Part 2-Trump Racism is Bad for America
Part 2-Trump Racism is Bad for America
By T.K. McNeil
Trump Racism is Bad for America. I ended Part I of Trump Racism Is Bad For America by wondering aloud if we were about to return to the dark days of death squads, concentration camps, and gas ovens. Trump racism is obvious for anyone with eyes, ears, or an X account. We are rocked out of our beds daily by angry and racially inflammatory 2 a.m. Tweets. Trump uses a practiced, coded language of dog whistles and red meat taunts that he pitches regularity to his MAGA hatted support base. The intent, an obviously planned effort to keep them agitated and ready for action. If nothing else, Trump’s base seems willfully ignorant and obsessed by fear. If Trump senses any ebbing in support he orders an extra rally, or maybe two; re-news attacks on the press; berates everyone from Rachel Maddow to Zelinskyy; but most notably, he intensifies attacks against immigrants, NFL players, entertainers like Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen, threatening “major investigations.” That’s how Trump works.
Trump racism dressed as law and order. Have people forgotten Trump opened his 2016 campaign with an unprecedented tirade against Mexican “criminal, drug mules and rapists?” Trump has revived nativist themes that have not been heard aloud since George H.W. Bush. In 1988 HW supporters used the image of a black killer/rapist Willie Horton to effectively sabotage his opponent Michael Dukakis. Until now, that ad campaign was considered a true low point in political racist tactics.
Jump to today. In a similar tact Trump is replacing the face of black man Willie Horton with the brown face of an illegal immigrant, and convicted cop killer, Luis Bracamontes. Hammering the anti-immigrant theme Trump claims that Democrats will open the country to criminals. Trump’s vitriol is toxic, but Trump is convinced that it was just such rhetoric that secured him the presidency the first time. Instinctively, he keeps pushing the limits of what passes for barely acceptable political discourse toward an ever-darkening place.
More evidence of Trump racism keeps emerging. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney for over a decade and a convict for three years, opens up about Trump racism. On Friday 11-2-2018 Vanity Fair published a damning portrait of the president. According to Cohen, Trump made frequent racist comments, most particularly against blacks. Cohen claimed that Trump frequently used the N word and other demeaning statements made about black people, their intellect, their abilities, their communities and even their countries. Cohen confirmed to Vanity Fair writer Emily Jane Fox that language reported by Omarosa Manigault Newman in her book, “Unhinged An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House” was typically Trump. So, Trump doesn’t limit his hate; he hates everybody that isn’t orange.
Keeping the fire hot. Trump has never stopped his campaigning. He has never become president of all the people. He is president of a core base and his goal is to keep them frightened and angry. He wants them fired up ready to attack whenever and wherever he points his accusatory finger. Trump racism is emerging more clearly as time progresses. Trump’s inflammatory language, reckless “otherism” and dehumanizing xenophobic attacks are clearly designed to divide the country.
Fear and Loathing is part of the performance. It’s no surprise that we as a country have a scrubbed and shiny public face and a secret horrific Dorian Grey face. That hidden-self, locked in the basement of our national identity is trying to come out of its imprisonment. All the while Trump, our Mad Hatter conductor, has had us on a head spinning ride of public debauchery, corruption and criminality. Trump careens from truth to delusion, to conspiracy theory, and back to racism all in blink of an eye.
Social Fears Are At The Root Of Trump’s Methodology. That said, we all know that there is a portion of the American psyche that hates and fears immigration, that hates and fears the blacks, that hates and fears Jews, that hates and fears POC, that hates and fears the changing demographics of America, that hates and fears tomorrow, that hates and fears the unknown. Those societal fears are what Trump racism feeds on.
The foes of inclusiveness. The ability to whip the mentally susceptible and the White Supremacist extremist fringe into a frenzy of violence is easy to imagine. The increased racial and ethnic violence will become a growing problem as he continues to demonize the “others” in our society. This man has the biggest bully pulpit in the country and he is using it to inflame the worst elements of our society. He is using his position to promote fear and racial tensions as he divides the country with his Trump racist white supremacist agenda.
Ethnic and racial murder on the rise. The pipe bomb mailings, the synagogue massacre, the Kroger killings, the Portland light rail murders, the Heather Hyer murder, Jewish Embassy staff member killings are all separate crimes in separate geographical areas but with the same theme of racial and ethnic hatred. There can be no doubt that Trump is pouring kerosene on the already raging flames of xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment that fueled his political rise. Violence is easy to stoke but the ability to tone it down is not likely to be found in Donald Trump. This should be of concern for all of us. Stability is what makes our great American life possible, and Trump with his firebrand demagoguery could potentially destroy that essential of our life.
The noise is so loud. With Trump’s first election; historians, political scientists and psychologists began frantically sounding alarm bells. How is it possible that after decades of progress the United States in the early part of the 21st century would become the epicenter of a growing firestorm of racial, ethnic and religious hate activity? It is important to remember that Hitler didn’t load the cattle cars and he didn’t personally switch on the ovens. He had his core of radicalized supporters to do that for him.
12,000 year old trinket. Twelve thousand years ago in a small Neolithic community in the Ukraine an early human carved a small ivory swastika and left it to be found by a modern team of archeologists. The swastika symbol has been found in archeological sites across the world from that cold Ukrainian dig to Celtic burial sites in Great Britain.
Pawns of a maniac. In a remarkable 15 year time span a geometric figure representing divinity and spirituality morphed into the symbol of the most murdering racist regime of the 20th century. A regime that was directly responsible for the murder of millions of human beings because they were religiously “different” than the majority. The six million dead; nothing more than pawns in a world shaped by racism and barbarism. A world where a demagogue manufactured an enemy through fiery hate-filled rhetoric.
Taking action. A charismatic leader can point with raging illogical rants against racial, ethnic and religious targets making them the “enemies of the people.” Simply put the demagogue (Hitler in this case) convinced his followers that “his” enemies were “their” enemies. Sadly, Donald Trump incites similar reactions from his supporters. Wanting to help him, these angry, fearful, and malleable people begin to search for ways they can take action to help him. Some will act as individuals, while others will join “militia groups.” Before long the supporters will turn the fiery hateful speech into hateful action. Getting people to hate “others” is all part of the Trump racism model.
Trump racism is becoming more and more obvious. “I love my country, if that makes me a Nationalist, so be it.” So, Donald Trump is a “Nationalist”. He’s actually came out and said so. In fact, he felt so confident in his newly identified status that he has repeated the assertion multiple times. Such honest pride. Such admission from Trump comes as little surprise to most of us who identified his racism many years ago.
It’s all in the definition. A closer inspection of the term “Nationalist” will reveal an insane rabbit hole of illogic so deep it is difficult to know where to begin. I suppose the best place is the actual definition of the term “Nationalist.” At its etymological core and according to the first definition in the dictionary, “Nationalist” refers to a person or group campaigning for the political sovereignty of their people or area, in other words, to become a nation”
Seeking nation status. Modern day examples from today’s headlines; The Basques are seeking to separate from Spain. The French “Nationalists” of Quebec are seeking to separate from Canada. Scotland seeks recognition as a separate nation. At the core of these nationalist movements is that native instinct to separate “us” from “them.” At some point the secessionists have felt “separated” somehow different from the larger community and finally that “difference” has created a sense of “minority” for them within the whole. With “minority” status comes discrimination real and perceived.
Rewind. To get back to Trump and his insanely ridiculous “I’m a Nationalist” statement of half a decade ago, the President of the United States of America calling himself a “Nationalist” clearly makes no logical sense. The U.S.A. is already a Republic. The “most free” form of all modern government systems. It really is government by the people of the nation. Our democracy is even more “free”, in a functional sense, than Constitutional Monarchies such as Britain, Canada, The Netherlands, Australia and Sweden.
Is the past such a good thing? Trump says “Nationalist” is an old-fashioned term. As illiterate as he seems to be I doubt if he understands how right he is. In practical, geo-political terms, the last American President who could truly be considered a “Nationalist”, in the original sense, was George Washington.
Heart thumping pride. In current parlance, the descriptor “Nationalist” has become associated with extreme nationalism based on ethnicity and an overblown pride in one’s “pure white” nation. This is, however, a bit of a new twist on an old concept.
Symbolism. To me the symbol of Trumpism is that red MAGA hat. Will history books declare that the red baseball cap has become so vilified that humanity refuses to ever wear them again? Could Trump legacy be that toxic? Will that toxicity infect this country like it did Nazi Germany? Or will we as a people be able to turn the tide; making Trump and Trump racism nothing more than a historical footnote? Time will give us our answer, but the potential that Trump racism will expand into an extreme phenomenon where millions are murdered or imprisoned in concentration camps remains a possibility.
Part 3- Trump Racism is Bad For America-by Trevor K. McNeil @www.calamitypolitics.com
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