I am not a fan of the way our POTUS is running things, but I understand. Lets consider for a second who the man is: He is a relic of a bygone era who truly believes that America’s best times were when there was a clear sense of racial division and hierarchy. He is a man who is fiercely loyal to those who support him the most, and someone who will fight tooth and nail to defend his self-inflicted machismo and idealism. Sadly he is also someone fighting for a nation that does not exist and is unwilling to recognize the reality of what does exist. This is only highlighted by his inability to see alt-right as inherently bad vs. defined by it. If defined by anything it is defined by his ad hoc creation of the alt-left boogie man and dogged belief in an idea of a leftism that doesn’t really exist.
In other words, he is a man that sees antifa as a name of a terrorist organization vs. the idea of anti-facism being something that we should all be rallying behind. He isn’t the leader we need. However, he is the leader we have and that isn’t going to change for a while. So, what do we do while he is here?
I’d say the more central-thinking individuals we turn away from his stink the better. There is a certain amount of comfort in the ideas of white oppression. It is a convenient excuse for those who have no other solid foundation for why things are bad in their lives. It is a message that (like most republican rhetoric) targets a poor and disenfranchised audience that wants to believe they have the same chance as any other hard worker to become a billionaire. These are the people who see Trump as a ‘common man’ or ‘working class leader’ while the reality is that he comes from extreme wealth and only ever pays lipservice to their needs. What happened with his pledge to bring back coal is case and point of that.
Some Thoughts:
- Those were just some anti-Trump thoughts swirling around in my brain that needed to find an outlet. I am constantly amazed at how much a presidency reflects where the nation thinks it is at. Obama’s presidency marked the ‘end of American racism’ while Trump’s marks the ‘normalization of white rage.’ Both are exaggerations.
- The beam approaches. Less than a week now.