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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.
