Not What You Are, What We Think You Are

After (yet more) shootings in Dayton, OH and El Paso, TX, many people who do not support Donald Trump have all but blamed him directly for the violence.  Some have even said it openly.  It seems that the Ohio shootings were just good old misogyny rather than racial hatred, but certainly we can blame the pussy grabbin' prez for promoting that too.  His photo ops are heavily criticized, the family of the orphaned baby receive furious messages for allowing Melania to hold him next to a grinning, up-thumbing Donald.  In response, Trump's supporters almost plaintively cry that he is not racist, has said and done nothing to promote racial violence, and this unfair idea of the president does nothing but polarize us further as a nation.  The thing is, the exact words that Trump uses and the actions he takes do not matter.  They have not mattered since he took office, and probably since he was named candidate.  He as a person is basically invisible; all we see is what he represents.

It would take a truly deluded view to say that Trump does not represent all sorts of prejudice.  He is a rich, white man, loud and thoughtless, used to getting his way one way or another and skipping out on responsibilities.  He represents the typical privileged white man Americans have always revered.  He does not need to openly advocate racist actions for himself or by the populace, he represents approval of such actions.  His existence confirms their appropriateness.  The big winner in the American game is the one who uses every single advantage he (and I do mean he) has, at the expense of everyone else.  He represents the pure 20th century American dream, where anybody can build an empire of obscene wealth (always forgetting the part that it helps if you start where somebody else left off).  His brash and pushy way of dealing with everyone around him is the aggressive businessman's technique, and the businessman is the true American, at least for the past hundred years or so.  Even if he has supporters among the rural and anti-urban segments, they admire him for his purported self-sufficiency.  Remember, he won the dream through his own work, not through government aid, grants, or any such handout for the weak.  Or so we hear.  His businessman's government should do what old-time Republican governments did, which was let business run itself.  Why, don't you remember the "Roaring Twenties"?  Product of business doing business that was!  Let's just forget about the Great Depression that came after that, that was obviously the real Russian meddling.

Many Trump supporters are frustrated and confused by being called racists/misogynists/homophobes etc. by the simple fact of being a Trump supporter.  Weirdly, a man calling himself Jesus Christ on a right winger's Youtube show made a good argument for why they might be so sensitive to it.  Basically, we have all accepted that it is wrong to be racists and racists are bad people.  However, we are good people.  We do not beat our loved ones, kick stray dogs, or go to Klan rallies.  We do not even demand segregation to be enshrined by law again.  We are not bad people.  Therefore, when somebody points out some statement or action that could be thought of as racist, it must not be because only bad people are racist.  As good people, by default nothing we do or say is racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, classist, etc.  Now, if we support the president because we think his hands-off policies on domestic business and pushing around imports will improve the economy, and our own economy specifically, that has nothing to do with race at all!  Yet, if the president is racist that makes him a bad person, and we as good people cannot support bad people.  If we support him, he must, by default, be a good person without flaw.  Donald Trump represents a strong America for his supporters, so no matter what his policies bring, they will support him and be deeply hurt that they are labeled racists.  By the way, the Youtuber was either so offended at being an implied racist or just so nervous to be next to "Jesus Christ" that he did not even try to make one of his slick arguments, he only repeated, "Everything you said is incorrect."

Of course, many of his supporters truly are racists and otherwise terrible humans, and back him up for that very reason.  He represents approval of violent dissuasion for the "wrong people" to participate in society.  He represents bullying softer, weaker voices into submission so the loud and violent can do whatever they want.  This is why, even after Trump has said that he does not support white supremacy, neo-Nazis and white supremacists wink at those words and boldly demand public visibility in their America on the right track.  Trump himself can deny his approval all he wants, and he may genuinely not approve, but he probably does not strongly disapprove unless there is serious violence and people try to smear his name with it.  In any case, it does not matter what his words and actions are, because his figure is all the approval necessary.

This is not limited to Trump, of course.  Obama was also more of a representation than a man.  However, he represented something very different.  Where Trump is not only the stagnant status quo and even a slide back into a more oppressive past, Obama was a signal of movement forward, to a fairer world for everyone, a society where maybe everyone did have a chance to succeed.  His background, his rhetoric, his campaign on "hope and change", gave the clear idea that progressive ideals were being taken seriously and a better country for all was in the works.  It did not matter than he failed to close Gitmo, that he authorized drone attacks that killed many civilians in the warzones that he also did not finish with, and even the fact that children being separated from their parents at our southern border became commonplace under his administration means nothing.  Obama represented a truly kinder nation and one that looked to the future.  What he represented was more important that practically anything he did or intended to do.  He won a Nobel Prize for being not-Bush, for god's sake.  Maybe he will win another for being not-Trump.  All he has to do is represent.