American Democracy’s Broken Because Minorities Have to Keep Saving It From White People
In case you hadn’t noticed, yesterday, Donald Trump posted a 46-minute long video demanding that the election results be “overturned…now!” That came shortly after Bill Barr admitted that Trump’s attempts to legally tamper with results were both baseless and absurd — and the Attorney General is a die-hard Trumpist if ever there was one.So why is Trump persisting with his coup? Hasn’t it failed?
Well…yes. But also…no. Coups can succeed or fail on several levels. And Trump might not have walked away with the ultimate prize — but he’s not walking away empty-handed, either. The proclamations of the outright triumph of American democracy are premature.
It’s true that Trump’s coup has failed at any coup’s primary goal, which is to seize power. Trump’s legal challenges have mostly all been thrown out, by dumbfounded and irate judges, no less. For Trump, losing a crony like Bill Barr is like the first mate of the Titanic heading for the lifeboats. His electoral college tampering is looking increasingly unsuccessful, too. The reality, at this point, is that Trump isn’t going to be in power for another term.
Not now, that is.
Yet Trump’s coup has been remarkably successful on two other levels.
It’s true that Trump’s coup has failed at any coup’s primary goal, which is to seize power. Trump’s legal challenges have mostly all been thrown out, by dumbfounded and irate judges, no less. For Trump, losing a crony like Bill Barr is like the first mate of the Titanic heading for the lifeboats. His electoral college tampering is looking increasingly unsuccessful, too. The reality, at this point, is that Trump isn’t going to be in power for another term.
Not now, that is.
Yet Trump’s coup has been remarkably successful on two other levels.
Levels which themselves have torn a hole in the already tattered fabric of American democracy. He’s accomplished something as ugly as it is bizarre as it is ominous.
The first level on which Trump’s coup has succeeded is with the Republican base.
The first level on which Trump’s coup has succeeded is with the Republican base.
70% of Republicans believe the election was rigged. That’s not just a majority — it’s a massive supermajority. That’s not, say 50.1% of them, which would be bad and sinister and foolish enough. It’s 7 out of 10 of them.
Who are Republicans, anyway? Well, here I have to share a truth with you that’s funny, ugly, telling, and…you’re not going to like it. Republicans are white people who like to lie because they’re ashamed of being Republicans. I know that sounds harsh, so let’s look at some basic statistics together. 51% of White voters say that they “lean Republican.” That seems like a pretty even split, right? But the problem is that they’re not telling the truth. Over the last fifty years, an average of 55% percent of white people have voted Republican in every electiono. No Democrat — not one, from JFK to Obama — has ever won a majority of white voters.
So to say that “70% of Republicans believe the election of rigged” is, more accurately, to say this: 55% of white people voted for Trump, the precise historical average, and 70% of that 55% believe that the election was rigged. That’s not an outright majority of whites — but it’s pretty close. It’s a massive, massive number of Americans. How many, to be precise? Well, you can simply put the number at about 70% of the Trump vote. That’s at least 52 million people.
Now, it’s worth bearing in mind the context for all this. It’s not as if the last four years have been…normal. They have been the worst four years in modern American history, by a very long way. First, there was the fascism…the concentration camps, Gestapos, purges, (actual) Nazis, “family separations,” and so on. Then there was the failure even for “real” Americans, whose incomes fell, suicide rates soared, and mobility cratered, as America became a nation of poor people. Finally, there was what fascism and stupidity and hate and ignorance tend to result in, which is mass death. How many Americans are dead of Covid today? Two hundred and seventy four thousand.
That’s the context in question. To call Trump’s Presidency a failure is the understatement of the century — yes, really.
Who are Republicans, anyway? Well, here I have to share a truth with you that’s funny, ugly, telling, and…you’re not going to like it. Republicans are white people who like to lie because they’re ashamed of being Republicans. I know that sounds harsh, so let’s look at some basic statistics together. 51% of White voters say that they “lean Republican.” That seems like a pretty even split, right? But the problem is that they’re not telling the truth. Over the last fifty years, an average of 55% percent of white people have voted Republican in every electiono. No Democrat — not one, from JFK to Obama — has ever won a majority of white voters.
So to say that “70% of Republicans believe the election of rigged” is, more accurately, to say this: 55% of white people voted for Trump, the precise historical average, and 70% of that 55% believe that the election was rigged. That’s not an outright majority of whites — but it’s pretty close. It’s a massive, massive number of Americans. How many, to be precise? Well, you can simply put the number at about 70% of the Trump vote. That’s at least 52 million people.
Now, it’s worth bearing in mind the context for all this. It’s not as if the last four years have been…normal. They have been the worst four years in modern American history, by a very long way. First, there was the fascism…the concentration camps, Gestapos, purges, (actual) Nazis, “family separations,” and so on. Then there was the failure even for “real” Americans, whose incomes fell, suicide rates soared, and mobility cratered, as America became a nation of poor people. Finally, there was what fascism and stupidity and hate and ignorance tend to result in, which is mass death. How many Americans are dead of Covid today? Two hundred and seventy four thousand.
That’s the context in question. To call Trump’s Presidency a failure is the understatement of the century — yes, really.
America has the worst Covid outcomes in the world. And it’s exploding all over again. And yet 70% of Republicans, most of whom are white people, believe that the election was rigged…against the worst President in American history…the worst leader on the face of the globe, apart from maybe the kinds dictators of failed states Trump longs to be. (That’s not just my opinion, by the way, but from 200 political scientists.)
Think about that for a moment. Because when these “voters” say “the election was rigged!” they’re also saying: “None of the above matters to me. Not the mass death from Covid, not the fascism, not the kids in cages, not even the skyrocketing suicide rate amongst the only people I consider to be ‘real’ human beings, white people. None of that matters. I don’t care!”
So what does matter to them? Their political preferences and priorities are crystal clear by now. Here’s what Republicans don’t want. Any kind of public goods, from public healthcare to higher education to retirement — that’s not so odd, by the way, because even Democrats don’t want that. That’s troubling enough — that both sides in American politics agree it shouldn’t be a modern, functioning society.
But what’s really ominous is how far backward Republicans want to rewind the clock of modernity. To the Wild West? This faction believes that carrying a gun is the right that matters most. To the Taliban? Sure: that faction believes that religious law should rule civil society. To… Handmaid’s Tale? Sure: Amy Coney Barrett, Justice of the Supreme Court, belongs to a fanatical religious sect in which men make all the decisions, and there’s no separation between private and public life, which, if Americans saw it in a Muslim country, would be called something like “Iran.”
Even democrats don’t think America should be a modern, functioning society, like Canada or Europe. That’s why Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders didn’t win the primaries then — and are being loudly, publicly snubbed by Biden now. But Republicans go way, way further than that. They seem to believe — genuinely, in a heartfelt way — that America should be some strange cocktail of a fascist state, a theocracy, and an apartheid state. They seem to want to create a medieval dystopia, where women have few rights, minorities are hated subhumans, the chosen people carry guns everywhere, and purity of faith and blood are what decide a person’s fate and destiny.
(We minorities call that “Hillbilly Elegy.” That’s a joke. If you get it, you get it.)
In that context, Trump’s coup has been super successful.
Think about that for a moment. Because when these “voters” say “the election was rigged!” they’re also saying: “None of the above matters to me. Not the mass death from Covid, not the fascism, not the kids in cages, not even the skyrocketing suicide rate amongst the only people I consider to be ‘real’ human beings, white people. None of that matters. I don’t care!”
So what does matter to them? Their political preferences and priorities are crystal clear by now. Here’s what Republicans don’t want. Any kind of public goods, from public healthcare to higher education to retirement — that’s not so odd, by the way, because even Democrats don’t want that. That’s troubling enough — that both sides in American politics agree it shouldn’t be a modern, functioning society.
But what’s really ominous is how far backward Republicans want to rewind the clock of modernity. To the Wild West? This faction believes that carrying a gun is the right that matters most. To the Taliban? Sure: that faction believes that religious law should rule civil society. To… Handmaid’s Tale? Sure: Amy Coney Barrett, Justice of the Supreme Court, belongs to a fanatical religious sect in which men make all the decisions, and there’s no separation between private and public life, which, if Americans saw it in a Muslim country, would be called something like “Iran.”
Even democrats don’t think America should be a modern, functioning society, like Canada or Europe. That’s why Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders didn’t win the primaries then — and are being loudly, publicly snubbed by Biden now. But Republicans go way, way further than that. They seem to believe — genuinely, in a heartfelt way — that America should be some strange cocktail of a fascist state, a theocracy, and an apartheid state. They seem to want to create a medieval dystopia, where women have few rights, minorities are hated subhumans, the chosen people carry guns everywhere, and purity of faith and blood are what decide a person’s fate and destiny.
(We minorities call that “Hillbilly Elegy.” That’s a joke. If you get it, you get it.)
In that context, Trump’s coup has been super successful.
Republicans — meaning American whites have never wanted to live in a modern democracy. They have voted, historically, as a social group — meaning a majority of whites — and as a political bloc — meaning “Republicans,” which is what they call themselves to put a polite gloss on “white people” — against all the following things: civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, desegregation, public education, healthcare. The list goes on and on and on.
Let me distill that.
“Republicans” is a euphemism for “white people,” and as a social group and political bloc, American white people have, in their majority never — never wanted to live in a modern democracy. A society of equals, where minorities and women and so forth have the same rights as everyone else, a truly free society, where everyone has the basics, a society that’s fair and just, where everyone is treated with dignity and gentleness and respect. They have never wanted to live in such a place.
Never. Not since the days of JFK — who eked out a narrow win, thanks to minorities — right down to now.
What Trump has done is give license to white people — aka “Republicans” to openly stop believing in democracy.
Let me distill that.
“Republicans” is a euphemism for “white people,” and as a social group and political bloc, American white people have, in their majority never — never wanted to live in a modern democracy. A society of equals, where minorities and women and so forth have the same rights as everyone else, a truly free society, where everyone has the basics, a society that’s fair and just, where everyone is treated with dignity and gentleness and respect. They have never wanted to live in such a place.
Never. Not since the days of JFK — who eked out a narrow win, thanks to minorities — right down to now.
What Trump has done is give license to white people — aka “Republicans” to openly stop believing in democracy.
See the process of decay: during the Reagan Revolution, American whites had to at least pretend to pay lip service to democracy, and so, too during the Bush years. But now they don’t. Trump has let them openly begin to state what they have always really believed and voted for — against democracy, because a modern, functioning society wasn’t something they ever wanted to have.
Basically, if you look at the numbers, maaaybe about 25% of Republicans aren’t white.
Basically, if you look at the numbers, maaaybe about 25% of Republicans aren’t white.
What a coincidence! That’s roughly the same number that believes the election wasn’t rigged. White people are still 77% of America. It’s a very, very bad thing when 70% of a political side —almost entirely made up of a single ethnic group, which is a society’s majority —openly stops believing in democracy, just because they didn’t get what they wanted. Which, incidentally, was less democracy in the first place.
If we saw all this happening in another country, what would we call it? What would we say if, for example, 70% of conservatives in a Muslim country thought an election was rigged because it didn’t result in dictatorship and authoritarianism — coincidentally, the same 70% who hated other religious groups? If, for example, 70% of one kind of ethnic group, the majority, who hated the rest, stopped believing in democracy, just because they’d lost an election in which they sought the right to repress and subjugate everyone else even harder? We’d call it what it is: a racist meltdown. A social collapse made of bigotry and hate.
That is still where America is.
Yes, Biden won the election. But it was a Pyrrhic victory.
If we saw all this happening in another country, what would we call it? What would we say if, for example, 70% of conservatives in a Muslim country thought an election was rigged because it didn’t result in dictatorship and authoritarianism — coincidentally, the same 70% who hated other religious groups? If, for example, 70% of one kind of ethnic group, the majority, who hated the rest, stopped believing in democracy, just because they’d lost an election in which they sought the right to repress and subjugate everyone else even harder? We’d call it what it is: a racist meltdown. A social collapse made of bigotry and hate.
That is still where America is.
Yes, Biden won the election. But it was a Pyrrhic victory.
It revealed just how racist, bigoted, and frankly idiotic the vast majority of American white people really are. They didn’t seem to care about the horrors of the last four years, they gave all that a free pass, if not cheering encouragement, and then when they didn’t get the right to inflict more damage on everyone, including themselves, they threw a massive baby tantrum, and threw all the toys out of the crib.
Biden’s victory is a vivid demonstration of just how broken America really is. Minorities won the election for Biden — a story that white pundits aren’t telling because they don’t want it told. They’re telling the opposite story — of a handful of minority communities in which Trump’s support, predictably, increased. Like Cuban exiles, who lean arch-conservative. So what? The larger story —and the truer one — is that minorities saved America from fascist collapse.
But let me tell you something you probably don’t know.
That’s what they’ve been doing for half a century now.
Who gave JFK his historic victory? Minorities did. And without that, America would probably never have had desegregation. Remember — whites have never voted for a Democrat as a majority. If American whites had had their way, if their preferences had prevailed, America would still be a segregated society. To this very day.
Stop and think about that for a second. It’s chilling and eerie to us minorities, and it should be to you, too.
Let me put all that much more bluntly.
Minorities have been saving white America’s stupid ass from authoritarian fascist collapse for half a century now.
And at every step of the way, American white people have resisted. They have refused to learn a damned thing. They have voted, over and over again, to keep democracy as limited and backward a franchise as humanly possible. As a social group, in their majority, they have never wanted anything but what Trumpism has promised them.
America’s white people are it’s biggest problem. They do not live in the modern world, and they don’t want to.
Trump’s coup has been massively successful in that regard. It has taught white Americans that they can keep on pulling backward, resisting the arc of history, the gravity of modernity, that they can keep on hoping to live in a backward, medievally ignorant, broken, crushingly poor, authoritarian society — as long as they get what they always wanted: supremacy.
That’s no small feat. Maybe it was always on the cards, if you understand the cruel history I’ve tried to tell above. And it doesn’t bode well for the future. Because either Trump is going to run again, or his kids will run, or someone even more stupid and evil and grotesque will. Before you ask if that’s possible, go ahead and imagine President Ted Cruz, or President Tom Cotton.
A nation cannot survive, often, when it has become like America.
Biden’s victory is a vivid demonstration of just how broken America really is. Minorities won the election for Biden — a story that white pundits aren’t telling because they don’t want it told. They’re telling the opposite story — of a handful of minority communities in which Trump’s support, predictably, increased. Like Cuban exiles, who lean arch-conservative. So what? The larger story —and the truer one — is that minorities saved America from fascist collapse.
But let me tell you something you probably don’t know.
That’s what they’ve been doing for half a century now.
Who gave JFK his historic victory? Minorities did. And without that, America would probably never have had desegregation. Remember — whites have never voted for a Democrat as a majority. If American whites had had their way, if their preferences had prevailed, America would still be a segregated society. To this very day.
Stop and think about that for a second. It’s chilling and eerie to us minorities, and it should be to you, too.
Let me put all that much more bluntly.
Minorities have been saving white America’s stupid ass from authoritarian fascist collapse for half a century now.
And at every step of the way, American white people have resisted. They have refused to learn a damned thing. They have voted, over and over again, to keep democracy as limited and backward a franchise as humanly possible. As a social group, in their majority, they have never wanted anything but what Trumpism has promised them.
America’s white people are it’s biggest problem. They do not live in the modern world, and they don’t want to.
Trump’s coup has been massively successful in that regard. It has taught white Americans that they can keep on pulling backward, resisting the arc of history, the gravity of modernity, that they can keep on hoping to live in a backward, medievally ignorant, broken, crushingly poor, authoritarian society — as long as they get what they always wanted: supremacy.
That’s no small feat. Maybe it was always on the cards, if you understand the cruel history I’ve tried to tell above. And it doesn’t bode well for the future. Because either Trump is going to run again, or his kids will run, or someone even more stupid and evil and grotesque will. Before you ask if that’s possible, go ahead and imagine President Ted Cruz, or President Tom Cotton.
A nation cannot survive, often, when it has become like America.
When its majority hates everyone else, because it hates the idea of everyone else being a person, being a human being, being free and equal, pursuing life and liberty and happiness, because what it really wanted, all along, was to be above them, dominating them, enslaving them, owning them. And if it can’t have that, it won’t accept any kind of social compact at all.
That is the perilous place America finds itself in. Just a tiny number of minorities less, the ones who’ve saved its ass from total implosion for the last fifty years, and America would be even more of a third world country than it is now. An authoritarian state, and probably an apartheid state to boot, not to mention vastly poorer. Its white people, as a majority, appear to be every bit as ignorant, remorseless, and cruel as the majorities in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia. If they can’t have it all — they don’t want anyone to have anything at all. There is no social contract they will agree to whatsoever, which is what “Wahhh! The election was rigged! I don’t believe in democracy!” really means. American white people have nothing in common — nothing whatsoever — with their cousins in Europe or Canada, who agree happily to modern social contracts where everyone has the basics, and then plenty beyond that, no matter their color, race, or creed.
America’s white people seem to truly be different — deeply, gruesomely so. They never accepted modernity and democracy. And they still don’t.
That is the perilous place America finds itself in. Just a tiny number of minorities less, the ones who’ve saved its ass from total implosion for the last fifty years, and America would be even more of a third world country than it is now. An authoritarian state, and probably an apartheid state to boot, not to mention vastly poorer. Its white people, as a majority, appear to be every bit as ignorant, remorseless, and cruel as the majorities in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia. If they can’t have it all — they don’t want anyone to have anything at all. There is no social contract they will agree to whatsoever, which is what “Wahhh! The election was rigged! I don’t believe in democracy!” really means. American white people have nothing in common — nothing whatsoever — with their cousins in Europe or Canada, who agree happily to modern social contracts where everyone has the basics, and then plenty beyond that, no matter their color, race, or creed.
America’s white people seem to truly be different — deeply, gruesomely so. They never accepted modernity and democracy. And they still don’t.
December 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment