Trump is not an excuse

This article in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates is typical of democratic-party-think: "Donald is a true white supremacist, and all he does is to elevate white supremacy."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/

It’s true in some basic ways – certainly he does openly flout many white supremacist notions and say many blatantly racist things. He is without a doubt an openly bigoted, misogynist, and racist man.

But the agenda of democrats & so-called “liberal media” is to amplify all of that into some sort of super-villain, some evil aberration who is simultaneously a mastermind of white supremacy and also a bungling idiot and also a Russian agent provocateur and also an incompetent man-baby.

Trump is a PoS of a human being. On that I agree wholeheartedly with democrats and progressives and sundry other leftists and independents.

But this attempt to make him out as being an aberration in terms of his white supremacy, and thereby to normalize the quiet acceptance of white supremacy of his predecessors –

I have deep misgivings with that. It is fundamental to what neoliberalism is, and how it maintains its stranglehold on American politics. It willfully misunderstands racism and white supremacy and our national character and the social fight we’re all currently engaged in. It eliminates from our entire conversation ownership of our collective participation in our collective ongoing systematic racism - especially including school-to-prison pipelines, criminalization of the poor, legalized murder of black and poor folks by the police.

Pieces such as this serve no useful purpose, as far as I can tell. Folks who read The Atlantic and articles like this – are democrats. They are the “true believers” in this narrative, and reading this is just joining into a massive circle with all of their peers – a kind of national prayer – going to the same church together to “pray on it.”

It doesn’t help elucidate anyone who goes. It doesn’t take responsibility for how we got to this sordid juncture in history. It doesn’t offer a way forward. It just reinforces everyone’s false-belief that they are good people, that Trump is bad people, that democrats are trying to do right in the world, that republicans are the evil slime blocking their good intentions.

That’s a road to nowhere. It’s where we’ve been stuck as a nation since at least Ronny-Ray-gun, and we’ve been digging this collective hole we’re all standing in deeper and deeper – with Congress becoming more partisan and acrimonious for decades.

And then the media plays up this rift – giving excuse to democratic representatives and senators – “oh, they couldn’t do [anything good] because those mean old evil republicans.”

And the democratic faithful rend their clothes and gnash their teeth and wail at the sky and do absolutely nothing. Understand absolutely nothing. Take responsibility for – nor demand their congress people take responsibility for – absolutely nothing.

Which is how this game is really being played.

Democrats always manage to pass the budget including a massive hand-out to all of their favorite donors – including war-industry, pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, and so on; while claiming that they can’t get anything that we-the-people want accomplished – often in numbers like 83% across both republicans and democrats – saying that “the other party makes it impossible.”

Democrats always manage to "do the patriotic thing" and vote for wars, and war-spending, and war-power.

Democrats always manage to "protect the homeland" and pass police-surveillance, fund new and existing intelligence agencies, rescind their duty to act as a check and balance to the president's power by authorizing (or not authorizing) wars.

Democrats always manage to ignore Flint, MI, and the leaded and contaminated water issue there. Or the crime problems in Chicago. Or the overall movement of money from the lower and middle class to the ultra-few-elite-wealthy. Or to ignore the vast inflation of health care in favor of their wealthy donors who own insurance co's, pharmaceutical co's, or etc.

Democrats always manage to pass bills that favor the wealthy, but can never manage anything that even upwards of 83% of all Americans want.

So the narrative given by this Atlantic article does nothing more than reinforce this useless and largely untrue narrative that keeps everyone stuck and useless while the domestic greedy and global war profiteers continue to have their way in the world.

So – please don’t think I am offering succor to Trump or his bigotry or his mismanagement or the myriad ways he embodies the inner asshole of the entire Human race.

However – he is merely a symptom of a larger cancer of our national character – one that this narrative only helps to hide while growing in plain sight.