We are told that some of the Trump voters — 78 million of them, 75 percent white — are sorry that they ever voted for him. Well, maybe so. But my quest has always been: Who (or what) created such white America in the first place?
Here is my own answer: liberals and capitalists — the two bedfellows with two different dreams for America — created the angry, brain-dulled white America. How brain-dulled are white Americans? They wildly cheer and holler when Trump tells them that he wants to be president forever. How did this brain-rot happen?
Historically, the process took two steps. The first step belongs to liberals and the second to capitalists. In the half century that followed the end of World War II, liberals created white anger and capitalists caused white brain-death, and together they delivered America to Trump.
First, to explain white anger, liberals pushed many of the “progressive” programs and “liberal” policies, like food stamps, Head Start, civil rights, and so on, which visibly favored Blacks, threatening the assumed white privileges. The favoritism shown by liberal Democrats and federal agencies toward the minorities — skillfully inflamed by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and later Donald Trump — naturally caused the pain of “reverse discrimination” for whites (especially after Affirmative Action). Everywhere in America, whites saw “welfare queens” showing off their Cadillacs and Black shoppers enjoying steaks and cigarettes with food stamps. White America’s grieving hearts, now feeling threatened, seethed with fury and raged with anger.
But in reality such federal hoopla did not help Black people at all, whose lives in white America still lived in hell: They were not one step closer to equality with whites. Common Black people lived in a way no decent white people in America would ever tolerate themselves. To wit:
The Black average income was (and still is) one-half of whites’.
Unemployment for Black males was twice that of white men.
Blacks’ poverty rate was three times that of whites.
Blacks were twice as likely as whites to go to prison.
Twice as many Black babies, as white babies, died.
One-half of maternal deaths in America were Black women.
The death rate for Black men under 45 was twice that of white men.
The UN ranked white Americans 3rd globally in income and Blacks 35th.
Demographically Blacks made up 12% but economically contributed only 2%.
There were no real economic gains for Blacks since the 40s…
Then, why were white people so incapable of recognizing how Blacks were living out America’s worst racist nightmare? What made them so callous and brainless against the plain truth?
The answer comes from the second half of the explanation: Capitalism destroyed the white mind with its entertainment revolution — first with cable TV and later with internet — all designed for children, giving white consumers everything their hearts desired. Now, surrounded by consumer fantasies and idiocies around the clock, these over-amused brainless whites could not survive such lifetime over-consumption of amusement without losing their minds. Predictably, white America soon qualified as Mark Bauerlein’s “Dumbest Generation” ever. Predictably again, the dumbest generation elected exactly their kind of president who promised them the American-style political holocaust. So, instead of turning their wrath toward capitalism, the real culprit, they spewed their venom toward the minority scapegoats. Donald Trump, first in business and later in reality TV, watched such deteriorating trends in American character and society, and plotted his course accordingly.
In the meantime, Blacks got competition from Latinos for the bottom-jobs in America: Castro’s 1959 Cuban Revolution opened the floodgate for Latino migration north, first competing with and eventually replacing Blacks for low-wage jobs. But, good for them under Trump, Latinos also replaced them as the target of his wrath, as, now, Latinos bear the brunt of Trump’s brutality wholly designed to appease white anger. In Trump’s calculus, it’s obviously safer to attack Latinos, Muslims and immigrants than openly abusing American Blacks who are already down and out — not much left there for further abuse. Fortuitously for them, it’s Latinos who are exiled to Africa. Thanks to such a Latino lightening rod, Blacks are practically invisible.
As voters, those who are addicted to consumer capitalism and those who are driven to Trumpism are equally brain-dead. Pampered by always-on entertainment and constantly fed lies by political and corporate propaganda, these white Americans chose the promise of all the false love and all the real hate in America. The leader and led were now both equally corrupt: blinded by hate the liberals had caused and consumed by the capitalist fantasies, white America was tailor-made for Trump, and he simply walked away with the windfall.
Since the Frontier era, America has known only two systems to guide its moral compass: liberalism in politics, which has always guided Americans on how to be free; and capitalism in economics, which has reliably provided our common livelihoods. But the two trusted ideological pillars of America ended up killing our democracy.
We have just celebrated our 250th year of independence in the emptiness and uncertainty of our moral foundation. To celebrate, we sang, shouted and cheered. But we don’t know for what: Haven’t we just lost America?
As if he anticipated our grief, John Milton described in the last lines of “Paradise Lost” how Adam and Eve, and their children, were banished from Eden for their sorrowful sin: “Between the world destroyed and world restored… and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.”
Hand in hand with Trump, with no dreams of Eden II, America also took its own solitary way to hell.
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.