Why the Angst?

 

Why the Angst?

        Contemplating the shirt rending and hair tearing of many on the Far Right makes me reflect on other presidential election outcomes throughout my life as a politically aware American. I confess that I’ve never seen such gut level splenetic venting in any of them. I didn’t like Richard Nixon but didn’t see his election as the end of the world. Same for Reagan, I knew he was a dunce, but I thought he’d muddle through somehow.

        To varying extents, since 1954, presidents have played to the post Brown V. Board racial bigot backlash in the United States. Advised and encouraged by Lee Atwater and others, Richard Nixon ran a whole campaign in 1968 about "law and order," which was basically a coded way to talk about, in his perspective, what radical civil rights organizations were doing to the health of the country.

     In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan constantly spoke about "welfare queens" and often characterized poverty as an African American issue and was criticized rightly for using that kind of rhetoric and tapping into this kind of anger and anxiety in white America. That said, their bias was somewhat less personal belief and more political strategy, not to excuse, but to explain it. In any case they didn’t publicly air pure racist diatribes regardless of private convictions.

        With Trump, however, it is also personal animosity and bias. The following quotes, which he knew were for publication, are instructive: “I have black guys counting my money. … I hate it,” “The only guys I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes all day.”  “‘Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that.”  This is not inconsistent with much remaining Southern, learned from parents, dogma.

                I “liked Ike”, and, along the way, actually voted for Bush 41, perhaps, at least on paper, the most experientially qualified candidate in the election of 1988. (besides, little Mikey Dukakis in that tanker helmet…really?) Sadly, George H.W.’s boy was a far cry in either experience or intelligence. With the Obama election, I felt like we might have turned the corner, but to those of the Far Right the vibe was different, since like Clinton, (and in truth Bush 43, to a surprising degree), Barack Obama saw the job as being the Executive representative of all of us. This went down hard for those of the populace of a certain mindset. And that’s what this is about.

        Donald Trump realizes this and has exploited it for the past four years. Nothing drives extremism like hatred, and Trump plays to several distinct sources. Racism had already become far more public, as Barack Obama continued even handed diplomacy both foreign and domestic. The irony and the sad reality is, that by stressing equality (of treatment, not of condition, as some have incorrectly maintained) for all, he became the focal point of animus for those who saw equal treatment and opportunity for all of us  as somehow anti-American as well as a threat to their continued social superiority. When a Rightist repeats the mantra “Obama divided us” it’s actually more a code for, “He was Black, unapologetic and didn’t sugar coat reality.” 

    For just one example, mentioning that Blacks were three times as likely, as a percentage of the population, to be killed by police while unarmed or even handcuffed, rather than identifying a societal ill, became an indictment of the victims, vice the police who were the murderers. Those who Trump has inflamed with sometimes veiled and sometimes blatant racist rhetoric were delighted that their guy “got it.”  The same applied to immigrants and, the darker skinned, the easier to disdain and discriminate against. It is the sort of “dog whistle politics” that every racist idealogue since Caesar has understood (Ficking Celtae!) The British understood it throughout their empire, especially South Africa, Americans re: Native Americans, The Chinese against their Muslim minority, Japan against Korea, Turks against Armenians, and the list goes on far too long. 

         In the post-election of 2016 euphoria, it became not uncommon for MAGA hat wearers, feeling empowered and justified by their leader  to single out persons (including children) of color or “non-white” ethnicity in grocery stores and question their right to be there. It also manifested itself as one of those “very fine people” committing vehicular homicide in Charlottesville, Virginia.

        Likewise, Trump appealed to the Xenophobia bubbling beneath the surface of his acolytes. Without several paragraphs or details, suffice it to say that he marketed the biggest big lie - “They take American jobs,” as well as the “They’re mostly criminals” mantra. For a bias “daily double” he again appealed to bigots, as well as xenophobes, by branding African nations as “shit hole” countries.

    In 2020, voter suppression, aimed along racial lines and elevated to a new level not seen since Reconstruction, was added to the Trump toolbox where it snuggled between bigotry and faux religious conviction.

        The man who, per his own older sister in a candid moment, cares for no one or nothing but Donald Trump, has been characterized by her thus: “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”   “He doesn’t read.” “Donald is cruel.”  “You can’t trust him.”  “His goddamned tweeting and lying, oh my God; I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”

        None of this matters, of course, to (too) many self-proclaimed Christians who use the cloak of faith as if it rendered their actual motivation invisible. 

    So, what’s my take on why Trump continues to resonate with his fan base? It’s simple really. Fear. Specifically, the deep concern that if they (White conservative racists) cease, at some point, being a white majority, they might face the same sort of treatment they now so readily dole out to minorities. For Conservative Christians, the fear that they may find themselves more restricted in attempting to cram their beliefs down the throat of those who don’t accept their dogma. It’s also based on centuries of being told that they, Northern European Caucasians, primarily, are superior to other races.

     Asian immigrants prove the error in this, just as the Irish And Italians were forced to in the 19^th century. Being identified by skin pigment has made it easier for haters to focus on Black and Brown persons. Adding LGBT persons to the mix is Trump’s stock in trade. It has also made almost every Republican office holder hesitant to call him out for fear of voter reprisals.

        And, because It’s what I do, here’s the history lesson: This isn’t even the first time that Republicans moved immediately to discredit a Democrat who won the presidency. It’s not even the second time. The practice of hamstringing a new Democratic President by suggesting that his victory wasn’t “genuine” goes back 28 years, to Bill Clinton.

        In 1992, Clinton won an overwhelming 370-to-168 electoral college majority over then-President George H.W. Bush. Clinton beat Bush in the popular vote by 5.8 million. (as I write, Joe Biden has an over 5 million popular vote edge) But the businessman Ross Perot ran a serious campaign as an independent and won 18.9 percent of the popular vote. As a result, Clinton’s share was 43 percent. Republicans then, smarting from the real loss, asserted that, even though Clinton won a huge Electoral College mandate, he was actually a loser. Then-Republican Senate leader Bob Dole declared the day after the election that Clinton had no “mandate” because “57 percent of the Americans who voted in the presidential election voted against Bill Clinton.” I only dredge this up for younger readers who might otherwise think this bullshit is new.

        What a sad, sorry mess. We need the election hoo-hah settled and President Biden to begin healing. That is simple for me to say, but the struggle will be uphill and arduous. People of character need to stand fast and keep their eyes on the greater prize. What’s the “prize?”  Read the Constitution. It’s all there.