Unlike some commentators, I am loath to recommend books. Not least because I suspect I’m already pushing my luck by expecting you to read my commentaries.
But I am recommending one today because it explains the cult of Donald Trump – just as Helter Skelter explains that of Charles Manson. And, understanding what makes the members of Trump’s cult tick is key to understanding the, well, helter-skelter state of American politics today.
No doubt you recall him asserting the following about his supporters in the early days of his presidential campaign:
You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people. … Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?
(RealClear Politics, January 23, 2016)
Most sane people thought he was crazy. Yet he has demonstrated time and again that he had good reason to make that assertion. Hell, not even Manson could boast of having such loyal followers.
As my headline indicates, Trump’s support depends on the self-abnegating folly of poor white folks continually voting against their obvious interests. Trolls have been targeting me for years for asserting that only one word explains this folly: racism. The author of this book asserts the same.
But I hasten to admit that I am only recommending it because the author is not black like me. Not only is he white, but he grew from dirt-poor roots to boot.
I cannot overstate how relevant this is. Because only someone like him can counter the whites who have channeled Trump, the projector in chief, in reflexively accusing me of racism for making this assertion. That this author is making it too clearly undermines their accusation.
His name is Johnathan M. Metzl. And the full title of his book is Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland.
The following is from a Publisher’s Weekly review on January 17, 2019:
In this groundbreaking work, Metzl, physician [in psychiatry] and director of the Vanderbilt Center for Medicine, Health, and Society, demonstrates the ‘mortal trade-offs’ white Americans make when they vote with the goal of restoring their racial privilege and end up endorsing ‘political positions that directly harm their own health and well-being.’ …
[M]any white Tennesseans, Metzl writes, ‘voiced a willingness to die, literally, rather than embrace a law [Obamacare] that gave minority or immigrant persons more access to care.’
Mind you, poor whites have always been willing to die even for illusory racial privilege. But Trump is the first president in US history to demonstrate a willingness to exploit it.
The priorities delineated in the FY 2020 budget he released last week is only the latest example:
[M]ore than 51 million American households — 43 percent — are unable to afford basics such as food, transportation, and health care. Yet the Trump budget contains a devastating $220 billion cut over the coming decade to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s largest nutrition assistance program … massive cuts — $777 billion over 10 years — from repealing the ACA [Obamacare] and slashing Medicaid [which] could cause millions of people to lose their health care coverage.
(Center for American Progress, March 11, 2019)
This raises the question: Why would anyone in any of these (predominantly white) 51 million American households continue supporting Trump?
With all due respect to Metzl, I’ve been grappling with this question for years. My commentaries on the phenomenon of poor whites voting against their own interest include “Trump for President?! Don’t Be a Sucker,” April 8, 2011, “On Syria (and almost every other issue) the American People Are Insolent, Ignorant, Idiots,” September 10, 2013, “In Defense of Obamacare Adviser’s Claim about Stupidity of the American Voter,” November 19, 2014, and “Trumpasites Already Gagging on the Lies and Promises They Swallowed,” January 30, 2017.
But the following from “New Hampshire Primary Proved One-Third of Republicans Are Gullible Fools,” February 12, 2016, sums up this self-abnegating folly:
Trump’s supporters are, for the most part, the same poor, uninsured white folks who are so ‘angry’ with Obama, they support rich, insured politicians who are hell-bent on repealing the healthcare Obama provided for them. They are the same blue-collar, white folks who act as if they have more in common with a white-collar billionaire like Trump than with fellow blue-collar blacks and Hispanics.
The inexorable inference is that the poor whites who compose his base will continue supporting him not only if he shoots someone but even if his policies end up killing most of them. What seems to matter to them, above all else, is that they have a president who makes them feel like being a dirt-poor white is still better than being a filthy-rich black. White privilege does not get any more illusory than that.
But, before you counter that millions of poor whites supported Obama, consider this from “Romney vs. Obama: Race (Still) Matters,” November 1, 2012:
____________________
It’s an indication of how irrational this racism is that on everything from welfare to taxes Obama’s policies are far more beneficial to the tens of millions of whites who compose the majority of America’s poor. Yet polls indicate that the majority of them will be voting for Romney – whose policies not only favor the rich but, like his pledge to repeal Obamacare, threaten to make these poor whites even poorer. …
I’m on record stating my suspicion that many whites voted for Obama in 2008 more as a gesture of racial absolution than of political faith. These AP findings bear that out. And having thusly absolved themselves of their sins of racism (with this one, historic act), many of them now feel liberated to give way to their racial prejudices without fear of being called racists.
____________________
Alas, this explains both the shock election of a racist like Trump and the sharp rise in racist attacks in recent years. And don’t get me started on the evangelical Christians among his base. The hypocrisy inherent in them showing abject loyalty to this two-legged golden calf is almost too contemptible for words. Suffice it to know that a skunk has more regard for a garden party than Trump has for a house of worship.
More to the point, though, there seems no end to the willingness of poor whites to buy into the myth of returning to the good old days; namely, when their upward mobility was practically guaranteed. Trump’s MAGA promises are just the latest manifestation of this myth.
Nothing demonstrates this quite like GM, Harley Davidson, and Carrier leading a growing list of corporations closing manufacturing plants in America to relocate overseas. Because this makes a mockery of Trump’s signature promise to bring such manufacturing jobs back to “America’s heartland.”
Meanwhile, his supporters there are living lies in quiet desperation — like political zombies foraging for an economic “safe zone” that exists only in fiction. Henry David Thoreau famously blamed “misplaced values” that ruled American society during the mid 1800s for this kind of desperation. He had no idea.
Related commentaries:
Projector in chief…
Gullible fools…
Romney vs. Obama…
evangelical Christians…