Trump’s Racism: Just Right for His Base

7/15/2019

Four members of Congress; Not Trump's kind

Even after King’s assassination and Angelou’s poetry and eight years of an idealistic, educated family in the White House, it never went away.

It festered under the rocks, all over America, and then, like some super-microbe, it reasserted itself in 2016 with the affirmation of essentially half a country.

Now racism has its spokesman, its hero, speaking things that have been gathering in all corners of this diverse country, things people of color (my friends, my relatives) hear and feel every day: why don’t they go back where they came from?

This sentiment generally refers to people of color, people who are “different,” people who speak out. The Other.

Now they have their man, looking to weed out all those who don’t fit into the white mold. It’s been there all along. You can see it in the smug nods of the White Citizens Council that gathers behind the Grand Kleagle himself, Mitch McConnell, in the halls of the Senate.

Now President Donald J. Trump has blurted it out, perhaps to the consternation of his backers, who prefer to do it by degrees, by gerrymandering, with the assent of the Supreme Court.
Goodness gracious, even servile Lindsey Graham, lost without John McCain, has urged Trump to “aim higher” while essentially agreeing with Trump.

Trump and his stubby little tweeting fingers let it fly on Sunday, the rant of a bigot who needs a minder, wishing that four women – of course, women, it seems to me that he hates women – of “different” backgrounds, urging them to go back where they came from.

Except, of course, three of them were born in the United States, and all of them have succeeded admirably in this country which allegedly rewards strivers. But only if you’re Our Kind.

There is no need to insert the quotes here, it’s all out there. The president wants to deport Latino immigrants without the right papers, but he also wants to deport, psychologically at least, people who are different, “troublemakers” (as the Chinese call dissidents), even elected representatives who are challenging their own Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

Trump is speaking to his base, which seems to think the economy is going great -- for them, and that is all that matters. He is betting that the Supreme Court and the McConnells and the state legislatures will give his party – his race – an edge in 2020. And he is willing to play the race card, out in the open, knowing he has support, a lot of support.

Speaking of deporting – go back where you came from – it is worth remembering that Trump’s grandfather, one Friedrich Trump, left Bavaria and wound up in Seattle, apparently running restaurants and hotels and maybe even brothels. When that earlier Trump went back to Bavaria and sought to resume his citizenship, they deported him because he had avoided military service – a perfect example of rampaging genetics, come to think of it.

Friedrich Trump groveled to the prince:
“Most Serene, Most Powerful Prince Regent! Most Gracious Regent and Lord!”
And he concluded his plea:
“Why should we be deported? This is very, very hard for a family. What will our fellow citizens think if honest subjects are faced with such a decree — not to mention the great material losses it would incur. I would like to become a Bavarian citizen again.”

In Bavaria, they told Friedrich Trump: go back where you came from, so he wound up in Queens, New York, and his son, Fred Trump, was soon keeping black people out of his apartment buildings, on his way to shielding his revenue from taxes, to pass on to his children (one of them a judge; only in America.)

Now the grandson tells four duly elected members of Congress to go back where they came from, his rant based on racism. He has touched off a storm, but Trump has an audience.

It never went away.
* * *
(The reaction to Trump’s racist bleat on Sunday)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/us/politics/trump-twitter-squad-congress.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
(The deportation of Friedrich Trump)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-grandfather-germany-letter-deportation-us-bavaria-dreamers-a7903071.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-07-15/the-latest-trump-renews-attacks-on-4-congresswomen
(Even Lindsey Graham urges Trump to aim higher)
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-07-15/the-latest-trump-renews-attacks-on-4-congresswomen

Seth Friedman

7/15/2019 10:34:53 am

Well done, as usual. Always great to read your writing. All the best.

Seth

Angela M.

7/15/2019 11:30:06 am

The relentless daily verbal assault on the national psyche is terribly disheartening.

Robert lefland

7/15/2019 11:25:32 am

Has the man no shame? It could be any of us. Most of us need look back very far to find the immigrant roots. First they came for the....people who looked the other way when donald trump threatened their fellow citizens.
And where is the fire and brimstone from the Ds? Surely someone, or several someones, should take to the floor of a house of Congress and blast him without fear or favor. They should hit him with him own family tree or that of his third wife. But who?

John McDermott

7/15/2019 12:05:46 pm

The Orangutan in the White House(I should probably apologize right away here to all the decent Orangutans out there) has merely opened the door of a very dark closet(or a fungeon perhaps) and made it ok for his followers to openly express racist attitudes that they had been keeping more or less under wraps. It’s a kind of “leadership”, I suppose, in the backward, retrograde sense. Instead of Back to the Future, Trump wants to take us Forward to the Past, a past where Blacks, Jews, the Irish, Italians and Poles knew their place, what kinds of jobs they should be doing and, most importantly, where they could live and go to school. And Mexicans? Aside from those relative few who crossed the border to do seasonal farm work, mostly in California and Texas, there weren’t any. As Tom Friedman said today, now it’s four progressive women of color in Congress. But it is really anyone who is in some way “the other”. His obnoxious “go back where you came from” tweet, by his reasoning, could just as easily have been sent to Ivanka, urging her to go “back to the Czech Republic” where her mother came from. What Trump really wants is an America that looks, and thinks like him. To quote Tom Friedman again, we have a President who wouldn’t pass the basic test given to those who want to become US citizens because he clearly has no idea what America is or what it stands for.

bruce

7/15/2019 01:00:58 pm

george,

well put.

i'd like to add a few thoughts..

the four women trump attacked were duly elected to their positions in congress.

so was trump duly elected....with some help perhaps, but he represents a healthy % of the usa.

laughable that graham is being hailed for his mealy mouthed response. let's attack their ideas.

but they are communists.

gerrymandering is rampant in the states.

many countries, mine included, have independent non partisan committees that draw up new boundaries as the population shifts. the number of seats in parliament have probably gone up 20% as the population has grown in the past 30-40 years.

many, it seems to me, of trump's base probably haven't benefitted nearly as much as their 'betters'...

one of four women was born outside the usa.

if she wanted to run for potus, too bad.

australia has had two recent prime ministers born outside oz. canada had one about 35 years ago and two more in the first years as an independent country including the first PM. england's trump lite, boris johnson, seems in line to be next PM of the UK. he was born in the good old usa.

racism is an ugly thing. i, a white guy, experienced more than my share during my years in japan.

it's not fun.

my father's side of the family moved to the 'new' world from ireland about 135 years ago. my family now includes people born in england, germany, romania, italy, india, cameroon and japan from my second marriage.

thank sky fairy for diversity.

finally, i wonder how far back you'd have to go before you were considered a 'real' american or is being white enough?

Alan Rubin link

7/15/2019 03:54:37 pm

Today’s partisan gridlock and personal snipping is nothing new. It started back in the 1970’s and is well documented in Ira Shapiro’s “The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis”.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/-shapiros-the-last-great_b_1429447

Both Democrats and Republicans were almost equally to blame back then, but today’s Republicans, in lock step with our dysfunctional president, have completely lost sight of what governance is about.

The ever increasing consolidation of news outlets to a partisan few has left most of our country with access to only one point of view. A significant segment of our population gets their news from one source, usually one whose opinions confirms their own.

There are many worthwhile programs for the development of the young, but teaching of “civics” does not seem to be one. The habit of hearing differing views of others should be developed at the earliest possible age. My son-in-law heads such a program for the State of Wisconsin.

Negative news may sell papers and attract TV viewers, but more support should be given to the many organizations and journalists who seek the truth. It is not easy, but very few things worthwhile are.

Charles Vincent

7/16/2019 01:16:46 pm

The Republicans in Congress offer no reason for a updated version of John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage"

George Vecsey

7/16/2019 06:23:18 pm

Regards to the Magnificent First Seven, thank you.
Charlie, regarding Republicans in Congress: I don't think they can tell, or are bothered by, what the guy is doing. I don't see a tinge of conscience in any of them. Scary. GV

bruce

7/16/2019 07:05:53 pm

george,

you can stop looking for any conscience never mind a tinge.

bruce

Edwin Martin

7/16/2019 10:26:26 pm

Beautiful, if painful, portrait of our divided nation.

Friends may also have seen a powerful statement by Conservative columnist George Will and a thoughtful discussion of liberalism and progressive by David Brooks, all in the last 48 hours or so. Thanks, GV. I took the liberty of posting yours on Ed Martin, Facebook.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Trump’s Racism: Just Right for His Base

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