the
American fabric practically since the creation of this country. Outside the
South, where racists draped themselves in the flag, most avoid overt displays
of racial rhetoric, some because they were at heart “moral” persons, but mainly
because they were concerned about how they would viewed by history. After all,
who wanted to share a seat in the history books with Adolf Hitler, who also
styled himself as the ultimate “patriot” of his country?
But the line between “patriotism”
and “racism” began to blur as the Republican “Southern Strategy” initiated in
the late 1960s adopted the “white identity” movement within that party, although
usually in racial “code” words that offered a degree of “deniability” when
confronted, However, what was once said privately behind closed doors is now an
“accepted” part of the public discourse, thanks to Donald Trump. Never in the
history of this country has a major party candidate openly embraced the
violence and hatred of the so-called “alt-right,” or so white supremacists and
neo-Nazis prefer to fashion themselves as. Never in this country’s history has
the “white identity” movement been given a reason to vote for a candidate who
“speaks” their “language”—and has been so loath to denounce their terrorist
ideology and activities.
Naturally, “mainstream”
Republicans, as if they exist outside the likes of John McCain, are only too
happy to use the support of domestic terrorists without actually embracing them
publicly. Look how slowly it took for Trump to respond to former CBS anchor Dan
Rathers call for him to make a statement on the recent killings by a neo-Nazi
on a Portland commuter train. According to police, Jeremy Christian
was “yelling various remarks that would best be characterized as hate speech
toward a variety of ethnicities and religions,” but directed at two apparently
Muslim female passengers. Onlookers tried to stop Christian, who pulled out a
knife and stabbed three men, Ricky Best, Taliesin Meche and Micah Fletcher;
Best and Meche died of their wounds.
What did the tweet-mad Trump have to say about the incident?
He intended to say nothing. He was too busy praising Greg Gianforte, a
Republican businessman who won a House seat in a Montana special election
despite the fact he went bestial on a British reporter for the UK The Guardian, for the “offense” of
simply asking a question. Gianforte was apparently disturbed by the fact the Guardian had the gall to do what no one
in the American media—even the so-called “liberal” MSNBC—would do, and that was
to demand that he answer questions about his policy “positions.” Once more,
Trump justified and even praised the violence of supporters, as he repeatedly
did during the past presidential campaign.
The day after the killings in
Portland, “centrist” CNN and “progressive” MSNBC had already moved on from the
story, the former back to debating Trump’s Russian connections, the latter
still bemoaning Hillary Clinton’s loss (one female commentator insisting that
Clinton lost Wisconsin because of “voter suppression,” as if laziness wasn’t the greater factor). The old school
Rather was having none of this breach of duty to the public, writing on his
Facebook page of the victims:
One was a
recent college graduate. The other was an army veteran and father of four. I
wish we would hear you (Trump) say
these names, or even just tweet them. They were brave Americans who died at the
hands of someone who, when all the facts are collected, we may have every right
to call a terrorist.”
This story
may not neatly fit into a narrative you pushed on the campaign trail and that
has followed you into the White House. They were not killed by an undocumented
immigrant or a ‘radical Islamic terrorist.’ They were killed in an act of civic
love, facing down a man allegedly spewing hate speech directed at two young
Muslim women. That man seems to have a public record of ‘extremist ideology’ –
a term issued by the Portland Police Bureau.
This
‘extremism’ may be of a different type than gets most of your attention, or
even the attention in the press. But that doesn’t make it any less serious, or
deadly. And this kind of ‘extremism’ is on the rise, especially in the wake of
your political ascendency.
Trump was clearly annoyed by the attention that Rathers’
missive generated; instead of posting his belated “condolences” to the victims
of the hate he has fostered on his personal tweet-monster page with its
millions of readers, he hid it on his less traveled POTUS page (without naming
the victims, as Rather suggested). Portland mayor Ted Wheeler brushed-off
Trump’s response, pointing out that “violent words can lead to violent acts.”
We of course recall the many acts of violence perpetrated by Trump supporters
on lone protestors at his campaign rallies which he found ways to “justify.” Obviously
taking his cue from Trump’s attitude toward hate and violence that served his
“interests,” local Republican county chair James Buchal took the opportunity to
pour gasoline on the flames, asserting that he would consider “employing” such
white supremacists as “security” at Republican-sponsored public events. So this
what this country has come to?
Yes, I too was disgusted by the photo of comedian Kathy
Griffin holding up a depiction of a bloody, decapitated head of Trump; but why
is this more “disgusting” than the scene of the Portland butcher in court, who
is apparently otherwise a vagrant with no income or home and in need of
scapegoats like so many haters are, shouting racist epithets and that anyone
who thinks he is a terrorist rather than a “patriot” should die? Trump has said
nothing about this, but he did of course tweet that the Griffin photo was
“typical” of “liberals.” Such is how “freedom of speech” and actual
racially-inspired murder by those emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric of hate has
become a matter of “relativity.”
Recently The Nation exposed the sordid truth about what this country has
become. In the past, the “mainstream” media ignored the reality that the “Tea
Party” movement was first and foremost a “white identity” movement like so many
that had come before it, only called different names (dating at least from the
nativist and xenophobic “American” or Know-Nothing Party from the mid-19th
century). Today, the media continues to ignore the racist impetus of Trump’s
support, continuing to insist that perceived “economic distress” is the core
concern of his support.
But The Nation’s analysis of polling on economic and racial attitudes blew
this hypocrisy up. While the media (because it doesn’t want to alienate
right-wing viewers?) explains away right-wing racial animosity (particularly in
regard to “Mexican” immigrants) on “economic” fears and anxiety, this is plain
head in the sand stuff. Those identifying themselves as either Democrat or
Republican both expressed similar economic “fears” and “anxieties”—except that
they typically placed the blame in entirely opposite directions. The only
conclusions that could be inferred from data was clear to anyone who valued
truth above all else:
Our analysis
shows Trump accelerated a realignment in the electorate around racism, across
several different measures of racial animus—and that it helped him win. By
contrast, we found little evidence to suggest individual economic distress
benefited Trump. The American political system is sorting so that racial
progressivism and economic progressivism are aligned in the Democratic Party
and racial conservatism and economic conservatism are aligned in the Republican
Party.
The media and some populist “progressives” have
belatedly blamed Clinton’s defeat on her failure to sufficiently speak to white
working class voters (as she did in the 2008 primaries, using racial code
against Barack Obama). Yet
Although
the plight of economically insecure white people has been placed at the center
of much of the analysis of the election, our analysis indicates that black and
Latino respondents tend to express significantly higher levels of economic
peril compared to whites or Asians, who as a group, express below average
levels of economic peril.
The last Democrat to win the white vote was LBJ
in 1964, and it is clear that his civil rights and “Great Society” programs
caused the party significant damage among Southern voters, who gradually
switched their allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican Party, a move
that helped Richard Nixon narrowly win election in 1968. It is clear what the
“wild card” in this change was, yet the “mainstream” media continues to deny
its existence. The Nation further
asserts that
Although Republicans
and Democrats do not, on average, express different levels of economic anxiety,
there are clear differences between Republicans and Democrats on the measures
of racial attitudes towards African-Americans and the measure of
pro-immigration attitudes. Democrats express dramatically lower anti-black
attitudes on both scales compared to Republicans or Independents. On the black
influence animosity scale the divide between Democrats and Republicans is even
greater than on the racial resentment scale…Both racial resentment and black
influence animosity are significant predictors of Trump support among white
respondents, independent of partisanship, ideology, education levels, and the
other factors included in the model.
But it is immigration—and anti-Hispanic in
particular—that is even more a predictor of racial animus:
The effect
of immigration attitudes for white people is even stronger than anti-black
attitudes. The results predict an approximately 80 percent probability of
voting for Trump for an otherwise average white person with the most anti-immigrant
attitudes, compared to less than 20 percent for a white person with the most
pro-immigrant attitudes.
It comes to no surprise, then, that The Nation found that anti-black and
anti-Hispanic racial attitudes the most significant indicator of party
affiliation:
To put
these results in context, the magnitude of the effects of each of the three
variables—racial resentment, black influence animosity, and immigration
attitudes—is comparable to the effect of partisan identification. The change in
probability of a Trump vote for a white person with the highest to the lowest
levels of racial animus is similar to changing their party identification from
Republican to Democratic.
The irony is that this resentment
is directed at the people with little or no power. Many white people have this
bizarre fantasy that being a minority is somehow this magical thing that is
endowed with some special power that whites have no access to and is “unfair”
to them. But the reality is that for most minorities (blacks and Hispanics
especially), there is little that is theirs save what white people allow them,
since all the power is in fact in the hands of whites, or at least in the hands
of the white political and economic elite.
In the election of Trump, whites have demonstrated the full and vengeful
extent of their power. Will anything actually change in their lives now? No,
but for white voters for whom hate consumes all sense of reality, the fact that
more undocumented immigrants were deported at a faster rate during the Obama
administration than thus far during the Trump administration and still people think that Trump is more
“credible” on the issue reveals just how important the very mainstreaming of hate is.
But why should white people—or
any non-whites who are enamored by Trump’s racist rhetoric as long as it is aimed
against other groups—care? After all, he gives them all the excuses they need
to rationalize their bigotry—Trump has a long history of denigrating the work
ethic of blacks, and of course Hispanics are all criminals and rapists—and the
White People’s Party is there to serve the “interests” of who else? But white
voters with any intelligence know that they have more important things to
consider rather than simply be consumed with hate for people without power,
such as the growing wealth gap between people like Trump and everyone else; the
maintenance of civil society, not by more “law and order” but through the
support of so-called “entitlement” programs for the poor and working people,
made more essential than ever by the increasing disparity in wealth by those
who actual decide how that wealth is distributed; the environmental
catastrophes that even the Prince Prosperos of the world will be forced one day
to reckon with, notwithstanding the James Watts of the world who believe that environmental
protection is needless because the “end of the world” is coming soon anyways; and
the undoing of hard-fought health care reform that will beget a human disaster
that will be only temporarily stayed if Trump and the Republicans get their
evil way.
Unfortunately, as a report by the
Guardian on the Montana election that
sent a man to Congress despite being charged with assaulting a reporter merely
for asking a question of vital interest to this country, many white supporters
of the Trump agenda have no clue about the ramifications of their denial of
reality, and some are unable to articulate beyond simple prejudice; as one
frustrated long-time resident said, they are voting for one thing: A “white
man’s country,” and what that means is not something even the white man or
woman can count on.
