Trump: Aberration or consummation?
The toughest critics of Donald Trump see him as an aberration. I see him as a consummation of features inscribed in the nation’s blueprint.
The United States is, in many ways, an anachronistic society. An anachronism is the kind of time disconnect that happens when, in a movie set in the 19th century, an airplane accidentally gets into a shot.
The United States was created near the end of the 18th century, and its brand-new republican political system was, at the time, a cutting-edge experiment. Many of the conditions, ideas, and practices that existed during that era and were virtually set in stone at the time have changed dramatically during the last 300 years. Newer democracies, like those who make up the European Union, were constructed under new realities and reflect them.
In contrast, in many ways the United States is frozen in a different time. That’s key to understanding the Trump phenomenon—the fact that almost half of American voters elected a president with zero qualifications, a racist rhetoric and resumé, robber capitalist ethics, and a deeply flawed character—and what that has led to.
The United States was formed at a time when racism was the norm in the world, white supremacy was the law of the land and the justification for empire, and the intellectual and moral inferiority of people of color was a taken-for-granted truth, even considered a scientific fact. This world view was a convenient moral salve for a people—the American people—who were robbing other people of their land and identity and killing them when they rebelled while enslaving another people for sheer profit.
While many things have changed, a lot have not. Just this week comedienne Roseanne Barr (photo at top on left) provided an example of the long half-life of racist attitudes present at the creation. The star of the highest-rated show in television tweeted that former Obama aide Valerie Jarret (photo at top on right), an African American, is what you get when you mate the Islamic Brotherhood and the movie Planet of the Apes.
Comparing a black to an ape is the oldest racist smear in the book. It dehumanizes. It minimizes responsibility for oppression and violence. It can serve as a rationalization of almost any kind of crime, from enslavement, to genocide, to mass incarceration.
If it were not so dangerous and wounding, Barr’s comment would be a hilarious example of a mind disconnected from all logic and ignorant of two centuries of science, among other things. How do you marry an inane Hollywood movie and a social movement and get a human being? It’s like the old joke that plays with differences in Latin American Spanish. The same word Cubans use for taking, as in taking a plane, Argentinians use for having sex. So, the Cuban says to the Argentinian that he is taking a plane and the Argentinian responds: “You Cubans really exaggerate.”
But there is no linguistic misunderstanding and no underlying humor in Barr’s tweet. Barr has sent into the world these racist kinds of things many times before, and her popular show was a kind of Archie Bunker in reverse. Archie Bunker was meant to ridicule prejudice. Barr’s show was intended more to show prejudice as widespread and practically normal, just another point of view in an average American family. Roseanne’s character (and person) is unfettered by what the right calls political correctness, or in other words, by common decency and respect.
Donald Trump’s election based largely on racist messages showed there was a market for this kind of show and his actions and words emboldened and empowered the racists. In a speech earlier this year, Trump exalted about the success of the Roseanne. And he said, “it is about us.” Amen. Roseanne is just another inhabitant of Trumpworld, albeit an especially famous one.
I get tired of progressive commentators trotting out a million reasons for why we should cut some slack to the millions of Americans who put Trump in the White House. I say the lack the courage and lucidity to speak the truth. You can’t denounce Trump and give a pass to the half of America who agreed with Trump’s bigotry, or those who chose to ignore it because of economic selfishness, or who are politically illiterate by choice. I won’t give a pass either for those who, not being particularly racist or interested in tax cuts for themselves, failed to be alarmed by Trump’s xenophobic and racist demagoguery and sat on their hands.
During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton caught a lot of flack for saying that about half of the people who voted for Donald Trump were “deplorables.” She fell far short in her estimate. For me, anyone willing to vote for a candidate that founded his campaign on brazen racism is deplorable. My estimate is 100 percent. This includes the fervent Trump supporters and those who voted for him for other reasons. Enabling a racist by electing him president is ipso facto deplorable. Revulsion against racism should outweigh ideology, party, and material interest. If for you it doesn’t, you are deplorable.
