- Step one: make a blatantly racist comment about four female Congresswomen of color, saying they should "go back" to where they came from (all are US citizens).
- Step two: double down, denying that the tweet was racist, refusing to apologize for it, and affirming that criticizing the US means hating it means you should leave.
- Step three: gaslight, framing the Congresswomen--and anyone else who criticizes his tweet--as the "real" racists. This step also taps into
- Step four, transform the affair into the latest litmus test for discriminating us (real [white] Americans who support Trump) from them (everyone else).
There's Trump's hairtrigger reactivity and quickdraw, stream-of-consciousness Twitter habit coupled with his expectation/threat to demonize any GOP member who fails to stand and applaud whatever comes out of his mount. Like other left-leaning folk, I was disappointed but not surprised at the near-universal silence (with exceptions) from the right regarding Trump's remarks.
There's the synergy between Trump's megaphone id and the aggrieved white (mostly male) entitlement circulating among so much of the Republican base, an aggrieved entitlement regularly stoked by right-focused media and politicians. From this perspective, this is Trump fighting for the true victims in today's culture: white Christian men.
There's the GOP schadenfreude at Democratic infighting, primarily between Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi. It's understandably hard for Republicans to resist exploiting a wedge between Pelosi (and moderate, mostly white Democrats) and the "squad" (more left-leaning, more diverse Democrats). We'll have to wait and see, however, whether Trump's ploy pries these factions further apart or (as seems to be happening) unifies them against him. I gather Trump sees it as a win either way. He welcomes fusing Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez et al. into a single enemy, one whose views are (in Trump's framing) inimical to white Christian men (the True Americans).
There's the plain old reptile-brain xenophobia and racism that fuels Trumpian nationalism. Blaming dissatisfaction with life on an external enemy is a human trait, one that politicians have long exploited by propping up a perennial favorite foe: immigrants and foreigners. This theme been Trump's favorite rhetorical ploy. Obama's a foreigner, build the wall, send them back. Signs point to full-throated nativist/nationalist xenophobia as a primary weapon for the 2020 campaign.
There's right-leaning fears of "political correctness" and a widespread conservative feeling that "racism" has become nothing more than a rhetorical smear progressives use to discredit those who disagree with them. Occasionally conservatives will reference a "real" racism to contrast with Trump's tweet, though I've yet to hear exactly what such "real" racism consists of.
There's the polarizing binary of American politics where even those more moderate Republicans who might object to Trump's remarks feel even more threatened by the Democratic alternative. Thus they reluctantly move to Team Trump in this and other cultural debates, drilling down on their support the more they sense themselves being criticized (called racists) for doing so.
None of these factors should occlude the vile racism of Trump's tweets. I have no idea if Trump, in the privacy of his own soul, believes white people to be better than people of color. I don't care. I reject the notion that I have to know someone's inner mindset before calling their racist expression exactly that.
Trump singled out women of color for criticism, even though he as many more powerful and high-profile critics. He mobilized a rhetorical tool ("go back to where you came from") that frames the women as foreign and illegitimate by virtue of the fact that they don't look like "real" (white) Americans. (He's never told Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer to go back to the country they came from.) This is textbook racism.
Despite Trump's (and his defenders') insistence that his tweet wasn't racist, explicitly racist groups recognize in the tweets a signal: I got your back, white brothers. Apparently "Send her back!" has become the new "Lock her up" shouted by Trump supporters at rallies. Racists, at least, are clear that Trump's words were racist.
I lament that the "is it racist" question has sucked up so much air that we lose discussion of other objectionable aspects of Trump's tweet. The underlying sentiment--criticizing me means you should leave the country--is one that conservatives and anyone who cares about freedom of speech should find chilling. It is explicitly American, explicitly an act of patriotism, to criticize American government and American politicians.
One of the most dispiriting things about Trump and Trumpism is how they substitute a politics of personality for an expansive civic sense of robust conversation. The personal really is political for him, and in the worst way. Trump cannot stand to be criticized. (He says he's for "fair" criticism, but in practice this means "praise.") If you criticize him, he will attack you viciously, personally, immaturely. And how he gets to align himself with "America." Criticize him, and you must hate America.
For some, this is a point in his favor. He fights back. I can appreciate wanting a leader that draws and defends boundaries, someone who can take a lick and return it. But I expect a President to embrace the notion that she serves all Americans, those who support her and those who don't. I expect a President to have a thick skin, to not be so easily triggered, to respond to perceived attacks with grace and maturity, not by bullying back harder. I expect a grown-up, in other words, someone who models best behaviors.
It's not just disappointing that Trump is not that model; it's worrying. White House staff already walk on eggshells around him (hint: that's never a good or flattering thing to say about a boss). It's worrisome that the most powerful man in the world has an ego so fragile that he must spend hours a day launching public, schoolyard-level taunts at people who are in every way less powerful than he. Eventually, anyone and everyone in his orbit cracks an egg around him. Everyone eventually comes in for abuse.
How long before his base starts to annoy him?
More tomorrow,
JF
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