After reading and reading and reading the craziness surrounding the election, I've come to the conclusion that this presidential race is, for the white majority, about their disaffected-ness.
The words "racism" and "racist" are carefully written about by about half the non-professional white people pontificating about Trump in online magazines and articles. The rest of the white people writing on Trump avoid talking the racism of his followers altogether by using the words "disaffected voters" a lot.
I am trying to figure out what white people have to be disaffected about but I find it fascinating to watch whiteness protect itself from consciousness when Trump is such a blatant racist. Even white republicans are having to say thing that essentially mean, "Yeah he's a racist but he's better than Hillary." White republicans never admit anything having to do with race -- like ever.
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So if you want to watch white people talk about "disaffected voters" without mentioning "white people," "whiteness," "racism," and also racist speech as a sign of a lack-of-political-correctness, personal freedom, and bravery, then go check out any social media page that is pro-Donald Trump. That's where the racists-that-don't-know-they-are-racists pump one another up.
You can also read the more centrist white liberals doing their version of the same thing in regards to Trump.
Even I have been amazed at how whiteness is protecting itself this election season. The levels of denial are beyond anything I could have imagined. I'm wondering if Nixon and Ronald Reagan are looking up here at Donald Trump right now wondering why they bothered being subtle with "Southern Strategy."
A couple of months back there were white people sitting on the political fence right now trying to decide between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders -- not between Hillary and Bernie, that wasn't a typo-- The "disaffected white people" were trying to decide if their final presidential vote should be for Trump or Sanders.
I know. I know. I know. I thought this was insane too.
White people thought that the choice between these two white men was a choice between two white men who 'refuse to play the same ole Washington game.'
To a bunch of the political "Independents" who think belonging to the group called "Independents" makes them "independent" thinkers, Trump is just anti-political correctness. His racism is not real in their minds or doesn't matter. I don't know. I can't begin to figure out how a mind like that works. And I've been living around white people for a long, long time. So that's saying something.
White the young wanting to follow Sanders, may be multi-ethnic (though I heard very few to none of his entourage in California was non-white at one stop), a lot of the counties in New York and California that Sanders won during the primaries are pretty close to pure white, almost as white as the state of Vermont, which he moved to in 1968 after his stint in the Civil Rights movement.
And when Bernie says something that indicates paternalism is his form of negative race based thinking (racism), he is "tone deaf" while his followers are also "disaffected."
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| This mural is not "real" but that's not the point. The point is why this mural was photoshopped this into existence This is an example of "paternalism" -- a word that needs to be brought back into favor. All well-meaning white people need to understand it thoroughly. |
If reality was reigning in the minds of most voters and the really wanted change, somebody about halfway between Hillary and Bernie would be wound up running on the left. And someone between Trump and an orangutan wold be running on the right.
Sanders and Trump are too far outside the current system to have any effect on it at all unless you put all the congressman all the lobbiests and all the CEOs paying the lobbyists on a spaceship designed to crash and explode on Mars. I don't care how much I like Bernie's ideas, 80% of them are unworkable without an interim step and an ability to shut up about the an end game that's unpalatable to the rich.
That is, if you're going to make college free by taxing the rich, you'd damn well better not announce it ahead of time. You'd have to hide that and find some other way to appeal to a young base.Somebody half way between Hillary and Bernie would have been smart enough to articulate an interim steps on Sanders various ideas, 50% of which would have taken less than 4 years complete which requires some sort of buy in from Congress. The way Bernie has shot his mouth off at the people that pay Congress people to run, he'd be lucky to get 1/3 of Democrats to follow him.
Bernie has been making campaign promises that indicate he thought he was running for King instead of President.
Hillary may be lying but she knows she's lying, therefore her lies are smaller, and she'll throw us, her constituents, just enough bones to hold us all together. We're going to get less out of her than President Obama but more than we would have out of Bernie, in my opinion.
I say this because Sanders couldn't even get the political big shots in his own state to follow him. They supported Hillary instead. To me that means his potential effectiveness was always close to zero
I hope Bernie has at least softened the ground for the next democratic presidential hopeful. If Elizabeth Warren or Michelle Obama (let me dream) run for president one day, they now know what is popular. They can add the idealistic to what is pragmatic and make some real changes, not that we have to wait for the president to change. We can change congress by voting too. In fact, that's probably slightly more important -- for so long as Trump isn't elected president.
Yeah, President Obama didn't put the banksters in jail. I knew they weren't going. They have more power than us and will continue to have more power than us until we find a way to break their hold on our congressman. (I almost think the left and the right would have to agree to come together for a season and vote all the incumbents out at once)
But President Obama got Universal Healthcare put together, such as it is, avoided a second depression 7 years ago, the economy is currently good by comparison, and he put the Fair Sentencing Act in place as well as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
So what have white people got to feel so disaffected about?
Maybe seeing black faces in the White House for 8 years straight has made some white folks realize that their normal (unacknowledged white privilege) is disappearing?
I truly tend to think that this is where most of the disaffected feeling is coming from in white people.
Usually, white people are fairly content if their money isn't funny. And it's not right now. Our money, the economy is supposedly on track. And they aren't the ones being mowed down in the street while unarmed, by police officers. They aren't being arrested for lynching without a knife, a gun, or even a fist in sight.
So where is this disaffected-ness coming from? A disaffected-ness so intense it makes Trump look reasonable and not racist?
I can't help thinking that Oscars-So-White (years 1 and 2), The Tea Party, Donald Trump, and even the paternalistic Bernie Sanders are all coming from the same disaffected white place in white folks's hearts.
But maybe that's just me.
I don't do coincidences too much. And too many things, all leaning in the same direction, have happened over same eight year time period.
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH US ALL THROUGH THE END OF THIS ELECTION
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