When Trump won a first term in 2016, virtually all pundits and traditional media outlets bent over backwards to give his voters the benefit of the doubt. They mostly attributed his support to economic anxiety, despite the fact that a significant majority of poorer Americans had voted for Hillary Clinton.
Research in the wake of that election pointed to a very different motive for those votes: racism. Over the intervening years, it has become abundantly clear that what scholars delicately refer to as “racial resentment” is the glue holding MAGA together–and yet, the legacy media still seems reluctant to call it what it is.
Non-“legacy” sources, however, increasingly point to the elephant in the room. (Pun intended.)
Heather Cox Richardson recently took on Trump’s efforts to cow museums into an alternate view of history, writing
When Trump says that our history focuses too much on how bad slavery was, he is not simply downplaying the realities of human enslavement: he is advocating a world in which Black people, people of color, poor people, and women should let elite white men lead, and be grateful for that paternalism. It is the same argument elite enslavers made before the Civil War to defend their destruction of the idea of democracy to create an oligarchy. When Trump urges Republicans to slash voting rights to stop socialism and keep him in power, he makes the same argument former Confederates made after the war to keep those who would use the government for the public good from voting.
Talking Points Memo has been equally blunt. In a recent Morning Memo titled “Trump Pushes White Nationalist Agenda Across Multiple Fronts,” Josh Marshall wrote that Trump’s anti-immigrant animus is
fundamentally a story about racism, xenophobia, and othering. It’s about preying on our fears, differences, and prejudices to create a villainous foe whom he can easily vanquish in repeated set-pieces. It’s about letting loose the worst of our impulses to heighten and sustain divisions among us.
The mass deportation agenda is just one part of a larger agenda in which white Americans are fronted as the real America and everyone else is second-class, unless they individually demonstrate in lavish ways a high enough degree of fealty to Donald Trump.
And at Lincoln Square, Stuart Stevens was even more direct, writing that Trump is a racist and that fact needs to be called out.
After decades of evidence — the dog whistles, the calls for innocent black men to be executed, the bizarre fixation on the Confederacy, his alliance with known Nazis and White Christian Nationalists — saying these things, that Donald Trump is a fascist, that he is a racist, should be the least controversial thing to say about him….
For seven months, he’s rounded up brown people for deportation, imprisonment, or total disappearance. He’s attempting to convince his base that slavery wasn’t so bad, after all. Some in his orbit are echoing this sentiment, going so far as to claim we shouldn’t actually blame white people for slavery.
He doesn’t like Black or brown people. Nearly every action is motivated by that dislike. Every breath he takes is flush with a fear and hatred of people who are not white.
What would you call that?
Ever since 2016, Americans of goodwill have tied ourselves in knots trying to understand why any sentient person would vote for Donald Trump–an ignorant buffoon with a limited intellect and unlimited self-regard. The answer to that question has always been obvious, despite a well-meaning desire that it not be so.
James Carville was wrong. It isn’t “the economy, stupid.” It’s the racism, stupid! As my youngest son observed, way back in 2016, only two kinds of people voted for Donald Trump: those who shared his racism, and those for whom it wasn’t disqualifying.
The civil war really never ended. It just morphed.
A great leader harvests the most appropriate core values of egalitarianism (justice in distributive power) and elitism (those most capable … lead). Instead, our current President polarizes deep divide for his own personal gain. The greater good is completely ignored. Atrophy accelerates when energy is derived from the tensions of polar opposites. The pendulum eventually swings. The current side show is temporary. Trump will be viciously characterized as the comical buffoon he is in the history books. False monuments will eventually be destroyed. Future generations will not know his name. AND that should be a source of relief by his descendants.
Norris has too many wishes on the backs of Americans. I would also add to Sheila’s son list the quiet racists. We’ve got Christian Nationalists and those who claim to be Christian who are getting tired of Zionism – some are even saying Bibi has gone too far. They say the word genocide, but you have to step in to hear them.
I listened to the clip of Huckabee with some Jewish Zionists Priests blaming sheer ignorance for anti-semitism. These people claim that the ignorance is from people not understanding that “Jews are the Chosen People.” I keep forgetting this as I read about another attack from the Jewish air force at aid stations that had clearly marked journalists. These should be committed international war crimes. Period.
Neither the Jews nor the Christians are superior to anyone. They’ve both been conned by desperate men and women inventing a religion used to control the masses. Like I said yesterday, Hitler wrote a book about controlling the masses, and it would seem someone inside Trump’s administration is following the path Hitler laid down. When I saw that picture of Trump hanging down on a government building, I had an eerie feeling of Hitler before WW2.
While we step back and take a wider look, MAGA has lots of facets or attendees. A large percentage are just ignorant. We’ve had two local elected Democrats announce they are joining the Republican Party because the Democrats have gone too far left and are full of communists. What a neat way of blaming the DP “moves to the left” instead of admitting you’re a racist. They also fear gays and transvestites. I’ve seen some awful memes about gay men lately.
Mark my word, those Patriots pardoned by Trump for insurrection are being hired into ICE, thus the masks. Once the “illegal immigrants” are deported, who will be next on Trump’s list? The Africans?
As a reminder, Hitler said this about the ignorant masses – he used the word “simple” instead of ignorant. It’s all about using propaganda (lying to the ignorant masses:
“The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way, the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.”
Trump might not grasp these final words of Hitler, but I bet Stephen Miller does.
Every day, we see a new corroboration of the substance of today’s essay. That’s what having 24% of the population pick the worst possible leader for democracy. I know Todd and others are tired of me posting about those social sloths who didn’t vote in 2024. BUT I think it remains the salient point behind the plight of today. Remember, nearly the same numbers applied to the 2016 election too. I know that is only a sample of two elections, but that might be the reason we don’t have another.
Tyranny is temporary. I side with wisdom from the ages written in The Old Testament:
• Psalm 72:4: “May he defend the afflicted… and crush the oppressor.” The ideal ruler is one who ends tyranny, not perpetuates it.
• Ecclesiastes 8:11–13: Though judgment may be delayed, “it will not be well with the wicked.” Tyranny may seem to endure, but its downfall is inevitable
I think we do need to call it what it is. Often and loudly. I have thrown racists out of my home. It’s time they either retreat to their rat holes or perhaps move to Russia. Lots of white folks there.
Some years ago, it was reported that Trump kept a copy of “Mein Kampf” on his night table. Actually, or not, that is his modus operandi.
What he’s really president of, is “Dirtbags Anonymous.”
Racism has no easy fixes. What is more likely to take down our country are the people who don’t vote. And MAGA, Inc. is in full activity across the country to ensure that even more people won’t in the future
Trump and those lip-locked to his rump, including voters, are cut from the same cloth. Trump came from a patriarchal, authoritarian family well known to be racist landlords. He has always been an empty entertainer, performing for money as he frittered away the wealth he stole from his siblings by getting Roy Cohen to get his demented father to sign a document he couldn’t even read at that point in his life.
All that being said, blaming others is how he gathered power, but attracting voters is how the blue party must proceed to regain its share in next year’s midterms. There is evidence that the governors, senators, and representatives who might compete in the next presidential primary are already doing so.
Liberal democracy relies on political competition to allocate power.
Bring it on, DJT. Stand toe to toe in the ring of the free press, Blues, and punch hard and often while defending your constituents from every punch the Reds have to throw.
Balance is needed. to far left or too far right, won’t work.
We cannot have everything. It never was perfect, but at least it was not insane.
Read “A Fever in the Heartland” by Timothy Egan about the KKK in Indiana in the 1920’s. It will leave you shaking in your boots. Their frightening message is being replicated today.