The flurry of liberal articles depicting Trump’s ascent as a measurement of White Identitarianism is quickly reaching critical mass. Every day, new articles like these pop up:
“How the GOP primary became a race to channel America’s racist id” is the title of a Salon piece by Eesha Pandit (ahem).
Or take the unhinged Matt Taibbi, who writes a piece titled: “The Republicans Are Now Officially the Party of White Paranoia”, beginning with this illuminating polling data:
ABC News published an intriguing poll the other day, one that spelled out a growing racial divide:
“Nonwhites see Trump negatively by a vast 17-79 percent… That said, whites are the majority group – 64 percent of the adult population – and they now divide evenly on Trump, 48-49 percent, favorable-unfavorable. Clinton, by contrast, is far more unpopular than Trump among whites, 34-65 percent. So while racial and ethnic polarization is on the rise in views of Trump, it remains even higher for Clinton.”
The inevitable racialization of U.S. politics, well underway, has been hastened to a degree I never would have imagined happening so soon. Or is this wishful thinking.
All of Trump’s constant bragging about his money and his poll numbers and his virility speak directly to this surprisingly vibrant middle American fantasy about a castrated white America struggling to re-grow its mojo.
In many ways, Donald Trump is like Walter White (or, more appropriately, Walter’s alter-ego, Heisenberg) in Breaking Bad.
Of the increasing racialization of U.S. presidential politics, Taibbi writes:
That leaves us facing a future in which national elections will no longer be decided by ideas, but by numbers. It will be a turnout battle between people who believe in a multicultural vision for the country, and those who don’t.
Amen.
Every other issue, from taxes to surveillance to war to jobs to education, will take a distant back seat to this ongoing, moronic referendum on white victimhood. And there’s nothing any of us can do about it except wait it out, and wonder if our politics only gets dumber from here.
Taibbi is correct that every other issue will take a distant back seat.
He is sadly mistaken, however, in characterizing White Identitarianism as ‘moronic’.
