2008 was the year it began. The axis of the world shifted
as the white majority saw itself as being overtaken. The election of
Barack Obama did not make us a post-racial nation. In retrospect it made
us a hyper-racial one.
And who stoked the flames higher than Donald Trump in his Birther attacks? Mr.Obama became the embodiment of so many evils, a black Kenyan Muslim secretly intending to destroy our nation. Whiteness was in mortal danger.
And who turned the fire into a conflagration with his Great Wall of Trump and his deaf ear to the cries of Syrian refugees? If "the other" was not a terrorist, he was at least a threat to the American way of life.
Donald Trump has cast the villains in this play. For those confounded by the sense that the world was slipping away from them, the vitriol of Mr.Trump provided a voice for their fears, their insecurities, their anger, their hatred.
"White like me" is not the rallying cry of those who support Mr. Trump but it is in their every word. The dreams of 2008 have been replaced by the Donald Trump nightmare of 2016
And who stoked the flames higher than Donald Trump in his Birther attacks? Mr.Obama became the embodiment of so many evils, a black Kenyan Muslim secretly intending to destroy our nation. Whiteness was in mortal danger.
And who turned the fire into a conflagration with his Great Wall of Trump and his deaf ear to the cries of Syrian refugees? If "the other" was not a terrorist, he was at least a threat to the American way of life.
Donald Trump has cast the villains in this play. For those confounded by the sense that the world was slipping away from them, the vitriol of Mr.Trump provided a voice for their fears, their insecurities, their anger, their hatred.
"White like me" is not the rallying cry of those who support Mr. Trump but it is in their every word. The dreams of 2008 have been replaced by the Donald Trump nightmare of 2016
3 comments:
In it's sick way I hope Donald wins the primary so he gets smashed in the election. It might really shake things up in the Republican Party and teach the moderates a lesson in bedfellows
To your point, Obama's last Thursday’s press conference was most telling. In it, he explained Trump’s ascent the result of “the nasty tone of our politics, which I certainly have not contributed to.” Really? Seriously? He went on: “Objectively, it’s fair to say that the Republican political elites and many of the information outlets-social media, news outlets, talk radio, television stations-have been feeding the Republican base for the last seven years a notion that everything I do is to be opposed; that cooperation or compromise somehow is a betrayal.” All of this reflexive Obama bashing created “an environment where someone like Trump can thrive. He’s just doing more of what has been done for the last seven and a half years.” The irony is that even as Obama denies any liability for Trump, he lapsed into the same rhetorical habit that helped fuel Trump’s ascent. For the President, principled opposition to his policies is always illegitimate or motivated by bad faith. Like the President’s nonstop moral lectures about “our values” and “who we are as Americans,” by which he means only liberal values and who we are as Democrats, he reads his critics out of politics. No wonder so many Americans feel disenfranchised and powerless. He’s never understood he’s the President of ALL Americans, not just Democrats.
So while we’re being “Objective” perhaps Mr. Obama could account for the populist uprising amongst disaffected Democratic primary voters for a 74 year old socialist vowing an economic revolution. Bernie is Donald’s leftward duplicate. The difference is that the Democratic establishment is doing a better job keeping their outsider away from a delegate majority.
For over a decade our economy has been growing by less than 3%; not seen since the 1930’s. Middle-class incomes have declined or stagnated, creating economic anxiety and political unrest. President Obama doesn’t do persuasion and compromise. He shows contempt for institutions he doesn’t run, and notably, most of his growth-subtracting policies have been imposed through unilateral executive action. Some policies were intended to sow division, like his lawless immigration order that inflamed the right and was stopped by the courts. The nature of Mr. Trump’s appeal CAN be explained by Mr. Obama’s own rule-by-regulation governing methods and polarizing political style.
So, if I understand you correctly, Mr. Obama shoulders much of the blame for the Trump accusations of the President actually being a foreigner in our midst, of Trump's allegations that all Muslims hate us, of his contention that Mexicans are, almost as one, drug dealers and rapists.
While Mr.Obama may have his shortcomings, the assertion that Trump is a natural result of the policies of the President is absurd.
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