How White Angst Will Get Trump Re-Elected (Hint: Racism Works)

Trump is going to get re-elected.

As long as Trump keeps misleading Disillusioned White People with familiar tried and true scapegoats, he will win in 2020.

As long as Trump keeps emotionally provoking — and appealing to — this segment of thwarted, angst-ridden white voters, he’ll get his second term.

Does my prediction surprise you? It shouldn’t. Especially if you’ve been reading my op-eds.

For over three years now I’ve been banging the drum loudly about Trump. Since 2016, I’ve been posting op-eds about the very real threat this fascist demagogue/wannabe dictator poses to our fragile democracy. If you’ve been reading my opinion pieces in The Richfield Patch, though, you must already know that.

You must also know that I’ve never minced words when it comes to his political aspirations, either.

While there’s no point in rehashing every single analysis I’ve already written about Trump, the one I wrote and submitted back on February 22, 2016, really deserves another look. The title says it all:

“Why Donald Trump Should NEVER be President (HINT: He’s an all-American racist boor with no emotional intelligence)”
“The Donald VS. The Pope: Why this latest scandal is only more Trumped-up PR gone bad.”

“Donald Trump is the worst kind of American: the kind who thinks he can do and say anything he wants just because he has money.

“Step away from the Rose Garden, Mr. Trump — Now!

“What’s really frightening is how so many voters at various income levels are actually buying into his shameless self-promotion as a Presidential candidate. Almost as though an entire spectrum of US citizens now believes that having a lot of money will somehow qualify a racist boor like The Donald to live in The White House. It can’t. It won’t…”

“…Oh, in case you skipped Civics class, the dictionary defines fascism in this way: “a philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.”
Kind of like Nazism without all the swastikas and hate speech. Kind of like what Donald Trump evokes when he tries to convince everyone that his business experience alone qualifies him for the Presidency. Of course, it doesn’t…”

Then I criticized Trump further for creating this “feud” between Pope Francis and himself. I also took issue with the mainstream corporate media for misrepresenting what Trump was doing. Too many journalists used sensational, inaccurate hype that showed favorable bias towards Trump. In closing, I offered this thought-provoking observation:

“…Trump’s irrational diatribe reminded me of something I once heard about businessmen. There’s not much physical difference between the brain of a businessman and the brain of a sociopath. In fact, they’re remarkably alike. It’s just that the businessman can find other ways to use his talents and intelligence. You know, doing things like making money with real estate and not doing things like messing with other people’s heads.”

“At this point, though, we can only pray that this egotistical capitalist/fascist won’t keep messing too much longer with our heads before the November election.”

Okay. That was 3 1/2 years ago. Now it’s official: Trump HAS been messing with our heads since Inauguration Day. He might have been inaugurated as our 45th President, but he’s continuously shown himself to be the shameless demagogue I always feared he would be. There’s no way he could ever be called “Presidential.”

Forget about appealing to the “better angels of our nature” as Presidents Lincoln and Obama always aspired to do. Trump is a bonafide demagogue. That means he gets his power (and maintains it) by emotionally appealing to the worst fears and prejudices of the American people. That means he’s mastered scapegoating, name-calling, hate-mongering, fear-mongering, and outright lying to get Americans to vote for him — and to loyally support him.

In 2016, Trump used his anti-democratic propaganda and modus operandi to win the Presidency; and, he’s going to do the same thing in 2020 to get re-elected. And he’s going to win — again.

And no fair criticizing the Democratic Party for not knowing how to handle him.

It’s pointless to start trashing any Democrat’s campaign strategy. Why? Because there’s no way any candidate can fight Trump’s emotional manipulation of the masses. Especially when racism is involved.

There. I actually brought up the R word. I actually included RACISM in this op-ed. It’s real, and we should stop pretending that it doesn’t exist. IT DOES EXIST. Trump used it to become President. Furthermore, he’s still using it in tweets, interviews, and campaign rallies to make sure he can keep flexing his Presidential Muscle.

As a white person myself, I can’t believe that so many other white people still don’t get it. So I’ll spell it out for you guys: TRUMP GETS IT. HE KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT HE’S DOING AND HOW TO PLAY IT.

Trump knows exactly how to manipulate this key segment of white Americans who believe the American Dream has passed them by. Every country has a good story it tells its people, and ours is about making our dreams a reality through hard work, good citizenship, and a strong belief in our democracy as the true Land of Opportunity for all. But it also goes beyond these dedicated goals. America has also formerly declared its inhabitants have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Americans firmly believe in this inherent right, along with the other freedoms and rights ensured by our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. And we are not about to STOP believing in our national credo, either.

But wait. What happens when your own personal “pursuit of happiness” implodes?

What if the factory or store or business closes down, and you can’t find another job? Then you couldn’t keep up with your mortgage payments. Then you’d lose your house. Then you and your family would have scrape around without adequate food, shelter, healthcare insurance. And you wouldn’t be able to afford the countless other expenses that little kids in every family cost their parents — things like new shoes, music lessons, summer camp, daycare, etc., etc. Then what?

That, in a nutshell, is the American Nightmare so many people are struggling with these days. Even if they aren’t directly experiencing it yet, they still live in fear that it might happen to them. And this fear and emotional overload interferes with their perception of reality. Their cherished belief system and time-honored values have gotten so compromised they just can’t see straight. They’ve gotten so dysfunctional they can’t connect the dots. They can’t get a clear picture of the cause and effect that’s affecting them. And yet, they can’t bring themselves to actually admit that the American Dream sucks. Or, that it always was an impossibility for hard-working average folks like themselves. But they still need to blame someone — or something — for their failed lives.

Unfortunately, they’re so overwrought they can’t put the blame in the right place. They don’t want to blame themselves. They don’t want to blame inflation; unjust laws; failed economic policies; greedy bosses; regulatory agencies that look the other way to excuse blatant law-breaking; or, human error. In other words, they never want to blame the white people who are causing them problems. They don’t want to blame someone who looks so much like them. They want to blame unfamiliar faces — unfamiliar non-white faces.

Trump understands their reluctance to dismiss our all-American credo. He instinctively knows that admitting our American Dream was only a B.S. pipe dream from our founding fathers would be like spitting at your Mom, the flag, and apple pie. It would just be un-American…and Trump gets it. He knows it would be trashing a sacred belief system — and we all need to believe!

Trump instinctively knows what so many others are loathe to admit. He knows that, underneath that down-home, flag-waving, God-fearing, white America, lies scattered fragments of real jaw-dropping prejudice, along with primal xenophobic fright. Hello, non-white scapegoats! No, certainly not all white people are intolerant of non-white people. Certainly, not all racists hide in white sheets and dance around burning crosses, either. Certainly, the number of White Supremacists is not legion. But their racism is just large enough in white angst-ridden voting districts to give Trump more votes than his Democratic challenger would get in any Presidential Election. It’s just enough to get him a second term.

It’s not that he can “speak their language,” it’s that he really knows how to use propaganda.

Trump’s diabolical genius (if you want to call it that, for lack of a better term) is that he can effectively match scapegoats with the right constituency. Factory shut-down? Those Mexicans are going to take away your jobs AND rape you! No more Christmas Trees allowed at your schools? Sharia Law! The Muslims are stealing our Christmas holiday! Racial discrimination? Black Americans would rather play the race card than clean up their rat-infested cities! It’s like, The Donald can come up with all kinds of racist tropes AND deny his racism at the same time AND not be considered a hypocrite because “he’s just Trump being Trump.”

(Sigh) Scary but true. The scariest part, though, is that his highly un-American campaign strategy is working. People are still going to vote for him and laugh at his racist quips at rallies as they keep insisting they’re not racist. Who can argue with them? No one can. Especially not the challenger who dares to run against Trump in 2020, that’s for sure. Trying to reason with Trump’s supporters will inevitably incur the wrath of a base that is already irrational and unreasonable.

And yet, if we don’t start confronting Trump’s “everyday low-key racism” pretty soon, we’re never going to get him out of The White House. Just four more years as POTUS #45, and he won’t be able to leave. He’d never be able to walk away from all that power if he wins a second term.

So if we really want to salvage our democracy, we’d better find some way to actually address his pathological racism pretty soon. If we don’t start now, Trump is going to crown himself America’s new King — like a new age Napoleon with his own tower AND after-shave lotion.