United States | News & Politics

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Lyndon B. Johnson

Why are white people so scared of being a minority? Are minorities treated poorly in the United States or something?

I always said, the main problem isn't that Trump is racist. The problem is, that his voters see it as a good thing.

I think the problem is that the powerful are endlessly fucking over the weak for profit. It's been getting worse and we're feeling more squeezed every year.

Racism is just a tried and true, old reliable, when it comes finding a scapegoat to get people to blame someone else.

Remember, the day it might eventually get to 49% is the day they start screaming "DEI" from the rooftops and pretending it was always their position.

In other news the sky is blue today

White supremacy is not new in the United States. Why would someone like Trump arise now because racism merely exists and not, say, in 1952 or 1965 or 1980? What is different about Trump? Is he really all that different when it comes to racism or white supremacy? Trump's main defining features are that he is rude, sassy, and is a lazy liar that doesn't even try to be slick about it, something the political class usually focuses on pretty heavily.

Demonizing immigrants, having a monstrous policy towards them, catering to the interests of white people, killing any number of overseas brown people without consequence, dispossessing entire global south countries? These are bipartisan positions. Biden has just as harsh of treatment of undocumented immigrants and by many metrics us worse, but you rarely hear about it because (1) he isn't openly rhetorically hateful, just in action, and (2) the media apparatus does not focus on it any longer. In fact, the Democratic party is trying to outflank the GOP from the right on harsh border controls and deportation policies and use GOP votes against their bills as gotchas in their media strategies. A polite fascistic policy is not materially better than a rude one. In fact, it is more difficult to fight, as people who don't think of themselves as racist or xenophobic can fly under the radar while supporting it and never have to really contend with the white suoremacy they are internalizing, supporting, and spreading.

So, what is unique about Trump and why does it arise now? He is a TV personality huckster, he is dramatic and sassy, he comes up with silly names for his opponents, he lies lazily. These are superficial things that reflect a superficial electoralism itself. A political media apparatus that is already shallow and obsessed with aesthetics. A focus on a horse race where whatever grabs attention is more likely to build support and Trump has generally been great at grabbing attention. Trump was even boosted by Dems back during Hillary's run as part of a strategy to make the GOP look foolish, but we are at a point in media production and consumption where what they thought was foolish was actually a highly appealing rhetorical thumb in the eye of a pretentious political class. His rudeness and sass and lazy lying was a strength. These are the things that people care about in the electoral process of 2016, 2020, 2024. A political clown show of different flavors made of the same basic ingredients. It has just reached a level of absurdity that itself catches attention and is, in fact, what most people critical of Trump focus on rather than actual policy.