By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
If you are one for reading polls then the right-wing newspaper, The Washington Examiner, just published a poll exclaiming that if our current political polarization remains as it is now, future events could send you into political spasms.
To spoil the ending to this column, I would just say that about 74 million Republican voters are rooting and tooting for Herr Trump to make another triumphal descent on his golden escalator and march into the White House for another four-year term, health permitting or he not sporting a stylish prison garb number.
What is important to underscore in this snapshot photo of the volatile American voting public is that Trump, the avatar, continues to hold a nigh Mussolini grip on the anger, fear and racial animus of too many white American voters, who are allied with the currently constituted Republican Party.
Trump, with his vitriolic speech and race mongering, nonetheless has tapped into a rich vein of resentment in White American politics because of the 74 million plus voters that he tallied in the most recent election, are singing from the same page of the political hymnbook.
This is what that aggrieved population is ostensibly saying to the nation: “We want four more years of his abysmal and pathetic style of leadership. We do not care that he has openly racist tendencies and hates immigrants (except for his own and those of his wife’s family). We are comfortable with his woeful lack of knowledge of American history and the rule of law. His corrupt administration did not deter us from flocking to him at his pep rallies. His hundreds of intentional lies do not trouble us in the least bit. His scorning of our allies and his debasement of all things non-white was not and is not an issue with us!”
It may sound far-fetched and preposterous to state, but Herr Trump is also hell-bent on seeking petty revenge on anyone that was not in a genuflect mode during his tumultuous four years in office.
I stylized Trump as an avatar or a representative of his base voters who see in him their last hope and dreams that he will reclaim America for white people and that with the help of a feckless GOP, he will continue to attempt to turn America back to the good ol’ days of The Little Rascals, Gone With The Wind and Leave It To Beaver.
Trump is mad at America. He is mad because his America (Fifth Avenue fat cats) has not loved him the way he thought it should via his MAGA campaign.
He has long been dissed by the upper crust New York society that he so desperately wants to be idolized by and be a member of.
As an avatar of those who distrust government, abhor any meaningful social safety net programs and want to go it alone in the world, Trump is their guy, and they make no bones about it.
As an astute marketer, Trump has smelled the political armpits of his base, rubbed his face in it and now his base (called “deplorables” by Hillary Clinton) smells their smell on him; and they see him as one of them even though Trump would disdain living anywhere near them.
Be under no illusions about the grim political state that confronts America due to a substantial portion of the Republican population seemingly longing to have an authoritarian personality ride into their lives and give them direction and guidance because of their fears of a browning of an America that they do not want to recognize.
If the Democrats lose the House and the Senate and if the GOP can retake the White House and if Trump is not in someone’s jail for his various and sundry criminal charges against him, a Trump wannabee will elbow their way to the GOP nomination and during the whole time, they will be extolling how Trumpian they are.
Fear and angst of what his base sees as a White America becoming increasingly a minority-majority population, is fueling their phobia that White America will be subsumed by those “others” and those “others” may not always be kind to those who have had no qualms about putting their economic knee on their collective neck for the past centuries.
Sure, there are other possible political calculations that could manifest in the months and years leading up to 2022 and 2024 but if I were a betting man, I would say that the current social and political turmoil will be exacerbated by right wing media and their trolls exaggerating all things race to generate more fear in a white electorate that has no problems with Confederate statutes populating the public square and a complete abdication of Affirmative Action.
America has not and is not remotely preparing itself for a growing wave of non-white voters flexing their political muscle at the local, state, and national level.
The concept of separate but equal, seems to still rule the day when minority Americans and Indigenous Peoples are relegated to the edges of society but when they begin to break out of the reservations and ghettoes, White America looks for a savior who will stand in the gap for them and swat them away with a hubris that has no basis in logic or fact.
The January 6 riot was a dress rehearsal for the phobias of Trump’s base. They are not comfortable with the state of the union and if that means, “Hang Mike Pence!” so be it. They need someone to be their Superman so they can maintain some semblance of power over their lives, lives that they believe are being trivialized by the media and those fat cat “liberals” whom they believe mock their values.
Enters Trump as their Superman and protector of the castle and a router of those colored hordes whom they have fashioned out of whole cloth as being their mortal enemies. Truth is now in the eye of the beholder and rancor and vilification of each other takes the place of civil discourse and comity.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com