As the last stupid, stupid embers of the crumbling Trump administration start to fade out (we sincerely hope anyway), I think it's time to examine how we got here.
Why did the GOP let this traitorous charlatan take it over? The reasons are more complex than a blog post can elucidate, certainly one written by me, but the main reason is that Trump was able to get at the core of the GOP and what it now stands for - whiteness. The Democrats are a diverse party that represents America, although poorly, incompetently, and often corruptly. The GOP is also corrupt, to its very core, but mainly it wants to be and stay forever white, and that is the vision it has for America. It somewhat tolerates other types of people as workers and servants, but when it comes to power and decision-making, it wants that to stay in white hands forever more.
Trump understands this. It's one of the few things he grasps, because it serves his interests extremely well and speaks to lessons he's been taught all his life by his father and others. He possessed the utter shamelessness to go past dog whistles and say what the GOP leadership and most of its rank and file really feels. They adore him for this, and will stand by him through nearly anything, although ruthlessly and nakedly selling the US out to a foreign power for his personal gain seems like it might be even a bit far for them, we'll see.
The GOP sees the trends in the census, which is why they tried to manipulate the census. They see that the great brown wave is coming and they know that they have nothing in their intellectual arsenal to counter it, because everything in that vapid armory is predicated on the superiority of whiteness. They are tirelessly working to stop the brown people from voting and they see in Trump a lasting legacy and blueprint that can be copied by others: attack immigrants, call them "illegal" and put them in cages to deter others; choose judges sympathetic to white Christian evangelicals; relentlessly pander to enormous corporations who will put the brown population in servitude to enrich conservative white families; gerrymander brown people into electoral ghettoes for all eternity; strip environmental legislation of all teeth so that brown people literally can't breathe or drink clean water; and on and on.
The most detestable thing about all of this is the GOP clings to something that is nothing. Whiteness is a ghost, a vapor, a myth, and a lie. There is nothing special about whiteness. Two and half billion Asians, for example, know this like they know how to walk. Northern, Central, and Western Europeans are not superior in any way to anyone else and never have been. My mother's family is Irish, and the Irish were not even considered white until the 1900's. My father's family is Anglo-Saxon and about as white as possible. I consider myself white and have lived among white people most of my life. We have no special gifts, have no claim on moral superiority, and have no particular brains or skills that others don't have. I've learned this throughout my life, in college, in business and among a diverse population in the cities in which I've lived. We muddle through this life like everyone else. The only special thing about us in the US is our number, and the lies we've told each other and continue to tell our children about how we got here and why we stayed here.
I'm not sure what it will take for white people to shake this notion of specialness. It's slowly happening in Europe as more and more brown people move in. There are huge pockets of resistance, but I feel like the overall sense in Europe is that it will never be the same and the future really isn't that bad. Here, we have done such a comprehensively bad job of education that the feeling of white superiority persists and is now acquiring a hyper-violent streak due to the much wider availability of guns as white people begin to realize that their power is diminishing. Trump bided his time until he could no longer wait, and until his long-time celebrity and the coming demographic changes brought him to the forefront to capitalize. His thorough boorishness and stupidity was unforeseen by his enablers, and may prove to be undoing, but he accomplished much of what he and the GOP wanted just by getting elected.
Even if Trump goes away soon, I fear that the destruction of America has started. It seems inevitable to me that we will divide into two countries, one that respects the rule of law and celebrates diversity and rejects white power, and one that embraces white superiority and despotism. Personally, I will have to move, since my state, Texas, is a white-supremacist despot's paradise. I'm not sure where my wife and I will go. My native state of New York is an obvious choice, or possibly one of the New England states. My autumn years will be spent mourning the nation of my birth, although in truth, we rarely lived up to any of its ideals in the first place. Maybe my new nation finally will.
Why did the GOP let this traitorous charlatan take it over? The reasons are more complex than a blog post can elucidate, certainly one written by me, but the main reason is that Trump was able to get at the core of the GOP and what it now stands for - whiteness. The Democrats are a diverse party that represents America, although poorly, incompetently, and often corruptly. The GOP is also corrupt, to its very core, but mainly it wants to be and stay forever white, and that is the vision it has for America. It somewhat tolerates other types of people as workers and servants, but when it comes to power and decision-making, it wants that to stay in white hands forever more.
Trump understands this. It's one of the few things he grasps, because it serves his interests extremely well and speaks to lessons he's been taught all his life by his father and others. He possessed the utter shamelessness to go past dog whistles and say what the GOP leadership and most of its rank and file really feels. They adore him for this, and will stand by him through nearly anything, although ruthlessly and nakedly selling the US out to a foreign power for his personal gain seems like it might be even a bit far for them, we'll see.
The GOP sees the trends in the census, which is why they tried to manipulate the census. They see that the great brown wave is coming and they know that they have nothing in their intellectual arsenal to counter it, because everything in that vapid armory is predicated on the superiority of whiteness. They are tirelessly working to stop the brown people from voting and they see in Trump a lasting legacy and blueprint that can be copied by others: attack immigrants, call them "illegal" and put them in cages to deter others; choose judges sympathetic to white Christian evangelicals; relentlessly pander to enormous corporations who will put the brown population in servitude to enrich conservative white families; gerrymander brown people into electoral ghettoes for all eternity; strip environmental legislation of all teeth so that brown people literally can't breathe or drink clean water; and on and on.
The most detestable thing about all of this is the GOP clings to something that is nothing. Whiteness is a ghost, a vapor, a myth, and a lie. There is nothing special about whiteness. Two and half billion Asians, for example, know this like they know how to walk. Northern, Central, and Western Europeans are not superior in any way to anyone else and never have been. My mother's family is Irish, and the Irish were not even considered white until the 1900's. My father's family is Anglo-Saxon and about as white as possible. I consider myself white and have lived among white people most of my life. We have no special gifts, have no claim on moral superiority, and have no particular brains or skills that others don't have. I've learned this throughout my life, in college, in business and among a diverse population in the cities in which I've lived. We muddle through this life like everyone else. The only special thing about us in the US is our number, and the lies we've told each other and continue to tell our children about how we got here and why we stayed here.
I'm not sure what it will take for white people to shake this notion of specialness. It's slowly happening in Europe as more and more brown people move in. There are huge pockets of resistance, but I feel like the overall sense in Europe is that it will never be the same and the future really isn't that bad. Here, we have done such a comprehensively bad job of education that the feeling of white superiority persists and is now acquiring a hyper-violent streak due to the much wider availability of guns as white people begin to realize that their power is diminishing. Trump bided his time until he could no longer wait, and until his long-time celebrity and the coming demographic changes brought him to the forefront to capitalize. His thorough boorishness and stupidity was unforeseen by his enablers, and may prove to be undoing, but he accomplished much of what he and the GOP wanted just by getting elected.
Even if Trump goes away soon, I fear that the destruction of America has started. It seems inevitable to me that we will divide into two countries, one that respects the rule of law and celebrates diversity and rejects white power, and one that embraces white superiority and despotism. Personally, I will have to move, since my state, Texas, is a white-supremacist despot's paradise. I'm not sure where my wife and I will go. My native state of New York is an obvious choice, or possibly one of the New England states. My autumn years will be spent mourning the nation of my birth, although in truth, we rarely lived up to any of its ideals in the first place. Maybe my new nation finally will.