Continued……
I think the white establishment, the liberal elite, the Washington power brokers, the civilised middle-class, the intelligentsia and the Democratic Party’s revulsion of Donald Trump stems from a deep seated national shame at having exposed white Americans for what they are, no less racist than they’ve been since the days of slavery, but just more discursive in their approach. Donald Trump is an enigma and a simpleton, a narcissist, bigot, misogynist, racist fellow who lacks the intellectual sophistication to know when to hold his tongue. The rise of the “most honest man” in American politics is not so much a declaration of his sainthood and honesty as a person, but is more reflective of the fact that by dint of his narcissism is exposing the core elements of the white American psyche, the underbelly of American thought and how Americans really feel.
Trump isn’t an anomaly an aberration, nor a ‘wildcard’ but critical to a sociological understanding of white American thinking. All white Americans, amidst many protestations are socialized into a racist system of white supremacy and are the deliberately intended, but undeserving beneficiaries of the social capital of a sociological phenomenon, known as ‘white privilege.’ These social benefits provide even the lowest social strata of white Americans with immeasurable advantages across all aspects of human endeavours, notwithstanding their individual efforts. The irony of this built-in package of advantages is its invisibility, and when exposed, the instant harsh tones of denials it receives.
Here Trump stand out as the paragon of white privilege, having inherited a fortune from his dad, Fred Trump, in excess of $430 million, he has since recorded several bankruptcies, failed business ventures and unethical business dealings throughout his lifetime that would’ve secured long prison sentences for his African-American counterparts. Still today, this man who boasts about his billionaire status can ascend to the presidency of the most powerful country in the history of mankind as a rank outsider to the political establishment and with such obvious human frailties, all of which are in the public domain. There are political pundits and sociologists who desperately look for clues into his successful capturing of the office of the President, but when applying Occam’s Razor, one is inexorably drawn to one and only one conclusion. Whilst there’s no denying that he had a certain blue collar appeal, spoke the language of the ordinary American and like all the others that have gone before him, made unsustainable campaign promises, the inescapable fact is that Donald J. Trump is male and white.
So we’ve arrived at a type of “Groundhogs Day” for the underclass of African-American citizens who are now increasingly subjected to state sanctioned violence and murder, exponential growth in the alt-right and the conservative class, and white-owned mass-media that provides the perfect platform for the nihilistic, dystopian messages of white supremacy and whiteness. The resurrection of the internment camps for children of colour is not so much reminiscent of Dachau and Auschwitz, but rather that Auschwitz itself. This is no more different to what was done in the days of slavery, it’s just ironic that Adolf Hitler copied the slave masters of the American South and now history and its terrible retribution has come full circle. Welcome to Nazi Germany of the 21st century, not so much because of Trump, but because unresolved sociohistorical conditions in America made him inevitable.
