HOW I FEEL
I’m not mad at
Donald Trump. I’m not mad at the people who voted him into office. This should
not, however, comfort them. What I feel toward them is not anger, it is something else.
I feel sorry for them. That is because I understand what motivated them to
vote this stupid, racist, sexist, jerk into office. For the most part it was
class hatred. They felt that the idiot Trump spoke for them, the common people,
and that Hillary Clinton spoke for the elite, the educated people. For most of
the Trump voters, it was his opening remarks that got them on his side. He declared
that the undocumented Hispanic immigrants were rapists and criminals. That
appealed to his supporters’ xenophobia, bigotry, and ignorance. The trouble is, he does not speak for them and they will probably feel down the road that he is their worst enemy.
Most
white people are prejudiced against Black people to one degree or another. They
will deny it because they do not believe that they are bigoted. They will
point-out that they have friends who are black and that they get along well
with African Americans. But the simple fact is that no matter what they say,
they are prejudiced against Blacks, and often, despite having Black friends,
they have strong feelings against Blacks. They are not a small group like the
KKK, but they include probably 99% of the people who voted for Donald Trump. I know
many such people. They would be offended if you said that they were bigoted.
But if you listen to their conversation you will hear them express anti-Black
feelings. Most of them are also bigoted against Hispanic people.
I
understand how those people felt when Barack Obama was elected President. They
had always assumed that because Blacks were so inferior to White people a Black
person would never be elected President. When he was elected, they were
shocked. They felt that they had not been paying attention and that as a result
a member of the hated and despised Black race got into the White House. In a
sense, that is how we liberals felt about the election of Donald Trump to the
presidency. We never imagined that he could win. He comes across as a dumb
bigot. But that is exactly what his supporters like about him. He will go on
making outrageous statements, doing outrageous things, and instead of his
followers being offended by him they will love it all. They hated political
correctness of every kind and when they heard about some of the rules and
restrictions on campuses, they were furious. Trump made them feel that they
would be able to say whatever they wanted and to behave toward minority people the
way they wanted.
In
his first few weeks in office Trump has done nothing to ease the aversion
better educated people feel toward him. One thing that is beginning to stand
out is hat he is emotionally lacking in confidence. His show of machismo
reveals not self confidence, but rather, insecurity. It is hard to imagine any
of his predecessors arguing about the size of the crowd at his inauguration.
The problem is, how will this failure of confidence affect his administration?
As a reader of history I have noted that many leaders who felt insecure in
their position used attacks on perceived enemies as a means of distracting the
public from their fears. Could this apprehensiveness of Donald Trump lead us
into a nuclear war?
Apparently,
Trump supporters do not notice his obvious failings. They like what he has done
so far. A reader of history will note that common people often love the leaders
who lead them into disaster. The people who supported Trump are like the
ordinary people of Germany who hailed Hitler all the way to the total destruction
of the Third Reich. It was not the educated, sophisticated elite who supported
Hitler. It was the ignorant common people, the mindless type who always admire
the tyrants who lead them into Hell.
