Trump, emboldened delusional racist whites, and harsh reality
Salon has two separate looks at Trump and his racist white nationalist supporters this Sunday. The first takes a look at the false “victimhood” narrative:
The right sees its political opposition as #triggered snowflakes who need a “safe space.” In the words of Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon, “They’re either a victim of race. They’re victim of their sexual preference. They’re a victim of gender. All about victimhood and the United States is the great oppressor, not the great liberator.”
While Donald Trump and his ilk claim that victimhood is exclusive to the coastal, “politically correct” elite, I find that feelings of victimhood are central to Trump’s appeal. Trump supporters believe that whites and Christians face discrimination while people of color reap the benefits of government largess. Far from being concerned about “facts, not feelings,” Trump supporters and the conservative movement have created a false narrative of victimhood that motivates their supporters.
The author, Sean McElwee, crunches a ton of numbers and reaches this conclusion:
To paraphrase a popular idiom, when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like discrimination. These data suggest that this feeling of loss and victimization, and the need for racial solidarity to protect what remains, is core to understanding Trump’s appeal. As I’ve noted before, beliefs in the importance of white racial solidarity are powerful predictors of Trump support. Whites who believe their race is “very important” to their identity had warmer feelings toward Trump. Trump’s rhetoric reflects this reality: He has described a world in which his white supporters are the victims of bad trade deals, elites and rampant crime. They feel they are living through rapid demographic change that will leave them as a minority of the population — and they know how minorities have been treated for so long in American populations.
And that fantasy is deftly sliced and diced by Chauncey de Vega, who explains why it can’t stand:
Click here for reuse options!Through discriminatory immigration policies; government subsidies that created the white middle class and were denied to black Americans and other people of color; de jure and de facto white supremacy; racial discrimination in housing, banking, and the labor market; white racist pogroms and ethnic cleansing; racist terror inflicted by the police, other law enforcement and paramilitary groups such as the Ku Klux Klan; eliminationist policies and land theft toward First Nations people; and a founding document that dictated that black people were human property, America has been a white republic for most of its history.
In his role as the white nationalist in chief of the United States, Donald Trump wants to make clear that America is a white man’s country and that everyone else permitted to live here is just a guest, permanently “on notice.” This is revanchism of the worst kind, and a desperate effort to turn back the clock to the wrong side of history.
Donald Trump and his minions will soon discover that black and brown people built America. Indeed, many of them were in the United States long before “white” Europeans arrived and tried to claim it exclusively as their own. The United States is a mulatto society, not a white nation. In many ways, black and brown people are the quintessential Americans. Whatever Trump may say or do, they are not going anywhere.
Copyright 2017 Liberaland
By: dave-dr-gonzo
David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.
* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.
10 responses to Trump, emboldened delusional racist whites, and harsh reality
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arc99 February 12th, 2017 at 11:25
I like pro football as much as anyone (more than most people). But the hours and hours of coverage and analysis of the Super Bowl action AFTER the game strikes me as rather odd. Who cares if the weak side A-gap blitz pickup failed on a crucial play, other than the organizations involved who have to get ready to compete next year, and need to figure out what went right and what went wrong?
I have the same opinion about these op-eds about the nature of Trump and his support. Not a damn thing will be different unless people get off their a$$es and vote to get us Democratic Congress in 2018 and a Democratic President in 2020. Otherwise all of this navel-gazing punditry is pointless.
Larry Schmitt February 12th, 2017 at 11:41
Kathleen Parker in the post had this column today about trump’s two-year presidency. Just to see how right she is, I saved the column to my sky-drive. That way even if I change computers, it will still be there.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-two-year-presidency/2017/02/10/32c2e4ce-efd9-11e6-9973-c5efb7ccfb0d_story.html?utm_term=.ce0606167af6
StoneyCurtisll February 12th, 2017 at 16:58
And Kathleen Parker is no fringe writer or blogger…
She is as mainstream as they get…
But of course now the ‘main stream media’ has been branded as “fake news” by the new authoritarian administration…
Any dissent will be met with serious,(yet dishonest) backlash…
It’s Orwell’s1984 on steroids.
arc99 February 13th, 2017 at 02:04
I’m afraid this is one rare example where the facts are on the deplorables’ side. The mainstream media is not infallible.
The mainstream botched the 2016 election big time. We were repeatedly told that Trump had no path to 270. Being mainstream is no guarantee that your analysis is accurate. Trump’s 300+ EC votes illustrate that point quite clearly.
Yes Ms. Parker is a mainstream conservative pundit. For the sake of our republic I hope her prediction has some truth in it.
Obewon February 12th, 2017 at 15:15
Delusional (R)acist whites crashed and burned. 55% of USA dumped Trump.
The way Donald Trump is handling his job as president 40%Approve 55% Disapprove – 15-Approve minus Disapprove 2/9-11/17 RNC Pollster Gallup Rolling average. 1,500 adults nationwide. Margin of error 3. http://www.pollingreport.com/djt_job1.htm
Ned Nutley February 13th, 2017 at 15:35
He’s one of the most disliked men in the world
now and most Americans didn’t vote for him,
there’s a growing chance he’ll only be a one
term president, he’s not gaining any new voters
with his incompetence and so many of his
current supporters getting buyers remorse, he
probably won’t even run in 2020 so he can avoid
the “loser” label.
William February 12th, 2017 at 15:27
He’s simply an embarrassment. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7958ba3181a60d0833aac1302d3e6956f811744798abe8c7ab4e1938e475d25f.jpg
granpa.usthai February 13th, 2017 at 09:17
until the deplorables can come to grips with the reality of the election that
LADY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE BY 3,000,000 – a number that is greater than the total population of 19 states, DC, and/or 4 US Territories, they will appear to be the idiots the world already sees them as.
In less than a month in office, their great COWARD COMMANDER PONME has backed away from DPRK and China, giving them a solidified hold in the Asian arena, plus endangering the continental US, specifically Washington, DC to a nuclear/thermonuclear attack. Our troops abroad are in imminent dangers, their families back here are at the complete mercies of the comey illegally armed white racist terrorist in Nevada, and the economy is slowly sinking.
the question each American should be asking themselves is: are we better off now than we were 19 January 2017?
Ned Nutley February 13th, 2017 at 15:34
3 weeks in office and it seems like 3 years!
Ned Nutley February 13th, 2017 at 15:33
With ones like Bannon in his cabinet, deep
down their real goals are to restrict legal
immigration, deport legal immigrants who
use social services, make America white
again, start kicking out non-white people
and punishing the poor!