Trump’s strategy: Infect racism into American whites’ bloodstream
3rd September 2019 · 0 Comments
Trump’s re-election strategy is crystal clear. Infect racism into white Americans’ subconscious. And it’s working. We see it in the upsurge of white mass murderers; in the uptick of racial profiling by police, we see it in everyday white citizens’ attacks on Black and brown people, who are going about their daily lives but getting the cops called on them for existing while Black. We see it in Trump’s allocation of millions more for his so-called detention camps; no, concentration camps on the border, where he is locking up children in cages. We see it in the recent Department of Homeland Security policy of kicking out dying brown children who came to the U.S. for treatment on medically necessity visas, only to be given 33 days to leave. We see it in recalcitrant Republicans who sit silently by while he breaks the Constitution and our laws. We saw racism rear its ugly head at recent KKK rallies in North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Indiana. We saw it this week when he attacked San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, while Hurricane Dorian was threatening the island…where he claimed to have authorized $90 billion, with only a fraction of the alleged $40 billion that reached the island has gotten to Puerto Rico.
“…FEMA and all others are ready and will do a great job. When they do, let them know it, and give them a big Thank You – Not like last time. That includes from the incompetent Mayor of San Juan!” Trump tweeted from the White House last Wednesday morning.
And we saw it here, in Louisiana, when the ACLU of Louisiana filed a lawsuit against the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office for arresting and detaining a man because of his race. Ascension Parish cops arrested Ramon Torres in 2018 and placed him on a “fugitive hold” for four days. Torres was reportedly told that he was being held because “every Hispanic person in the jail is detained for ICE,” according to a news release from the ACLU.
Schwartzmann called the arrest “inexcusable” and that locking people up based on race or ethnicity is “antithetical to our most cherished American values.”
Torres had his Louisiana driver’s license on him and a social security card on him when he was arrested because he was suspected of driving under the influence. Even though a friend sent multiple identification documents to the sheriff’s office, showing that Torres is in the U.S. legally, he was not released until his friend hired a lawyer.
Schwartzmann is no stranger to attacks on people in this country legally. In 2016, she sued the state of Louisiana for voter suppression tactics that prevented naturalized citizens from voting. The state relented and the ACLU dropped the lawsuit before it went to court. Thousands of naturalized citizens living in Louisiana had to jump through hoops to vote, even when they showed citizenship papers, they were told their documents had to be validated before they could vote.
Trump is a sniveling racist coward, who loves attacking Black and brown women and the greatest POTUS in modern history, President Barack H. Obama.
As the economy is inching its way to a recession…duh…what do you expect when you run up a $2 trillion deficit, of which billions went to the richest one percent in the country…and while Trump’s wall is as invisible as the intellect we all knew he never had, (last week he lied and said miles have been built; adding another lie to his 12,000 tally) Trump is escalating his racist attacks on Black and brown women, men, and children.
Trump is confident that he will be re-elected. His base will vote for him, as he proclaimed, even if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue.
But there is very little reported about his “base.” What does their undying loyalty for Trump say about them? There are still white farmers who may have to file bankruptcy and lose their farm to Trump’s Tariff Wars, and others at risk for their land by eminent domain for Trump’s useless border wall, who pledge to stand by their man. Really? Who said self-preservation was the first law of man? Guess not, in Trump’s Whiteland.
The only assessment of Trump’s base that can be made by an outside observer is that people who vote for Trump are just like him, racists of a feather flock together. They so love his racist attacks, so in love with the idea that the South shall rise again, the Lost Cause is not lost, so imbued with ideations of white superiority, white supremacy, and white privilege, that they would lose all for that loving feeling of being better than the other.
If white American’s insane support of the megalomania, narcissistic, racist, misogynist, greedy opportunist in the White House only affected them, the world wouldn’t care. But then are empowering the worst person that ever sat in the Oval Office and their bodies and souls are slimed with his infectious racism. Because of their support, we’ll all be singing we shall overcome, including them, from the poor house, while Trump kicks back at one of his golf courses. Trump is the grinch that stole Christmas 2019. Check the prices at your local stores.
Trump is a pathogen-carrying, crude, excuse for a human being, spreading racism like Typhoid Mary, here in Louisiana, the nation, and abroad. Witness his mini-me, Boris Johnston, the appointed prime minister of England; trying to force Brexit down the Brits’ throats. All Brexit is about is not having to accept refugees into Britain. Sovereign whiteness is a thing now.
Trump and his minions ignore the reality and the fact that Blacks and browns keep this economy humming. Most are just two paychecks away from poverty and must spend their hard-earned minimum wages on bare necessities, keeping big box stores in business.
Popeye’s restaurants recently announced the stores had run out of chicken for its sandwiches. News pundits wondered if it was a result of the chicken sandwich wars on Twitter or just a marketing ploy. We wonder if it has anything to do with the more than a thousand brown immigrants that ICE arrested while they were working at several chicken processing plants in Mississippi.
Hold on to your wallets. It’s going to be a bumpy recession. Which is just one more reason to get out and vote for people who have an agenda that respects the sanctity of all human life.
This article originally published in the September 2, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
