Wednesday, June 13, 2018

They built that. We watched.



White liberals really embarrassed ourselves in 2016 by being blindsided by the level of support for Donald Trump. "We didn't think so many Americans would actually vote for an ignorant racist!" we said. Voters of color knew better and shook their heads at our completely willful ignorance.
Then we continued to show our asses via the white media's collective insistence that support for Trump was a symptom of "economic anxiety," and not racism. White liberals bought it, and we filled op eds and airwaves to overflowing with hand-wringing about appealing to the "white working class.""Why can't they see that Democratic policies benefit workers more?" we wail, again and again and again, while never stopping to consider that those voters might just be motivated by something other than economic policy. Again, voters of color shake their heads at us and note that giving white people the benefit of the doubt is a luxury that only white people can afford.
The latest manifestation of white liberal denial is this insistence that GOP politicians and voters are turning against Trump. We scan the news for glimmers of defection and hold them aloft as if they were moral victories, when in fact they're merely isolated desertions born of distaste - not for the agenda, but for the man who's taking all the credit for it. "He's gone too far, even for them!" we yell into the void of reason and ethics, as Gallup publishes a poll that shows GOP approval for our president at 90%.
Listen. He has not gone too far for them. His supporters are not turning against him. They are not moved by the bullet-ridden bodies of high-schoolers. They are not moved by unarmed citizens treated like enemies on a battlefield. They are not moved by little brown children in cages. The most enduring truth of 2016 is that fully half of our voting public is deplorable, and wants to inflict harm upon the other half. They are racist, yes, and they are so much more. They are willing to destroy the constraints of governance in order to empower a dictator who will persecute the people they hate. And they won't turn back from their course on their own. We cannot convert or reason with them, we can only use what is left of our democracy to stop them.