On the GOP under Trumpism: Identity politics v. Political identity

::::::::

Republicans disdainfully call it "identity politics," this outreach by Democrats to the many target audiences that make up what we used to call "the melting pot" but is more accurately described as the patchwork quilt comprising the American people.

That's because, when they think of "the voter," "the people," "REAL Amurricans," Republicans have a very clear image in mind: a middle-aged white man with a middle-class job, a wife and kids who are dependent on him, and the grandparents, who are also white and live in the suburbs or a retirement community.

That's why the 2016 Republican convention looked like a 1956 Memphis country club: it's the only identity they can wrap their heads around. "The norm," to them, is a mirror image of the people they see and live and work with every day. Hence the countless photos of congressional panels whose entire membership is white men (and a few blonde women) between 35 and 65, and a recent photo of the entire class of 80 or so new Republican congressional interns, in which exactly one face--waaaaaaay in the back of the picture--was not white.

Democrats, on the other hand, call it "inviting everyone to the table." These are the people the GOP ignores, at its peril: African Americans; independent-minded women; the GLBTQ community; Hispanics/Latinos, Asians, immigrants; people of all faiths and of no faith; executives and janitors, gardeners, cooks, and professors; college students, millennials, single parents; the elderly who rely on Social Security and Medicare (both created by Democrats). And anyone else who's interested.

Having named them, Democrats invite them all to have an equal voice in governing our country, making policy, and keeping America as great as it has ever been. That's also why the Democratic convention, unlike the GOP's, looked like America.

That's not identity politics; that's a political identity.

Why does it matter?

It matters because the GOP population--those white guys--have owned the American pie for 400 years, even when black people grew the wheat, ground the flour, picked the apples, refined the sugar, and baked--and served--the pie. And today, when those black and brown people--as well as Asians and women and GLBTQ people and the rest of us--announce that it's time for everyone to get a piece of the pie they labored over, those folks say, "Hell, no! You're playing identity politics! It's our pie!" I suspect that's because, now that a lot of people have been insisting that Black Lives Matter, the GOP has invited a new group into its fold, too, people who don't fit their country-club stereotype: white supremacists and members of the KKK. Maybe that's their idea of diversity.

Now, in full disclosure, I myself grew up as a privileged white male in the South in the 1950s and '60s. And despite a few setbacks and failures in my life, I have always had all the pie I wanted, whether I deserved it or earned it or worked for it or not. It's just there for me, because I'm a white guy. A gay man, but a white guy. And I personally enjoy sharing the pie--whoever baked it--with everyone who comes to the table, just as the Native Americans did at the first Thanksgiving and as Jesus did at Cana. But some of my brethren, some of those unreconstructed, deplorable white people, are still demanding that they get the whole pie ... though they might occasionally drop a few crumbs in the laps of "the good ones." (I'm talking to you, Herman Cain, Ben Carson, David Clarke, Katrina Pierson, Clarence Thomas, Allen West...)

But here's the thing: when black and brown and yellow and gay and female people say Our Lives Matter (Too), we simply don't want to hear you whining about "White Pride." You've had all the pie long enough, and your lives have been the only ones that mattered for 400 years in America, and frankly, you've got damn little to be white-proud about.

Which brings me to Donald Trump

The Republican Party has been laying the groundwork for Donald Trump's candidacy for two generations. Since Nixon and Agnew railed against hippies and pot-heads and draft dodgers and radical feminists; since Reagan railed against welfare queens driving Cadillacs; since Bush 41 railed against Willie Horton ... since time immemorial, the party has been ginning up the anger and resentment and violence of the uneducated white male working class in this country.

They've done it through political targeting led by Lewis Powell, Lee Atwater, Frank Luntz, and Karl Rove; through evangelical hypocrites like Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell; through radio and TV personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly; political columnists like Charles Krauthammer, Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza; the "think tanks" that underwrite them like the Rutherford Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute; and through self-serving ideologues like Phyllis Schlafly (R.I.P.), Newt Gingrich, and Rudy Giuliani.

For 50 years they've stoked resentment of blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, Native Americans, and anyone else who wants a slice of the white man's pie. They've encouraged violence at polling places; the militarization of civil police forces; a relentless, illogical, anti-scientific, and race-based "crack-down" on drugs; and unending attempts to restrict the right to vote by anyone who doesn't agree with their white-people's-party ideology. They've packed the Supreme Court with Lewis Powell clones like John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Samuel Alito.

And now they're shocked--shocked, I tell you--that, egged on by Donald Trump, angry, resentful white men have risen up in opposition to the black president and the female nominee.

Trump and his father were sued twice for refusing to rent to blacks in their apartment complexes. That's called racism. Trump called for the execution of one Hispanic and four black teenagers falsely convicted of raping a white banker ("the Central Park jogger") in 1989. After they were fully exonerated by irrefutable DNA evidence and the confession of the actual rapist in 2002, Trump said they still should have been executed. Because, "guilty." And on Oct. 7, 2016, he said he still thinks they're guilty. "Because they confessed." Without lawyers, under coercion and with police telling them that they'd face the death penalty if they didn't confess. That's racism. That's hate.

The playground defense: you do it, too!

Democrats are often accused by the GOP of being full of hate for them, for white people, for Christians, for Donald Trump. But no one I know hates them, or him. We find Trump, in particular, pathetic, revolting, deplorable, self-obsessed, incompetent, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, pathologically dishonest, and loathsome, but we don't hate him.

We consider him utterly unfit for the presidency, and the epitome of what the tea-party movement was all about: racial hatred of the first black president, whom they and he consider A) uppity; B) illegitimate; C) a non-citizen. But we don't hate him for that, either.

We see in Trump the worst underside of American politics and racial animus, the tactics of a bully, the petulance of a spoiled child, and the thin skin of a fearful, frightened, cowardly rich boy who has been in over his head his entire life. An entitled narcissist who has thrived only through bluster and breaking promises--and contracts--with thousands of people who trusted him; a man who finally resorted to selling the only thing he had left: his name, which he plastered on enough companies to convince low-information, gullible people that the "brand" was worth something.

But we don't hate him. We see him as woefully ill-prepared even for a debate that required preparation and that he knew about for months and for which he decided to "wing it"--because surely a privileged white boy can defeat a lowly woman without even trying.

Hate him? No. We feel only contempt, disgust, weariness, and disbelief that such a person could climb anywhere near the levers of power.

So, the election

The issue for America is whom to elect to the most powerful and important job in the world. Are we willing to elect a woman who has prepared for this work her entire life, who knows the facts and the issues and the leaders of the world, who understands how government operates and how politics works, who has demonstrated for 30 years that she is capable of handling adversity, unexpected change, conflict, compromise, and common ground that will benefit the entire nation? A woman who has always shown empathy for "the least of these," who has lived by Methodist John Wesley's creed to "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you can." A woman who without any doubt has the temperament, character, intellect, personality, and interest in the job to do it well and with diligence?

Or, conversely, do we choose a self-obsessed narcissist with the ego of a three-year-old, the attention span of a five-year-old, the temperament of a 10-year-old, the psychosexual development of a 14-year-old, and the pathetic anger of a frustrated 70-year-old loser who has never accomplished anything in his life other than selling his name and a false image of himself to gullible rubes?

That's the issue at stake on November 8.

Authors Website: http://citizenx-andy.blogspot.com

Authors Bio:

A writer, editor, publisher, theater director and activist who lives in North Carolina with two cats and a beloved Saab convertible.