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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 3/28/17

The "White Wing" Of American Politics

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Elections have consequences. Sometimes it's a "be careful what you wish for moment" where everything seems right and peachy but triggers feelings of regret and "buyers remorse" the next day. It's a lot like downing that last shot of Tequila and then mentally blacking, out only to forget that the toothless woman at the bar with the sagging udders, looked a lot like Marylyn Munroe. So much so that by the time you got her into your room, lip-locking all the way, with your "little head" whispering in your sozzled, Tequila-drenched brain that she could pass for Miss America, it was way to late to stop.

Then the next morning you get a WFT moment and look at yourself with open revulsion as if you'd just woke up from sleeping with a pig with lipstick. This aptly describes many of President Donald J. Trump's supporters -- they are so far in that they cannot find a way to disengage from him. Besides, after the revulsion of having coitus with a porker wear off, there is the fact that Trump's coming to power has sparked the rise of the "white wing" of the Republican Party. This ignorant, bloviating, racist, blinkers-on, unthinking group that believe that its time for "white power" is now vocal than every before.

Trump is the willing standard bearer of a segment of the American population that believes that America is only for white people; that Black and brown people should "go back to their country," that its very important in 2017 to re-litigate and re-define the aims of the American Confederacy as somehow a patriotic, progressive movement, and that the white race is entitled to own and control America -- and the world. That's the gist of social development in America in the age of Trump. The narrative is simple and easy to understand: for too long white people have been ignored, maligned, and challenged for their place in society by Blacks, Hispanics, Jews and "others."

Now it's their time. The "justification for their cause" is based one the unjust and un-American attacks on the country's most defenseless people -- immigrants, Blacks, Asians and "all others" whose ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower. This is what undergirded the rise and victory of Donald Trump. It is a narrative bereft of facts, truth or historical precedent and perspective. Its is a conclusion drawn based on skin color, white privilege, and an inward nativist approach to American domestic development that harkens back to the slave days of the 1950s and 1960s when Blacks were still treated as disposable chattel. My fear is that with this new power given to white supremacists by a United States president unwilling to call out and reign in the racists in our midst that we'll be refighting the battles of the Civil Rights Era as neo-Jim Crowism becomes an essential plank of this president's Administration. Indeed, when President Trump proposes in his first budget to cut important programs that benefit America's poor -- white and Black -- then this puts in place the very first salvo of the opening battle to preserve and protect the hard-won gains of the past 50 years.

In fact, this presidential period is eerily similar to the struggle for social and economic justice that was fought in the era of Reconstruction when the old "white wing" of the Republican Party (and some Southern Democrats) under the cover of pseudo- white pain and neglect focused on race and class rather than on pragmatic social change. This ultimately led to great friction, violence, and what constituted some of the darkest days in American history. We're on the cusp of a similar era right now with one significant and fundamental difference.

Today, the new white's attack on hitherto sacred democratic institutions is a harbinger of a group that holds nothing scared or important in their pursuit of political power. So in this climate the "white wing" has conjoined and lumped all liberals, progressives, leftists, Democrats, feminists, North East and North West elites as well as the intellectual strata in one "we despise and hate you" box. Today's Trump voter is anti-intellectual and rejects any knowledge that runs counter to their warped worldview. This anti-intellectualism has spawned an entire population of uninformed, intellectually lazy, and gullible people that embrace the con-job of populism sold to them by the man now occupying the White House.

At another time in history ANY ONE of President Trump's mistakes, shortcomings, unfounded allegations, unsubstantiated accusations and indiscriminate lying would have provoked such an outrage that the president would have been forced to apologize and this very job would have been in jeopardy. But the OPPOSITE is true of the reaction today. Its as if the most outlandish, preposterous, and unhinged statements and behavior that the president engages in, the more his supporters idolize him. To sane, grounded people, this is mindboggling and incomprehensible.

Until you come to grips with the "white wing" and the "new white." Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton came about not just because of her campaign's mistakes, but because he'd already made the 2016 Presidential Election one of the most racist and negative in American History. Unable to articulate any sound socio-economic policies in a 21st century environment, Trump appealed to banal, narrow racism as the foundation of his campaign. He attacked immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, Blacks and Hispanics in ways that appealed to a plurality of white Americans, especially those in rural America. Among this population old racist canards still exist and primitive religious beliefs and actions still persist. Hillary Clinton and her campaign could have preached until Jesus Christ came down from Heaven and she would not have been able to win over these "Trump voters." How can you convince these people who hate gays and lesbians, believe that God causes rain to fall, and that Black people have their skin color because they suffer from the sinful Curse of Ham?

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MICHAEL DERK ROBERTS Small Business Consultant, Editor, and Social Media & Communications Expert, New York Over the past 20 years I've been a top SMALL BUSINESS CONSULTANT and POLITICAL CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST in Brooklyn, New York, running (more...)
 

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