For Trump supporters, "patriotism" and racism are inseparable

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-19^th 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.

To do or not to do may mean little in 2018 to Trump's supporters

Donald Trump’s 100 days are up with very little to show for it, save a few items to satisfy bigots that Trump hasn’t turned “soft” on them, like claiming that he wants to be president for “all” Americans, not just a minority consisting of white xenophobes and nativists. Far-right commentators and Republican lawmakers—and “lawmakers” should be put in quotes when applied here, since Republicans tend to spend their time undoing laws when they are not just lounging about on the taxpayer dime—are warning that if Trump’s anti-healthcare agenda, pro-rich tax “reform,” and racial and ethnic paranoia is not translated into something more substantial than mere rhetoric, then there will be “hell to pay” in the 2018 mid-term elections. Of course, one recalls when a party actually does something constructive—like passing affordable healthcare for all, (some) regulation against a reenactment of the “Great Recession,” rolling back the worst abuses of the Bush-era tax cuts, and saving hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs by keeping the domestic auto industry afloat—there was still “hell to pay” from voters who thought it was too much and it was time to put a stopper on it. 

That equation might be different now, because Republicans are in power and they do what they always do, rule by subtraction. Some voters seem to believe that “less” is “more,” but that equation only make “sense” for those who think less wages and benefits for working people should mean more for the few. One paper-pushing corporate CEO who “earns” $100 million a year in compensation is probably paid at least $98 million more than they are worth, and that money could have been applied to a $10,000 raise for 10,000 low-wage employees; multiply that by a few factors (after all, we are talking about just the top .001 percent in that example), you can see just how out-whack this country’s priorities are. And Trump’s proposed tax “reform,” cutting rates for the rich by half, is supposed to “help” working Americans? 

There were those who were farsighted enough in the depths of the Great Depression to know that the top marginal tax rates of 70 to 90 percent went far to undo such imbalances by making it more beneficial for corporate executives to employ more people and pay higher wages, since personal greed was not “profitable” for them. It also helped the federal budget because more people were paying taxes (not to mention not being on public assistance), instead of being “replaced” by a few idle rich doing what they could to avoid paying taxes at all. But along came Reagan, and the era of personal greed over national well-being prevailed, and continues to be so.  Trump and Republicans claim that reducing tax rates to 15 percent for the super-rich will create jobs, which even the economists who pushed a much less “radical” cut under Reagan admit that its trickle-down benefit never came about, in fact going in the opposite direction ever since.

Trump and many of his supporters in Congress are the product of personal greed and social elitism, and voters who believe Trump is for the “little guy” will soon become disabused of that notion if his agenda actually becomes law; ethnic and racial scapegoating will not create jobs, but likely cost jobs by forcing businesses to shut-down because complaining is an easier occupation than getting one’s fundament off the sofa while watching Fox News. No, what might make a greater impression of what a Trump presidency really means won’t be apparent until he actually does manage to get the Republicans to pass his agenda. It might not become apparent right away, but it did take less than a decade for the massive anti-regulation financial “reform” of 1998 which the greed-ridden Clintons endorsed to do its work, and outside a few of the worst institutional abusers, the ones who “paid” were working people. 

One wonders if the reality of Trump matters more than if his agenda becomes substance or not by 2018. Polls on healthcare reform and immigration seem to indicate that the opinion of a radical minority carries far more weight than that of the majority in the minds of Trump and the Republicans, but what does that matter?  Does doing nothing “safer” than doing something, or does simply rolling back “change” to the “bad” we already know easier to tolerate? Perhaps people don’t want too many “complications” in their lives, especially those things they can’t perceive directly effecting them, since ignorance of the “unknown” tends to unleash powerful emotions, like paranoia and scapegoating. 

But does that also mean they don’t like the idea of having “choices,” which Trump intends to deprive them of? If people can’t afford healthcare, or their employer doesn’t provide it, does that mean they don’t want the “choice” of an alternative (like Obamacare), other than dying? Do they feel more comfortable not having a “choice” about whether unregulated financial institutions are allowed to gamble away their hard-earned money, like they tried to do before the Great Recession? Do they prefer not having a choice if there is environmental and food safety regulation, and polluters are allowed to pollute unfettered by any regulations or laws? Or are we a nation of the kind of person I once overheard, an older man, demanding to know why he should pay taxes to fund public education. He has no kids. 

What do I think will happen in 2018 if the Trump/Republican agenda does not come to fruition? Probably no more than if it does, and nobody notices too substantial an effect on their lives either way. Gerrymandering has entrenched the Republicans in the House of Representatives, and they might lose a few seats in the Senate. This is a country that only understands pain of the personal pocket book kind; for now, Trump and the Republicans have found it expedient to focus white paranoia on the usual suspects, but that will only work if things are only so bad enough that the most vulnerable can be blamed. Anything bigger, white voters will have to consider that maybe—like in 2008—minorities and “liberals” were not to blame for the state of country, but people like Trump, his rich friends and Republicans.

Trump's governing "philosophy" dispenses with the "common good"--or any other "good"

I haven’t posted anything here for a while not because nothing is happening, but because it is so hard to respond to lies and stupidity befitting a child, and so much is happening that angers and frustrates seemingly on a daily basis that one hardly knows where to start. Every day a new example of the inhumanity inherent in an ideology that denies the validity of the social contract in favor of what Hobbes’ called the “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” life which the political and economic “elites” wish to foist on society as a whole in order to “validate” the their own selfish brutality. The social contract, according to Rousseau, recognized that “libertarian” and “natural” philosophies allowed for an “undeveloped” sense of ethics and morality, and that the contract as enforced by civil government instilled in the governed a more developed sense of moral responsibility to their fellow man. Civil society should follow the “general will” for the common good of all, "directed towards their common preservation and general well-being." Locke believed that the populace required government to protect them from those seeking to “injure or enslave” them—not to make it easier for private individuals or orgnizations with the economic, political and judicial power to do so. 

Yet the social contract is under violent assault by Donald Trump and his alt-right henchpersons who seem unable or unwilling to answer for their moral and ethical defects. From healthcare to immigration to taxes to economic regulation to environmental protection to Trump’s evil budget proposal, the greed and inhumanity of the far-right’s assault on the social contract continues unabated. Trump has attempted to usurp the contract that is the underpinning of democratic civil society with the fascist ideology of corporate control by the “elites” of society which he himself is a part of, along with Republican politicians whose worldview is closely aligned with the Antebellum period of this country’s history. Yet millions of voters in this country who are seen merely as “plebes” by the self-entitled “patricians” have willingly allowed themselves to be duped by unsubtle rhetoric that plays on their paranoia, bigotry and search for scapegoats. Instead, the demand for civil and economic rights by the “dark races” must be fended off by expanded military and law enforcement power—to be paid for by abandoning the social contract almost completely.

The working class poor—a term seemingly interchangeable with that of “minorities” in the minds of those who see the world through a racial prism—are not the “problem” and never were. The reality is exposed in even the most commonplace of situations. For example, I’m sitting in a restaurant for whom those who are cost conscious find convenient for their pocketbook. While I am sitting there feasting on the value menu items I observe a man wearing a buttoned-down shirt and tie come into the establishment not as a customer but merely to sit at a table and go to work on a stack of scratch tickets from a nearby lottery ticket vending machine. When he was done with those, he walks out into the lobby and slid some bills into the vending machine, and returned with a new stack of cards, with apparently the same result of failure. I observed this activity repeated a third time, and a fourth time as I was leaving. This time I could see that he was loading a wad of $20 bills into the vending machine; he must have spent at least $500 on scratch tickets in the last hour. 

Observing this, I could not but be overcome with a feeling of disgust over the distribution of wealth in this country. Nobody really needs to be “rich” to be happy. Who really needs a mansion if not to store expensive, useless knickknacks to impress other conceited people. For me, books and a music and video collection more than adequately fills empty time, and writing this blog gives me a small connection to world at large. I don’t need to waste money going out to expensive amusements and eateries in order to “socialize” and confirm one’s vanity—or to waste hundreds of dollars on scratch tickets. Meanwhile, millions of working people in this country barely make ends meet, thanks to the belief that a few people have a right to decide what is a proper distribution of income, which includes one’s expectations of how much money they should “earn” more than mere working people; the vast majority of those who decide are corporate executives who just happened to drop into their positions without ever having to dirty their hands with actually creating the wealth they so easily rob. “Class,” of course, has a great deal to do with it;  people who work in an office believe they are superior to those who work in the warehouse or production facility. They get the free coffee and pastry, while the “working class” have to do with the overpriced items in a vending machine.

Thus the most significant inequality in this country is not what you hear from talking heads on cable news, “pretty people” with “victim” complexes that their own existences is exposed as self-serving indulgence, but is in fact the inequitable distribution of wealth. This inequity doesn’t even have to do with the “top one” percent and everyone else, but from above and below the median income in places like Seattle; half the people in Seattle make almost $100,000 and above a year. It is a white (and Asian) good old boys and girls club where club members and their friends “look out” for each other. Even in “liberal” Seattle, racial tolerance only goes so far as the under-represented minority is useful to be patronized with a few crumbs thrown well down the social ladder to ease any “guilt.” However, that is at least more than what Trump and his gang of racists are willing to do.

 We are told that if we remove the incentive that allows the tiny minority to skeletonize the working class in order to gain as much personal wealth as possible, that this “elite” class loses the motivation or ability to create jobs. Trump and his ilk speak out of both mouths here, blaming immigrants for low wages, yet refusing to support adequate minimum wage rates, saying it will “hurt” businesses. Yet this mindset loses sight of the fact that wealth cannot be created in a vacuum; in order to allow the few to push paper, crush data or make phone calls all day from a comfy chair, someone has to do the actual work, and it is those people who have become little more than nameless, faceless numbers on a spread sheet. If they don’t “accept” the way of the world, they are simply replaced; they don’t get a multi-million dollar “golden parachute.” They are not seen as human beings with problems that are largely the result of poor compensation for their labor. 

Trump repeatedly claims that he is for all Americans—although his definition of who is an “American” is not exactly clear; his rhetoric and actions seem to limit that “privilege” to those who share his pallid complexion, if not his bad hair. Yet even that is a con-job: his administration is entirely under the control not of persons who have a working knowledge of their responsibilities to those constituencies under their purview, but of rich and/or powerful elites whose only “responsibility” in their minds is to their own enrichment at the expense of the “plebes.” They feel no responsibility to maintaining civil society in accordance to the social contract; their “answer” to the defects of their ideology is oppression and tyranny, the more the better. This is the evil that underlines the Trump administration—the more so because Trump himself has never felt compelled to play by the rules of the social contract.