Oh, Those Poor Deluded Fools. They're Not to Blame.

 

There's a growing effort underway in the ranks of America's left to excuse the sins of Trump's legion of useful idiots. It's not their fault. They're to be pitied, not scorned. They've been handed a bad deal so they lashed out and latched on to the first smooth talker who promised to lead them to the Holy Land.

You hear that shit from Bill Maher. You can hear it from Chris Hedges. It seems to be in the air.

It's bullshit.

Sure they've had it rough. America is no longer the Land of Opportunity. Republicans, their political flavour of choice, have economically gerrymandered America. Life in the precariat is a tough gig. What's a guy to do when all he has to cling to is his whiteness?

Trump's followers remind me of the "Good German." That's a term defined as "someone who turns a blind eye to criminal atrocities committed by the government. It includes needless war, lying to the public, stripping civil rights, ignoring laws held to keep government in check and disrespecting the general populace." 

In Trump parlance, they're the white supremacist, xenophobic, racist, misogynist, Christo-fascist, nativist, loathsome scum who backed that orange malignancy. He degraded minorities, separated young children from their parents and tossed them in rudimentary kennels, incited violence as he indulged its perpetrators and it didn't matter a bit to them. He was their pied piper and they chose to follow him down that dark road just as they would again in a heartbeat.

Yes they're white trash. They've been a cornerstone of that land going back to the 16th century. Louisiana State professor, Nancy Isenberg, chronicles the role these untermenschen played in expanding the original colonies in her aptly titled book, "White Trash." Now they're Trump's white trash and they've got every Republican Representative and Senator paralyzed with fear.

The idea that a little sweetness and light, let bygones be bygones, will bring these people back into the fold of enlightenment is nonsense.

Trump didn't inject something into their souls. He merely played to what was already there, brought it to the surface.  To pretend that this can all be made right is childish thinking. 


Comments

  1. TrailblazerJanuary 26, 2021 at 4:55 PM

    Yes they're white trash. They've been a cornerstone of that land going back to the 16th century.

    White trash do not respect borders and we , in Canada, should not be so smug whilst commenting on US politics.
    White trash is everywhere .

    You hear that shit from Bill Maher. You can hear it from Chris Hedges.
    I never had time for Maher and have always been suspect of Hedges.
    Maher is Islamophobic and Hedges views upon the world suggest he was buggered by his priest.
    Beware of false idols!
    I don't expect our enlightened US alternative media to self flagellate but they could at least admit to total failure of the not so United States of America, a well meaning ideology stuck in the past.
    Becoming second best is difficult to accept.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibJanuary 27, 2021 at 10:19 AM

      The left needs to come to their senses. Trump didn't make these people, his followers, racist or xenophobic or hateful and bigoted. He just fed them a harmonic tune and they fell into line. Even the Evangelicals excused this most immoral, serial sex offender on the bullshit idea that the degenerate-in-chief was put into the White House by God to do their God's work.

      To say that they're just a pack of dupes ignores all the knowledge we have amassed on the nature of authoritarianism and its adherents. They're like Cicadas that sit dormant underground until every 17 years they surface to breed.

      Trump is/was merely the culmination of a process to legitimize the hate that exists inside these people. Trump merely brought them to the surface. He made it respectable to be a social and moral reprobate again and they love him for it.

      Now the question becomes how to take these flying monkeys and clip their wings again. That doesn't begin by excusing them and ignoring the menace that lies within them.

      Delete
  2. Bill LongstaffJanuary 27, 2021 at 3:42 PM

    I agree. Nobody gets a free pass to vote for a fascist.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibJanuary 30, 2021 at 12:07 PM

      Hi, Bill. Yes, condonation is somewhat less insidious than full-throated support but it's the one factor that every despot needs to take and hold power.

      The process by which so many of his educated, liberal countrymen transformed into Good Germans in the 30s is powerfully conveyed by Sebastian Haffner in his book "Defying Hitler." It's an immersive memoir that I expect you would appreciate.

      Delete
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