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I have heard may people whom I often agree with saying that we should not label all Trump voters as racists. Maybe not all Trump voters, but most are completely indifferent to racism. The Trump voters who think racism is disgusting but voted for him anyway are either:
- Completely ignorant of who Trump is and politics generally.
- View other positions as more important than letting a racist faithfully execute our constitution, in which case...Fuck you.
Voting is not an abstraction. Voting is not equivalent to speech. Each vote is the expression of a very small amount of power. Trump is a man who through both actions and words has left no doubt in my mind that he is a racist. Therefore, if you voted for a man that was running a campaign based primarily on bigotry, racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, then you have enabled all those things. I do not care if what was deep in your heart had more to do with tax cuts, the outcome is racist and is having an effect before Trump even assumes office.
Do I think Paul Ryan believes black people are inferior human beings? No, probably not more than most people, but I also think that does not matter because has helped enable Trump's rise to power. I was taught that actions speak louder than words... So guess what? Voting is an action. If you voted for Trump for reasons other than bigotry, you are still saying that those other reasons are more important than the freedom and dignity of your fellow humans.
Most of the white people in the era of lynching in the South were normal, as were most of the people in Nazi Germany who looked the other way as Jews were sent to concentration camps. The fact that lynch-mobs and Nazis were largely normal citizens does not mean that they were not culpable.
Pull out a mirror, Nephew.
ReplyDelete“We also have to caution ourselves to the complexity of [our] history. I thought Donald Trump disqualified himself at numerous points. But there’s now this idea that anyone who voted for him has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric. There are guys in my neighborhood that I love and respect, that I think have incredible qualities, who are not afraid of Mexicans and are not afraid of Muslims and not afraid of blacks; they’re afraid of their insurance premiums. In the liberal community, you hate this idea of creating people as a monolith. Don’t look at Muslims as a monolith. They are individuals. It would be ignorance. But everybody who voted for Trump is a monolith, is a racist. That hypocrisy is also real.”
ReplyDeletehttp://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
ReplyDeleteYeah, except you choose to align yourself with the Republican party and you choose to align yourself with the bigots that support Donald Trump. Trump's bigotry was not a side note of his campaign as it was with Reagan, it was his campaign. Either you are too ignorant to see the bigotry, are a bigot, or are indifferent.
ReplyDeleteHaving a bigot as president who doesn't come out forcefully against the bigotry being carried out in his name. Who not so subtly suggested violence against his political opponent and against protestors. Who spread propaganda from white supremacists without even attempting to verify it's authenticity. Who has appointed Jeffery Beauregard Sessions III a noted racist who was too racist to be confirmed as a judge by Republicans in 1985. Who has suggested nationwide stop and frisk which was not only ruled unconstitutional but proven ineffective and racist in it's outcome. Who has suggested religious tests for entering the country. To participate in the election of this man and then expect people to be civil about it is the height of hypocrisy.
Are Trump supporters a monolith? No, but all of the bigotry behind him was blatantly obvious so even if you don't hold those racist views, if you voted for him you have enabled those views and helped put them into a position of power.
Whether your support for Trump is do to racism or thoroughly discredited economic policies, the effect is the same: You have enabled an authoritarian racist. For me to sit here and try to parse out the difference is a meaningless exercise in political correctness. Elections have consequences and this is one of the consequences.
I regularly engage in introspection. I'm not perfect nor do I expect perfection from anyone else. But if you're a upper middle class white guy who thinks that he's the one getting screwed, I suggest taking that mirror out.