Racism By Any Other Name

So the racist-in-chief has now taken another giant step down into the political gutter with his clearly racist tweets against the four progressive junior Democratic Congresswomen of color (“the squad”). This was significantly compounded by the racist “send her back” chant at a Trump rally in North Carolina, referring to congresswoman Ilhan Omar and directly inspired by the tweets, which the president did nothing at all to stop or dissuade, despite his subsequent blatant lies to the contrary. Although it is impossible to know how strategic Trump intended these to be at the time, it seems clear that he is testing the political waters to see how far he can go without losing support and cover from the cowardly Republican congressional caucus. Predictably, only a few Republican lawmakers have been principled and brave enough to speak out publicly against the tweets and chant and label them for what they are, overt racism, and only four House Republicans (plus independent Justin Amash) voted with Democrats in favor of their resolution condemning the racist presidential tweets. After initial behind the scenes blowback over the rally chant, Trump did a tepid walk back initially, and then saw that he could get away with going back to his initial position. What Trump et al have determined to be the best party line for all of this is denying that any of this is racist(!), and claiming that he and they are only criticizing the extreme views and controversial statements of the four Congresswomen, who Trump claims all hate this country (REALLY?!), and therefore should leave it! Naturally Trump’s statements and those of his minions are laced with lies and distortions, including claims that those congresswomen are all anti-american because they criticize things about our government, and viciously anti-Semitic by virtue of criticizing Israel and related lobbying groups (primarily or only done by Omar). Obviously criticism of the Israeli government is NOT by itself anti-Semitic, and Trump is no stranger to anti-Semitic statements and campaign ads. And of course Trump himself has been one of the biggest critics of American government, especially Obama’s administration. But of course the hypocrite-in-chief always gets to do what he condemns everyone else for! So basically Trump gets to say, tweet and promote overtly racist things to gin up his “patriotic” (read racist) base, and then he and his supporters can all just turn around and deny that they are racist! Fortunately, most people can see through this gaslighting, with polls showing about half of Americans believing that Trump is racist (although that really should be higher!). The “love it or leave it” theme is also just more right wing reactionary red meat. Trump and the Republicans are also trying to make these progressive congresswomen emblematic of the modern Democratic Party in general, also a gross distortion. Lindsey Graham was even ranting about them being communists! Unfortunately, Democrats do run the risk of a lot of this propaganda sinking in with swing voters, especially if the Democratic presidential nominee is espousing a very progressive agenda. Hopefully at least Trump’s ever bolder legitimization of obvious racism will turn off a significant number of moderates and independents, on top of all his previous outrageous behavior. In fact, it seems that Trump’s strategy is to just try to turn out a higher percentage of his core base without expanding that base.

After watching an interview of 8 Texan Republican female Trumpites parroting every absurd talking point and lie that comes out of Trump’s mouth about this issue, even claiming that the four Congresswomen are the racist ones because they have not included any whites in their group(!), it has become obvious again that it is just not possible to have a rational discussion with true Trump cult members because we and they simply do not share the same perceived reality. Frankly, it is difficult to believe that we share the same national identity! It is highly gratifying to see that at least CNN as well as ABC News are unequivocally describing Trump’s tweets as racist!

Unfortunately, one of Trump’s advantages is that fear and hate, which he is a master at manipulating, are probably stronger motivators than hope and love, which are the Democrats’ usual selling point. A common reaction to Trump‘s racism from many of the Democratic candidates and surrogates which I find really annoying is “this is not who we are as a country”, or “we are better than this”. If that were true, Trump simply would not be president! Unfortunately, to a large extent this really IS who we are and always have been as a country, and to a large extent as individuals. This country was stolen from Native Americans and built on the backs of slaves and successive waves of cheap immigrant labor, with each wave of immigrants treated like lepers and often told to go back where they came from by those who came here before them! It is only a recent development in our history that equal rights has even been seriously attempted as real policy rather than just lofty rhetoric spouted by the founding fathers and so many generations of politicians since then, and we still have a very long way to go in that regard! Of course, we have accomplished many phenomenal things that we can be proud of, and there certainly is a tradition of charity and generosity that we can take pride in. But that does not entitle us to settle for or excuse the rampant and systemic racism and bigotry that still exists or to ape the “love it or leave it” slogan, particularly directed against those striving to make things better! I think a better refrain would be something like “we need to be better than this to live up to the ideals the country was founded on”.

Meanwhile, we are all anxiously awaiting Robert Mueller’s belated congressional testimony, which has the potential to either turn the corner on moving public opinion toward impeachment or closing the door on it. This may well be the most important event of the summer. It will be interesting to see what Trump comes up with to try to distract everyone from that!