Midterm election will determine just how big a majority of white America is motivated by unreasoning, unjustified fear

Franklin Delano Roosevelt made many speeches that have had an indelible imprint on the national consciousness. In his 1932 inauguration speech he derided the “falsity of material wealth as the standard of success,” and in his 1936 Madison Square Garden address, he took on the forces of corporate greed and far-right politics head-on:

For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best that is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace, business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.

But FDR’s most famous line (more than the “Infamy” of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor) was in the opening of his 1932 address:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

It is unfortunate that today we do not have that standard bearer of national conscious whose credibility is so unimpeachable that he (or she) can expose the forces of hate and fear in the form of Donald Trump and Republicans who grovel for the crumbs of his fanatical supporters feasting on his rhetoric of racial paranoia for who they really are. Trump is first and foremost a creature of money; his entire self-image is based on his evaluation of his personal wealth. He has “his,” so the only explanation for his attacks on minorities and dehumanizing and demonizing immigrants is his contempt for people he believes he has no financial interest in associating with. Such a man who thrives on hate and bigotry is always in the market for fanatical cheering wherever he can find it, even from the lowest of the low of whom he normally would not socialize with or even deign to tolerate in his presence—unless, of course, they are attractive women he can’t keep his hands off, even porn stars.

This mid-term election is clearly a referendum not on the insane policies of Trump, but on this country’s tolerance for hate. Historically, white people seem to have a greater tolerance for hate than one might expect from a “superior” race, although many would say that is the reason for it. In that vein I am fascinated by the continuing “cult” of Charles Manson, in which many people still prefer to ignore the murders and focus on the “culture” of “love” that was supposedly fostered. But as the recent documentary “Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes” makes plain, this “love” was for “whites only” and to start a “race war.” What wasn’t mentioned is the sexual rationalizations for this “war,” that Manson’s “plan” was to draw all the eligible young white females (at least locally) into his “family,” and all those black men allegedly hot for white female flesh would become crazed from being deprived of this “outlet” for their sexual “appetites”  and start attacking white people, thus starting this war (I’m not making this up—it’s right there on the Wiki page for Manson’s plan for “helter skelter” ). Unfortunately, Manson was not getting enough of the young white women off the streets quick enough, so in order to get the race war going, he decided to start it himself, with the help of the most “expendable” members of his “family.”

Of course, it isn’t all that surprising that the assumed fears and paranoia of white women and the need to “protect” them is being used to stir hate and racism in the base to swing the Trump/Republican way in the midterm elections tomorrow. Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post wrote that 

What do women want? President Donald Trump thinks he knows. “Women want security,” Trump said about the caravan of migrants heading to the U.S. border with Mexico during a rambling press conference on Thursday. “Women don’t want them in our country. You look at what the women are looking for: They want to have security.”  He again proclaimed, without evidence, that the migrants were “tough people,” and warned that if they throw rocks at troops he’s sending to the border, “I say, consider it a rifle.”…Besides the patronizing assumption that women need his protection, Trump’s message also echoed racist sentiments of America’s past that minorities were out to rape white women.

But The New York Times tells us that many white women do feel they need “protection” from the raping and pillaging hordes coming across the border:

Yet days before the midterm elections, women are streaming into the president’s campaign events wearing bedazzled hats and T-shirts proclaiming Mr. Trump’s greatness. In between the selections from the musical “Cats,” the Celine Dion ballads and the Elton John classics that fill out the president’s campaign soundtrack, they hoist hot-pink “Women for Trump” signs as they balance babies on their hips. And they scoff at the suggestion that Mr. Trump—who has been accused of sexual assault and boasted graphically that he could do “anything” with women—has a problem with them….But it is their visceral fear of immigrants and raw anger about changes in cultural mores…that appear to be driving the intensity of their support for the president… Mr. Trump has not tempered his tone, instead betting that his fear-based appeals will resonate with women. “Border security is very much a woman’s issue,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday afternoon in Belgrade, Mont. “Women want security. They don’t want that caravan.”…That is certainly the case for Kristin Sellers, 48, of Pace, Fla., who said she was “anxious as hell” about the migrants, and trusted Mr. Trump to keep them out.

But these far-right hate fanatics are not the only “problem”; so-called “liberal” women and feminists are also guilty of harboring the ugliest of stereotypes, particularly when it comes to Hispanic males. I once encountered this when I was walking down an aisle in a Seattle QFC; I noticed peripherally that a young white female was glaring at me coming from the opposite direction. I just kept walking keeping my head straight, but she nearly ran into me and when I was forced to look at her directly she sneered “Looking at my boobs?” I let out a sigh and retorted “No, I’m looking at a fucking Boob.” To be blunt, I haven’t had time for any woman for years, but self-involved, bigoted white women especially.

I dug-up a story in an obscure “self-love” website written by a white woman and self-proclaimed feminist named Ginger Stickney, whose “partner” was Hispanic. She expressed her fear that her son—by default “Hispanic”—would be a target of racist stereotypes, especially by other white women:

After all, these women were talking about men like my son. Girls in my classroom warned each other about Mexican men. The men leered at them, they claimed. These stories did more than shove people into stereotypes. They created an idea of the over-sexual brown man. And, of course, I’ve heard these same stories about black men.

When we as white women share these stories of being checked out and catcalled by men of color, we are creating a culture in which these men easily become seen as sexual predators. I am as guilty as my friends, which is why I committed to stopping this line of thinking a couple of months ago. Nobody deserves to be unfairly cast into any role. These stories and practices contribute to an image of lechery. How much of a step is it to imagine men of color unable to control those impulses?

It is interesting to note that FBI arrest statistics (not actual convictions) on rape have doubled since 2013, but not because incidents of rape is on the rise, but because the definition of “rape” was politically-driven to include not just “forcible rape,” but revised to include just about anything “sexual” without “consent.” Anything from “slight penetration”—however that is defined—to any action that may lead to unwanted sexual interaction is now included in the definition of “rape.” Aggravated assault, by the way, still accounts for ¾ of all violent crime arrests, while homicide arrests until the 2013 changes occurred at about the same number as rapes. However, even with the expanded definition, it is about 1-in-7,000  women who make rape accusations, which in turn result in arrests--which brings to mind the claim that one-in-three college women are raped and the frequent claim by the more extreme gender advocates that there is a "culture" and "epidemic" of rape in this country. What is interesting about the new guidelines is that under the category of arrests by “ethnicity”—meaning “Hispanic” and everyone else, although by “ethnicity” any “race” is included—Hispanic rates were more affected by inclusion of what had previously been categorized as “sexual offenses” other than rape. As suggested before, this may be more due to the fact that women (or rather, white women) are more prone to see Hispanic males as “sexual predators” and be predisposed to view any encounter in that light, whether justified or not.

Take for instance the case of one Luis Garcia. In April, 2009 Garcia was charged in Pierce County in the state of Washington with rape in the first degree and assault in the second degree, which was alleged to have occurred in August 2000. In 2011 he was arrested and confined in jail for 300 days. In 2012 the state filed an amended complaint charging Garcia with a single count of assault in the first degree with a fictitious commission date (August 2006). Garcia was persuaded by his attorney to enter a plea and was sentenced to 83 months of confinement. He was released in February 2016, the case against him dismissed with prejudice. Garcia had withdrawn his guilty plea in 2013, claiming that he had not made a knowing and intelligent decision, and was not advised of his waiver if the statute of limitations had passed, and his constitutional rights were violated. In fact the trial court lacked the authority to enter a judgment and to sentence since the statute of limitations had expired. An appellate court vacated the conviction with prejudice, but the state attempted to retry him on the original charges. After his new attorney filed a motion to dismiss, the state also did so based on the fact that the “victim” had admitted that she had not been raped, but was (allegedly) assaulted by a boyfriend. The alleged victim was also “deceased.”  Thus is how fanatical gender advocates in the criminal justice system are when they seek to prove that sexual crimes are “epidemic”—knowingly keeping a man in prison not only unjustly but with total disregard for due process. That he was “Hispanic” was just “coincidental.”

Stickney bemoans the fact that feminists have done much to stoke this fear-based stereotyping of Hispanic males—who naturally  compose that “caravan” of "rapists," "killers" and "terrorists."  It was two white feminist “researchers” who, after all, supplied the “rapists” claim that Trump used during his campaign. As I pointed out back then, illegal immigrant women were liable to say anything that would “please” their questioners in the hope of receiving preferential treatment, and furthermore it wasn’t the male immigrants they were traveling with crossing the border that they necessarily were accusing. The U.S. military’s own assessment of the threat to national security posed by the caravan is somewhat less frightful than Trump and Jeff Sessions’ assessment. Besides no evidence of “criminals” and “terrorists” in their ranks, only a small percentage are expected to reach the border (just over a 1,000)—half of them children, or in Sessions’ feverish mind, soon-to-be gang members—to face-off against 5,000 soldiers. According to the Washington Post, “The assessment also indicates military planners are concerned about the presence of ‘unregulated armed militia’ groups showing up at the border in areas where U.S. troops will operate.” 

What makes this all the more absurd is—besides the patently racist refugee policy that ignores the U.S.’ own historical role in the social and economic subversion of Central America—is that most Hispanics are “invisible” to white America until it is time to find a scapegoat or something to focus their hate on. Hate makes some people feel “good.” But not all immigrants are hated, of course. Included in that group is the one-in-six residents of Indian heritage who are in the country illegally, many of them concealed by Indian-owned businesses and franchises; Chinese “parachute” children landing in small town Iowa to “revitalize” dead communities (or is it to kick the asses of lazy students at otherwise all-white schools into gear?), and Russian “birth tourists,” like those bikini-clad women proudly displaying their bulging bellies on the beaches of Miami. Those Russians are not here to work and contribute to the economy like Hispanic immigrants; they hope that their U.S.-born kids can partake in the benefits of being born here whenever they feel like it without the responsibilities of being a U.S. citizen. 

Thus ignorance and hypocrisy is part of the stew of hate, nativism and xenophobia. There are problems with the immigration system, but most of it has to do with attempts to racialize who gets to be allowed legal entry, particularly from Latin America even though past U.S. policy toward the region makes it appear that this country merely regarded it as its own “backyard.” But some have noted that what is actually occurring is that Trump is paying the price for ignoring Latin America, and as usual instead of changing course he is doubling down. Why has he done this? Likely because he has few business or financial interests in the region, plus he hasn’t been known to “socialize” with any Hispanics no matter what their level of success is, so there is no one he is afraid of offending. But Trump “personalizing” every issue isn’t news; what is “news” is that he threatens the civil rights of every Hispanic in this country, even those who are in every way an American.

This is what this election is about.  Trump and his supporters in the media, white women like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, are banking on white people’s acceptance of dehumanization and demonization of a whole group of people simply because they hate them and fear them. This election will tell us how much nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance is the guiding principle in the minds of the large majority of white people who Republicans are banking on. It is not a question if the majority of whites will vote on the basis of ignorance and prejudice and fear and paranoia and hypocrisy, but if it is big enough a majority to maintain control of Congress.