On Trumpists and Trumpism

 

On Trumpists and Trumpism

March 2, 2021

 

We face a mystery in our national life these days. It’s named Donald Trump. It includes the way millions of Americans cling to him as their savior or their only hope for the future, none of which makes any sense at all. Donald Trump was easily the worst or at least one of the worst presidents this country has ever had both as a person and as a politician. He is entirely self-absorbed and selfish, giving not one good God damn about anyone else, including those who so idolize him. His sexual morals are deplorable. He is uninformed about nearly every issue. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t listen to others. He thinks he knows complex technical subjects better than the acknowledged experts on those subjects. He craves adoration but does nothing legitimately to earn it. He believes that only he can solve the world’s problems though he has never solved a problem in his life but has created an untold number of them. His actions as president are every bit as bad. He used the presidency to enrich himself and his family. He did everything he could to destroy the environment and make the wealthy wealthier. He ruined our relationships with our traditional allies, pulled us out of the Iran deal and nearly went to war with that country, ripped families apart at the southern border, built part of a useless border wall that keeps no people out but blocks migration routes for wildlife. He cozied up to dictators as long as they weren’t Iranian, debased the Justice Department, obstructed justice, and put himself above the law. He introduced as much discrimination against LGBTQ+ people into the federal government and the military as he could. Hundreds of times he repeated the big lie that the 2020 election was rigged and his victory was stolen from him. As a final act of desperation he incited a mob to invade the Capitol building in an attempt to overthrow our constitutional form of government. The list of Trump’s transgressions could go on and on, but I trust the point is made. Donald Trump is as despicable as American politicians come these days both personally and professionally.

Yet over 70 million Americans voted to reelect him. He has so taken over the Republican Party that it ought to change its name to the Trumpist Party. White supremacist groups, always part of his base of support, vow that they have only begun to fight to put him back in power, and they don’t mean help him win the 2024 election. He keeps repeating the big lie that he really won the 2020 election, and that lie keeps his supporters committed to him and ready to use violence in support of him. A great many Republicans want him to run again in 2024, and they want him to win that election. That he has ever had any support is distressing. That he still has it is nearly beyond comprehension. Yet we can never solve a problem without first knowing its causes, so we must at least try to comprehend the reasons for the phenomenon that is Donald Trump.

We start to do that by first looking at this country to understand the context within which Trumpism flourishes. The demographics of this country are changing in profound ways. At least until very recently this country has been run by and for the benefit of white men. Whites have been a substantial majority of the population. White privilege was the order of the day even more than it is today. All the people who ran things in business, academia, the military, and politics were white. It’s not that all white people were wealthy or even financially secure. Many weren’t, but even the poorest, least educated, least sophisticated white man could and did look around him and say at least I’m not female or Black. There was always someone lower in society’s structure to whom every white man could feel superior because they were white. Of course their being white didn’t actually make them superior to anyone, but their culture told them that it did.

All of that is changing. Racism and sexism are still massive problems for our country, but we have made enough progress in overcoming them that the world looks very different than it did fifty or sixty years ago. Women run universities and giant corporations. The vice president is a woman. She’s even a woman of color. The president before Trump was Black. Perhaps most significantly the numbers of Black and Brown Americans are increasing so fast that within a relatively few years whites will be a plurality but no longer a majority of the population. Being white still confers privilege in this country, but doesn’t confer as much privilege as it used to. In future years it will, and should, confer even less.

Many Americans experience the changing demographics and ethic of this country as threat. They perceive, perhaps only subconsciously, that they are losing their privileged status in American society. They think that people of color are taking their jobs, their schools, their influence. They are afraid. They know at some level that America’s future will look very different from American’s past, and it feels to them that all the change that is taking place disfavors them for the benefit of people they’ve always seen as below them. Their fear makes them angry. Their anger turns some of them violent.

Many of them turn to the politics of complaint and victimhood. White people are still privileged in this country. They hear complaints and expressions of victimhood from other demographic groups. Those groups have legitimate complaints and are victims of this country’s numerous isms and phobias—racism most of all but also sexism, classism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Sometimes those complaints get a lot of attention. They can dominate the television news the way they did after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, in May, 2020. It seems to many white people that the country responds to complaints of victimhood but not to them. So they complain. They present themselves as victims. Doing that has various advantages for them beyond perhaps getting some public attention. Common complaints and claims of victimhood create bonds between people. They can create community. They can even create identity. It’s not surprising that a fearful and angry demographic would resort to them.

These white men we’re talking about are likely to blame the government for many of what they perceive to be the causes of their problems. At least they blame the government for not solving those problems, as if the government could ever reverse demographic trends. Along comes Donald Trump. He’s running for president, but he attacks the government he’s running to lead in ways that they would themselves if they were capable of it. He says he’ll “make America great again,” by which he means he’ll turn the clock back to a time when white men ran everything and weren’t being displaced by other people the way the whites attracted to Trump believe they’re being displaced. He gives them dog whistles that reinforce their endemic racism. He says there are fine people among violent white supremacists and neo-Nazis. He panders to their prejudices and makes them believe that he and only he can and will solve their problems. He tells them exactly what they want to hear, so they do more than vote for him. They cling to him. They idolize him. Some of them very nearly worship him. It doesn’t matter that he could never really do most of the things he tells them he will do. They believe his lies because those lies mesh with their own fears and prejudices. They will even the believe the big lie that he won an election he lost though there is no evidence to support that claim whatsoever. Facts don’t matter to them, only having their fear assuaged and anger affirmed does.

The fanatic support by millions of people of the charlatan and would-be dictator Donald Trump is the greatest problem our country faces. It represents rot from the inside not threat from the outside. That is does makes it all the more difficult to counter. Giving Trumpists facts is useless. They’ll just spout “alternative facts,” meaning lies, and call the truth fake news. Perhaps the only thing that will defeat the Trumpist movement is time. The clock will more forward as it always does, not back. The demographic trends that are a primary cause of the Trump movement will continue. Our country will continue to change just as it always has. Trump is 74 years old. He will pass from the scene. His movement will too. Our task is to see to it that it doesn’t cause more harm before it does. Nazism would have faded and failed in Germany had responsible Germans not bought into its lies but had prevented Hitler from ever taking power. Trumpism will fade and fail too unless we make the mistake of letting Trump back into office. May we be vigilant and diligent in seeing that he never comes into power again.