For reasons I have never understood, Ronald Reagan has a positive reputation among Americans. I’ll grant you that he is the only Republican president of the past 60 years whose term in office didn’t end in defeat, disgrace, or both. But why a dithering old bigot who ignored AIDS, created the homelessness crisis, and unleashed hell in Central America is regarded as some kind of folksy icon of freedom is beyond me.
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The “woke mob” didn’t kill 10 people in Buffalo.
A transgender swimmer didn’t kill 10 people in Buffalo.
A teacher talking about CRT didn’t kill 10 people in Buffalo.
No, the biggest menace to Americans continues to be an angry white man echoing Fox News talking points.
In this case, the justification for mass homicide was a favorite among conservatives: replacement theory.
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We start the new year as we ended the old one:
With a deranged old man holding the country hostage over a xenophobic fever dream that will never come true.
I’m talking, of course, about the continued government shutdown over the president’s insistence that he can bully Congress into funding his idiotic (and totally imaginary) wall on the Mexican border.
This comes despite the fact that Trump abandoned his early promises that Mexico would pay for the wall, and then couldn’t get funding for his simplistic, fear-based solution even when his party controlled both chambers of Congress for multiple years. And it comes despite the fact that Democrats have absolutely no incentive to compromise with Trump on anything. And it comes despite the fact that fewer than 40 percent of Americans support this boondogglish foolishness in the first place, and that the percentage of support dropsinto the 20s when people are asked if the wall is worth shutting down the government. And it comes despite the fact that ex-Trump officials, who are becoming as plentiful as cicadas, are now admitting that the wall is nevergoing to happen. And it comes despite the fact that illegal immigration is down, and a damn wall wouldn’t stop anybodyanyway. And it comes despite the fact that… well, you get the picture.
Basically, the president has gambled the tattered remnants of his pathetic reputation on fulfilling a bizarre campaign promise that only the hate-filled, the ignorant, and the delusional ever believed in the first place.
Trump now says that the resulting government shutdown could last “a long time.”
It could indeed last a long time. Not because Trump is a shrewd negotiator who is standing firm on principle, but because he is a sociopath who doesn’t care about the people he’s hurting and the country he’s damaging.
Yes, within this whole sad spectacle, there is just one thing that all Americans can agree upon:
The Steel Slates is a great name for a rock band.
According to certain individuals of a more conservative mindset, this week’s midterms were actually a big win for the Republican Party — so impressive, in fact, that it was“very close to a complete victory.”
Hey, who says the GOP is delusional? Certainly not me.
In any case, the fact is that the Democrats have captured the House, which means they will be able, in theory at least, to launch investigations into the most corrupt administration in history and slow down, if not stop, the freight train of disaster that Trump has sent hurtling toward the American people.
Of course, if they could just protect the Mueller investigation, we would all be pretty happy about that.
The new Congress set to take office in January “is slated to be the most racially diverse in history,” and “record numbers of Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and women of color will serve in the next legislative session.”
Within just a few weeks, Congress will be full of young Latinas and Muslims and Native Americans, with some states having the absolute chutzpah to send all-minority delegations. It’s a white nationalist nightmare.
It’s undeniable that this is a major political and cultural development for America. And it has the potential to be a much-needed course correction to our nation’s recent detour into overt xenophobia, fear-based hatemongering, and rambling insanity.
Of course, white supremacists are still getting reelected to Congress, so it’s not all pride flags and wins for la raza.
But for the first time in two horrific years, there is a spark of hope.
It is, perhaps, the most pathetic attempt in a long line of pathetic attempts to distract from the president’s colossal failures and massive corruption.
I’m talking about the right wing’s frenzied, frantic endeavor to get you to focus on the tragic death of Mollie Tibbetts, a young white woman who was allegedly murdered by — and I bet this is the first you’re hearing about it — an undocumented Latino.
The grotesque individual who killed Tibbetts supplied the perfect imagery for the Republican Party, which wants“voters to believe they’re living in a horror movie” as part of their plan for avoiding disaster in the midterm elections. You see, “it is no accident that a president whose supporters are overwhelmingly white and less educated, who tend to live among other whites, are being targeted” and motivated to vote Republican based “on fears of the other and the unknown.”
I mean, what else are they going to run on? An unpopular president in legal jeopardy, a tax cut for billionaires, and a total lack of progress on health care, the opioid crisis, and the fabled wall with Mexico are not very compelling highlights.
So instead we have GOP leaders publicly admitting that they want to make Tibbetts’ murder a midterms issue.
And yes, this is the very same political party that insists any talk about gun control after a mass shooting is “politicizing” tragedy (by the way, there was another mass shooting just this week).
However, the opportunistic xenophobia of conservatives has disgusted Tibbetts’ family, which has called out the racist fear-mongering and callus exploitation of their agony. It has prompted at least one family member to tell right-wingers to “keep her name out of your mouth.”
But of course, Trump and his enablers are not going to allow little things like overt racism, blatant hypocrisy, and a devastated family’s loss get in the way of their political playbook. They fully intend to keep insisting that undocumented immigrants are killing their way across America.
Oddly, conservatives can write whole impassioned editorials about the Tibbetts murder without once mentioning, even in passing, the well-established fact that immigrants — including undocumented ones — are substantially less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.
Also lost in the conservative outrage over Tibbetts’ death is the fact that the woman died because a man decided he had the right to take her — and take her life — without a moment’s hesitation. Acknowledging misogyny’s killer strain is not big with the Republican Party, which tends to appeal to men and female apologists for sexism.
However, “the truth is that any young woman like Mollie Tibbetts has a much greater chance of dying at the hands of a husband or boyfriendof any type than meeting harm at the hands of an undocumented immigrant.”
If you don’t believe me, just look at the week’s other big story about homicide. Apparently, some monstrosity in Colorado murdered his wife and two daughters — or triple the women that Tibbetts’ killer has confessed to.
But hey, at least that guy was a citizen, so I guess it’s no big deal, right?
Now in its fourth century of existence, the United States of America has withstood the birth pangs of violent revolution, a bloody civil war, the enslavement of millions of its residents, the brutal forces of racism and xenophobia, the Great Depression, multiple recessions, the murder of some of its most brilliant leaders, two world wars, Vietnam, Iraq, and the September 11 attacks.
But you know what we can’t possibly endure? You know what would break our back and destroy the nation?
That would be the impeachment of Donald Trump.
Yes, according to many commentators, impeaching the lunatic of Pennsylvania Avenue would be bad for the country, even a “grave injustice.” And plenty of Trump supporters have threatened to “begin a second civil war in the U.S. if President Trump were impeached.”
Even our old friend Nancy Pelosi said “pushing Trump out of office would further ‘divide the country’ and suggested it could do more harm than good.”
Oh, I know that two other presidents have been impeached — one just a couple of decades ago. And nobody ever suggested that trying to remove Bill Clinton from office might result in America’s collapse. Although to be fair, that was all about a blowjob, which is far more of a crisis than silly things like selling out the nation to a homicidal dictator of a hostile country. I mean, it’s about priorities.
And I know that this nation has endured warfare, natural disasters, civil rights outrages, drug epidemics, economic collapses, rioting in the streets, and even the rise of disco (that one really stung). But clearly, we’re just fragile princesses when it comes to the strain of a Senate trail of the president.
It’s best to just avoid the whole thing and go about our business.
After all, we wouldn’t want to upset Trump’s hardcore supporters, who as we know, are a minority of the population, have had their every concern or insecurity elevated to national prominence, and are driven primarily by racism, hatred, fear, and ignorance. No, let’s just kowtow to them even more than we already have.
It’s just a good thing that we’re not implying that if a subsection of America threatens violence, we’ll all give in — oh wait, that’s exactly what we’re implying. Never mind.
Well, at least we’re not saying that corruption, incompetence, and neo-fascist tendencies would actually be rewarded, rather than punished, which is horrifying in both the present and because of its ramifications for future presidents. Check that — I guess we are saying that too.
And we’re certainly, most definitely not saying that all the talk about the rule of law, and the importance of checks and balances, and the sanctity of the Constitution, and the strength of America’s institutions, and the integrity of its very culture — all that is meaningless. Oops, wrong again — we are not just implying that but screeching it from the rooftops.
But still, whatever horrors the Mueller investigation uncovers, we should all just ignore them. Yes, only good things can come from denying reality and appeasing madmen.
We should do this, you know, for America’s sake.
In my last post, I asked a simple question: What’s behind Republicans’ strong drive to halt immigration and, by extension, to stop economic and technological progress?
Well, it’s clear that the point is not — nor has it ever been — to make America great or to make sure we’re number one on some imaginary list of the world’s greatest countries.
No, the GOP’s motivation is to make sure that white people in general (and white Christian men in particular) continue to enjoy the cultural dominance they have enjoyed for a couple of centuries now. All other goals in the modern Republican Party are subservient or incidental to this top priority.
It is the reason that Latino immigrants, black NFL players, and Muslim gold-star families are all the enemy, along with many other demonized subgroups. Trump’s embrace of white nationalism cannot be denied, and efforts to do so are increasingly delusional.
This disturbing moment in history is pivotal because it offers one of the few clear-cut moral choices that defines the nation and its people. Will you support a man who is clearly a hate-filled bigot, peddling soft-core racism? Or will you, at the very least ,object to this charlatan who has made xenophobia acceptable?
It’s a pretty clear choice.
It’s easy to predict the 2018 midterms (i.e., the Democrats will win big… or they might not).
It’s a little tougher to predict the 2020 presidential election (i.e., Trump will lose in a landslide… or he might not).
But if we really want to get crazy, let’s look at the 2024 presidential election. Because regardless of whether or not Trump gets reelected in 2020, he will not run in the election after that. Either because he’s a disgraced loser who is way to old to run for office, or because he is constitutionally prohibited from a third term (unless, of course, he declares himself president for life… ahem).
In any case, we can say, with a high degree of certainty, that Trump will not be the GOP nominee in 2024.
So who will it be?
Well, let’s face it — naming a specific person at this point is idiotic, arrogant, or a sad attempt to fill time on a 24-hour news channel having a slow day.
No, I don’t have any names to throw around. However, I can predict what type of person the Republican nominee will be. First, we can be fairly certain that he will be a guy, probably a white guy, and probably an older white guy. After all, the GOP is overwhelmingly the party of older white guys. So don’t expect their future nominee to be an Asian woman in her forties.
Of course, the limited gender and racial makeup of the current and future Republican Party is well-known. The bigger question is what characteristics the 2024 nominee will have.
And this is where it gets truly interesting. Conventional wisdom holds that Trump has so severely damaged the GOP brand that it will not recover, at least not any time soon. Trump’s incompetence, corruption, and immorality have repulsed most Americans from voting Republican. Combined with undeniable demographic trends, the GOP will be sent reeling in the coming years.
Under such adverse conditions, the GOP will try to make amends. They will nominate a moderate in 2024, and his campaign will basically consist of begging for forgiveness. But this tactic will fail miserably, and the Republican Party will essentially be confined to pockets of the Deep South and rural America, with nothing but decay and slow death in its future.
But wait. There is a different version of this story.
You see, there is a school of thought that Trump has permanently altered not just the GOP, but American politics itself. His brand of fire-breathing madness and racist demagoguery has revealed the GOP for what it is. And the conservative base loves it. Far from punishing Trump and his allies for, say, insulting anyone who isn’t a white man, the GOP true believers are more enthralled than ever.
As a result, Republicans are now perfectly comfortable embracing xenophobia and tolerating tacky pronouncements on race and ethnicity. In fact, they are loath to disclaim it, for fear of pissing off their army of bigots.
In this scenario, the next GOP nominee will be just as prejudicial, neo-fascistic, and hate-filled as Trump. The probable difference is that he will not be as overtly crude as Trump. He will be more polished, and more open to playing nice when it suits him. At the very least, he will have just enough self-control to avoid attacking people in 5:00 tweetstorms.
This smoother, more charming Trump could indeed win a general election, especially if the Democrats find a way to screw up things up like they always do.
And then what happens? Well, Trump 2.0 would have little trouble pushing America into authoritarianism for the foreseeable future. He will succeed where Trump’s belligerence and obvious mental instability have failed.
He will create a new nation. And it will all be over for the rest of us.
How’s that for a prediction?
I haven’t shared my correspondence in a while, mostly because the hate mail has simmered down for some reason. I can only assume that my most virulent detractors have grown weary of repeatedly emailing me vague threats and hyperbolic insults.
I mean, really, there are only so many times that you can call someone a spic racist idiot communist before you move on to harassing women or trolling Muslims or screaming at gay people. Hey, I understand.
Instead of my usual hate email, I’ve been receiving questions more along the lines of “Hey, I thought this site was about Latino issues. Why the preoccupation with Trump?”
Well, it’s a fair question, although to be blunt, it’s also a bit of a naïve one.
You see, the focus of this site has shifted in the last year from chronicling the highs and lows of Hispanic culture to discussing the lows and lows (and lows and lows and lows) of the current occupant of the White House.
And this is because America has never had a president who hated Latinos more.
And yes, I’m including James K. Polk, who provoked the Mexican-American War solely so the United States could grab the West Coast (it’s true). And I’m also including Eisenhower, who instigated a massive deportation campaign called Operation Wetback (also true).
I’m sure those guys disliked Latinos, and some of our presidents were more racist — like Trump’s hero, Andrew Jackson, who wasn’t terribly fond of Native Americans, and just about every Founding Father who thought black people were good for nothing other than forced labor.
But none loathed Hispanics as much as Trump. Remember, the very first group he attacked, as he announced his candidacy, was Mexicans. And how much of his limited mental energy has been taken up with daydreams about massive walls and kicking out Latin Americans immigrants? The man really is obsessed with us.
Furthermore, no president has ever been as transparently bigoted as Trump, at least within the context of his culture. By that I mean we can all agree that Woodrow Wilson was a virulent racist, but a hundred years ago, when he lived, most white Americans were overtly prejudiced. Wilson was just worse.
Trump, in contrast, is living in enlightened time, when racism has been defeated, and people aren’t discriminated against, and… I’m sorry, I couldn’t finish typing that line without gagging.
The point is that our culture no longer defaults to bigotry, our government no longer enforces laws that are blatantly racist, and being a loudmouthed supremacist is frowned upon.
Within that context, Trump is egregiously racist.
Of course, you could argue that our culture does indeed default to bigotry, our government is once again enforcing laws that are racist, and being a loudmouthed supremacist is no longer frowned upon. But if that is true, we’ve regressed only since Trump was elected, which just reinforces the point that this guy has made racism acceptable again and moved our nation backward.
I mean, his prejudice is so well-known, so widely acknowledged, that even his supporters are acknowledging it now.
So when you’re dealing with the most anti-Latino president of all time, it’s difficult to focus on other topics. Believe me, I would love to get back to discussing the differences between Dia de Los Muertos and Halloween. And no doubt, I will soon.
But for now, it’s all I can do to keep up with this administration’s constant assaults on democracy, common sense, and basic decency.
And that’s why I keep writing about it.
It’s been just over a year since 62,979,636 Americans said, “Hey, you know that smug, narcissistic, mentally unstable billionaire who hates women and minorities? Yeah, that guy. Let’s all vote for him.”
And it’s been nothing but easy living ever since.
To be fair, plenty of Americans are indeed happy with Trump’s first year in office, even if by any objective or reasonable standard, it has been a complete failure, daily embarrassment, and horrific nightmare.
No matter, because as I wrote in my last post, many hardcore Trump supporters have abandoned all pretense of rational thought or even strained justification for their misbegotten votes. Instead, the working-class folks profiled in Politico insist that the human cringe factor masquerading as a president is a great guy, and that things couldn’t be better.
Well, I didn’t mention that the Politico article ends with a Trump supporter casually dropping the N-word, which might as well be a snapshot of what the 2016 election was really all about.
You see, study after study has shown that bigotry is a prime characteristic of many Trump voters. In fact, some experts insist that racism motivated Trump voters more than any other factor.
But as I’ve written before, Americans tend to dismiss the very idea that racism was even a minor variable in Trump’s election. We are determined to say that prejudice died in the 1960s, and millions of our fellow citizens cannot possibly be bigots.
Well, as the Atlantic recently pointed out, this kind of delusion has been going on for decades.
And it is not just Trump’s supporters “who were in denial about what they were voting for, but Americans across the political spectrum, who … searched desperately for any alternative explanation — outsourcing, anti-Washington anger, economic anxiety — to the one staring them in the face.”
The explanation staring all of us in the face is blatant racism, xenophobia, hate-filled rage — whatever you would like to call it.
What happened in 2016 was that “Americans, who would never think of themselves as possessing racial animus, voted for a candidate whose ideal vision of America excludes millions of fellow citizens because of their race or religion.”
It really is that clear.
Now, of course, it is inaccurate and offensive to label all of Trump’s supporters as racists.
But the vast majority who are not neo-Nazis and white supremacists were still willing to look the other way as they voted for a guy beloved by, well, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
The Atlantic article has gone viral for a very good reason: It is an astute and well-written attack on our national delusion. At the risk of checking out for the remainder of this article, I’ll just list some of the most striking passages here.
“A majority of white voters backed a candidate who explicitly pledged to use the power of the state against people of color and religious minorities, and stood by him as that pledge has been among the few to survive the first year of his presidency.… This all occurred before the eyes of a disbelieving press and political class, who plunged into fierce denial about how and why this had happened.”
“Supporters and opponents alike understand that the president’s policies and rhetoric target religious and ethnic minorities, and behave accordingly. But both supporters and opponents usually stop short of calling these policies racist. It is as if there were a pothole in the middle of the street that every driver studiously avoided, but that most insisted did not exist even as they swerved around it.”
“The argument for the innocence of Trump’s backers finds purchase across ideological lines: white Democrats looking for votes from working-class whites, white Republicans who want to tar Democrats as elitists, white leftists who fear that identity politics stifles working-class solidarity, and white Trumpists seeking to weaponize white grievances.”
“A peculiarly white American cognitive dissonance is that most worry far more about being seen as racist than about the consequences of racism for their fellow citizens. That dissonance spans the ideological spectrum, resulting in blanket explanations for Trump that ignore the plainly obvious.”
“A majority of white voters backed a candidate who assured them that they will never have to share this country with people of color as equals. That is the reality that all Americans will have to deal with, and one that most of the country has yet to confront.”
It’s a lot to take in. But a combination of data-driven research, psychological study, anecdotal evidence, and our own common sense all verify that this is indeed the case. Americans remain in deep denial about the crushing moral failure that occurred last year.
To justify their votes, Trump’s biggest fans combined “an insistence that discriminatory policies were necessary with vehement denials that his policies would discriminate and absolute outrage that the question would even be asked.”
The only thing more delusional than thinking that Trump is not a bigot is to believe that his die-hard supporters will ever become open-minded and tolerant. In essence, “these supporters will not change their minds, because this is what they always wanted: a president who embodies the rage they feel toward those they hate and fear, while reassuring them that that rage is nothing to be ashamed of.”
So let’s stop kidding ourselves.
