Trumpers recoil reflexively in disgust when you tell them that President Trump is a racist. They often want proof on the spot, even though proof would find them to be racist as well. Anything except Trump declaring full-throatedly, ‘Yes folks, I’m a racist!!!’ will fall short in an attempt to convince them. Even then there would be arguments about context.
You can point to his anti-immigrant policies, the attempt to construct a border wall, the Muslim travel ban, or the refusal to help Puerto Rico recover from a highly destructive hurricane as tangible evidence that he doesn’t like brown people a whole lot. Some of them don’t vote and if they did, it would not be for him. So being racist/white supremacist (pick your label) works for Trump because minorities don’t merit a “deal” in his mind. Not that it has to directly do with racism, but simply as an example of how small-minded and vindictive he can be-California is currently on fire and I submit that because it is such a blue state, he’s ignoring it because its citizens- again, don’t do anything for him.
But lately, he’s promoting racism in such a manner that it deserves more scrutiny. It’s Native American Heritage Month. Did you know that? I did not know that, being white and all until the president renamed it “National American History and Founders Month”. It’s probably not an accident that Twitler put Andrew Jackson on the wall of the Oval Office, a giant fuck you to the people who lived here before we stuffed them in giant concentration camps reservations.
Yesterday at a rally, Trump made it crystal clear, though. The motherfucker flashed the “white power” hand gesture. He couldn’t help his bloated transgressive self. There’s a mini-mythology about this gesture. Instances where the sign is flashed in conservative spaces are considered an inside joke. They insist it is meaningless, a hoax that they have perpetrated to own the libs who get triggered over anything. I still don’t quite get the joke, which is fine because conservatives are bad at funny and evidently lousy at irony as well.
It just so happens that the people who think this is humorous are usually pretty damn racist. When the sign is flashed, make no mistake-it’s a coded dog-whistle between themselves and other racists. They’re only fooling themselves if they think otherwise. The hoax has turned into something quite real. Here’s our president, soon to be impeached, letting everyone know who and what he is and not giving a shit:
As Trump’s base of support hemorrhages, he will have to directly appeal to smaller and smaller niches, and I guess white supremacists- many of whom do not know they are racists- are numerous enough that flashing that “joke” white power sign is not to his detriment when measured. It’s a cheap appeal to that loathsome, deplorable, uneducable trashy white whose vote he desperately needs if he is to survive another election.
And the worst part of it is that this is not the ground floor of how gross Trump can get. Believe me.