Terrific piece byTa-Nehisi Coates
The scope of Trump’s commitment to whiteness is matched only by the depth of popular disbelief in the power of whiteness. We are now being told that support for Trump’s “Muslim ban,” his scapegoating of immigrants, his defenses of police brutality are somehow the natural outgrowth of the cultural and economic gap between Lena Dunham’s America and Jeff Foxworthy’s. The collective verdict holds that the Democratic Party lost its way when it abandoned everyday economic issues like job creation for the softer fare of social justice. The indictment continues: To their neoliberal economics, Democrats and liberals have married a condescending elitist affect that sneers at blue-collar culture and mocks the white man as history’s greatest monster and prime-time television’s biggest doofus. In this rendition, Donald Trump is not the product of white supremacy so much as the product of a backlash against contempt for white working-class people.
“We so obviously despise them, we so obviously condescend to them,” the conservative social scientist Charles Murray, who co-wrote The Bell Curve, recently told The New Yorker, speaking of the white working class. “The only slur you can use at a dinner party and get away with is to call somebody a redneck—that won’t give you any problems in Manhattan.”
“The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes,” charged the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, “is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now.”
That black people, who have lived for centuries under such derision and condescension, have not yet been driven into the arms of Trump does not trouble these theoreticians. After all, in this analysis, Trump’s racism and the racism of his supporters are incidental to his rise. Indeed, the alleged glee with which liberals call out Trump’s bigotry is assigned even more power than the bigotry itself. Ostensibly assaulted by campus protests, battered by arguments about intersectionality, and oppressed by new bathroom rights, a blameless white working class did the only thing any reasonable polity might: elect an orcish reality-television star who insists on taking his intelligence briefings in picture-book form.
Enidigm
5390
Conservatives are going to have to actually face the realities of a Trump election and what that means to their worldview. Most are going desperately try not to. Call it grading Republicans on the Clinton Scale. Assuming you’re a conservative and you think the Clintons are corrupt and bad at best and The Worst Thing Ever at the worst [and setting aside as a liberal whether or not this conclusion is fair or accurate from a liberal point of view], how many Clintons does a Trump presidency rank?
-
<1 Clinton. You think a Trump presidency is actually less corrupt than a Clinton presidency. This is at least something that can be argued over. You in your mind still hold the moral high ground - Republicans are still better than Democrats. At least though this is a point of contest, at least we can discuss why you think this, and whether those beliefs are exaggerating, and maybe open to changing minds. Republicans are not pure and lilly white, but in your view, they have the moral majority against Democrats. At least you think Republicans should stand for and be better those illogical, irrational, riotious and corrupt Democrats. Hopefully you’ll be able to defend youself when people demand to know why you think this with more than Breitbart links.
-
=1 Clinton. You think Trump is probably just as bad as a Clinton presidency. At this point you cede the moral high ground - your worldview is that Republicans don’t hold their politicians to a higher standard than Democrats do (in your view). At this point… you pretty much stop have to complaining about the Clintons. You don’t think Republicans are any better than Democrats. You’re happy with the status quo, everybody sucks, what can you do? Again, this is at least debatable, but you at this point by logic must admit to yourself you’re really no better than those liberal Clinton lovers you think are so illogical and irrational.
-
greater than 1 Clinton [i can’t use greater than sign, thanks discourse!]. You actually admit that Trump really is worse than a Clinton presidency… and you don’t care. At this point you have to admit to yourselves, and everyone else, that you really are just out to get what you can get. Republicans might bitch about Clinton, but when it comes right down to it, you admit they don’t hold the moral superiority and are just out to get what they can get. Sure crazy liberals are rioting, electing Trump is causing mass protests, racial tension, possible diplomatic disasters across the world, causing the erosion of governing norms… whatever. He got rid of those environmental laws that cost me money and reduced my taxes. That’s all i care about, don’t really care about anything else. Now you’re really in conflagrational territory. You can’t really bitch when “crazy liberals” come after you, because you never gave a shit about crazy liberals to begin with. At the core, you just want to get yours, and you think they just want to get theirs, and it really is a zero sum game, and with Trump you won. Great. But don’t really act to surprised when Armando and Co. comes knocking on your door one day with a mob and wearing Robespierrian smiles.
Scuzz
5391
Heaven forbid rich people paying big money to belong to a country club for business purposes. Whatever will we do?
Timex
5393
Just to be clear here, you do not have any problem with Trump using his office to personally enrich himself.
Is that a correct description of your position?
Scuzz
5394
If you read my posts above I don’t say that. I just find the complaint about his golf courses somehow just now attracting businessmen kind of disingenuous. If Trump wants to make money from being president there are other more lucrative ways. And people paying for access is nothing new.
Timex
5395
Trump specifically campaigned on this being like, the worst thing in the world.
Scuzz
5396
So he changed his mind on something else.
Don’t confuse my failure to hate everything Trump does with being a supporter of Trump. I think he is totally unprepared for the job. I also think he is a businessman first and a “statesman” second, or maybe twenty-third.
Now I want Kim Carnes to record a song called ‘Robespierrian Smile.’
I actually agree, Scuzz. The only related outrage I have is really that nobody seems to give a darn these days about the emoluments clause, and this is just another example of Trump’s intent to profiteer off this wreckage of an administration.
Quaro
5400
Remember Trump saying he’d put things in a ‘Blind Trust’ … LOL
vyshka
5401
He thought they said blonde trust. Conway don’t mind though.
I never know whether I should feel touched by the comparison or slightly let down that my militant atheism doesn’t at least warrant an accusation of Hebertism.
That piece was great. Thanks for the heads up!
The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House.
Truth.
Yes, great read. Thanks, Grumpy.
And so the most powerful country in the world has handed over all its affairs—the prosperity of its entire economy; the security of its 300 million citizens; the purity of its water, the viability of its air, the safety of its food; the future of its vast system of education; the soundness of its national highways, airways, and railways; the apocalyptic potential of its nuclear arsenal—to a carnival barker who introduced the phrase grab ’em by the pussy into the national lexicon.
Apparently one car shooting at another car.
ShivaX
5407
Shitty, but better than a Trumpster targeting a media outlet.
MrGrumpy
5408
(and @rrmorton) Glad it didn’t get totally lost in the shuffle. It’s a brilliant essay.
