On Trump as Symptom not Cause

 

On Trump as Symptom not Cause

May 16, 2026

Essentially everyone in the world in which I live despises Donald Trump. I despise Donald Trump too. I despise him as a grossly immoral person and as a would-be fascist dictator hell bent on destroying American democracy. Donald Trump and his army of bootlickers certainly appear to be causing a great deal of harm in the United States and in the world, and, indeed, that is precisely what they are doing. Yet there is an underlying truth in our world that it is easy enough to forget or to ignore. Donald Trump would not be able to harm anything or anyone if the American electorate had not made him president not once but twice. The second time they elected him, he even garnered a majority of the popular vote as well as the necessary electoral college votes. Trump didn’t make himself president, the American people and the American constitutional system of electing the president did.

It is, therefore, perfectly appropriate to see Trump less as a cause of harm and more as a symptom of something far deeper than one deranged, immoral, incompetent man. A healthy society would never have made Donald Trump president. So since we did make him president we have ask: What is so unhealthy in our country that a fascist charlatan like Donald Trump could win two presidential elections? That question may be as hard to answer as it is easy to hate Donald Trump, yet I think there is an answer. That answer, I believe is: Change and privileged people’s resistance to and even fear of change.

So what is changing in this country that could explain the rise of Donald Trump and his American fascism? The simplest answer to that question is: Demographics. The United States of America was founded on white supremacy. White immigrants from Europe and their descendants considered themselves to be so superior in every way to Black and Indian human beings that they hardly considered those people to be human at all. I needn’t go into all the gory details. We all know about race-based slavery. We all know how white Americans took essentially all of the land that had been the home of Indian Americans, nearly eradicated their cultures and languages, and even very nearly exterminated them as a race of people.

Slavery ended with the Civil War of course, but American white supremacy certainly did not. Racism continued to rot the cultures of both the American south and the American north and west in forms other than slavery but with effects not much less horrific for non-white Americans. Until quite recent decades, white Americans controlled absolutely everything in this country that was not created by and specifically for people of color. Whites were the majority, and they ruled everyone else for the advantage of the whites at the expense of essentially all others.

In recent decades, that has started to change. Whites are still a majority of the population, but they are a significantly smaller majority than they used to be. People of color are playing ever larger roles in American life. There are very substantial Latin communities in many states. There are large Asian communities in many states including people from countries like Vietnam who previously were scarcely represented among us. There are more Muslim Americans than there ever used to be. Despite the deep-seated racism of American culture, people of color are more visible and powerful in American life than they have ever been before.

As a result, a great many white Americans, primarily but not exclusively poorly educated white men, feel threatened. They know, at least subconsciously and probably consciously as well, that their position of privilege in American life is ebbing away. These white racists used to be able to watch television and see only an occasional Black entertainer or athlete. Now people of color appear all over the TV networks. Perhaps most threateningly for these American racists is the fact that we’ve even had a Black president.

White privilege has always been foundational for the self-identity of most white Americans. It is perhaps an old saw, but it’s still true. The poorest, least educated, least sophisticated white American could say to themselves: Well, at least I’m not Black. The color of their skin gave them a sense of superiority even over a Black president. They learned white supremacy from the moment they were born in a culture rotten to the core with it. And they know that their position of privilege is eroding away.

Then, along comes Donald Trump. He’s white. He’s male. He’s straight. He may be richer and more sexually immoral than most Americans by far, but he’s still “one of us.” And he plays right into the fear that so many white Americans feel over their eroding status of authority and supremacy. He gives American racists “dog whistles,” things that may not be overtly racist  but which a great many people hear as racist. He calls torch-carrying, Nazi-loving fascist thugs “fine people.” He calls on a gang of white, racist thugs to “stand back and stand by.” He has virtually no people of color in his life. Indeed, early in his business life, the government sued him for racial discrimination in housing he and his father controlled. He plays to the worst things in American culture, things a great many Americans don’t think are bad at all but which constitute their view of themselves and of the world.

And, in true fascist fashion, he gives frightened, angry white Americans a scapegoat for all of their problems. He gives them “immigrants.” Mostly, perhaps, “illegal immigrants,” but really just immigrants. Immigrants, he tells them, are murderers and rapists. They both steal American jobs and freeload off of public services, he tells them. It matters not at all to either Trump or his audience that not one of those things is true just as it mattered neither to Hitler nor to millions of Germans that what Hitler said about Jews wasn’t true. It is appallingly easy to turn angry, frightened people against a designated enemy; and that’s true even if a person’s fear and anger are mostly subconscious.

That is precisely what Trump has done with his brutal campaign against immigrants. All immigrants. Documented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants who are nonetheless here legally seeking asylum. Even naturalized American citizens who were once immigrants. Many of us complain, rightly, about the rough and unconstitutional ways Trump’s ICE thugs treat immigrants, but we must remember. The cruelty is intentional. it plays directly into the fear inherent in Trump’s supporters and the anger that fear engenders. It is a purely fascist tactic, and it does for Trump what brutality always does for fascists. It may drive some people away; but it attracts more people than it repels as long, that is, as it is directed against the fascists’ designated enemy and not against the fascist’s supporters.

So yes, Donald Trump has caused, is causing, and will cause a great deal of harm to American democracy and to American and other people; but as well as being a cause of harm, Trump is a symptom of an underlying disorder in American society and American culture. He is a symptom of the fascistic reaction of white American racists to their perceived, and real, loss of privilege and power in today’s changing demographics.

We will be rid of Trump one day. He is, after all, as mortal as the rest of us. But getting rid of Trump will not solve the underlying problem that produced him in the first place. American white supremacism will still be there in all of its evil manifestations. It probably isn’t possible to cure the fear and anger that produced Donald Trump. At least, I don’t know how to cure it. What we must do is contain it. We must turn out intelligent, morally sensitive voters in such enormous numbers that the American fascists’ attempts to subvert American democracy fail. The MAGA mob is, after all, a rather small minority of the American people, and the support for Donald Trump is declining every day. My plea today is only that we be aware of what’s really going on in this country and that we be vigilant in keeping it from destroying us.