America is Responsible for Donald Trump
Donald Trump has become a terrifying phenomenon in American politics. He has bull dozed what was supposed to be an incredibly strong field of candidates for the GOP. Not only that but his supporters share the same racist, bigoted, sexist, and xenophobic beliefs that Trump does. There’s also been a level of violence at his rallies not seen since George Wallace ran as a segregationist candidate in the 60s. Polls, rallies, interviews with supporters, and endorsements, have all shown that his candidacy is built on white supremacy and fascism. It’s what his campaign has always been, even if the media are just coming around to it now. It’s fairly obvious that any effort to slow down Trump has proven completely ineffective. I don’t know if Trump can win the general election, but it’s certainly possible. If turnout on the Democratic side is low, or if the economy takes a sudden downturn in the next 7 months, that will lead to a Trump, or any GOP nominee win. Regardless, all of America shares part of the blame in its severe inability to stop Trump. From Republicans, to Democrats, Fox News to CBS, conservatives and liberals. Maybe if we understand that, we can stop Trump from winning the election and prevent candidates like him from propping up in the future.
The Republican Party
The GOP is the group that is most responsible for creating the environment that led to Trump’s candidacy. They did this through two ways: Giving Trump legitimacy as a political figure, and creating an extreme base.
Not only have they asked Trump for money, but Romney sought out his endorsement in 2012. He did so even after Trump went on his birther quest where he failed miserably to prove that Obama was not a U.S. citizen. The Republican Party had no problem with Trump when he was being a racist birther, as long as he only gave his money and endorsement. Many politicians entertained his birther theory as well. Before Trump seemed utterly dominant, but still said a variety of terrible things, the GOP establishment declined to do anything about Trump because they thought he would naturally fade away.
The other way they created an environment for Trump was by encouraging distrust of any mainstream media outlet, also aided by conservative media. So their base refuses to think of media as credible because they’re bought into the idea that it’s all a liberal conspiracy against their candidate. Now when the GOP excepts things like fact checking and strong journalism to bring down Trump, it proves entirely ineffective to their own base because they distrust anyone that isn’t supporting “their guy.”
Ever since Barry Goldwater’s candidacy, the Republican Party has consistently practiced dog whistle politics in order to appeal to white racists and bigots. They kept these people at arm’s length but they consistently used the Southern strategy after the post-Civil Rights political realignment. When Reagan received his party’s nomination he first went to a fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town where the Ku Klux Klan and the deputy chief released 3 young black civil rights workers from jail and murdered them in an isolated area. He then repeatedly talked about state’s rights and giving control back to the local government.
Republicans also had made ridiculous promises to their base. They consistently vowed to block Barack Obama at every turn, and promised the repeal of Obamacare. Every day Obama succeeded, and Obamacare was still the law, their base grew more infuriated. Promises had been broken and they’ve been pissed off for a while. Before Trump even had announced, it was clear that the base wanted nothing to do with the Republican establishment. If you promise to shut the other team out, and then the other team consistently is able to score some points, you’re going to look like a fool and that’s what happened to the Republicans.
They spent decades cultivating a racist, bigoted and extreme base and then were unable to realize what their base had become. They were slowly bleeding away any moderate or liberal Republicans in the party and ended up with what they have now. All of their more moderate options even share similar policy positions to Trump. The “sensible alternatives” only seem sensible because of their tone. On the substance they’re incredibly similar.
Fox News and Conservative Media
Fox News and conservative media hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage were able to become gate keepers to the Republican Party. They amassed large audiences and then took the rhetoric of the party to the next level. They were active participants in dog whistling against Obama, and encouraging stereotypes about minorities. They fed their audiences information that pitted them against minorities, immigrants and Muslims. They are just as responsible for creating the base of the party today.
They also continually brought on Trump on the network and elevated his status among their viewers. They let him spew his false birther claims with little push back and often just let him rant whatever was on his mind. The other instrumental part in keeping Trump legitimate is that they consistently told their viewers that the mainstream media was lying and had a massive liberal bias. So even in the most absurd scenarios in which Trump is lying, he’s impervious to being fact checked because his supporters have an inherent distrust of the media.
It wasn’t until they realized they couldn’t control Trump that they attempted to bring him down in the very first debate, but then ended up backing down from him because they were so afraid of losing access over protecting their rising star in Megyn Kelly. Only until yet another barrage of tweets that disparaged her did Fox News release a statement about Trump.
Mainstream TV Media
The rest of the media is also responsible for Trump in two key ways: They ignored Republican dog whistling, ignored all signs of institutional racism, and they gave Trump unprecedented levels of free, easy, media for the past 7 months.
The media has been obsessed with playing a neutral party in which every political conflict is 50/50. They have done this to not offend any candidates and maintain access. It takes courage to call out racism and bigotry and the media ignored what Republicans and Fox News have done. All that it would take is connecting the dots to realize the amount of racial resentment the GOP and conservative media stirred up over the years, but they turned away from it so that politicians would continue to come onto their show. They refused to hold people in power accountable, at the expense of those who were hurt by the policies and rhetoric they pushed. There is a key difference between being objective and being neutral. If the media called sports games the way they talked about politics it would go like this: “The Warriors and the Spurs played last night! The Spurs say they scored more points and the Warriors say they scored more points! Now to a commercial break!”
Then they gave and continue to give Trump unprecedented levels of free media since he announced his candidacy. Even NBC, who attempted to take a principled stand against Trump by cutting off ties with him, had him host SNL. MSNBC’s hosts have had more than cozy relationships with him. The president of CBS said Trump was bad for the country but great for ratings. It is so transparent how they have put money over any sense of journalistic integrity. They only just now discovered white supremacists support Trump and that there is violence at his rallies when there’s been evidence of it for months. The coverage has been incredibly soft, and they normalized his racism and bigotry because his polls weren’t going down instead of pointing out the obvious conclusion his supporters are just as racist as his remarks.
The best and most honest coverage of Trump has come from more independent media like Buzzfeed and comedians like John Oliver and Seth Meyers. It’s incredibly apparent that the media has chosen to ignore what Trump and his supporters are out of choice and not out of incompetence, although they certainly are incompetent as well.
The Democratic Party
The Democratic Party helped cause Trump because they consistently spent more time trying to be the lesser of two evils instead of a good option. They would go to the African American community and they would pander to them and when they got into office they would consistently pass policies that aided in the destruction of those same communities, or neglected to block policies that would. They also never decided to call the Republican Party out on their own rhetoric, and some of the more conservative Democrats even employed it themselves.
Even the more liberal and progressive wings of the party have failed. Consistently they put class issues over race issues with the age old argument of “a rising tide lifts all boats” despite the numbers not actually proving this is true. They have consistently put their candidate on a pedestal so that any criticism or attempt to hold them accountable has been seen as “well you’re going to give us X Republican in the general election.”
But they don’t get how black people have come to think how pointless voting is. Look at everything that has happened to their community before Trump, and try to tell them that voting matters. Schools are more segregated now than they were before the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Last year there were more African Americans killed by police than there were lynchings in the peak years where it was happening. Mass incarceration, the drug war, the handling of Hurricane Katrina, all existed before Trump. The crisis in Flint, Michigan and the issue of police brutality both happened under President Obama. What will someone who contributed to these problems like Hillary Clinton, or did little to stop them like Bernie Sanders, going to do?
White liberals and progressives have to understand that we have also played a role in the rise of white supremacy. We’ve told the African American community to put their issues second while still asking them to vote for our leaders. In cases like Bill Maher, they’ve even been called “fucking idiots” for trying to hold those candidates accountable to the issues that they care about.
America is a White Supremacist Nation
Trump is around because we ignored that we are still a white supremacist nation. That was what we were founded on, and we failed to fully correct it. We passed some voting rights and civil rights bills and suddenly decided that everything was finally an equal playing field. Then we continued to just pass more policies that decimated the African Americans, minorities, and women.
Media and politicians of all kinds allowed all of this to happen. The American people allowed this to happen, sometimes out of blissful ignorance. Specifically, white Americans, and American institutions which are overwhelmingly white. The common response to this will be “Well I didn’t do any of this, it’s not my fault, it’s not my responsibility.” At the same time, we take credit for what America supposedly stands for. We vote, we’re complicit in a system still rooted in white supremacy, but refuse to own the consequences that result from it. We can’t take credit for America’s accomplishments and not its faults.
Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist, lamented, “I honestly thought our institutions were more robust to a Trump-like figure & that others in public life were more committed to democratic norms. … Someone could capture a major party nom who endorses violence & few seem alarmed.” How could anyone possibly think our institutions were robust when they’ve never been robust to anyone in the past that has abused power and harmed innocents. The fact is our institutions have consistently failed to hold the powerful in America accountable. In fact, they’ve always been beholden to them. Trump is not an aberration of the norm; he is the conclusion of the norms that have actually been accepted.
We have spent the past 40 years ignoring black people, Hispanic people, and Muslims speaking on the racism and bigotry in this country. Men and women of color and outside the mainstream religion have been silenced by our institutions. Now that it seems like the personification of that is running for President, we suddenly don’t like it. Now that it may finally affect us, and it will certainly affect minorities, women, and Muslims more, we don’t like what the system has given us. That in itself is an insult to all those who have been oppressed by America. Even if Trump loses, that doesn’t mean his supporters will go away. It doesn’t mean the policies and rhetoric that has turned minorities into second class citizens and the politicians who support them will go away. Stopping Trump will simply be the first step of many needed to end the injustices America has committed.
