JB owes NYT readers some original contribution from him and not just reciting partisan memes as a soldier in the election season. I'll provide examples:
JB: (a) The chants at the rally were "an expression of racist contempt and a celebration of shared values."
(b) to watch the crowds "unite in frenzied hatred of a black woman — to watch them cast her as a cancer on the body politic and a threat to a racialized social order ...."
JB and NYT have it all wrong.
1. Yes, the crowd was raucous but who would not be after observing years of disdain, and ignoring of needs, by the mainstream media and elites. We know that if and when any Dem gets crowds that endearing, that fired-up, their actions will be described as exuberant and a sign of good things.
2. You cannot ignore the words of Trump before the chant and then claim, without ANY EVIDENCE, that the chants were "an expression of racist contempt" or "frenzied hatred of a BLACK WOMAN." (emphasis added). To millions and millions of us, the contempt is deserved because of Omar's toxic and deeply destabiizing history of anti-semitic remarks and remarks making light of 9/11 and remarks in sympathy to Al Queda and ACTIONS supporting enlistees for ISIS, and just overall ingratitude. This contempt is real and has nothing to do with her color or her gender and it is entirely within her power to neutralize these hostile feelings of millions but apologizing. I wish JB would live up to his exalted position and just note the facts.
9
Jamelle, IMHO, the clearest indictment of the modern Republican Party as being racist from Nixon, to Reagan, and to Trump now, is in Earl Shorris’s death-bed 2011 article, “American Vespers” in Harper’s:
“Evening did not begin at that convention, nor during the election. The cell that multiplies, the killing thing, lies beneath the observable world. Reagan began his campaign in Mississippi, with a speech at the Neshoba County Fair, close to the place where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. “I believe in states’ rights,” Reagan said there, close by what some Americans would call hallowed ground. “I believe that we’ve distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment.” He soothed and sweetened what had only the day before been moral disgrace. It was as if all the decadence of centuries had been gathered into a few sentences and said in the jelly-bean rhetorical style of Ronald Reagan. He carried forty-four states.
The ultimate effect of the work of the man with no philosophy was to be a philosopher: he removed ethics from politics. Everything followed on his elegant excision, an operation performed so deftly on the body politic that it did not feel the wound.“
https://harpers.org/archive/2011/12/american-vespers/?single=1
16
When Trump says America, it is the "royal we", he is speaking about himself. So when he says "they hate America" in describing the so called "Squad", he's in effect stating they hate him and for this, he claims they should go elsewhere. It is pure narcissism and has nothing to do with the Country. Of course, no one has address this point.
4
Why shouldn't Americans criticize an anti American ingrate like Omar?
78
@News What, exactly, is an ingrate? I have never heard more vilification of the US than from Donald Trump. Not just the country, but its leaders, its institutions, its Constitution. And as for ingratitude: just think of what he's gotten from this country. Decades of tax fraud, to say the least. But its okay for him to criticize the country, but not her? Never mind. I guess I know the answer.
563
Oh, forget it, never mind. I haven’t got the time or inclination to explain the obvious on a late afternoon Friday. It wouldn’t do any good anyway.
202
@News
Criticizing the Dear Leader's policies is not "anti-American", especially if that citizen is a member of Congress.
338
The Joy of Fighting Racism in these scary times when the racists and bigots whom "we" outnumber – I want to believe that as gospel – try to spook "us" into believing they have the upper hand or that they outnumber "us." Consider this a working draft!
I'm on the lookout for stories and anecdotes and accounts of people who fought back, who fight back against racists/racism, bigotry and intolerance on all the levels of their existence. I'm looking for sharing, that is, the sharing of account and experiences how they or someone they knew. I share mine, they share theirs and we build and build on those experiences. I'm not talking about the lions and lionesses, our heroes recognized and lionized for fighting the good fight. I'm interested in the experience of the man and woman in the street who decided enough is enough.
10
Many of the people at Trump rallies are, indeed, good people (to quote Trump). They have had their brains poisoned by propaganda. One of the most chilling false threats that has made the rounds in right wing, Republican voting areas is the fear of Sharia Law, the idea that Muslims are coming to this country and will somehow force adherence to their religious beliefs and traditions.
This basic fear is unfounded but it is not without small threads of fact. I have seen video of Muslims in London threatening non-Muslim women for not covering their heads. There is a real sense in which Muslims are deeply insulted that the entire world does not adhere to their beliefs. This is a conflict that has been going on almost since the very start of Christian and Islamic religions and, for that matter, each religion considers the other to be practiced by infidels.
Fear is probably the greatest motivating power among humans aside from the need for food, water and companionship. Americans are now subject to a heavy dosage of brainwashing from Fox Noise, Rush Limbaugh, AM radio stations coast-to-coast and wild rumors spread largely on Facebook. People exist in a bubble where falsehoods are circulated among like believers. They are being inspired to hate and live in fear.
These false beliefs and rumors are not new, what has changed is the ability to spread them so widely with no countervailing voices or opinions. Everyone agrees that everyone agrees...in the area where these voters live.
8
Gandhi readily acknowledged that non-violence only works against an honorable opponent. With Trump, I'm not so sure. He might needs to be dragged kicking and screaming from the public stage, wrapped in a straitjacket, yelling and screaming "Not Fair!" and "Hillary's emails"! This could get much worse before it gets better.
12
"Such tests arise inevitably out of democracy — the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions. In private life no man of sense would think of applying them. We do not estimate the integrity and ability of an acquaintance by his flabby willingness to accept our ideas; we estimate him by the honesty and effectiveness with which he maintains his own… But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand…
The larger the mob, the harder the test." H l Mencken
Many good men and women have written about the psychology of the mob, certainly the Trump rallies are mob activities where the individual seems to surrender their minds and their sense of personal responsibility at the door.
Trump lies, they agree. He bullies, they applaud. He aims both barrels at our institutions of democracy and they scream, "Pull the trigger!"
Or for now? Send Them Back!
7
I sure hope that American evangelical Christians keep in mind that Jesus was a brown-complexioned socialist Jew, that he was very supportive of poor and oppressed people under Empire, and that in this respect he was, in his humanity, akin in some ways to historical men (people) like Moses, Mohamed, Martin Luther, Fredrick Douglas, Mark Twain, W.E.B. Du Bois, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, FDR, JFK, MLK, et. al. in being against Imperialist governments, exclusive fundamentalist religions, and crooked ‘money changers’.
18
Our country was founded on racism: The racial genocide of the pre-existing native population to steal the land and the racial kidnapping and sale of the native population in Africa to provide the labor to work that land. Mr. Trump is merely returning to our roots.
And when one remembers that women were excluded from the political and economic activities of the country for most of our history, the genital-grabbing glee of the Trump era doesn't seem so odd either.
When Mr. Trump talks of making America great again, this is the greatness of which he speaks. Mr. Trump isn't the source of the problem. He merely brings it into focus.
13
It is difficult to express in words the primal nature of the hatred espoused by Trump followers, but watching one in action is worth a thousand. Simply Google gardner Esteban Guzman's recording of a white woman berating him and praising Trump. It is a revolting display of white racism in action. This is Trump's raison d'être.
4
A rock concert of anger. Smart marketing.
7
"This dynamic wasn’t unique to the event. It’s been a part of Trump’s rallies since 2015. "
The GOP have been carefully rebuilding this kind of shamelessness since the reagan admin. If any of you are old enough you will remember much of his victim hood preaching was an oblique appeal to nostalgia for the good ol days when a white man could call a black man the N word without fear. And now they have achieved it in every way except there is still trepidation about using the N word openly.
6
@magicisnotreal
The Scorpion is the GOP. The frog is the rest of us.
The Scorpion and the Frog
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the
scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The
frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion
says, "Because if I do, I will die too."
The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,
the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of
paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown,
but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"
Replies the scorpion: "Its my nature..."
5
I can’t think of anyone who complains more about this country than Trump — his platform literally says that it’s not a great country anymore, and all those red hats worn by his supporters proudly echo that idea. Yet suggest to these people, themselves the descendants of immigrants, as all but Native Americans are, that they leave and go back where they came from, and they’d indignantly tell you they were born here. Meanwhile, they see no contradiction in exhorting brown-skinned Americans who were also born here to go back. And somehow they think they’re not being racist? Where are all the chants directed at white Democratic politicians to go back where they came from, then? The willful ignorance as they surf their intoxicating waves of hatred is incredible.
8
WOW!
This op-ed should remain for a long time, since it must lead to very important conversation of racism in America that is alive and well.
BRAVO! Jamelle Bouie!
It's long past time to enlighten americans and remind the next generation of this country very dark, stained past.
BRAVO! Jamelle Bouie
Really, all this newly acquired knowledge should put a pause, to at least his younger supporters feverish enthusiasm, don't you think...
Not so fast...It's the "Economy Stupid"
So, aside from the dangerous heat wave
we have the utmost dangerous group occupying the WH, the Senate and the racially galvanized base, who loves to hate!
Yesterday, I was horrified watching Chris Hayes "All IN' episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ahdXQDbNs
AOC to DHS Secretary: “Did You See the Photoshopped Images of My Violent Rape?”
AOC Confronts DHS Head Kevin McAleenan on Facebook 'Rape Memes'
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/3k3ggn/aoc-to-dhs-secretary-did-you-see-the-photoshopped-images-of-my-violent-rape
"The Joy of Hatred" spreading all over, in crucial part because of absence of moral leadership, total Moral Vacuum.
Every school history manuals should be updated to face new facts, new revelation and the reality of this moment in time.
Glossing it over will not do!
We depend on very informed new voters, who will eventually decide the destiny of their country and the path forward.
7
The Squad are four women of color who share Progressive beliefs. Trump's crowds are all anti-Progressive. Some presumably are racist.
When the chant went up, no one made it explicit whether it was about politics or race. The message was "America, love it or leave it", a political message from the Vietnam era. That chant was used against anyone who opposed the war, and was not race specific.
Of the four women of color, two identified as Muslim, a religion not a race. And the chant was directed at one of these Muslim women. When most of us think of racism, we think of blacks as targets. But the one black woman among the Squad has remained silent rather than letting Trump bait her.
So there is a good deal of ambiguity here. And the crowd in not likely to clear things up. Trump crowds include very few rocket scientists. And most of them probably didn't even know what the chant was about.
1
It is nearly unbelievable to me that I have photos of my great Grandmother, Great Aunts & Uncles from the 1890's who were living during the time of such cruel, shameful form of public executions - & especially that of a mentally challenged individual.
Is it really possible humans have evolved so little & so slowly from their 14th & 15th century relatives? Despite the widespread ability to read, global education & tremendous advances in all the sciences, humans remain remarkably recalcitrant & oppositional when it comes to understanding one another.
7
As is the case with many articles in the Times - it is the reader comments which I find most enlightening. Several authors posit that the Democrats must do this or that to win while others offer that Trump supporters can be persuaded with positions that assuage their fears. Is this true?
There is only so much the Democratic Party can do. And too many of us further the Republican's work by always castigating them for being too out there - too this - too that. I'm not sure that sound policies would be given any air time in our gladiatorial entertainment area of political discourse. Somehow the comments will be twisted into socialism (and massive amounts of money are being spent furthering this approach).
It is misguided to think that Trump supporters want reason, want their fears addressed, want to educate themselves beyond the soundbites of 'regulations are bad.' They don't. They are not going to be persuaded. Hate is a lot more fun. Then there is the cohort of folks who've got theirs and the heck with everyone else. It is a biblical and outdated construct to think that when someone experiences misfortune it will open their hearts and minds to others. It's more fun to follow their vicious, greedy, vindictive god - no matter what the consequences.
4
Quoting Du Bois; good for you.
Beyond words. Way beyond. How incredibly unread, unworldly, racist, and bottom line stupid one must be to be a trump (never a capital t) supporter must be. He has done nothing but to threaten the true GREATNESS that is America. Oh, and a run up the deficit in an era of unprecedented growth is no big deal (hey, bankruptcy is a good thing). We are in it deep....
8
Lady, all I can say in response to you is that he doesn't "get" me. I refuse his hatred and racism. I DON"T think this way and hope that I never will. You and his supporters appall me. Proud to be racist and spew hate. Hope I never have to meet you.
5
Mr. Bouie's eloquent analysis of Trump's latest rally with comparisons to lynch mob psychology is chilling. I had a different reaction ... equally chilling. It reminded me of newsreel film of Adolf Hitler standing smugly on a podium while his adoring followers chanted passionate slogans of support.
6
The entire GOP culture, leaders, elected officials, voters et al cannot be shamed any longer - it simply doesn't register.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/before-you-call-out-our-hypocrisy-let-us-remind-you-that-we-dont-care
Inquiring minds want to know. Where will Trump's next Nuremberg rally be held?
6
When you look at Trump rallies don’t think lynch mob! Why not? Lock her up, send her back, they hate “America”, blah blah blah. Trump is the carnival barker and the rallies his mob. That the lynching is figuratively instead of literally is hardly the point. Trump works the hysteria up to a certain level then backs off, he’s in control of the beast and will release it at need. You could just as easily say that the Nuremberg rallies weren’t pogroms themselves but look where they led. Mob behavior is a dangerous thing and its manipulation is chancy at best. Trumps playing with fire, I hope we all don’t get burned in the process.
6
Mr. Bouie, what would it take to turn the crowd at a Trump rally into a lynch mob? An orange head nod I think. Nothing more.
2
Who exactly are “his people”?
The 100 million Americans who support him?
Look, I am unlikely to vote for Trump for a variety of reasons (I didn’t vote form him in 2016) but I know many who did/will, and I wouldn’t characterize a single one as hateful racists looking to lynch black people.
Don’t you see that it’s just as hateful to assume the worst about your political opponents and their supporters and portray them as the enemy?
If you can’t see this, then you are also part of the problem.
6
Who is the bigger threat to the United States? Five hundred or so wingnuts from the far right, or 10 or 15,000 university social science and humanities professors? The latter won't pick up guns like the former, but the former can't wreck young minds with post- modernist Neo Marxist intersectional foolishness like the latter.
4
An excellent column. Once again we see that nice intelligent people are capable of rationalizing ANYTHING. The Nazis clung to a rationale to justify exterminating millions. Millions found rationales to disrespect Obama. Millions rationalize their support for Trump. There is NO limit to our ability to rationalize ANYTHING.
4
I've been watching some "Simpsons" clips recently. Homer soooo reminds me of Trump. Really! try it...
And Trump supporters? Remarkably 'Homeresque...'
( Have to feel bad for Melania Marge )
Reading David Brooks and Jamelle Bouie each explain America today, I have to say, the preponderance of the evidence is with Bouie.
2
Trump is a "Gaslighter" It is a common technique used bf abusers, dictators, narcissists, & cult leaders. The term comes from the movie “Gaslight” (1944).
Trump uses the following techniques:
1. He tells blatant lies. We're unsure if anything he says is true.
2. He denies he said something, even though we have video proof. The more he lies & denies, the more we question reality.
3. He appeals to fear. He attacks the foundation of our being.
4. He wears us down over time. He lies constantly. Fox News & WH sycophants repeat his lies.
5. His actions never match his words. Deflection is his forte. What he says is meaningless diversion.
6. He uses positive reinforcement to confuse us, to keep us with a sense of uneasiness.
7. He sows confusion, to weaken us. He uproots & make us constantly question everything.
8. He projects his faults on us. He believes this distracts from his own behavior.
9. He aligns others against his detractors. He is a master manipulator. He is a pathological liar who wants mob rule.
10. He is dismissive. He attacks our sanity or patriotism, so others will not believe us when we tell them that he is abusive & gone out-of-control.
11. He cries out “false news”. By screaming that everyone else is a liar, it again makes us question our reality. It's a manipulation technique.
The more we are aware of Trump’s techniques, the quicker we can identify them & avoid falling into his trap.
With thanks to “Psychology Today”.
9
Do we expect trump to change his behavior or his stage act when he and his freedom caucus white nationalists are still winning.
I expect as a voter and citizen that we are heading for a national civil war.
I believe trumpian dog whistles have activated many NRA supported and militia supported redoubt groups with weaponry and this election cycle and outcome will usher in street violence and trump and company declaring Marshall Law and becoming our true dictator.
The reason?
A political debacle known as the electoral college.
And treason committed by republicans.
And Miller , Kushner , pence and Bannon along with trumps senate hoodlums.
2
This is who Malcolm X was naming when he said "white devils"--a term he later abandoned in the interest of comity. But that didn't make these filthy, debased people any less devilish.
There's a large percentage of white America that can't be healed and doesn't want to be healed. What is to be done with them? And if you're white and that question makes you nervous, why do you group yourselves with them? Don't you see yourself as separate from them, or do you share their beliefs?
2
What many missed about trump's rallies is that they employ the pyscology of lynch mobs or Hitler's Nuremberg rallies.
that is you get a ctowd of people together when you are transgressing against morality-what one person would feel wrong doing the crowd can justify they create their own reality, since we are social creatures morality can often seem to be whatever the crowd decides it is.
this trump, and Hitler, rewrote people's moral code for a time. But the reality is that morality doesn't change- a lynching demonstrates this- when a white man died in the south his pregnant black mistress was lynched on a trumped up charge-
and as she was hung the baby kicked visibly in its death throes.
Evil remains evil no matter how trump or Hitler or the leaders of lynch mobs thought they could rewrite morality by crowdsourcing it.
Let's be crystal clear America:
The (confederate) south has risen again. The current White House occupant purely represents the confederate constituents of these here Untied...er, United States.
Wake up now or never to the existential (zombie) racist threat that is a redux of America's civil war of the 1860's! The president is Robert E. Lee incarnate here to make a last stand for confederate values. Hoping no violence ensues, I will get others to vote like my life depends on it!
1
Yes, Trump is a RACIST. But he is also a "RACYIST".
What I mean by racyist, is that he is great at racing ahead.
While Democrats are rambling on about Trump's latest Tweets,
he is getting the jump on them. Democrats remain clueless!
In 2016, Trump was already planning his re-election.
When will Democrats wake up, and find ways to trump Trump?
Democrats must push a new wave of democracy to beat Trump!
(See, "Democracy" by Leonard Cohen, "Democracy is coming...")
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Can the NYTimes discuss the "Democracy" song?)
1
As a European, I have always been interested about Europe's biggest question: what happened in the 1930s that could change educated, and perfectly civil Germans into a people that blindly followed a man, disturbed, uneducated, un-skilled,un-gifted and with no talents whatsoever, into the abyss of the second world war.The answer will always be elusive, but I got an eerie glimpse of what came very close to what must have happened at the Nuremberg rally, just a few days ago, on every TV screen all over the world.
The build up to Nazi Germany was a slow one. Only few Germans did not realize what was going on. They knew, as the Republicans know today where Trump will lead them. The resemblances with the rise of Naziism are stunning and very frightening and this time the pace to a disaster it will not be a slow one.
10
So happy to hear that Representative Omar was given a hero's welcome home in Minnesota after he figurative lynching in North Carolina. My apologies for living in that state.
3
"To be clear, the Trump rally was not a lynch mob." Mr. Bouie the Trump mob had all the same characteristics of a Lynch mob: Ignorant, vengeful, and hateful.
2
Before the rise of Trump, I figured maybe 10 percent of my fellow Americans were unregenerate racists and just plain bad people. Now I know it's closer to 35 percent. Possibly more.
7
They are always smiling in the hideous pictures of the crowds in lynchings.
They are always smiling as they hurl abuse and hate at these hideous Trump rallies.
And you know, for a person who clearly has not a scintilla of joy in his life—not a spark of happiness—Trump does come alive when he draws out hate in others.
It is appalling beyond words.
6
No reasonable person can argue against the reality that the U.S was founded as a white supremacist nation (so was Canada, but with a much less significant slavery legacy). It wasn't until the 1960's that both countries rejected that founding principle. Canada seems to be a bit better at functioning as a multi-ethnic society than the U.S 50 years later. Sure, there is significant "racial anxiety" in the population , but all our mainstream parties reject racist language, with our most conservative major party (the large C Conservatives) has been actively courting immigrant votes for at least a decade)
But Omar would be a juicy political target in either country, given her extremely unpopular political views. Expect Trump to drop references to the other three in the group and ride this one all the way to the election
3
Omar is arrogant about her righteousness but she’s an annoyance at worst, not deserving of being accused of being an enemy of the state. Her comments are hyperbolic expressions to impress the significance of what she sees as an injustice. It’s being taken by Trump’s crowds as a personal affront.
1
Jamelle, here’s a more accurate, effective, and true chant against Emperor Trump:
DUMP
EMPEROR
TRUMP
3
Really, what else can be said of the hopeless, reckless, homophobic, racist, sexist and exceedingly depraved Republican Party? Who the Republican's are and what they're about is embodied in their childish, self-serving, racist and backward looking chants: "Drill Baby Drill", "Lock her Up" and the latest, "Send her Back". I wouldn't be at all surprised if those hopeless women in a picture I saw of his "Send her Back" rally, some of whom were holding signs lamenting their racism, will eventually roll out a new chant, "Repeal Women's Rights", "Bring Back Slavery", "Let's Go Back to the Good ole Day's". They'll do this proudly and never question the basis for that which they chant.
2
How revolting and pathetic. Makes me sick. I am grateful I am not contaminated by the filth that is trump. Let's go forward and leave these people behind. As he exploits them, he weakens the country. The House just passed a bill to give a $15 minimum wage within 6 years and Mitch McConnell said no! That would destroy the good economy! The GOP is also working hard to take away health insurance from 20 million people and give federal lands to private pals' companies. So, go ahead and spend your money on trump garb. I hope the hate is worth it.
4
It may not have been a Lynch mod but add a few matches and it could easily turn into one.
1
In 2019, to be a Republican is to be a racist -- because by being a Republican you very actively support raw racism. Donald Trump is a raging racist. Some Republicans have best friends who are not white; at best, they are "soft" racists.
2
People that are afraid revel in the company of those that share their fears. Their fears are assuaged by their numbers. This is particularly true of fears that are not rational.
Trump ralliers are afraid of people that look different from them. They are afraid of people that don't share their religion. They are afraid of sexual minorities. They are afraid of big cities. They are afraid that there's no place for them in the modern world.
Trump gives them targets upon which to focus their fears: political opponents, minorities and immigrants. Notably, it's the same set of targets Hitler focused on.
We're not there yet, but we seem to be marching in that direction.
4
At least five perfectly reasonable comments blocked on this piece.
Go back in time. This crowd or mob could as well be chanting “Crucify him”. These haters have no shame.
6
Unfortunately hate sells.
2
Look at 1950’s era photos of Black children attempting to integrate American public schools & remember that all those hateful, White faces tormenting those poor schoolchildren were the parents and grandparents of all those hateful, White faces attending Trump’s campaign rally on Wednesday evening.
4
Bouie sees everything as an expression of racism. He would accuse an Eskimo of being a racist if his sled dog team was made up of less than 50% Huskies with black color coats. To Bouie, all opposition or criticism of a black person is racism. He only tolerates criticism of anything a black person does when that criticism is by another black person (interesting that he doesn't apply that same rule to criticism of white persons).
If ever there was an classic example of racist hate, it is that which emanates from the mouth of Ilhan Omar.
7
Is it true that the family name was changed by dropping 'a' and adding 'u'???
1
I live in Montgomery, Al, where I was born and raised, and I can assure you rascism is alive and well here (where nearly 90 percent of white people voted for Trump). Mr. Bouie is spot on. The one thing I might add about the creepy, joyous atmosphere of these rallies has to do with Trump's clownishness. It's very convenient! His supporters can hide behind his ignorance and pretend not to take him seriously. When they are pressed about the rascism, they roll their eyes, as though they're talking about their crazy uncle, "he's just Trump being Trump". They can agree with every mean spirited thing he says, does, and implies, yet not take him or themselves seriously or look seriously in the dark mirror. Hitler had an intense seriousness about him; he looked mean! Wallace had that intensity, too. To follow one of them, you had to own it. Trump is so transactional, and stupid acting, and so enthralled with the hollowness of television and ratings, that his followers treat it as though it's only entertainment, when it's convenient, and don't have to see themselves as mean or cruel in any way. And if you really press them about the rascism, they will explode with self pity and all their grievances, just like Trump. There are many ways to avoid one's conscience. It's so maddening!
5
Folks, Trump MAY be re-elected for one reason and one reason only: WHITES will never give up control. If his voters never see or hear from a person of color in their entire life— they will be very happy. IF he wins you and I know that , in FACT, it will be the end of American democracy as we know it. I am NOT being hyperbolic. ——- GOTV.
1
Those people at his rallies seem to share a common trait - ignorant.
3
Trump and his enablers have successfully rebranded the "Squad" as the "Gang of Four."
They have already seized the advantage in the media hype leading up to 2020.
Democrats better smarten up.
Let us see what they can do with Mueller.
The sprawling structure of the Democratic Primary debates is not helping. The sooner the Party can winnow the field the better.
For the life of me I cannot fathom why so many candidates still remain, unless it is about maximizing exposure in the hope of a future administrative appointment.
Party before the individual.
1
I wonder if any of these people joined in their irrational hatred ever wonder what is in the hearts of those of us who truly have no problem seeing character over skin color. Are they ever curious enough to ask why people aren’t racist.
2
Maybe these people could re-read the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. You know, the one about "Send me your tired and your poor..." O wait. That statue is a French import. Maybe we need to send her back to where she came from as well.
3
Those people are nationalistic, and as there are out to defend the small people against foreign and other dangerous other cultures they are socialistic as well. US, watch your back, a monster is upcoming
2
Well, its finally out in the open for everyone to see, what is truly the heart of rural, white America.
It's not jus any minority that they hate, its white people that are different from them too.
Worked for a global farm equipment company and spent 25 years in rural America developing their dealership and computer systems networks. I am a third generation American of southern European decent from New York. The hostility I experience was suppressed when I went to these communities but it was there.
The analogies are being sprouted everywhere comparing trump to Hitler but what trump has done is bring the same type of people out again. Periodically in our countries history, these people come out and then they disappear back under the rocks they crawled out from.
What's different this time is the realization that the changing demographics are going to crush them in our democracy. Even the most ignorant one realizes that they are becoming a minority and will loose power to the minorities. This is enraging them.
That's why we all need to be aware that they will not back off this time, this is their last chance to retain power and if destroying democracy is necessary that's fine to them.
I see the comments that "it's a sad day for America". No, this is much worse, we're a patient in critical condition and the 2020 election needs to be a decisive repudiation of trump, these people and everything they represent.
4
Google/image 'lynching postcards'.
Brace yourself.
A close in-law recounted to me once that in the 20s while a boy his dad took him on a picnic to a site in Indiana famous for lynchings.
Another close family member told us of his memory in the 20s in Ohio of a cross being burned in the yard of a Catholic neighbor after a loud political campaign against the 'Papists'.
Both Indiana and Ohio were controlled by the KKK at the time. They would march in 4th of July parades.
J.B. says the Trump rally was not a Lynch mob, but was that simply due to lack of opportunity? That was certainly a mob locked and loaded to become one.
Are we not slowly relearning what many Germans of good faith and conscience learned in the 30s, as their institutions fell once by one to the Nazis?
(It's not 'Godwin's law' if it's true.)
2
Yes, Trump and his supporters are hate-filled and contemptible. But do be careful about making a martyr of Ilhan Omar. She's also hate-filled, and likely a criminal to boot.
3
In spite of all this outrage I see no one packing up and leaving - is this all storm in the tea pot. The pictures here show a bunch of delusional men and women who are too lazy to understand the world that is changing and cutting their noses to spite their faces.
Where are they from? Lazyland?
What are Ilhan Omar’s views as a self-identifying Muslim, wearing a hijab, female, and “of color” , with respect to male homosexuality, female homosexuality, polygamy, homosexual marriage, and abortion of any type? I have missed her comments on these issues.
3
And yet Democrats and so-called ‘progressives’ saw nothing wrong when in 2012 VP Joe Biden told a mostly black audience that Republicans wanted to “put y’all back in chains.” Democrats cheered and yucked it up.
Now it appears heated political rhetoric gives Dems the vapors. Spare me...
2
@EGD This so-called progressive saw plenty wrong with Biden's comment about the chains. As did my politically engaged friends.
I now see plenty wrong with your brand of broad, sweeping statement, and your binary thinking. We all cheered and yucked it up, eh? And now we all have the vapors? All of us?
There exists a spectrum of nuanced beliefs. Seek them out. Learn from them. Otherwise, you'll not only be spared, you'll be dismissed.
1
Mr Bouie: Sometime before the election there will be blood. Do you doubt it? Does anyone?
1
The white crowds who chanted "Send her back" are a complete disgrace and embarrassment to the U.S., to their race and to humanity. If demeaning others is the only way that they can lift themselves, then they are truly pathetic creatures. The Republican Party has absolutely no moral authority to criticize anyone, when they encourage Trump's calculated and utterly evil hate-mongering.
There are no words to express how despicable this president is--and how out-of-control this hatred has become. Trump will have blood on his hands.
3
"To be clear, the Trump rally was not a lynch mob"
Mr. Boule, you bend over backwards for objectivity and fairness. This Dear Leader is walking this "base" right to the edge of violence - and will deny with a smirk he had anything to do with it when the inevitable occurs. Can't happen here? It is, right here, right now.
1
All one has to do is read the comments to this article to know where the real hatred lies.
Trump and "his people" don't hate anyone, including Omar. They are just sick and tired of the sanctimony and hypocrisy of progressive America.
4
@Red My 27 year old daughter, a brilliant and gifted writer, would respond to your comment thusly: hahahahaha. This indicates irony. It references a statement so patently absurd that it doesn't deserve a legitimate response.
But I am not my daughter, so here's this: Trump's people, his Christian followers, don't have the tiniest bit of room to call out sanctimony and hypocrisy. They've overwhelmed all existing space with a tsunami of their own blatant violation of Christian values. Meantime, we progressives will continue doing the work of Christ's gospel as we seek ways to feed the poor and care for the sick. You may call it sanctimonious. I call it love.
3
The last line "And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.” is what's troubling to me. Trump will be gone eventually, hopefully by the end of next year. But the people who support his worldview will still be with us and they will still be thinking those bad thoughts and acting on them in ways both subtle and blatant.
4
Make no mistake: if the Democratic candidate wins the presidency, violence will almost surely follow, and it will be directly stoked by Trump who will of course remain well out of harm's way. We need to be prepared for this outcome. It will not just be the problem of how to extract Trump's bulk from the White House when he refuses to leave, but responding to terrorism on the streets from his followers and potentially even civil war. Be ready. They've given up on American democracy and are quite willing to sink the entire ship rather than share it.
4
No, there may be more incidents but only a relatively few people are willing to destroy their own lives over one election. It takes an existential crisis like the conflict over the institution of slavery to do that.
1
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” ...
Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
5
Those who defend Trump and make this discussion about Omar and her past tweets are trying to divert the conversation. Trump and his minions hate the "others". If its not Omar it will be someone else, over and over again.
5
I was a protestor at the Trump rally in North Carolina. I thought long and hard about the content of my poster, knowing that posters never change people’s minds at such events and came up with “MANA: Make America Normal Again,” printed in red and blue and the same stars as on the MAGA bumper stickers. Despite the fact that many Trump supporters yelled at us, I also saw many smiling at my poster and taking pictures of it. I really believe that even many Trump supporters find the constant chaos Trump fosters to be exhausting and unproductive. It might be momentarily fun for them, but it really changes little. That’s how we can reach people. Calling them racists—even though I know they certainly perpetrate it-- just gets their backs up and they stop listening.
1
@Cindy
You acknowledge there were a range of personalities yet you end by grouping them all as one.
Who would have guessed by looking at them that trump and the trumpite mob would be such snowflakes? Can't stand criticism or an opinion not theirs. No, anybody who disagrees that trump isn't the greatest should be eliminated, sent back.
They really are deplorable. All of them. You wonder what they are on, what's in their water. Looking at them and their bad-acting frenzy, you wonder if they aren't being paid.
3
Hatred is an inalienable right and there is an art to it. One needs to hate one's oppressors so one does not get complacent.
Actions that are illegal are what matter. The illegal action by someone who hates might be justifiable as a crime of passion. We hate to watch our haters very carefully and we can't jump the gun on them just because they hate. That actually provides them with a defense. We need to stay a bit invisible and be ready to arrest and cuff them or they will get away and we might not get a second chance.
1
American lynch mobs are low-hanging fruit when seeking troubling past parallels.. The theater of Albert Speer and Heinrich Hoffmann, perfectly captured by Leni Riefenstahl all for a demagogue who understood the value in pomp and circus as the feed bucket for the hoards of sheep-followers is much more relevant both as a model from the past and a prediction of the future. It's much gloomier this this essay presumes.
1
"He says what the rest of us are thinking". That says it all.
Working class whites hate Blacks. They think they are
second class citizens and a threat to their white society.
Before Trump, they kept this largely to themselves. But
Trump told them to shout it out. Trump thinks this will
solidify his base and ignite "closet racism" in others. He
is probably right.
He thinks voters will line up behind him simply because
of his views on race. Nothing else, like character. matters.
He may be right here, too.
1
I really do hope that those identifiable people in the picture of this mob, lose their jobs.
1
Jump Jim Crow is alive and well, currently preforming live in the White House! And he’s getting great reviews in the South and Midwest. His traveling roadshow is a product of the Republican Party, who stands backstage,behind the curtains, in utter awe of his performance. In their view he has led us back to a better time. But be forewarned, after chants of, “Lock her up!” and “Send her back!” be prepared for, “String her up!” from his screaming mob!
“The Times They Are A Changing”
2
"he gives them permission to express their sense of siege" why? Is it because without it they would fear reprisal? Not at a southern rally, to be sure. Where, then? In "normal society", that's where. The white supremacist's righteous indignation is inversely proportional to his or her self-identified level in "normal society". The lower on the rungs of opportunity, the greater the need for permission to express resentment, and at the lowest levels, no permission may be sought where real violence starts.
“He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
That would probably qualify as the scariest line I've read in awhile. But it's also one that Democrats need to pay attention to. As unfortunate as it is, there are a very significant number of people in this country who do feel "under siege" due to the reality of shifting demographics, and their false belief that it is people of color who are responsible for their very real economic hardships.
In order to weaken Trump's hold on his base, Democrats need to shift their focus from identity-based politics and immigration (which only makes these folks feel more threatened) to real solutions that will improve economic conditions for all Americans - higher wages, lower taxes for the poor and middle classes, free educational opportunities for adults so they can learn new skills more relevant to our current economy, home-buying assistance, and the like.
Yes, Trump supporters are a bunch of racists. And that's not going to change no matter how loudly we shout that fact from the rooftops. What might make a difference down the road, though, is restoring these people's communities and economic security so they no longer live in fear. Because that's the root of this. They're afraid for their own futures and their ability to provide for themselves and their families, and it's far too easy for them to blame those who look different for their plight.
5
We have come no further since Jamestown with our racist problems.
“looking to our history of communal racial violence and the ways in which Americans have used racial others, whether native-born or new arrivals, as scapegoats for their lost power, low status or nonexistent prosperity. “
Just look at the faces in this picture, probably what the faces at a lynch mob looked like.
3
“He gets us. He’s not a politician, and he’s got a backbone,” a woman who attended a recent “Women for Trump” kickoff event in Pennsylvania told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
My feeling has been that Trump has validated a lot of people's racism or need to throw off civilized behavior. That's what they like, a rich white man who because of his status believes he can get away with anything, be it racist dog whistles, groping and assaulting women, insulting people around him, refusing criticism, taking no responsibility, blaming others for every unpleasant thing in the world. They want to be like him and now emulate in their daily lives. I have witnessed the mistreatment of immigrants doing their job. Or being harassed by a white police officer, it is disgusting. The best incident I saw was an accident involving a BMW with a white family that was hit from behind by a car carrying an immigrant appearing family. The police officer was a non white woman, she was treating the "immigrant" family nicely speaking Spanish with them. The BMW occupants were not amused.
There seems to be much more open disrespect for people or rules. To me this is coming from the top.
2
Gotta say, Hiilary was right: people that can still support Trump today are truly deplorable
3
I only saw a bit of the rally but I did see the part where Trump talked about people who hate our country and said that if they hate it so much they could leave, they could go anywhere they liked, or not, it was up to them. Then the crowd started chanting, “send her back” the same way they did “lock her up” in 2016. I assume some clever audience member thought of the parallelism and the crowd took it up based on that.
I also heard him talking a lot about how great the economy is.
What I did not see or hear was any kind of hatred. Trump was relaxed; the crowd was enjoying themselves. It was a far cry from videos I’ve seen of Hitler.
You may not agree with Trump. His style is certainly different(!) than previous presidents. But the level of unveiled hatred for anyone who supports Trump found in the NYT comment section, exemplified by an earlier commenter who is going to boycott all products from red states, bothers me far more than a chant against a controversial politician.
22
@Z97 Beyond counter intuitive ...
19
@Z97 Sure, sounds like a total lovefest. I'm sure we're all wrong.
9
@Driven,
Yes, but which side wants to put people in camps? Only Trump voters. The rest of us don't want to put them in camps -- we just want our country back -- you know, the democracy where all people are considered equal, regardless of color or religion?
13
Trump is himself, as my late father would say, a big nothing. but just as a blank brick wall next to a playground reflects and amplifies the sound of a Spauldeen bouncing off it, so too does Trump mirror and amplify the angry noise of his supporters. he is merely a reflection of an aberrant segment of our social fabric. Trump seems to believe he's a unique strain of genius, but really any persistent loudmouthed jerk could get the same reaction from crowds gone stupid with fear and anger.
3
We are a nation rooted in genocide and slavery. Did we ever have much of a national soul?
1
Excellent piece, Jamelle!
What twisted my gut the most was the combination of the chant's vile, racist message and the ebullience of the crowd. Seeing their unrestrained glee while chanting racist slurs. The image is terrifying.
Was horrified seeing the little girl look around her as the crowd began to yell, unsure what to do, what was happening. Scariest is after a few rounds, she slightly smiles and chimes in.
2
Watching these people. watching the Conservative minority gain and wield power in this country, it is much easier for me to understand the rise of fascism in other times.
Trump's inflections and body language strongly suggest he has had instruction from Evangelical tactics on how to engage their audience/cult most effectively. Courses are available online. He also emulates Mussolini in making a statement, then frowning, chin unnaturally raised, looks down on the crowd and slowly turns his head back and forth giving approval to their frenzied responses. Come to think of it, the first couple share some similarities to a famous Latino pair. The disenfranchised poor showered Juan and Eva Peron with misdirected loyalty and love.
2
All children enter this world with the same range of potentials although there are some variations, they do not depend upon race. Racism is not founded upon any biological basis. The range of characteristics of people does not show any relation with race. In fact, any person has more characteristics in common with all people than with only those sharing his/her/they racial category.
Cruelty and the obvious enjoyment of the display of suffering of other creatures is something which people have exhibited around the world. As recently as two centuries ago an entertainment was cat burning. Until about a century and a half ago, bear baiting was popular. Even today, dog fighting and cock fighting are games enjoyed by some people. The point is that people are capable of enjoying mistreatment of others.
The era of violence against racial minorities was most recently exhibited by lynching of African Americans but included the random mass murders of native Americans and of Chinese and of Mexican Americans. Trump does not encourage lynching but his hate fests are related to that same brand of cruelty reserved for people stereotyped by race or failure to agree with right wing fanatics.
Hitler & Co. used these tactics in Germany very successfully and when they occupied most of Europe they found them almost as useful to a varying degree. They had their admirers here as well, one of them being Charles Lindberg and many of the America First movement. Already there are those experts who say there is a good chance Trump will get a second term, if only because of the electoral college. Let's hope we will not follow the path of Germany, but with our violent history, we may well do that.
1
Mr Bouie,
You need to rely more upon experience than what you have read.
I can assure that Poor Whites were not freely admitted
to every gathering nor did they attend the best schools.
There was the Poor Side of Town, the Rich Part of Town
and the Colored Part of Town where I grew up in the South.
The school I attended in Alabama before Brown vs. Topeka
was a "Colored" School and the teachers were the best
I ever had in my Public School years. They were highly
intelligent, demanding and caring, they just had not been
allowed to attend Medical or Law Schools or study to become
Engineers.
I have be reviled and vilified more on the NY Times Web Site
via Liberal/Progressive commentators who presume that I
am "White" and since I live in Idaho, a Country-Bumpkin
who is highly prejudiced against minorities.
Human Nature does not change, every single one of us
could be a Saint or a Sinner.
Anyone can be part of a Mob that burns a person alive,
as we saw with "Necklacing" in South Africa.
Trump is just tapping into these people's anger at being
treated like "White Trash" by the Elites and the Media.
Why don't you go and talk to these people and find out
why they are so frustrated and angry that they would
chant what they did and trust Trump more than whatever
candidate the Democrats put forth.
4
I was raised in Eastern North Carolina and spent a lot of time in Greenville with my grandparents. I am appalled at what happened with that nincompoop earlier this week. He is evil. These people aren't that evil, but he goads them on and on. What a nasty person he is.
I believe - Trump's White House Team - including: Stephen Miller - Pre-Planned - 'Send Her Back' Chant by planting Trump surrogates in the crowd to begin the chant - that he later said - I didn't say - the crowd said it -
But - Trump knew full well - of the plan to have Trump surrogates begin the chant -- this is an age old 'Fear' technique to whip up a crowd as the Leaders of Fear want the crowd to behave - in their favor.
7
"To be clear, the Trump rally was not a lynch mob." Oh,no? If AOC had appeared she'd have been shot. If you or I had been in the crowd with a protest sign, we'd have been beaten or worse. I am tired of listening to how these people have to be understood. They must be outvoted--that's all.
19
Mr. Trump's fans are not responsible for the brutal killing of Henry Smith. Nor can it fairly be said that they espouse a modern-day version of the thinking behind it.
I'm willing to bet that most Americans, including those at the rally for Trump in Greenville, do not even know or care what color the four squad members are. The issue for so many Americans is that the four invite criticism by their positions on important issues and, in the case of Ms. Omar, their biased, hateful remarks.
I'm a lifelong Dem who is thoroughly put off by the squad, which appears to me to be alienating significant numbers of voters.
Mr. Bouie: Do not see every event through the lens of racism.
In this opinion piece, your lens is badly out of focus.
5
I can remember and appreciate those DuBois psychological wages I got as a white man when was working on construction for minimum wage. I used to buy food by saying take it out of my psychological wages.
2
When any group feels their invested in culture is being threatened, it gets ugly pretty quick.
Has nothing to do specifically with white American people, it is just a function of human nature.
Dismissing them as just “grievances” is wrong.
Treat them as rational and then find common ground and solutions, looking to find ways to provide stability when the ground is changing.
Dismissing them as just “hateful” will not work, and will produce more Trumps.
4
Brilliant piece. Thank you, Jamelle. Similar to the argument for why yeoman farmers in the South fought for the economic interests of plantation owners in the Civil War (Stephanie McCurrie's Masters of Small Worlds focuses on this).
There is a lot of hatred to go around here, though. Liberal professionals (also mostly white) are not easy allies for working class whites without access to educational credentials, jobs, and urban cultural amenities. These figures seem to be worthy of anger on par with that now directed at Omar (commentary on "send her back" as the new "lock her up" suggests shared rhetorics of dehumanization here). Do you see hatred for professional liberal whites coming from the same place? A similar threat to the psychological wage?
“He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
OR
He lets us off the HOOK...the Moral Hook!
Trump appeals to the most primal instinct life has to offer...survival! "Life lives on Life" Morality is all that keeps us from consuming ourselves. The "crowd effervescence" allows one to forget morality and be a survivor for a few minutes or hours...or days or to the interruption of death. There is no pleasure stronger than the power of illusion. Trump's appeal to his crowds is the illusion he sells that allows them to hide from morality. The irony is he does this by painting his opponents as amoral! Yep, there is great JOY in HATRED.
hate
[hāt]
VERB
feel intense or passionate dislike for (someone).
2
The opposite of human love is not hate.
Indifference to our common humanity is the ultimate human evil.
And the ultimate virtue is humble humane empathy for our fellow Earthlings aka human beings.
There is only one biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species that began in Africa 300,000 years ago.
What we call race aka color is an evolutionary fit pigmented response to varying levels of solar radiation at altitudes and latitudes primarily related to producing Vitamin D and protecting genes from damaging mutations in ecologically isolated human populations over space and time.
What we call race aka color aka ethnicity aka national origin is an evil malign socioeconomic political educational demographic historical white European Judeo-Christian supremacist mythology meant to legally and morally justify black American humanity personhood denying enslavement and equality defying black African American Jim Crow.
Despite my documented white European, black African, brown Native and yellow ancestry I am deemed all and only black African American. While I do not run from nor shun this definition of who I am, when asked I proclaim my race as human and my national origin as Earth. While race is not real, racism is alive and well in Trumpian America.
See 'The Race Myth: Why We Pretend That Race Exists in America' Joseph L. Graves; 'Watson Defined' ; Matthew 25: 31-46
8
I try hard to comfort myself in thinking that the reelection of Trump is a necessary step for America to become a real democratic country.
W.E.B. DuBois - one of the smartest and most cogent observers of any time....
1
I keep thinking of pro football fans whenever I see Trump rallies. Many teams have a particular section where the most rabid fans congregate ( the Dog Pound, the Hogs, etc.).
Many pro football teams expect their players to go out in the local community, do good deeds, and provide good role models for their fans. They know they have a responsibility to the community and they hope to harness the fan frenzy for good causes.
What Trump could do for the country if he decided to channel the energy of his supporters towards love instead of hate.
4
The barbarity of Trump rallies has antecedents that go back to the Stone Age. Because it is so inherent to human nature, the problem is that we do not recognize our natural propensity to enjoy the comraderie of collective hate. Heroin is also enjoyable.
3
The Joy of Hatred. Perfectly stated for today's political climate! Each rally is a version of a modern-day Roman Colosseum. The President is seen as divinely inspired. As Brad Parscale, his campaign manager, stated: "Only God could send such a savior...." And, in addition, they are "owning the libs." I know many middle age and older white Americans who voted for the President. For them, the Democratic party is the party of the "others" and it does not get more complicated than that. These voters feel that they are not responsible for what came before; they have their own history of grievances and prejudices and discriminatory practices, which history nor writers nor columnists nor elites acknowledge.
4
There are still a bunch of mostly white people hollering and kicking to keep their special place in the world. They see everything in terms of groups, tribes, colors. But that group will die out, this is their last hurrah. The future belongs to he young who are more inclusive and less threatened. In the end they, the young, will win, Trump and his folks will lose. i just am not sure if the damage he and his true believers will create along the way will be easily remedied.
6
"To be clear, the Trump rally was not a lynch mob." Are you sure about that? Had the woman been there, it is unlikely she would be alive today.
3
Hey, it's not just the Trumpies who are guilty of hatred, it's also the lefties! We're just as full of hatred for Trump as his followers are for others. The whole nation is in a frenzy of finger-pointing, labeling and anger. Trump is a fitting President for such a time, he captures and accentuates the collective mood. He's like the pimple that appears when the blood is fetid.
2
I agree with your take, Mr. Bouie.
As do so many others, of many political stripes.
Lest the Trump bootlickers claim that it's only "leftists" and "disgruntled minorities" who disapprove of Trump's vileness and dangerous demagogy, here's what white, male, conservative, long-time GOP strategist Rick Wilson wrote of the hate rally:
“Trump understands his Deplorables with an almost anthropological eye; he knows they’re not just looking for validation or jobs or a drained Swamp; they’re looking for permission to be as cruel, grotesque, and vicious as he is.”
Our republic is in real danger, folks.
7
The ironic thing is that as hate filled and supremacist as these Trump rally attendees are, people of color remain fixated on moving into their neighborhoods at all costs under the banner of "desegregation." At the end of the day you're a lot safer at one of these hate filled Trump rallies (actually absolutely safe) than in East New York or some love celebration like the West Indian parade.
2
“Their neighborhoods”? I didn’t realize neighborhoods had racial designations. When were to live is based on the color of one’s skin, it sounds more like apartheid.
“He gets us. He’s not a politician, and he’s got a backbone,” - Oh, some "backbone" for Trump is a "bone spur" Vietnam War draft dodger. The MAGA Republicans express and celebrate their fear and hatred with and through Trump! What is to be said other than it is embarrassing to be an American!
3
As a "white" American who served the country in uniform for 30 years, I don't get this racism. It terrorizes me and is extremely painful. Its un-Amercian to the core. Makes me ill.
Currently live in the South - west-central Florida. It can be scary. People drive around with hate stickers on cars, place hate banners on their fences, hammer hate signs in yards and near shopping centers. The "whites" here are in the majority and control everything. As a "white" I fear their rancor against anyone who doesn't there to their expectations.
As a child I first experience racism in Houston visiting my mother's cousins about 1953 at age 9. Local bus to the movie theater with my cousins and I entered and headed to the back where it was more fun as the bus rounded curves. I was quickly reprimanded by my Texas cousins that the back of the bus was not for "whites." Before then we had lived in Amsterdam, Netherlands where my dad worked for a UD company.
I know that if I'm scared, even as a veteran, others must be terrified. You don't want to engage random people down here for fear of reprisal. I have even had contractors at my home imply they won't do any work if you are not a card carrying racist white.
Not the America I served and fought for and swore an oath (8 times) to protect. This must change if America is to survive as the place of American values as defined by the Constitution.
8
The Trumpista who said “he’s got a backbone” is utterly wrong.
Trump is a weak, sniveling coward. He talks tough to his supporters, then shrinks in front of reporters. He talks tough about Kim, then fawns over him face to face. He struts among his contemporaries, leaders of our allied countries, then insults them on Twitter. He fires people on Twitter. He berates people on Twitter. He has his emissaries meet with the Chinese, then claims he, Trump, laid down ultimatums. When nothing happens he blames his emissaries. He insists that anyone who tweets negatives about him should lose their Twitter account.
He’s the ultimate bully who can dish it out but can’t take it.
8
"To watch raucous crowds of (mostly) white Americans unite in frenzied hatred of a black woman"
Their chants referenced her statements and attitudes, (e.g. about 9/11 and Israel), not her skin color. Since Mr. Bouie likely has no personal knowledge of the chanters' racial attitudes - only their political views - on what basis does he presume otherwise?
1
Then what does “send her back” mean exactly? If that does not indicate that it was addressing the person’s ethnicity, then why would they not do the same in criticism of Biden, Bernie, Warren? Of course they would not say “send them back” about white people...therefore there is clearly a racial component of the chant.
1
@MCMA - doesn't follow. You can't send Biden, Bernie, and Warren back because for them there is no back. Nor would you want to - because they have no history of making pro-terrorist and anti-semitic statements ("somebody did something" i.e killed 3000 Americans; "it's all about the Benjamins").
Note the very last sentence, from a Trump supporter: "what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
Let us not delude ourselves any longer: There is NO daylight between Trump and his mob. We cannot explain away their support for him with excuses like "economic anxiety." WHAT HE SAYS IS WHAT THEY ARE THINKING. By his words and acts, we know him to be a racist, a fascist, a white supremacist, a narcissist, a misogynist, a sociopath, a worshiper of raw power with complete disregard for laws and norms and simple human decency. And if his supporters tell us that HE SAYS WHAT THEY ARE THINKING, then we have no choice but to see them in the same light. He is a racist speaking for racists. He is a fascist speaking for fascists.
This is terrifying, but at least it's good to know the truth. To know the nature of our enemy is the first step towards defeating them.
5
We got the martial music, we got the funny hats, we got the crowd chanting about Blood and Soil and we got our Fearless Leader screaming from the podium about, "Enemies of the People". Seems the only thing missing is the goose stepping and the one armed zombie salutes.
7
He says what most of you are thinking, which accurately describes the mentality of the followers of Don the Dishonest. call it thinking, we of more intellectual acumen call it reacting to prejudice and bigotry, you do not think, your only respond to your personal hatreds.
1
I agree with the article with the exception of calling trump's rallies "political carnival." A carnival is a traveling amusement show or circus. While the atmosphere might feel circus like, there is no amusement at a trump rally, unless you are filled with hatred and can't wait to have your place in society secured because of your race and you get off by having the president of the United States enjoy sharing your hatred.
I have listened to Some of Hitler's speeches. He and trump have some of the same oratorical skills. Hitler "bewitched" his audiences, and took advantage of brewing discontent and "found himself at the forefront of an opportunistic political ideology," according to Bruce Loebs in an article in Business Insider. The article goes on to say that Hitler created "his own political theory and a government that could not exist without him." Not only has a good portion of the public entered the cult of trump, but so too has the GOP. This is not a carnival, it is a nightmare. To watch a president of the United States of America behave and speak like trump - much of the populace feels terrorized. Unfortunately, the GOP stands lock, stock, and barrel with trump.
3
“Send her back” is not tantamount to a lynching. Omar is not a victim but a privileged Somalian American congresswoman with a powerful bully pulpit.
MAGA participants include Latino grassroots Republicans, Asians who support Trump’s tax cuts, and blacks invested in jobs. They are united by a distaste for liberal criticism of the “American Dream,” however canned and naïve. It is not always so black and white.
Gory “spectacles” are a part of human civilization, which is a history of tribal warfare and domination. Greeks and Romans enslaved millions. Romans enjoyed the spectacle of the Coliseum, including the depravity of starving lions feeding on Christians. The Reign of Terror ruthlessly guillotined hundreds of nobles, including the French King and Queen.
Africans, Aztecs, Mayans, Incans, Papuans, and North American Indians waged war for centuries. The cost of losing these battles ranged from cannibalization to torture and enslavement. The Iroquois consumed the heart and blood of Father Brebeuf, a Jesuit missionary, in order to incorporate his stoic courage into their own bodies.
This is not to diminish the abhorrent treatment of blacks in America but to recognize slavery as one aspect of a cruel human history. I am optimistic that history is ultimately meliorist rather than cyclical. But post-Enlightenment history has witnessed world wars and events like the Holocaust.
Nature may yet have the last laugh as nations unthinkingly continue to spar over shrinking resources.
1
Your erudite detachment comes with a skewed picture of reality. There is no defense for Trump’s abuses of the unparalleled powers of the presidency to target, bully and incite racist chants directed at an elected Congresswoman. Has she been in the locale, she would have been both terrorized and in danger.
While reviewing digital recordings of our current president’s rally in North Carolina what I noticed most was the pleasure radiating from Mr. Trump’s face as his supporters chanted “Send her back.” The mesmerized crowds chants were an expression of racist contempt but the event was not a celebration of shared values. Mr. Trump has no values, other than his own insatiable ego. He cares nothing for the crowds of misinformed people who idolize him. He cares nothing about the challenges they face in their daily lives. He cares only to feed and affirm his own avaricious vision of self importance. The crowds of people at this rally were merely pawns being used by a sociopath… a sociopath who seems destined to cultivate hatred and greed. WE THE PEOPLE of all ages, races and cultures must unite and protect humanity. Our goal? We must work tirelessly to insure that Mr. Trump is NOT reelected in 2020. The survival of coming generations depends on our dedication and focus on this goal. Trump must be defeated in 2020.
3
Trump supporters and Trump voters hate America. There is literally no way to reconcile racism with the ideals that make America... well... America. There is no rationalization - e.g., "I like lower taxes more than I care about the fact the president is a racist" - that trumps the fact that if you support a racist, you don't believe in America
1
Vote him out! Vote him out!
2
"But watching the interplay between leader and crowd, my mind immediately went to the mass spectacles of the lynching era."
That says more about the author than about the leader or the crowd.
3
Yes, but what can sane, anti-Trump people do about beating him?
Direct attacks on Trump, feed his dominance in the daily, media!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me suggest that Democrats and critics focus on democracy,
more than on Trump's insanity. I suggest a new democratic wave.
Can the NY Times focus on a new democracy, with a song?
Take the "Democracy" song of Leonard Cohen (1992)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Democracy is coming to the USA"
Can the Times print out the words of "Democracy" and study
the meaning and the hope of a new democracy wave?
"Democracy is coming to the USA"
1
Thank you for this. Joyful celebration of unleashed hatred as a kind of "wage" is fascinating, insightful and, I fear, true.
The election of Donald Trump was a unmitigated disaster for this country, economy (that he inherited and is surfing) and temporary stock market rise notwithstanding.
It is not possible to have a malignant, unqualified and unfit moral reprobate at the wheel of this country, supported exclusively by ignoramuses and bigoted fools, i.e. the “base”, and avoid disaster. It hasn’t happened yet but the chances are running out that we will avoid it.
We will have the Republican Party, it’s imposter tyrant leader, and their supporters to blame.
3
Long after Trump is forgotten the demon he is attempting to ride in 2020 to the White House and beyond will still be with us if we continue to fail to accept we are the problem and not a NYC real-estate hustler.
If we wish banish racism to the same place as wife-beating, child-labour, apartheid, lynching, slavery, witch drowning etc we need to accept we all have an 'other' problem.
Many here decry how 'terrible' the racism in the US is. Those gentle souls have never visited Rwanda, India, the Ukraine, Poland, Indonesia, Yogoslavia, Syria etc wherein today, and within living memory, millions of normal people where murdered by hundreds of thousands of normal people on the basis of race.
Go today to any of the beatiful peace-loving Mediterranean countries and you will witness naked racist hostility and even joy directed towards desperate refugees drowning like rats in their thousands.These same folks are as nice as pie if you like me and my five children are white, blue-eyed and comparatively well off.
Trump represents an opportunity for America to shine a light on this dark corner of all our souls and lead the way to a better place.
But first and foremost we have to accept it is we who have the problem and not some dangerous Broadway Joe and some of his misguided supporters.
1
I would really like to know what makes Trump and his disgusting racist cult members (i.e. the Republicans) think that they have any ethical or moral high ground in this attack upon our Democracy!
The last time I looked it was THEY that attended hate-mongering, racist rallies and it was THEY that had less of a claim to American citizenship than immigrants who EARNED it.
Birthright is a technical term - it implies nothing but geography. Not responsibility, not fighting for freedoms, not intelligence and certainly not a moral superiority or ethical entitlement. NOTHING - and Trump is a perfect example of a total nothing who has conned the in docent, stolen from everyone and contributed absolutely nothing to society. HE is the LAST person that I would ever approve for American citizenship - a disgrace to his country.
So, who is going to justify your "superiority" here. Any takers?
3
I cannot believe that any person of color who attends those Trump rallies does not feel threatened. Those nasty hate filled angry crowds can easily turn on them, embracing a mob mentality. Maybe it's just fun being a loud mouth racist with a bunch of harmless compadres letting off steam. Or, at their dictator's command, will they bring out the nooses? Trump certainly is guilty of throwing the match on the pile of hatred at his rallies. Those people certainly look like they are having the time of their lives and proud of being openly racist. We can thank our politicians for killing our humanity.
2
These people lead such useless, empty lives, that this un-American drama is like a drug to them. They love it, can't get enough of it, and feel let down when it's over. It's sickening. It's terrifying to see people behaving this way.
3
We are a violent animal at the top of the food chain. The thin veneer of civility controlled by our higher brain function is simply no match for what we really are.
1
Absolutely right. I think of the Dalits of India. They are at the bottom and shunned horribly. The other 4/5ths of the population get to think of themselves as better. For absolutely no obvious reason. Same for us. DuBois' construction that it is a kind of social pay to whites is perfect. And our president? Perfectly horrible.
3
A historian on MSNBC remarked that Trump is basically following the pattern of having poor whites and poor blacks point at each other instead of 'pointing up'. The wealthy.
Economics is our greatest social sin, climate our greatest worldly sin. We the People are criminals of inequity and inequality, purveyors of grotesque concentrations of wealth and property alongside poverty and want. Yes, we are the problem.
Hating others is much easier that hating your own actions, your political malfeasance, your unpatriotic votes. Republicans must be called out on our economics of oligarchy, plutocracy, which ruin any idea of real democracy. Called out. Economics of the rich, including tax cuts and tax havens. We've been had, by our own hand.
Hate greed and avarice. Hate the pride of Trump and his angry acolytes. Hate our willful neglect of this planet and our family of humanity. And then, keep moving to cure these cancers.
5
Finally! Someone is using the right vocabulary to describe this. The exuberance. The gleeful energy of hate. It animates all of this rising tide of white supremacy. And it’s working.
3
You are too kind ("mass spectacles of the lynching era"). None of us like the insensitive, unthoughtful use of this analogy, however, this reminds me too much of the "mass spectacles of Hitler's rise to power."
1
I do know where I have seen these faces before, and it is in the joyful crowds at lynchings. America has always been dangerous for Black people, and really everyone except rich white men, but it is becoming more blatantly so again. The Trump regime's great America existed in 1850.
1
I don't speak German, but watch and listen to the old films of Hitler rallies. Parallel it to a Trump rally, but turn the sound down so that you don't hear the words, but listen to the cadences, the crowd reactions, the tone and texture. Sound familiar?
Scared yet? I am. If you're not, you aren't paying attention.
3
Trump et al. believe that if you find them loathsome, you find America loathsome.
What if they're correct?
“He gets us."
Yes, and the rest of us are starting to get you as well. The last time our divisions were this apparent we had a civil war. Maybe this time we will do it right. Or not and we will end up on the dustbin of history. Has happened plenty of times in the pat.
4
When Trump calls people names and says they don't belong here he is attempting to dehumanize them. Dehumanization is the first step leading to violence against a stigmatized group. We saw this in Nazi Germany and events leading up to the Rawandan genocide. Trump has ripped the veneer of civilization off of our Democracy. Shame on any politician who is silent during his racist tirades. He is a demagogue and uses others deep seated fear of the other to prop himself up. GOP members, how will you explain your support of Trump to your grandchildren?
7
No, they were not a lynch mob.
Not yet.
3
Do Not ...take the bait; do not get into a senseless fight with
the rabble-rousers.....this is not a boxing match...and that
is what it has become...a dog fight...all without any purpose
but just ….so Trump gets to have the TV cameras on him
24/7
Where are the grown ups ….nowhere to be found...and we
do need grown ups …..and some conscientious members
of Congress to ….show some leadership....
Nancy Pelosi...; do not take the bait....
and all the responsible leaders should just take over the
microphones...and set the tone for the country..
Trump is just an agitator...nothing more...and we need to
call upon our former US Presidents to weigh in on all the
chaos...not just leave it up to Robert Mueller.
We are in a crisis; and must deal with this chaotic GOP
POTUS and his irresponsible supporters in the House and
the Senate...so NYTimes send you best and brightest to
weigh in as Tom Friedman has done...and take the lead.
6
I once shut up a southern racist by saying that my grandparents were from Italy, and that because his lineage was long US southern, there was probably a white rapist of black women in his past and it was likely that black blood was in his bloodline. He was shocked speechless.
I have spent much of my life in the Deep South after growing up in NYC and can attest that racism and stupidity is the norm, not the exception in the south.
9
Looking at the crowd of almost white, this scene is no different from the time when white Southerners gathered with their Sunday best to celebrate the lynching of African American. Those who wears the MAGA hats is no difference than those who wore hoods and terrorized the black communities.
8
The crowd at the latest rally would become a lynch mob if Trump asked them to do that. It should terrify us all that this racist monster may be reelected with the help of corruption at the polls on voting day, gerrymandering, and finally, more illegal help from Russia and other bad international actors. The racist party of Republicans will show nonwhites what discrimination really is if Donald Trump is reelected. It will be license to discriminate in the worst possible ways. Justice? Ha! Corrupt police and corrupt politicians will multiply. American apartheid!
6
As a native-born white male Southerner, I have noted from day one of Trump’s presidential bid his mirror imaging of the racist bigots who demagogued their way to power by preaching the virtues of segregation to their sadly misinformed and deluded constituents. I, too, have been well aware of the appalling similarity between Trump’s political rallies and the mobs of ordinary human beings that gathered to celebrate with boisterous laughter the latest lynching of a black man—or, in Georgia, the lynching of a Jew, in the famous case of Leo Frank.
Trump’s similar use of lies, demagoguery, and race and hate-mongering to appeal to Republicans has only intensified during his time as president. With his attacks on the congresswomen, his race mongering has simply become even more nakedly overt. And the excuses for his behavior by Republicans have become more and more revealed as the worthless buckets of warm spit that they are.
Let me go Mr. Bouie one better. I have also pointed out that Trump‘s rise to power is the mirror Image of Hitler’s rise to power. I’m talking about the career of Hitler between the writing of Mein Kampf in 1925 and his launching of WWII in 1939. The years in which Hitler was just another, albeit successful, German politician. We now look back in bewilderment as to how this raging racist lunatic could demagogue his way to legally becoming Chancellor of Germany—the way future generations will judge the Trump era in America.
11
Thank you for bearing witness, SouthernView.
4
I feel nauseated by this mob, and it recalls the same sickening feeling I had when I saw The New York Historical Society's exhibtion on lynching in America.
5
“He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking,” a Trump supporter says.
It is a frighteningly straight line from here to some contemporary American version of Nazi Germany.
7
I am disgusted to the coreby the Scheister occupying the White House and by all those smiling supporters. I find the whole thing revolting.
It appears the Racist supporters are feeling emboldened as a State Rep was told to go back where she came from, in a grocery store, in front of her 9 year old daughter. She was called even worse and not publishable in the NYT comments.
I encourage folks to view the video in the Guardian article. Did NYT cover this? I don’t know and not sure why not. In any case here is the link. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/19/black-us-lawmaker-verbal-attack-georgia-go-back
8
"And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
Thinking of hate, and grievance, and pleasure in the cruel and the unjust. They will come for the black and the brown. The Asian. The Arabic so despised. Then the LGBT if not before. And don't forget the Jew. They will come for us all.
This is how it works. In a society unchecked. Led by a devil as evil as nihilism allows. It can not happen here. But it is. Working out just fine. Because evil is boiling the brew.
4
One can look at literature to see how quickly humans can resort to barbarism: The Lord of the Flies and Shirley Jackson's
"The Lottery" come to mind.
The disturbing thing about both works is the question of whether any human under the "right" circumstances can become that way.
2
“He’s not afraid to say what he thinks."
One of the definitions of a 5 year old.
I remember an amazing Twilight Zone "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street". The opening narration;
"Maple Street, U.S.A., late summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and the flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43 P.M. on Maple Street...This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street in the last calm and reflective moment - before the monsters came."
And of course the monsters were us. How a bucolic hometown turns into madness and death. The flash of light, courtesy of an opinion offered by a teenager from a story he heard, is of course aliens - and according to the story they have infiltrated them.
One after another they accuse each other and turn on each other afraid that one of them is the alien. Truly one of the greatest, and unfortunately realistic episodes.
7
Mr. Bouie's discussion of the spectacle of lynching raises the uncomfortable truth about Trump: he has substantial support. There are many who seethe with racial resentment and who find Trump's embrace of their grievances cathartic. Just as the elite alone could not lynch black men if there weren't popular support, so Trump cannot govern incompetently as he has, absent popular support. Trump's divisive tactics are from an old playbook. Unfortunately, for people of good will, this type of divisiveness can be expected to resonate. We have an economy that concentrates wealth and has increasingly concentrated growth and opportunity in certain areas of the country, leaving the rest to fester. Neoliberalism has no solution for that. At the same time there's a similar concentration of educational excellence that leaves poorer communities underserved and their children ill-equipped to compete. Can we expect the depleted tax base of many communities to support quality education? The dreary facts repeat themselves every so often: how few know basic facts about our history or government and basic concepts of science, say evolution by natural selection. Mix in a toxic social media environment and we have the dumbed-down world of Trump-istan. It's a cause for profound despair.
6
Excellent column as always. Let's talk about the seductive siren called The Centrist. Hand wringing on how we will attract such a desirable catch is propaganda from the wealthy. If a voter does not see where the United States is headed and clearly understand their duty to fight then they deserve what is surely coming for them, it appears that the fatal disease of America is money over country.
12
What an incredibly powerful article!
We tend to look at the photograph of the 1893 lynching as ancient history, as an artifact of a time long gone. But that would be a mistake. There still people alive who, as grandchildren of participants in this horror, sat on the knees of these people as they reminisced about that day. There are still people alive who remember segregated bathrooms, water fountains, restaurants and the US Army.
But, as difficult as it might be, let's try to look at the glass as half full. America has always been a work in progress, towards Langston Hughes' goal of "Let America be America." Within the lifetime of many, we've had Brown vs. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Movement, and some - although inadequate - progress on women's and LGBT rights. A substantial majority of Americans are more open-minded and inclusive than a generation or two ago.
Each Anita Hill or Charlottesville highlights the huge shortcomings of America, but also prompt a national conversation about the core values of the American experiment.
Let's always remember that Trump and the trumpistas represent a minority. If we unite across age, class, race and other barriers designed to separate us, we can have the country we deserve.
Vote in 2020!
11
Apparently our subject dislikes people of color; he favors blonde women as paramours and Nordic men as servants. He is quite a showman; he knows how to 'work the crowd'. He knows how to be entertaining and how to appeal to audiences ruled by emotion and uncritical thinking. Elected to the highest political office of his country on the backs of lies about his achievements and his capabilities, his specialty is insults and denigration of his opponents. Persons of color get a double dose of disrespect.
He found his political groove in stoking anger, stirring the pot of class resentment and disappointed dreams. He plays to his audiences in emotional terms they respond to automatically. He finds he can summon up the spirit of the mob, and senses he can control the rush of their passions. The feeling of power intoxicates him.
He's playing with fire, and that's exactly what makes him feel whole. His detractors can laugh at him, name him 'moron', expose him as humbug, but when he conjures up the roar of thousands of followers' voices nothing else matters. He knows they will follow his command....
It's more than shared hate, it's a symbiosis of hate-anger and it could become violent.
Who will face the consequences?
6
I looked upon those young faces in the MAGA crowd dressed in their red shirts, I saw maniacal grinning and laughter. Are they so uneducated that they cannot see the wrong in the bullying of these female representatives who likely work way harder than many people in the audience. I also saw Republican Senators and Congressmen smiling and clapping. Truly disturbing and disgusting, reminded me if scenes from books of the French Revolution, eating food, knitting while watching the heads come off. Will we never get better than that as humans?
19
Bingo. This explains so much.
5
Does anyone really think that Trump would not have said the same thing to a white person born in another country - whether a member of Congress or not - as he did to Omar et al if he/she said the same things Omar did? Why didn't the House pass a resolution calling out Omar by name after she said those stupid and clearly anti-semitic comments a few months ago? Crying racism all the time is all too often used as a strategy to shut down the conversation much the same way "sexist" was used to block criticisms of Sarah Palin a decade ago. Omar is supposed to be a legislator - that is her job. Al too often, however, she is just a clueless bomb thrower. One can criticize Trump, of course, but I am one Democrat who will not coddle the likes of Omar.
2
The answer to your question is, “yes”. Many people, including me, believe Trump would not have said the same thing about a white person from another country. And you seem to forget, three out of four of these women are not from another country.
2
Steven Colbert aptly described Trump as “a creature of pure energy in Star Trek – our horror only makes him stronger.” Trump feeds off the racism of his crowd, and he feeds off the disgust of everyone else. Win-win for him. Sick.
8
It is sickening to watch these crowds of white faces, like my own, revel in such hatred. There is no place for this in America, and yet this has been America all along. It only took a modern day Pandora, fully aware and complicit, to open the box and unleash the evil once again.
12
No argument will sway Trump cultists. When (not if) someone is murdered at one of these hatefests, Trump's followers will revel in their hatred. As he frequently brags, he could murder someone himself and it wouldn't change their feeble, uneducated minds. Everyone should be outraged at their murderous mindset. The Germans didn't get angry. Remember what happened to millions of them.
7
From the song “Trouble Every Day” by Frank Zappa-
“Hey, you know something people?
I’m not black, But there’s a whole lot of times I wish I could say I’m not white”.
The ignorance and racism is not only embarrassing- it’s dangerous, against any semblance of religious teaching, and anti American.
9
This is a historic moment: we are on the verge of succumbing to fascism. It is for the conscientious citizens to take action: vote Trump out!
10
I thought the article was going to be about the riots after Rodney King or Chicago in 1968. Talk about scary. That Trump crowd didn’t look scary.
@Shamrock
If you do not see the scariness and hatred in every Trump crowd you are not looking in the right place. Start at the podium and glance down from there. Just because the faces are white you aren't scared? Or are you willing to join them?
3
In most states, every few years they make you take an eye test as a condition to your driver’s license renewal. Obviously this is done to make sure the applicant has at least some minimum visual acuity in order to operate a vehicle.
Unfortunately, we have no such “citizenship acuity” test every few years. Most of the people at this rally couldn’t tell you what the Constitution truly said on any subject, how government is organized or works, or the basics of American history, let alone what the Founders wrote at the time on various issues. And, certainly, they don’t have any idea of the history of immigration in this country, and very possibly not even in their own families. (Funny how you don’t ever hear Donald Trump talking about his German “Drumpf” ancestors, either.)
Perhaps the answer is that great Americans like these Greensville patriots would welcome a citizenship test every five years. If you pass it, great. But if you fail, that proves you are not a true American anymore and so you would be deported back to the original country where the first immigrant to the U.S. in your family came from.
My bet is that we’d wind up with more Somali, Indian and Columbian-American citizens, and fewer bloated Dixie Know-Nothings, still celebrating the wrongness of the cause Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee fought for 150 years ago and the protective armor that is their white skin.
5
The heart of Donald Trump's resentment is that his grandfather had to settle in the United States after being thrown out of his home country (Germany) because he did not meet its minimal requirement for residency.....filling his military obligation. The heart of his resentment is that is mother was an economic migrant, and every time he thinks of her he remembers she was a poor white who came to the US to work as a domestic servant. Donald Trump resents that no-one held Melania accountable for apparently working in the United States without legal permission to do so, and that he is the beneficiary (?) of her family's chain migration to this country. Most of all Donald Trump is really upset that no-one has ever held him responsible for meeting the minimal rules of living in civilized society. All his life he has been the social outcast tolerated because of his money or his connections but rejected because he is not one of "us". And he will never be one of us because he is too shallow, too lazy, and too nasty to be part of an accepted moral order. This is why he delights in the company of people who scream "lock her up" or "send her back". For someone who craves attention and respect think how demoralizing it is to know a black refugee woman from Somalia receives public approval for her accomplishments and values while he must pander to those who embrace resentment, grievance, and entitlement. Donald Trump is a coward, bully, and failure; he punishes us to assuage his guilt.
8
I know Germany, like all countries, has its problems, but it's one of the nicest countries I've visted. On my second trip there, I spent a few days in Weimar where, unlike the larger cities, not many people spoke English. But the times that I got lost and needed directions, the residents were incredibly helpful, using gestures and English sounding words to help me. Weimar is also a town where the allies forced the residents to walk through the Buchenwald camp after it was liberated.
We have never had that liberation in this country. We have school districts that very literally whitewash slave-era history. Tens of millions of pundits and politicians give lip-service to the American "ideal" without ever acknowledging slavery as the economic foundation of this country's creation. Imagine what Germany would be like if they had not followed the path of facing their ugly history: you might have millions of Germans saying things like, "It wasn't that bad," or "They were better off," or "I didn't do it, I wasn't even alive."
I believe that's why tens of millions of White Americans can support this corrupt, bigoted little "man." They believe in an "exceptionalism" that makes them sinless, and a history that is like the platitudes of an extended Hallmark card.
7
Can someone please explain to the public, why the press doesn’t ask Trump to expand on each of the unloving, hating rants the four Representatives apparently said and the reason why he’s attacking them?
It all makes as much sense as if Jeffery Epstein was hollering “witch hunt!!! ... witch hunt!!!
1
Republicans often opine that 'democracy is just mob rule' (hence their love for the Electoral College, gerrymandering, voter suppression). But GOP rallies now are mostly organized lynch mobs.
4
The Trump apologists are out today! Excusing him, attempting to convince us that there was “no hate” nor was there “any ill will”! For those of us of color, those of us who are different, those of us whose sur amo are not “American” the words “GO BSCK TO WHERE YOU ARE FROM” speak of racism, exclusion and ....hate. Many White Americans are unaware of what these words mean to those of us, who are refugees, people of color or speak another language.
America, until we acknowledge we have a serious problem we won’t change. By the way, America doesn’t belong to any of us, it belongs to the Native People, the First Nations People who were here for a millennia before, first the Spaniards and then the British!
2
98 percent of Americans today came from Immigrants. The other 2 percent are American Indians who came here over 10,000 years ago.
What Trump did at that rally was a slow motion lynching. He set that into motion by getting those Trump supporters to yell "Send them back". Of course, those four Congresswomen of color will not do that. So, to those unhinged supporters, violence is justified.
The Fox News pundits said that these supporters were smiling and did not mean that. Have you seen photos of African Americans being lynched? Did you see the assembled white men, women and children? They were smiling too, like they were at a baseball game. But they definitely meant it in all seriousness.
Trump states that these four "hate our country" but he never provided any specific quotes from these four. But, never mind, these Trump supporters need no proof as long as their President tells them so. Like lynchings, no proof nor legal convictions are needed to be given the death penalty.
Like a lynching you need only a ringleader and a mob.
A lynching is nothing more than organized violence to keep control of your town, your state or your nation.
Like a lynching, you don't have to criticize the handling of caged children, the spiraling national debt, Climate change, polluted air, dirty drinking water, voter suppression etc.
Because the lynching controls the victim and the Racist alike and Trump laughs all the way to the bank with his stolen loot.
5
On 7/17/2019 the door slammed shut on righteous indignation. Hillary was correct; Trump supporters are DEPLORABLE..
5
I don’t think it helps to compare Trump supporters to a lynch mob because it is not, and its sufficiently disturbing on its own. There is no need to make it sound like a lynch mob because the hysterics of the comparison weakens the strength of the point being made.
Its grotesque, malignant and bad enough for the country on its own that is clear.
Nobody is going back anywhere.
This country is like a Mormon marriage, we are stuck together like it or not.
The ridiculous statement that our diversity makes us stronger is not serving the country and it cheapens the very idea of diversity because everyone knows its a political lie.
Our diversity does not make us stronger aside from fabulous food, worldliness therefore a better CIA, army etc leading to at least a minimal understanding of the cultures and countries we sadly seem to go to war with. It brings an enormous amount of friction.
Prohibiting racist, inflammatory talk helps.
Democracy, hate, stupid ideas, everything dies in the dark.
The Romans encouraged marriage between their soldiers and the women of conquered lands. Within a generation tensions calmed down.
Marry « others ».
1
@Marie
Miscegenation laws were some of the last to go in the former confederacy. Medgar Evers died in my lifetime for reportedly looking at a white woman. Lynched. The Trump crowds are exactly lynch mobs - metaphoric now, actual with the next Medgar Evers.
1
Hateful chants go both ways. There's "Not my President" and "impeach! impeach! impeach" The Times has shown videos of these chants in what appears to be a positive light. I've got no use for Trump. But the notion that hateful chants only go one way is simply wrong, and reflects bias on the part of this paper.
1
Impeachment is in the Constitution, there is nothing in the Constitution about ceiling Congresspeople.
1
@michjas
Sorry, michjas, those chants are political, not racist. You want bias go to Fox News. We had all better wake up to the difference between right and horribly wrong.
1
As Omar might say "some people chanted something."
3
@John What did the other 3 congresswomen say that puts them together as a common group that Trump denigrates? The only real things they have in common are that they disagree with Trump, they are women, and they are not white.
1
Not being a person of color I cannot begin to imagine how it feels to be judged by the color of your skin, not who you are as a human being. Seeing footage of his rally sickened me to my core. All those people laughing, chanting, egging him on. Shame on every last one of you.
Sadly, to a large extent I don’t think trump’s words are making more people racist. But by fanning the flames of racism, he’s given people who’ve hid their racism the “courage” to now speak out.
I’m ashamed and disappointed in my country beyond words.
5
For me, the exuberance of the crowd reminded me of photos I saw at the Holocaust Museum, showing ordinary Germans, including well dressed women, celebrating as Jewish residents were evicted from their apartments and stripped of their possessions. There is an ecstasy that accompanies the freedom to give vent to your innermost prejudices.
4
'Not a lynch mob'...yet. The election is still 1 1/2 years away, and if we've learned anything from Trump, it is that there is no bottom to his, and his supporters, behavior.
4
I cannot believe I belong to the same species as these people. What gives? Look at the self-righteous glee on their vaqcuous faces. Incredible.
5
Early in his 2016 campaign Trump sensed the white racial anxiety and resentment of his crowds, manipulating them to anoint himself leader and protector of white Christian America. Recently “white privilege” has been trivialized, used on celebrities and college kids. White privilege is the key divide and conquer strategy used by rich whites since Reconstruction to get poor whites to serve as Klan shock troops to terrorize black people. Trump has torn off the sheet and made white nationalism respectable.
3
Did he talk about policy during his racist spectacle? No! He doesn't need to. His bully wanna-be audience don't care. If they did, they would know all he's done is give the 1% a big tax break. That's all there is, folks.
4
In looking at the photo I have to wonder what would compel someone to purchase so much Trump swag. Seems cultish to me – or I dunno, a pro-wrestling event mob mentality? I really don’t understand it. Jamelle’s words sadden and worry me greatly. America, please come to your senses…
5
After the Christchurch NZ Muslim massacre there was a proposal to change the name of the local rugby team away from 'The Crusaders'. The reaction to this exposed the racist underbelly that exists in NZ. This underbelly, always present, is kept in check by strong political leadership which we fortunately have in NZ, but unfortunately not in the US at the moment, nor in fascist Germany and Italy in the 1930s.
3
Yes-sadly this opinion has pin-pointed the issue.
Watching news clips from the recent rally and I saw the same thing-women animated by the president's taunting words, and egging Trump on to be even greater degrees of mocking and taunting.
He has a talent for tapping into the primitive part of the psyche that exists in each of us to protect each person in times battle. He knows that to engage that psychic mechanism he simply needs to stoke the universal danger reflex. Using fake news to point at an "Enemy Other" he harnesses peoples's innate defenses and and transforms them in a lynch mob.
Without the process of "othering" the mind rejects these tactics. See the history of the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, were first made other, then stripped of social identity, then removed to isolation and finally eliminated.
5
“He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
The simple fact is that Trump supporters really are flat out racists. They may claim it's about trade or crime or whatever but at the heart of it, it's racism.
The GOP is right there with Trump. Their silence simply means that the GOP is the party of racists. Period.
4
Thought provoking. Thanks
1
There’s an order to entitlement in this country. Those who came first feel as if they are the” real Americans “. Consequently historically the Irish were discriminated against, then Italians, etc. But at least 50 years ago, it was still the land of opportunity: everyone could make a decent living even without a college degree.
Now in the lower tier jobs whites see Mexicans and Central Americans taking over. Paid less and good work ethics. Mid range jobs of programmers, Mathematicians, IT folks taken over by better educated Indians and Asians. And a disproportionate percentage of the multimillionaires again by “brown people “ and Asians. All of which adds fuel to the fire making many Trumpees feel stupid and sidelined.
Great job Mr. Bouie.
I am always filled with contempt when I observe these pro wrestling gatherings often called Trump rallies. I look at their faces, and can see the hatred in their eyes, and can imagine that these "fine, decent folks" would be among the crowd of 10,00 to witness the lynching of Henry Smith.
One thing I found amusing was that the bigot in chief mentioned at this rally, that one of the squad was guilty of anti-semitism.
Looking at this crowd, I know that this particular comment fell on deaf ears because this group of people have little regard for Jews as well as blacks. Blacks, Jews, Muslims, are all despised by the typical Trump supporter. They hate all people who are not like them. Trump is doing a maserful job of uniting racists.
The chillng thing is the similarities of Trump rallies, to the Nurenberg rallies of the early 1930s.
3
Send her back....Not much of a reach until they're chanting, "String her up!"
4
Think Mar a Largo lizard loungers. They are in charge now.
2
The hatred and vile disgust the Left has expressed towards the Right, is utterly nauseating and on display on YouTube for any journalist to see. Except of course for the willfully blind. Insufferable snobs jeer any conservative on college campus. Conservatives can’t express opinion. Anyone with a MAGA bar is open for ridicule and assault. But yea. Let’s focus on trump and his supporters. They are to blame, even though the war on trump started before he could pass a single law or executive order.
@Ari Weitzner
Sorry, Ari, the right is wrong. The right is racist. The right is for redistribution of resources and government money upward to the already rich and powerful. The right is for government interference in every woman's uterus. The right is the gun-fueled hatred stoked of the Russia-funded NRA. The right has always had the market cornered on hatred. Now you are miffed that the left are angry enough to fight back. Trump won by stoking your right-wing hatred; the left will win with their righteous anger at the abomination that is Trump.
When did the war on Obama start, Ari? I'll tell you - when he was born. And it was started by Donald J Trump. Who started the war on Obama before he could pass single law or executive order? The Republican party - Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, every GOP politician who put party over country. I heard your indignation then, didn't I? Sure I did. The willfully blind are the conservatives who screamed at Obama for wearing a tan suit but overlook Trump's Russian connections, Emoluments violations, and racism. Like Trump, conservative apologists transfer the flaws of their own conservatism onto the opposition. So yeah, let's focus on Trump the racist and his racist supporters, as Mr Bouie does here. They are in charge now, and the scrutiny is well-deserved.
3
“He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
And what the rest of you are thinking is "Racism is RIGHT." That is SCARY.
I grew up in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania. My father, my uncles, and their friends would regularly toss around the n-word as if it were no big deal. They also bad-mouthed Italians, Poles, Slovaks, Germans, and Jews. Somewhere along the way, I learned that this kind of thinking was WRONG. As I grew up, as I watched the Civil Rights era unfold, as I watched the women's movement gain political power, and as I saw Barack Obama achieve the Presidency, I thought we were finally growing up as a nation.
Then Trump called Mexicans "rapists." And all my hopes vanished.
I have tried to understand Trump voters. I have tried to see what it is about him that connects with them. And all I keep seeing is a vicious, loud-mouthed, intellectually lazy, morally bankrupt, and just plain EVIL man who conned his way into the White House.
All I see when I talk to Trump voters are vicious, scared, resentful, uneducated, mean-spirited bigots who think that racism is okay if you are "honest" about it and proclaim it in front of thousands. All I see are people who watch too much television, who think "The Apprentice" was real, and who fantasize about "one WHITE nation under one WHITE God." (These so-called Christians insist that Jesus was a white man.)
I am ashamed to be an American. Enough! Trump must GO. NOW.
2
Trump isn't the problem he just holds the mike.
2
Behold the rise of the first American dictator.
1
The clips are chilling, conjuring up the worst images of hate-filled group-think: lynch mobs, Kristallnacht, gladiator battles... What normal person would ever want to associate with this?
1
Let's face it. His supporters love him BECAUSE he is a racist. He hates the same people they hate, and he allows them to openly spew their hatred.
2
The Trump rally may not have been a lynch mob, but it was definitely a very, very close cousin. Donald Trump has all by himself revealed the racist underbelly our nation has always tried to ignore, but now that we’re being forced to look at it, we’re seeing just how hideous the truth really is. I’m beginning to think that Barack Obama was simply a seductive mirage.
Keep doing it liberals and Bouie and most other NYTs writers. Keep ignoring the deep pain and fears among Trump supporters. Keep just writing them off as "having fun" and as racist bigots.
Oh ye who are so enlightened.
I am a life-long (71 year-old liberal) Democrat, but I no longer recognize the so-called liberals these days. What passes for liberalism is, instead, an arrogance. In place of empathy there is tribalism (it's GREAT to empathize with immigrants, and a SIN to empathize with those in the heartlands who have watched their worlds implode).
I no longer recognize liberalism. It is the same as Trump conservatism. The only difference is who your friends are, and who you care about, and who your enemies are that you vilify.
1
@Travelers
Those in the hinterlands watching their worlds imploding voted for their own demise by sending Republican charlatans to office time and time again. Republicans who side with Big Business, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Money to the detriment of American workers. Don't you get that by supporting and pulling up the least among us we all gain? One who can't see that is just as blind as the chanting Trump crowds, seduced by 50 years of conservative lies. They've watched their education, infrastructure, healthcare, wages, unions, and opportunities disappear without seeing the connection between their conservative voting patterns and their own decline. Don't you fall for the same lies.
2
Racism, lies, incitements to hatred and violence against a scapegoated target audience of "outsiders" who're polluting a national purity?
Now, where has history heard all that before...?
1
I literally searched this picture for a while and didn’t one ethnic face. I think everyone there was white. Glad they didn’t point the camera at the stage where Trumps people usually plant a few minorities. This is the real picture. A deeply racist South.
2
Mark Twain said "The pitifulest thing out is a mob . . . they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass . . .
And Hillary was spot on - Trumps masses really are 'deplorables'.
2
Did anyone notice that the chant erupted in full voice after the cue “anti-Semitic screed”? I feel sure “cheerleaders” were planted in the crowd to coordinate the rhythmic chanting.
1
This is also reminiscent of the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. For many Klan members in that period, hatred of African Americans, Catholics and Jews seemed almost casual and acceptable. It feels as if the folks at Trump's rally took off their hoods, and we can seem them clearly for the first time for what they are.
1
I feel sad about the situation in the US. Of course we have problems in the UK with our own blond, mini me version of Trump, his attachment, Farage and helpful idiots like Piers Morgan. I have visited and lived in the US and encountered few difficulties - however I am white and Scottish. I would like to remind Trump that Scotland gave birth to an amazing Enlightenment (after a failed attempt to build a colony) which, amongst other things, was a massive outreach to thinking in Europe and to people who are different. By his actions and words, your President (and he is yours even if you did not vote for him) is shaming liberal thought (or any thought at all) and the memory of Hume and other key figures of that era.
2
Mr. Bouie's thoughtful piece is a timely and incisive reminder. It should rouse us to pay attention to many shameful parallels. The power of lies to gather and hold a crowd. for example, and the appetite of mobs to observe as pain is inflicted on another sentient being. Then, I recall indelible pictures from Nuremburg in the 30's and, later, a paid ad that ran in the late 80's calling for the death penalty for teens about to stand trial.
The anger and hate shown by these crowds could easily turn to violence. Mr. Trump is playing with fire.
1
I disagree Jamele, it's not hatred
just plain old tied in a knot ignorance and fear
What if.......Representative Omar happened to have been at this rally? Nothing would surprise me.
1
Yes, for all they rail about imagined “no go “ places I would be afraid for certain people to wander among them. At times they appear to threaten the press even.
1
Somewhere between 45 to 50% of Americans seem to approve and even adore Trump. Every one out of two people I meet in the streets is a bigot. This is a really depressing and frightening thought.
3
When Obama won the presidency I can remember the jubilation I felt that day. All that we had been through in the 60s seemed to finally bear fruit. I thought those terrible days of the assassination of MLK, the race riots.....it was all behind us....left in the past. America had moved on.....how wrong I was. All that hope smashed to bits with the election of Trump. I look at his rallies and see the hatred of his mobs. I now realize it was all still there, only hidden beneath a thin veneer.
1
"what Trump voters really want is to hate, and to be able to take out their hatred on the rest of us. And their president has told them that it is just fine for them to do so."
Another poster said this and I totally agree. The people who voted for Trump are hateful, racist, misogynist, xenophobes just like Trump and his rallies and rants and tweets give them permission to show that to the world -- loudly, publicly and often. It was never about lost jobs, being left behind etc. - it has always been about hate and being able to express it openly anywhere, anytime.
3
When you have nothing else left but hate, that's how wars begin. History is littered with examples.
1
Once we admit that we all are racists the behavior we condemn cannot be dumped in a "that's other people" box. We have to look in the mirror and decide how to deal with our natural drives that were once needed to survive but have been diverted to unnatural needs. The expression may alter a bit, but the core is there. Those who think they can erase history by sanctimoniously destroying statues, burning books and paying off descendants are saying that there were no lessons to be learned from the rise of Nazism 90 years ago. We need to see ourselves in the historical events Jamelle Bouie describes.
1
Thank you for your insightful analysis. As always you are right on the money. What Trump allows his base is to be unafraid and unapologetic about expressing their most hateful thoughts. And I don't think they care one bit if he keeps the promises he made about returning jobs back to America, the fabulous health plan that does not even exist in his feverish imagination, or even building the wall as long as he continues to discourage brown and black people, through sheer cruelty, from entering the U.S.. Trump's rallies, like their predecessors the Nazi and Fascist rallies, are celebrations of hate and recrimination against historically marginalized and ostracized individuals or groups. During these mass demonstrations, Trump's base appears to undergo some form of catharsis in purging their most toxic and forbidden thoughts out in the air. Let us hope that does not embolden them to act on them.
The cancer on American culture of slavery is still eating away at the soul of our country. I never thought this illness would last so long.
2
Well done. I for one am really sick and tired of usually sharply intelligent NYT columnists, conservative but anti-Trump, still underestimating the gravity of this man. OK, one more chance, misters Douhat and Stephens—Trump winning in 2020 will be almost as calamitous as would have been a Lincoln loss in 1864. Refute that.
2
The irony is that notwithstanding all their bogus and mindless, so-called "patriotism," these people represent the absolute worst of America. They are hateful, simple, uncivil, loud, and intolerant.
Give me a hard working, enterprising immigrant any day. It takes energy, drive and compassion to uproot your lives and benefit in and contribute to the the America that has always been great.
3
“He gets us. He’s not a politician, and he’s got a backbone,” a woman who attended a recent “Women for Trump” kickoff event in Pennsylvania told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
I guess it takes a racist to know a racist.
Is this what we are? Is this the "our country" that his supporters want back?
Count me out.
3
These loud and obnoxious Trump acolytes are deep down the most frightened people on earth (the more scared they are the louder they scream against "the other"). I feel sorry for them and their lives consumed by fear.
Once the yoke of guilt comes off it will be hard to refit it Jamelle. Try though you may.
"He's not afraid to say what he thinks" said one Trumpette. You know else isn't afraid to say what she thinks, ELizabeth Warren? Compare the two and then ask yourself why Thomas Friedman is so afraid of the latter, that she can't beat the former? I guess that means that he feels that, at heart. more Americans will opt for racial hatred and fear than, class struggle and hope.
For as long as there has been an America, politicians have exploited the racial divide to cover for the class divide that supposedly doesn't exist in America. Trump is just the latest and most blatant practitioner of that technique.
Let's just see what happens when we are presented with the stark choice in 2020 and the chance to reject the ugly avatar of an ugly history.
3
I don't disagree with any of this. My only response is that accusations of "racist,” "fascist,” and so forth are in there own way as painful to the recipients as the "send her back” trope. Even if factually true—and the fascist charge is quite dubious—they express anger more than logic and make debate all but impossible. Perhaps both sides need to calm down a bit?
It won't be long before every Trump rally begins with the "Two Minutes Hate". Instead of showing the visage of "Emmanuel Goldstein", it will be Ilhan Omar.
"In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell, the Two Minutes Hate is the daily, public period during which members of the Outer Party of Oceania must watch a film depicting the enemies of the state, specifically Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers, to openly and loudly express hatred for them. The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatreds towards politically correct enemies..." (Source: Wikipedia)
Look, I am all for this explanation of Trump supporters being racist. I went along with it for a while, actually. But how do you explain the Trump voters who previously voted for Obama?
It’s easy to dismiss each and every Trump voter as a racist or a sadist. I don’t deny that many of them are. I just don’t see how an article like this helps anything other than to let readers feel better about themselves for being NOT-racist, xenophobic, etc. Sorry if this is an insensitive take, I guess I’m just bored of identity politics.
1
@Whitey Bulger
So, Whitey from the South is tired of identity politics. Doesn't he realize that the only identity politics is conservative white Christian racist politics? Does AOC say only those of her race belong in this country? No, only white Christian conservatives say that. Does Omar want her religion enshrined in our laws? No. Only white Christian conservatives want that. Does Pete Buttigieg want to criminalize those not adhering to his sexual preference? No, only white Christian conservatives want that. The only identity politics are white Christian conservative politics. If you want a change from that, check out the Democrats.
3
There is a old saying "men love in haste and lust in hate". So it is.
Mr. Bouie has clearly tapped into some of our most disgraceful and terrifying history, and done us all a service.
But the whipping up of targeted hatred is a well-known device that's been in play throughout human history. It's not limited to the frothing of racists or fascists, because at its base (pun fully intended) it's also an effective and universal tactic: it enables people to vent their personal frustrations (and bond to a powerful group) by screaming together at a designated scapegoat.
Both the source of their frustration and the identity of their scapegoat are less crucial than all that sustained screeching at the top of one's lungs. After such a thorough catharsis, the haters always feel better, while the rest of us are only horrified and frightened by what's just been unleashed.
In his brilliant, all-too-prophetic 1949 novel "1984," George Orwell describes the "2 Minute Hate": this is when everyone stops whatever they're doing to gather around a "telescreen" so they can shriek their hate at the designated scapegoat du jour. This mandated daily venting distracted people from their own misery, and most importantly, kept them in line.
Sound familiar??
www.theinsanityhoax.com
1
I wonder if/when the next step at Trump’s rallies will be “shut them up!” Or even “string them up!” Are these far from “lock her up!” Or “send her back!”? Not really. Are we this far Into the realm of meaningless emotional expression? Is getting the msm and the Dems upset of such unquestioned pure joyful value that in the service of this aim, all things are allowed?
1
Carnivals, Tent Festivals and an Elmer Gantry roadshow. Good, clean fun using the anonymity of a crowd to let our demons run wild.
This just ain’t a trump show, it’s a vehicle to ride the racist/ bigotry roller coaster and let loose.
The news “incidents” of after rally violence exacted as “revenge” against “others” a Crystalnacht that no GOP dare condemn?
2
One day, we will view the images of the people attending Trump rallies as we do the sepia toned images of white picnic goers attending a lynching or smiling German faces from Triump of the Will. I hope that one day Trump's supporters will recognize the real depths that they have sunk to and seek to repair the damage that they've done to our national social fabric and the red Trump hats will be seen with the same disgust that we regarded the Brown Shirts.
Thanks, Jamelle Bouie.
We better all be talking about this.
Trump's strategy is not only getting his base joyfully on board but also the American racists who will not openly/publicly support him... but quietly vote for him.
American racism seems to be openly talked about... but typically it is the White citizens who are unaware of the real cultural, physical and psychological damage that's been done for the last 400 years.
The fact, that many White Americans are living with and passing on to their children this ignorance (ignorance, not necessarily evil), is that maybe they are hurting themselves and their own culture more than anyone else.
So let's read more Jamelle Bouie.
If this sector of society doesn’t want to be viewed as uneducated hillbillies, then they should stop acting like it. These are the same dutiful christians who pray before every meal and praise god fervently at services every Sunday. The president knows exactly how to get them going to get the result he wants. He’s only disturbed because it took him too long to think of it.
1
"To be clear, the Trump rally was not a lynch mob." Really? Turn the clock back by a century or more and Donald Trump could easily be the head barker at an American lynching.
The white hatred of the Reconstruction-era post-Confederacy yet exists, with the relatively stronger constraints of civilization that Trump is gleefully but humorlessly rips apart.
The scenario even embarrassed its Perpetrator-in-Chief the following day as he denied saying what video clearly recorded him as saying and failing to discourage mob behavior that video clearly recorded him as failing.
If you insist on bigotry, Mr. President, at least own it and keep your bus wheels off the faces of your supporters. But that would require a smidgen of character.
Comparing a Trump rally to a despicable act of violence that happened 126 years ago is shameful incitement.
1
@Lawrence
Forming a Trump rally that mirrors a despicable act of violence that happened 126 years ago is shameful incitement.
1
The accompanying photo sends chills down my spine. Unfortunately those are the people Mr. Bouie should be speaking to. Here in the NYT he's preaching to the choir.
Respectfully, I disagree: We do have to "conflate the past from the present"! 1893 Texas not much different mind-set from 1933 Nuremberg and fascists rallies of today.
Essentially the same mind-set and delight in scapegoating of minorities to a possible deadly consequence by similar people, albeit like their "leader" they'd deny it ... !
History does repeat itself and that's what's so disturbing about this man: He unleashes the unbridled id of hate in his crowds ...
No Democratic has gotten the majority of the White vote since LBJ passed Civil Rights laws in the '60s. Saying all of that I am saying it is time to move on and build coalitions with people repulsed by a pseudo campaign rally held last Wednesday. In reality, the rally was reminiscent of a Klan rally sans the Bedsheets and Burning Crosses. In The Real America, there are plenty of people who have no problem seeing Brown children in cages unable to brush their teeth. These Trump supporters Christain faith does not extend to people who don't look like them. Trying to bring the aggrieved middle America White man back into the fold by ignoring the needs of all other men of color is a fool's errand. By constantly saying Black Women are the bulwark of The Democratic Party is insulting not only Black Men it is insulting to all people of color. There were almost a hundred million voters who didn't vote in 2016. If we want to stop the free fall Trump has us in we have to stop playing his game. Branding Trump a racist is only emboldening him with his liked minded supporters. People with esteem issues always need someone else to blame for their plight and what better target than four females who don't look or worship like them. In my opinion, our time should be spent in a massive get out and vote effort. Mueller and The Courts are not going to save us from Trump but ballot box will.
1
Bob Dylan echoed WEB DuBois in 1964's "Only a Pawn in Their Game." That it is relevant 55 years later exposes a deep problem in America.
A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than the blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin, " they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game
Fifty-five years on and the caboose riders have not woken up to their status as pawns, this time in Trump's game.
2
This column informs us of the most heinous, heartbreaking incident that I've ever heard of--the monstrous torturing and burning of Henry Smith! As Mr. Bouie says, it "tied white communities together in a shared experience of rage, righteous anger and joy." Absolutely monstrous. The French Revolution didn't go this far in executing aristocrats, nor did Hitler's or Stalin's pogroms.
That what Trump is fomenting--this hateful racist rhetoric--was cheered by too many in his latest campaign rally. It is stomach-turning to see the avid approval in his followers eyes. In fact these followers are frightening monsters, empowered by a hateful president who has demonstrated his callous and brutal opinions with no constraints.
We have a monster in our midst, and the Democrats need to put ousting Trump ahead of any minor variations in their stances on the problems facing us. Together we can prevail.
1
America can never, ever be great with so many white Americans demonstrating just how far from great they are personally. When they truly accept that racism and intolerance are simply unnecessary and wrong, they might have a chance to help make America great. If they remain as they are, greatness is nonexistent.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
1
It sounds that these rallies are a catharsis for white racists. A place where they can assemble and express their hate without being politically correct. And it allows the rich elites to have all this bottled up anger directed at a black woman instead of at them, even though they are making out like bandits while leaving little for for average worker. But his expression of hate has consequences. (For anger directed at the rich elites the place to go is a Bernie Sanders rally.) There are people out there who buy guns and decide to take matters into their own hands, like Dylann Roof. White supremacy acts of terror have greatly outnumbered acts of terror by jihadists in the US in recent years. There are violent white supremacist street gangs like the Proud Boys who have been a particular problem in Portland, Oregon. It is almost unthinkable that a president should be stirring up this hate instead trying to get people of all types to live together peacefully. The US has had a pretty ugly history but this current chapter brought in by Trump is one of the ugliest.
1
Can you imagine the reaction if those smiling white faces were actually brown or black and they chanted "Send Him Back" or "Lock him up"? Can you see the police response? The armored tanks in the street? Think of that for one minute and say the country is not racist to its core.
1
Make America Great Again???! I've always wondered what time period Trump referred to with his MAGA campaign. Now I know. He wants to go back to the time when our country imposed awful treatment to the men and women they brought over here, against their will and made them slaves. I thought we were getting beyond that. No longer. That's what this president has done: he has taught us to hate.
1
The Great Translation:
"He's unvarnished."
Translation: he's angry, biased and a wrecking ball but I like having him on my side
"He's not a politician."
Translation: He doesn't have to legislate or govern because he's our guy and he's above everyone else in Washington.
"He just says what he's thinking"
Translation: We finally have someone who mistrusts and hates blacks, thankfully, and says as much.
"He gets us."
Translation: Keep blacks down, keep wages down with no minimum wage increases, and allow us to keep our resentment and anger at others KEEPING US DOWN!
1
I know there are many good people in North Carolina,but I will never travel there.This mob scares and disgusts me!
Great job Mr. Bouie.
I am always filled with contempt when I observe these pro wrestling gatherings often called Trump rallies. I look at their faces, and can see the hatred in their eyes, and can imagine that these "fine, decent, patriotic folks" would be among the crowd of 10,00 to witness the lynching of Henry Smith.
One thing I found amusing was that the bigot in chief mentioned at this rally, that one of the squad was guilty of anti-semitism.
Looking at this crowd, I know that this particular comment fell on deaf ears because this group of people have little regard for Jews as well as blacks. Blacks, Jews, Muslims, are all despised by the typical Trump supporter. They hate all people who are not like them. Trump is doing a maserful job of uniting racists.
The chillng thing is the similarities of Trump rallies, to the Nurenberg rallies of the early 1930s.
I am repulsed by these performances. But don’t kid yourself, these are people who experience life with the same natural capacities and preferences as all people.
“He gets us....He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.” Wow..!!! Still, most mobs are only as strong as their leaders and Trump, like gangrene, needs to be removed. At the same time, we need to remember that the GOP allowed him to fester & metastasize.
The people who attend these Nuremburg rallies scare me more than anything I've ever seen in my life. These are celebrations of hatred, bigotry, and willful ignorance upheld as cultural values.
The best way to combat this malignancy is to make some type of national service compulsory for young people just like many far more enlightened societies around the world. Kids could choose a branch of the military, a CCC or WPA-type program, work abroad in the Peace Corp. or similar programs.
Either way, they would be exposed to and work with people from different ethnicities and backgrounds. It won't make much difference in the outlook of those inculcated with hatred from a young age but it might help those who have a chance to do their own thinking.
These people who come to these rallies are unrecognizable as countrymen or even rational adults. Please, let us expose and ridicule them back to the shadows. It begins by voting their execrable leader out of office, along with his lickspittle lapdogs.
3
VOTE to change this in 2020.
1
I’ve known some Trump-ties in my family so I feel comfortable with the following descriptions. They feel entitled, chosen and called by God. (See Mike Pence.). “Their” God is special only unto them. No other God exists except theirs, according to their description. If you do not follow “their” God you are a sinner. Their world is very small, their horizons are incredibly short and their minds are contained in small boxes. Their diminutive minds cannot contain thoughts that threaten their narrow definitions of themselves or of life with its inclusivity and diversity. They are afraid of contradictions and can only comprend their own linear thinking. They have no understanding of Jesus but profess to be the experts. Does this sound like Islamic fundamentalism? Of course it does. Just replace Jesus with Mohammed. Fundamentalists are the same the world over. They just have different stripes. Ours are just as dangerous as theirs.
4
@Hortencia
My sister is an evangelic Christian Trump supporter. She sees no hypocrisy in that. I maintain that those who worship Jesus and vote for Trump understand nothing of either man.
2
When Trump was elected I remember a comment from a NY Times reader who said that his elderly father had voted for Trump for one reason only - he thought that he (Trump) would give everyone permission to once again say the "N word."
1
Donald Trump is trying to foment a race war in America. Think about it.
You can't get much whiter than me: of Nordic and WASP descent. But I will tell Trump this. I would rather join the Black Panther Party than the GOP at this point.
BPP at least espouses American values.
4
My simple advice to Dems and Independents is to let Trumpty Dumpty continue his racial rants and to muster every ounce of energy to get out the vote in 2020.
We need to deliver a RESOUNDING repudiation of him and what he stands for.
Once he's out of office his crimes will catch up with him and we can move on as a country.
Can we stop wasting time trying to persuade Trump followers of the error of their ways? They cannot be separated from the ecstasy they feel expressing hatred, righteous anger and joy, whether it be at a tiny Somali-born woman, all women, immigrants, Democrats, gays... What they feel is instinctualized, too alluring to give up. Like sex or a good meal. They cannot be moved or reasoned with. Better to band together and crush them at the ballot box.
2
In other contexts sociologists and anthropologists would refer to this as a "ritual killing" - most lynchings would bring that same mindset to the fore... one wonders why the terminology is never applied to the practices of people of European descent...
1
After this horrible week I was stunned to see a post on Facebook from a woman I work with cheering the president as he landed in Morristown for another golf weekend
She loves the racism even as she has lunch with her black and Indian co workers. It makes me feel so sad and helpless.
3
I am a 73 year old Black Man and I think I have a fair idea of what racism look and sounds like. This discussion of "Is the President a racist?" to me is crystal clear. But for the sake of discussion I will say this.
Whether the president is racist or not is really not the question. I can see into his soul. But I can plainly SEE and HEAR how he uses racism to stir up the mobs at his rallies.
I have observed how he treats and talks about Latino mothers, fathers and children trying to flee the violence and danger in their countries only to be mistreated at our border.
We all have witnessed his disrespect for the first Black President claiming he was born in another country...Oh please!
So is the president a racist?
2
This horrible old lynching story puts me in mind of the incident at Freddie's Fashion Mart, where a mob was agitated and people were burned...
Antifa supplies violence and hatred for the left. Plenty to go around.
Trump is a bad substitute for a people's hero, but perhaps given the US political system, stagnant for years, he is what pops up. He is there because he seemed to be for change and the poor, and the Dems appeared to be clueless. Hillary did not stand for change, she and the rest of the rich thought things were fine.
Raise wages. Tax the rich. Get money out of politics. Healthcare. What is needed is a person with enough power to do those things. A powerful governor perhaps..
1
Those who hate rather than embrace are typically the insecure, fearful that others will replace, outperform or outshine them.....
So their defense is to demean, criticize and belittle through a mob mentality.......Trump's supporters are typical and their Trump rallies are reminiscent of Germany's hate driven Nuremberg of the 1930s ......We might remember those rallies foreshadowed a disastrous era for the world's peoples....
1
I grew up in the segregated south. As a (white) child I feared the power and the hatred of white racism. As a teenager and young adult I reveled in the progress of the Civil Rights movement. I was so sure that the mantle of Jim Crow had been destroyed and the visions of Dr. King would eventually blanket our country,
Today I am terrified for our country. Race hatred is racing through our population like a virulent communicable disease. I see the same fires of hate that I grew up in.
Those flames have been beaten back many times. Will this be the time they consume the visions of the millions who have come here to make a new country, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal?
267
@Maureen Steffek
James Baldwin said it best, "The fire next time."
11
Humans need hate. If we can't hate another country like we did during the Cold War and WW2, then we can hate each other. How can it be otherwise? Political views are often times irreconcilable and cut to the core about who a person is and how he orients his life. Your aborted fetus is another person's helpless murder victim.
All this doesn't necessarily lead to violence but it does lead to rallies and political objectives where the goal is to immobilize and make powerless the other side.
1
My last name sounded German but in fact wasn't. Family members from my mother's side helped Jews escape from Denmark in fishing boats but nevertheless my German sounding name got me labelled in grade 5 when my friend's grandmother from Ukrainia said we couldn't play together because her family had suffered under Nazis. I tried to explain that I wasn't German and we had no family from there but it was no use. This was the 1950's and her pain was fresh. I was called many ugly names and learned at a very young age that people will hate you for no valid reason if you fit some category. By High School no one cared about my name but the early years of taunts stayed with me.
I can't believe that a US president is fuelling the misinformation and hate that children on my school yard acted out. He is like that grandmother who wouldn't listen to any explanations or clarification because she would not let go of her hate.
@Agnate
Yet the Ukrainian conscripts were often more sadistic concentration camp guards than their Nazi overlords.
1
a wealthy white male trump-voting southerner explained it to me years before trump, years before I saw who he really was...
basically that anyone else's gain was his loss, underlying white male privilege is perhaps its fragility, esp in the face of hungrier, smarter, braver, hard-working who never expected an easy ride...
and as they say, hurt people hurt people...
1
The hatred is probably there. But, watching the crowd, what I see more is a group of white people at a combination Rodney Dangerfield/Don Rickles comedy show. The herd the camera shows behind the headline entertainer seems to be having more fun than becoming politically aroused. Maybe if the cameras panned the floor...I get the feeling they know he’s full of it, but are enjoying the presentation anyway. They’ll all vote for him again, but, many won’t know why. Maybe, we’re all taking this too seriously, but let’s all vote to close the show anyway...
We will look back on these pictures as we do the smiling faces of people all over this country who were witness to the lynchings of the post civil war era to the times of Jim Crow and question. Our descendants will wonder what were those people thinking expressing a hate that we thought had been extinguished to some extent with the election of Obama. What we find is that racism is as much a part of the american psyche as apple pie and it only took a new baker to bring the pie of hate out of the oven again.
2
Thank you. Trump has made being a racist acceptable.
I recall looking at pictures of the Southern mobs shouting at black children attending schools and being truly sad. I believe my grandchildren will be looking at footage of Trump rallies and having the same feeling.
1
Let me be very clear about this: if you were a Trump supporter, you are my enemy. Let me say that again: you are my enemy. And I intend to treat you as such.
3
Thank you, Mr. Bouie, for an excellent analysis of Trump’s campaign carnivals, and especially for putting the obvious analogy into print: “If you can’t lunch them anymore, then send them back to where they came from”. As a country, we seem to be closing our eyes and ears to Trump’s increasing fascism, even in the face of his recent comment “I’ll be leaving in six years, or maybe ten, or maybe fourteen.” Wake up, people.
1
In the early 20th Century, the MAGA types of that era, would attend the open spectacles of lynchings of black men (most were men, though several women were also lynched) mainly in the South, though there were lynchings in the midwest and out west. You look at the photographs of those lynching spectacles, and you could easily swap the folks in those with the MAGA dunces attending the Trump rallies, and the photo would not look anachronistic. Those lynching photographs were often turned into postcards, and these fine white folks, would mail them to their friends who couldn't be at the lynching. Sick stuff.
I have been told before that Trump says what people are thinking and my response is always "then shame on you".
2
Mr. Bouie ably describes the connection between presumed white virtue and mob violence. How many crimes in human history have been dressed up as protecting the good and virtuous? Empower a zealot who seeks advancement of one group over all others and the results can be the Inquisition or the Holocaust.
Trump is exploiting a group that should not feel powerless. Rural whites in particular hold a political advantage to urban poor people, mostly people of color. Yet, these are the disaffected who fill his rallies and respond to his rants, believing that they have been victimized.
The problem with everyone getting a turn to play the victim is that real victims—sufferers of addiction marketed as medicine by pharmaceutical companies, incarcerated three-strike marijuana smokers imprisoned for decades, women who cannot feel secure because the state is literally invading their bodies, and three-year-olds torn from their parents arms because they crossed a national border seeking safety—are drowned out by the shouting.
We need to screen out the noise and hear the sounds of actual victims.
1
Trump, like his followers, never takes the blame for anything he does. They are all busy congratulating themselves for terrorizing a young black women who dares to speak.
This tribe of people see themselves as victims of immigration, black and latino equality and the equality of women. The equality of people other than white men is an upheaval of the social order. Our equality looks like their oppression.
And...they are going to fight back. They are coming for liberal America with all the hatred and violence they can get away with...which seems to be a lot. They will fight against their own self-interest, national healthcare as an example, in order to support their victimhood and to keep the gang together. We have already seen the torches and the killing. I expect there is more to come.
1
The only thing I saw when I looked at the photo of that crowd -- some grinning, more grim-faced -- was the photo accompanying another gruesome story in these pages of an equally hideous mob watching a man being tortured and burned to death. Why is hatred so much fun for so many?
The Republican Party and 45 viciously assault and persistently denigrate and disparage the four Congresswomen of colour simply for demonstrating their First Amendment right of free speech critically excoriating 45. So be it. The intensity of the extreme vitriol should therefore rationally justify the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to initiate the process for expulsion since 45 disparages dissent expressed about these intelligent women of colour calling out 45 for the ineptitude, incompetent, and insane means of allegedly trying to govern. Since their collective and individual conduct is so extremely reprehensible to GOP/45 American beliefs, simply initiate the process. Put it on record. Compel every Republican to cast a vote to expel, especially since they vehemently condemn these intelligent women simply for their dark complexion. Article I, Section 5, of the United States Constitution provides that "Each House [of Congress] may determine the Rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member." McCarthy and 45 should push the issue. Place it before the America they love and cherish, the so called patriots at Greenville that chanted these women should be sent back to their countries. Just do it. Go on record. The sooner the better. 2/3 vote is all that is required, and I ma confident 45 and McCarthy can convince certain Democrats in the House to join them! Do it! See what happens! Race matters!!
The rally reminded me of photographs of the 1920’s of lynched black men hanging from trees, white men, women and children grinning up at the bloody or smoking spectacle.
It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine the ”good times” are on their way back.
2
@ Charlie Fieselman
In answer to your questions, all that is exactly what about half of them want. And most of the other half are cowards or fellow travelers being dragged along.
Reading this column was a viscerally chilling experience.
But sadly, the lynch mob is not a human aberration but rather a classic example of the power of "mob psychology". The fact that these lynch mobs were commonplace across much of America for almost a century after the end of the Civil War is a testament to just how hideously "normal" they were.
Trump's rallies (as Mr. Bouie so vividly explains) are also classic examples of mob psychology.
But rather than lynch mobs, whenever I watch a Trump rally on TV (and I find them horrifying but necessary to bear witness to) - what I see are chilling re-enactments of the massive Nuremberg rallies in Germany in the decade prior to WWII.
The parallels are uncanny. The strutting, bellicose Fuhrer (Leader) whipping the crowd into a frenzy with his theatrical bombast. The adoring crowds, their faces contorted into spasms of both ecstasy and vengeance in a twisted harmony.
The ritual chants of dominance (over "the Other") and obeisance (to the Leader).
All that's missing are the stiff-armed salutes and the torches.
Have you ever wondered why thousands of "regular folks" will stand in withering heat and humidity for hours waiting to get the best seats at Trump's rallies? Because they know what awaits them once inside.
It's the transgressive ecstasy of being encouraged to be part of the mob. To revel in the power of the crowd. To be allowed to communally express their tribal hostility to "the Other".
To Make America White Again.
Has anyone else picked up that Trump's rallies are all fine examples of Orwell's 'Two Minutes Hate'? Well, they do run a tad longer...
Another way to look at this phenomena (which plays out all over the world and throughout history), is that when the powerful want to indulge their greed instead of serve the people, the oppressed will be angry and it is necessary to redirect the blame. Blame it on a minority group with no political power. Soon the wealthy and powerful can get away with saying “It’s not my fault you are oppressed - I’m one of you!”
“He gets us. He’s not a politician, and he’s got a backbone,” a woman who attended a recent “Women for Trump” kickoff event in Pennsylvania told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
us."
Speak for yourself, mam. The "rest of us" are not racist, xenophobic rabble-rousers caught up in a shameful (and shameless) cult of personality.
3
Trump supporters were thinking these thoughts before Trump floated down that escalator. Indeed, Trump himself has thought these thoughts along with them. He stumbled upon a key to electoral power by telling his followers what they want to hear. Picking on Ilhan Omar and the other three women is just one facet of what Trumpists despise. There are the media people, articulate, perceived as non-church goers, urban people. They are worth the crowd's ire. There are the egg heads (I know, it's retro but so much of Trumpworld's passions are retro) who share so much with the media folk. Trump loves to lambaste cities, especially cities with large minority populations because they are filthy, filled with criminals and illegals. Everything Trumpists fear, Trump mocks and attacks.
It worked in 2016. It failed in 2018 because his core supporters are a minority and in 2020 complacency won't keep anti-Trump voters at home. Or at least I hope that will be the case.
1
Jamelle - Could the crowd joy and pleasure you mention have been promoted by the fact that the speaker suggested at the outset that they were “going to have a lot of fun” since he had all night with nothing to do? Just wondering....
If patriotism now means hate our country is in really in sad shape.
1
When violence does come from the hands of someone egged on by the so called president why is he not held accountable?
If I were to tweet that someone should "take care of a problem" for me and someone does I would be in front of a judge in two shakes.
The bosses have always known that if they can get the white working stiff to hate and fear the black and brown working stiffs they will be able to steal for all more easily.
That someone like t rump; someone that is not funny, not charming, not handsom, just mean and hateful; someone like him that can enthrall so many fellow Americans is probably the saddest thing I have seen in my 70 years.
And if voters cannot see the world of difference between any of the Democrats in the race and the so called man who squats in our White House then America is OVER.
Worse! Four elected officials were made expendable by Trump because he wants to remove his coziness with Epstein from the headlines. To take a page from the Trump playbook, it has been said that some powerful men were “entertained” by young women on Epstein’s plane. I suspect some high fliers may be worried about their culpability or an Epstein plea.
1
60,000,000 white nationalists voted for trump. To "whitewash" this fact with "economic" excuses is to ignore the risk to Americas future as a democracy.
1
If lines are drawn, I know where I will stand; along with my fellow citizens of color who helped build this nation.
Thank you, Mr. Bouie, for another magnificently insight column. You are now the highlight of the op-ed section, along with Gail Collins and Paul Krugman who write on entirely difference matters.
I am a white woman who grew up in the South in the '50s and '60s, now in an even more redneck area of PA. Your column causes me to weep for our despicable history and for the obvious fact that the hatred still exists. As a country, it seems we have learned nothing from our past, but that the bigotry is so open and so blatant and from the White House no less burdens my soul, my essence, as nothing in my lifetime has. This hatred can only self-immolate us as a country.
1
It's pent up backlash and you could see it coming a mile away. If the left defines some as subhuman they should not be supersized when those so defined either reject the label embrace it.
A friend asked me not to express criticism of Trump or Republicans with " he or they make me want to vomit". She finds it repulsive. After reading of a a mentally disabled black teenager being burned alive by a white mob in Texas, my nausea is not figurative, it's truly literal.
Conflating hate and joy is a horrific concept and one we must challenge, otherwise we will regress to the Roman Coliseum, where prisoners were fed to lions for public entertainment. Donald Trump has unleashed a madness in many Americans souls. Things are unlikely to end well.
The opposition to Ilhan Omar’s actions is neither because of her sex, nor because of the “color of her skin”, but as Dr. M.L. King would have it, ‘the content of her character.”
That character is manifestly leftist radical, dismissive, demanding of special privilege for a minority view, and reflects a collectivist attitude and an antisemitic international polity, and one favoring intolerant, dictatorial, regimes.
It is not compatible with the office she holds in a democracy, the purpose of which is to represent her local constituency in a Congress of more than 400 other freely elected local representatives.
She and her supporters resort to manipulative, baseless, social calumny, rather than fact.
@Arthur Taub MD PhD
Trump and his supporters resort to lies, hypocrisy and racism rather than fact. Their lack of character is white right wing radical dismissive with a lack of any minority view, who want to maintain their hold on power even as they are no longer the majority. They favor intolerant, dictatorial regimes, like Putin's, and wannabe autocrats, like Trump. It is not compatible with American values. Trump and his supporters favor lies to truth and racism to inclusion. They favor a closed society to an open one, oligarchies to democracies.
1
@Arthur Taub MD PhD
This is exactly what I think, Arthur! You nailed it! But I think there's a typo in your comment--it should be "The opposition to DONALD TRUMP'S actions..." Better luck next time.
Look at the photo. These are not monsters, racists, or subhumans. That's too easy. They are our neighbors, our friends. They're Americans, and they act this way because they're afraid. Why? This is what they hear:
The government wants to force you to buy health insurance...Illegal immigrants are swamping our country and taking our jobs, healthcare, and leaving a wake of violent crime...Terrorists in the middle east hate our freedom and want to attack us (blather, wince, repeat).
And when Democrats don't grab the arguments by the horns and show America that these aren't true, we're begging for another four years of Trump.
Team Blue- stop sounding like socialists. Address the concerns of the people in the picture, and don't make them feel like victims. Then we can slowly make progress- from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
159
@R Mandl
Someone explain to me why the government "requiring" that all people have some form of health care insurance is so bad?
The government requires car insurance, drivers licenses, road and bridge fees, income taxes,
property taxes...which we pay begrudgingly but understand the necessity of such fees.
BUT, this ONE requirement which directly benefits the health and welfare of each citizen the absolute MOST is summarily dismissed as unconstitutional by Republicans.
Every other civilized country has implemented a health care program and about which their citizens boast.
Without health insurance, we, taxpayers, end up footing an even greater bill for the outrageous cost of emergency treatment of tens of millions of uninsured.
Why are Republicans so against insuring our nation's health and welfare?
Is it because they know the vast majority of the poor are minorities and can't afford insurance without government help?
Does everything always go back to race for Republicans?
70
@R Mandl Easier said than done... A lot of these people actually believed that Trump could make Mexico pay for a wall.
35
@R Mandl
Look at them. They have voted Republican all their lives and have nothing to show for it. Democrats got them healthcare, fairer wages, medical leave, rural electrification, cleaner air and water, etc, etc. Yet they still vote GOP. Too brainwashed to realize that expecting change after doing the same thing for 50 years is insanity.
There is no tide of immigrants swamping our country. They GOP claimed there was in their 2004 campaign. They have had 15 years to do something about it, but they refuse to govern. Electing them again and expecting them to actually accomplish anything but ballooning the deficit with unbalanced tax cuts for those least in need of them is the definition of ignorance.
Team Red - stop voting for fascists. Realize the GOP has never passed any law to improve the quality of your life in any way. Stop being victims of their shell game and you won't feel like a victim anymore.
62
Trump will be re-elected in 2020 if things stay the same. The Democrats will not pick its most popular candidate which was their mistake in picking Hillary over Bernie and Trump will win. However, if The sitting president keeps his campaign laced with racist overtones, this election will become the one that tears our country apart. There will be rumors that the election was fixed and no one will believe the other won fairly. There will be the realization that the white “majority” doesn’t mean more in numbers. There will be an incident where leaders will ask for calm, but it will be too late. There will be skirmishes is the streets. Here and there at first, then it will escalate quickly and get out of hand. There will be national guards called in to maintain law and order. We will see “insurgent” activity in the country, may not even be caused by American citizen but appear to be. It will be hard to come back to what was America. When everything’s over. We may actually see a New American Union and something completely different than these United States of America.
My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride, From ev'ry mountainside, Let freedom ring!
Let’s not forget that folks
"To be clear, the Trump rally was not a lynch mob"
True, there are probably very few (but not zero) who would have shouted YES, if Trump asked "Should I lynch her?". But, I will bet an American dollar that if he asked "Should I put her in a pillory on stage for you?" the crowd would have trampled each other in the rush to be the first to hurl abuse and other objects at her.
a powerful, thought provoking analysis!
President Donald Trump hated hate-mongering start long ago before became President shame America people didn't noticed that World Leader condemn action way haven't Republicans most condemn his action like Lindsey Graham. Kevin McCarthy because there scare Donald Trump.
Do we remember start campaign rallies Donald descended in crowd , 2016 campaign Donald Trump yell out to crowd " beat up" as America am worry that misguided by Donald Trump.
“He gets us. He’s not a politician, and he’s got a backbone,” a woman who attended a recent “Women for Trump” kickoff event in Pennsylvania told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
As Hillary Clinton said, they are "deplorable"- there is no better word. Sadly it is an epithet that describes far too many Americans and is the truest form of "American exceptionalism". We are at a point where we have to face who we are as a nation. The hollow excuses for trump voters in 2016 i.e. "economic anxiety" etc. were nonsense and self-delusion to avoid the truth. More succinctly-to quote Bruce Springsteen: "Well sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world".
2
Of course they feel joy and rapture. Hating out loud in a pack is a sickness that breeds bloodlust and mindless violence. Weak, selfish people are never happier than when they're in a mob and have a scapegoat in their sights. "The Lottery" tells this story well. So does "The Ox-Bow Incident." We are dealing with very sick-minded people who have no understanding of pluralism and democracy. They are driven by hatred, pure and simple. Trumpism is all about wallowing in baseness and cruelty. It turns out that for these people at least, that's what they want most in the world.
Mr Bouie,
Let us not forget that in 1893 ,Texas had as its Governor a Democrat and the mayor of Paris was also a Democrat
What was done to Smith in Paris Texas should be discussed in schools as to how civilized behavior is apparently a thin
veneer.The disgusting-actions of people who would consider themselves civilized even in 1893 shows starkly
how thin the veneer is.You claim in your opinion piece Mr Bouie that you are not equating Mr Trumps supporters
to a Lynch mob but then come up with reasoning as to why they are.Then many of the comments on your piece
are displaying hate towards the Trump supporters who you imply are the only hate filled people in the room so to speak.
As to how much more we have become civilized let us not forget the recent wars in the Middle East where only a few years ago
a captured Jordanian pilot was burnt to death while being held in a cage while thousands of Isis fighters cheered.
Also individuals brought up in Western society who happily became executioners under Isis beheading people on video.
My point Mr Bouie is that uncivilized behavior of the worst kind is not monopolized by Trump supporters as you are implying
but by the human race which should be watching it’s rhetoric at all times.
“And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.” Deplorable.
With respect, I see a group of people who simply hate others who are not on their side. It is tribalism pushed to extremes by a leader who personifies it. A black person in a Trump shirt or MAGA hat should feel perfectly safe at these rallies – a helpful accessory, in fact.
To call this crowd racist may be accurate, but it is also coincidental. Only a candidate who can connect with Trump's tribe, to convince them how uncaring their leader really is, will get their votes.
1
Thank God for Trump! What we are seeing in these rallies is the pure, cathartic joy of not having to lie any more about what you stand for. For decades now, Republicans have had to mouth words about ‘family values’ and ‘conservative principles’. With Trump they can finally shout in a bright, clear voice about what it truly is that animates them. Racism.
Will people always need “others” to look down on in order to feel good or superior? Sad commentary to human kind.
You need to marshal historical facts like this, fine tune the argument a bit, get professional prep at speaking loud and fast, find a truly neutral moderator, and then debate Jordan Peterson.
1
I can’t forget the woman in Florida who was mad at Trump after Hurricane Michael because “He’s not hurting the people he should be hurting.” That sums up Trump supporters in one statement. They enjoy inflicting pain on others, but so often they are the ones who are affected. When will these adoring cult members see that he has no love or respect for them? They are tools in his crazy plan. Maybe one day they’ll see the light but I’m not optimistic.
221
@Greg Johnson
Maybe after they lose their health coverage, social security or family member does? However by then it will too late.
15
@Greg Johnson - I agree, except using the word "plan" alongside T-Rump is an oxymoron. His only "plan" is how to best gratify his enormous, insatiable ego.
13
The Republican Party and 45 substantially advance the high tech means of sophisticatedly delivering and viciously conveying the carnival atmosphere. The circus like in 1968of racially incendiary condemnation and antiimmigrant denigration to constantly remind their heavily dependent less than educated Caucasian supporters that 'they' are better than 'them.' This aggressively exhibited racial fearmongering and ethnic denunciation is a refinement of the George Wallace politics of racial divisiveness zealously pursued in 1968. Wallace supporters turned out in droves, hanging from the rafters, cheering, yelling, and screaming their applause. Wallace repeatedly reminded the jeering crowd that that their lack of cultural, religious, and racial awareness, less educated, for the most part, achieving an 8th or 12th grade level, and they may be blue collar workers, but their Caucasian white skin privilege is all that entitles them to racial superiority. The Wallace campaign stressed the unsubstantiated allegation that black and brown people, and immigrants, were responsible for whites losing both jobs and social standing, that these racial and ethnic minorities were menacingly encroaching upon sacred white societal norms, threatening 'their' way of life. Ricard Nixon's 1968 Southern Strategy, desperate to derail Wallace's increasing momentum, tapped into their racial chord by repackaging and presenting the same racist line, only toned down. 2020 will see a repeat of 1968. Race matters.
1
How is it that the Greenville rally folks think they have right to tell voters of Rep. Omar's district who should represent them in Congress? Don't they know the Constitution? Or doesn't the Constitution matter to them? This is what happens when mobthink takes over people's minds.
2
I marvel sometimes at how the truly beautiful democratic ideals expressed by some of the so-called founding fathers (slave-holders included) have been so crassly abused in practice. "All men are created equal "- I guess one first has to define the meaning of what "men" are. Anyone considered less than oneself apparently doesn't qualify as being "men" and "equality" flies out of the window. I shudder when I observe the fervor and joy expressed on the faces the Trump-lovers at his auto-da-fes. They are beyond deplorable. Mediocrity rules and stupidity triumphs. America loses.
Thank you for this important essay. Your title is striking. Putting joy together with hatred, you put your finger on what is most upsetting in viewing these immoral mob chants: That it is the president 'rallying' his followers to take pleasure shouting cruel, verbal abuse of a congresswoman who is a woman of color. Contextualizing these events by relating them to our country's shameful history of lynching, you help us to see, more clearly, through our disgust and tears, that this isn't a new, spontaneous phenomenon, but one that the president is following like a playbook. To what end? We all must ask, ourselves and others. There is, to my mind, clear and present danger in his invoking and endorsing vicious sentiments in his 'followers.' These sorts of events are also why the US under Trump can, regrettably, be viewed through a proto-fascist lens.
1
An inspired interpretation by Jamelle Bouie of 45's rallies and his tweet storms. It's uncomfortable to see our hero, the working man and his family, mostly white, at these rallies, swept up in this mindless, dangerous euphoria of fear-tinged hate. You'd like to explain it away with excuses about how his community has lost jobs and the American dream has not turned out as he would want it but none the less there he is, drunk on hate and self pity lashing out at imagined assailants. Imagined assailants carefully crafted via an intoxicating story constantly fed him and his fellow victims by fox/brietbart and other highly effective propaganda instruments, all funded by the Koch bro.,Mercer, Murdoch, Adelson, et al. A very ugly, dangerous form of entertainment. The truth is we're all, including the "squad", trying to figure out how to make things better in our country. and kindness along with open minded reading and listening to the other side helps. The excitement of hate has a horrible hangover.
Absolutely spot on 100%. Thank you.
“He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
Terrifying!
In my opinion, Bouie gets it exactly right. And his analysis of Trumpism demonstrates perfectly why there is no point in the Democrats' trying to appeal to Trump supporters. It would be as futile as trying to reason with the spectators in the 19th century mob that Bouie describes in this essay. There simply is no denying that Trump has tapped into a vein of racism, nativism, sexism and bigotry that runs through a significant part of the electorate in order get where he is. That is why I am sick of hearing that it's the job of non-Trumpists to "try to understand them better" and to empathize with their economic anxiety. What about the economic anxiety of everyone else? No - the problem isn't that we don't understand Trump supporters. On the contrary - we understand them all too well - as does Bouie.
1
Your story of Henry is deeply unsettling as are all the stories of killings and hangings of innocent people. Most troubling is the carnival atmosphere that culminates in the torture and death of a human being. It would be nice to think that those days are in the past but looking at the faces at trumps rally makes me wonder if they would have attended Henry's Carnival with the same fervor that their ancestors did. And now we have Tennessee raising the memory of one of the founders of the KKK to a state holiday and establishing a Nouveau Confederacy. This is more than saying what he thinks, this is inciting people to do what thinks. Right from a book of speeches from one of the most vile and evil men to have ever lived.
“He gets us. He’s not a politician, and he’s got a backbone,” a woman who attended a recent “Women for Trump” kickoff event in Pennsylvania told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
There is evil and there is holy, both dwell in us.
That is why Jesus taught us in the Lord's Prayer "do not lead us into temptation"!
I hope our next President can kindle the virtue part of our spirit out,. Not only "do not lead us into temptation", but also "deliver us from evil".
1
Jamelle, you write of “a cancer on the body politic” — which is far more than just “a cancer on the presidency” — a phrase that popularized during the fall and unforced removal of President Nixon.
I fully agree with your expanded, dangerous, and, unfortunately, accurate use of your existential phrase “a cancer on the body politic” — because this current 21st century metastasis of political, economic, and social “cancer on the body politic” of our formerly ‘promising’ and sometimes progressive country has certainly grown and spread beyond the initial disease of Nixon acting with deceit and ‘above the law’ to the now advanced stage-four level, of faux-Emperor Trump clearly acting like an Emperor, and attempting to make our once proud democracy actually ‘act like an Empire’, when and where Emperor Trump has overtly and covertly attempted to tell the countries of the EU, and Japan, China, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Middle East what to do, how to act, and who to follow, to such an extent that Emperor Trump is acting like he is the Emperor of the World.
Arrogant, bullying, and dangerous behavior like Emperor Trump has, and is continuing to force upon other people, their countries, and ‘we the American people’ had been used by dangerous authoritarian leaders in the 20th century, which led to great pain for all the people of the world.
I can think of no diagnosis nor solution except for us to:
DUMP
EMPEROR
TRUMP
“We can’t be an EMPIRE”
1
When white supremacists marched on Charlottesville, employers of some of those marchers took notice and fired them. Well played by those employers.
Can we see the same level of scrutiny paid to some of the racists in Trump's "White Power" rallies? Surely if they were to utter such spew at their place of employment, the next thing on their reading lists would be their walking papers.
Time to stand up again, Employers.
The rising use of the Confederate Flag, the increase in racist chants, and applying "patriotism" to cover for the new hatred bubbling up in this country is sadly triggered in large part by Trump.
From his early days in NY real estate where he and his dad were sued twice in 1973 by the Justice Department for blocking blacks from renting in their apartment buildings to today's racist chant of "send her back," there's a implicit permission given by this president to act out your anger. And he's got your back.
And here's the real hypocrisy of Trump for me. He wraps himself in our "flag" as if he's the definition of a patriot. Yet when the time came for Trump to stand up for this country and serve in Vietnam, he couldn't run faster or further from service lying about bone-spurs to avoid his duty. That's not patriotism. It's the mark of a coward & con-man. And yet he still criticizes a true war hero in John McCain who both served and suffered for his flag and country.
So when we see more evidence of this angry & arrogant behavior trying to push aside the character, compassion and values of America, look no further than the "leader of the free world."
Thank you Mr. Bouie for this history which fills me with such powerful and contradictory feelings that I can barely write these words. To know that thousands of people would come together to celebrate the mob murder of a human being just because they are black and do it again and again and again so many times through our history is to know overwhelming disgust, horror and shame. As a white man I know how privileged I am that I - nor all the white people in America (unless they're gay) - have nothing to fear in this regard. And yet apparently there are a whole bunch of white people out there who are oblivious to Trump's and their own racism, and how its threatening our precious democracy. Clearly, there is no convincing them. My heart is heavy and I am profoundly fearful that we are going down the same dark, dangerous road that the German people went down 85 years ago. Are we too late to stop it?
"Trump and “his people” reach deep into the violent history of public spectacle in America. "
If the author had written 'for the human race' instead of 'in America' his article would have been more revealing.
A cure for racism is like the cure for alcoholism, the first, foremost and supreme question is you must accept you are a racist and always will be. Unhappily for everyone alcoholism is reasonably rare, whereas racism is remarkable in its prevalence across all nations.
It is only when folks accept that racism is another one of their many weaknesses can they begin to deal with it and stop it degrading their lives and the lives of others.
Most well-meaning folk (especially well-meaning educated white folks) find it difficult to accept they have strong racist tendencies. African, Asian, Slavic and West European peoples have less problem with recognizing their racist demons and their racial intolerances but it is only a question of the level of self-awareness. History and mass murders bares witness as to how restrained Europe, Asia and Africa are controlling the monster.
Lots of societies who consider themselves racially tolerant are nearly all homogeneous and the brown, black, yellow-faced 'other' is mercifully absent and thus the demon lies dormant.
In the multi-racial US this mercy is not forthcoming.
If we think racism is an American problem and not a common human problem we will continue to feed the monster and we will all continue suffer for it.
Even when Trump is gone, his people will go underground, waiting for the next Trump. The racist vein runs deep in America, its fear and resentment towards those people they blame for problems real and imaginary goes beyond reason and time. Trump has exposed this ugliness for all to see and plans to use it for as long as he can.
The crowd thinks it's hysterically funny. That's the key to understanding their glee. But low class is low class.
There can’t be an “us” unless there’s a “them”. A group that can be looked at as lower in the social order, inferior in any of several categories, and a direct threat to “us”. If such a bunch doesn’t exist, one must be created...and, this bunch is very creative...
A more recent example are the George Wallace rallies. They spewed hatred and outright racism and were very dangerous. And the weren't confined to the South. One big difference was the media coverage. Today, news reports pussyfoot around words like "Nuremberg Rallies" just as they seem too deferential to Trump by not branding the border detention centers as concentration camps.
Team Trump may be evil, but they are not stupid. They have picked up on the wiggle room media restraint has given them and see it as a green light.
The American Dream was created and fought for by young people. They are the creators of great futures.
The Trumpian Dream is a mediocre vision. an obese old man and sold to other old people. It’s a dream for the now unproductive, social security and medicare dependent welfare queens whose only future is a grave. Their rallying cry is “we won’t be around when the bill comes due.” Pathetic
These are people desperately trying to hold on to what they have, hoping it carries them to the end
Sadly technology allows them to live too long. Trumpian America is the victim of this unfortunate demographic change.
These people grow up hearing and learning these racist values only to find out that in the real world, more and more people share the same racist values. It is validating for them that all these people feel the same way as well as President Trump, who has a large platform. This makes them feel like its okay to send out this biased hate into the world.
When these Trump supporters chant "Send her back" or they say "come back to where you came from" it is a direct statement to those immigrants that aren't white. This is where white privilege comes into play, and those shouting racist slurs forget about their ancestors that immigrating to America or the immigrants that are white.
While the treatment of black people may have changed over many progressive years, racism will always be the same. These people will still use colored minorities as "scapegoats for their lost power." Racism is ingrained in America, as well as history, and this is just another form of it.
As tempting as it is to dismiss the photograph accompanying Mr. Bouie's column as the face of the stupid, what Trumpism shows is that there is but a thin veneer of civility separating us from the state of nature described by Thomas Hobbs in Leviathan in which life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. And what does Hobbes say is necessary to stem the inevitable anarchy of the natural state of man? A protector (call it government) to whom we give all of our rights in exchange for security. In walks Donald Trump describing himself as the only person who can save us from American carnage. As we look into the mirror our latter-day Huey Long holds up for us, it is not a pretty sight. And he will not right the ship because his power depends on chaos. If the ship is to be righted, it is we who will have to stand on the keel.
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@G. James - It takes training and practice and personal courage for a crew to learn how to execute such a maneuver . The ability to swim is also useful.
Where is America's trained crew of mariners? For its lack, will the American ship of state wallow in the waves and sink ingloriously to the turgid depths of history?
Beware the metaphor.
10
Mr. Bouie, what an excellent piece. I praise you for reminding us of our sordid history from which this current moment is rooted. We have a man in the Oval Office who has no idea what you write about and his obligation to know, but instead is using only its evil for only his own gain. He has even pitched violence in these rallies and does nothing when violence has resulted. I hope the electorate understands the importance of 2020.
8
Powerful commentary with a history lesson!
3
The over-reach in this article encapsulates precisely why Trump will win a second term. There is so much to criticise, but his critics seem obsessed with making stuff up.
2
Just as dictators will not voluntarily relinquish their power, so will white America not give up its dominance. Unfortunately, this is a part of human nature that is not aminable to reason.
The hateful people at Trump rallies are consciously indulging in group identity rooted in a fear of being displaced by other groups. Ironically, they realize that if the tables were turned and they lost their dominance to another group, in all probability their displacers would treat them just as badly.
The Golden Rule is a tough sell to humanity.
5
Trumps followers hate black people and those who don't hate black people. It is that simple. If they really felt economically disadvantaged, Trump would not have their support because he has done nohing to help them. There is still an opioid crisis, the communities are still economically depressed. It is all hatred. Period.
I lived in Greenville NC for 6 years, from 1968 to 1974. The town's schools integrated during that time-- industry brought diverse families there and busing was enforced. I was in junior high and high school with a dizzying array of classmates, and I myself was just back from two years of being the only American in two English schools. That was a long time ago, but still I wonder why the DJT campaign picked it out of the line up of small towns for a rally. Why Greenville NC? Where did the audience come from? Same with the kickoff rally in Orlando. They didn't come from Orlando. Who are these people? How do they pay for their travel to these rallies?
8
Yes. Exactly. Many in my family, and extended family, somehow believe they are under siege. When pressed with a seemingly simple conversation about an even mildly political topics, an irrational, vehement and frightening persona emerges. I’ve never seen anything like it before but recognize that behavior from historical texts I’ve read - historical meaning similar to the example used from Paris, Texas.
27
@HS
Ironically, your relatives would probably be hard-pressed to identify a specific threat to their actual lives, only a generalized feeling of ill-ease. This is one of the things that Trump has mastered--playing to people's insecurities about their place in the world.
12
The ability of people to be cruel to people and animals with indifference or for entertainment is something to consider seriously. Why Trump can generate this attitude in crowds is a real cause for concern. Such situations have led to atrocities. But the normal reaction of revulsion towards the people exhibiting cruelty and hatefulness, actually worsens the evil results.
When a person composes and expresses a point of view, that person involuntarily invests in it. The ability of Trump to generate attention that upsets and arouses dismay or anger actually makes people involuntarily take positions with which they feel are them and not willing to reconsider. This makes it inevitable that the people holding opposite opinions will not see them as views but as who people happen to be.
We can stop this process but we need to consider that our own views and attitudes deserve to be treated with at least the possibility of skepticism.
5
an expression of racist contempt and a celebration of shared values----How do we change this?
The Joy of Hatred gets it right, however Jamelle Bouie's classifying this solely as racial hatred reveals he is applying his own bias to interpreting mob's motivation. This is hatred of "the other".
It's sad and curious that White Protestants in this country have a long history of denigrating "the other", considering the Puritan's fled to this continent to escape religious persecution. Yet, they attempted to convert native americans. They have long wanted to rule or otherwise have status above others, and because the U.S. constitution calls for equality they have ongoingly tried to shut out others (i.e., Catholics/Irish/Italians, Jews, Japanese, Chinese, Blacks, Latinx, Muslims) to ensure having control ought of fear of losing status.
Many of these White Christians have been pro-immigration, as that delivers itinerant workers less expensive than native-born americans ... yet do not want to pay living wages and do want to off-lay the cost of subsidizing nutrition, healthcare, housing, and workers children's education onto other taxpayers, believing it is "manifest destiny" god-given right. Yet, these same White Christians, are often extraordinarily incensed when faced with competition from immigrant, non-white, non-christian, non-male, and/or non hetrosexual entrepreneurs.
Trump leads un-American mobs. They embrace fear, are fearful of love, behave as anti-Christians, and ignore American values. Those do not like the U.S. being the great melting pot ought to go.
12
@old patriot you make several good points but I don’t understand why you think Mr. Bouie’s characterization of this as racial is incorrect, and then say it’s about fear “of the other”. Isn’t that fear part of what racism is about. Also when folk say that the demeanor of crowds like this is unamerican, I disagree. It’s part of what America has always been and what many Americans struggle with.
4
I would only say that excluded groups--the "not quite whites"--from the Irish to the Italians to a whole host of other ethnic Europeans eventually got to be "white." Often the most vicious defenders of whiteness are those whose whiteness was once questioned.
Perhaps hate must have its day, as it has at various times in our nation's history. One might suggest that hate and love are dueling aspects of human nature. Perhaps our outrage is irrelevant, even counter-productive. One can simply say, "I see you need to express your hatred;" And, see if the hater feels the relief of being understood.
4
Millions in history have lost their lives in torment and misery thanks to indulged and cultivated mob hatred. And it is not a victimless catharsis even when it stops short of physical harm: consider the weight of hatred directed toward an individual or vulnerable group, especially when that hatred is deliberately inflamed by the “leader of the free world.” Anyone who has been seriously bullied in school should be able to imagine the emotional effects to some degree.
For me, absolutely brilliant in capturing that desperate energy infecting the base population vulnerable to this thinking disease. Concerning and crazy mob behavior.
12
Everyone needs to calm down and check their misplaced outrage. The hyperbole in the comments section is what will get Trump elected in 2020. This rally was disturbing, like every other Trump rally, but equating it to a murder is absurd. These rally attendees hate liberal contempt more than anything else and probably have no idea who Omar is. They are there for the show. Good luck trying to sway potential Trump voters with these arguments. The vast majority of Americans care about their family and good jobs above all else - with the unemployment rate at 3% and 401K’s soaring, Democrats need to unite, mobilize, and focus on what really matters to the average voter instead of passing resolutions on Trump’s ignorant tweets.
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@BP The overwhelming majority of people attending Trump's rallies will not be swayed by any arguments no matter how cogent. That's the truth.
You say they hate liberal contempt more than anything. I don't believe most liberals hold them in contempt, astonishment yes, contempt no. That said, their feelings towards liberals are not particularly loving. How should liberals react to that?
74
@BP
Fortunately, many Americans do care deeply about things besides their families and their paychecks: things like, oh, I don't know, "liberty and justice for all."
25
@Seldoc The belief that the white working class is well off because their "401Ks are soaring" is ridiculous...they lost their 401K, if they ever had one, 11 years ago! The white working class was economically destroyed by the last Republican "Great Recession"--remember 2008? Who was President then? Who do you think lost their suburban homes, their savings, and their jobs then? The fact that unemployment is low today does not equate with high wages because they will work for any kind of wages now--that's the only money available to them. Here's a validated statistic: working class wages have not risen since the 1980s when adjusted for inflation! Many Americans have to work two jobs; are saddled with debt; have less than $500 in the bank; and are devasted economically by one serious illness, one serious car repair, or by one rent increase? Ask the Mid-West family farmers, and the tractor dealers, if they are prospering under Trump's unsuccessful (and entirely unnecessary) Trade Wars? They are just now begrudgingly understanding that Trump is a Con, but the fear and the hatred of "the other" sustains them."The other" (first Catholic, then Jew, now Muslim, and always Black) has been ever-present in American politics because there always has been "an other" in our immigrant-necessary, inclusionary politics which have grown more progressive since the end of the Vietnam War. What Trump is doing is stirring hate and division because that's all he has left!But We Resist and will win!
31
The hatred on display most recently in North Carolina made me think about Russia’s “sweeping”, sophisticated cyberwar on America and its democratic institutions initiated in 2014.
According to the Mueller Report, the intent of Russia’s cyberwar was/is to sow internal discord and disarray.
The Report details how Russian intelligence agents came to the United States in 2014 to better understand the main fissures in our country - racial, religious, and cultural. They took their findings back to Russia, where government-sponsored troll farms developed a sophisticated plan of attack using social media and other means to fuel breakdowns in American civil society.
According to the Mueller Report, in the 2016 election cycle, an estimated 129 million or more Americans were exposed to and posted/retweeted Russian lies on social media, packaged convincingly to seem like grassroots American products. Through fake social media affinity groups, Russia also organized local rallies across America. Russia operatives especially liked to cultivate two opposing groups to fight each other at opposing rallies the same day.
Unwittingly or not, Trump’s and the GOP’s divide and conquer strategy and divisive rhetoric are amplifying Russian messaging and serving Russia’s goals.
Note: the engrossing Lawfare podcast The Report walks listeners through the story set forth in the Mueller Report, using audio of real participants, quotes from the Report and experts providing context.
21
Trump shows the world exactly what an American President shouldn't say or do...and the policies, situations and actions that are against the U.S. Constitution. He is the Anti- President.
8
Much of the animus of Trump supporters comes, apparently, from a sense of loss. They seem to feel that their ability to earn a middle class income has been compromised, and they wish to find someone to blame for it. Trump has given them Mexicans. This isn’t true, but that doesn’t matter much.
The real villains are, naturally, more complex. One is the success of international trade in erasing borders. Another is corporate greed that pushes wealth into select segments of society. A big one, though, is the changing nature of work brought on by technology.
America after WWII was seduced and lulled to sleep by low skill/high pay manufacturing jobs. Assembly line work seemed to make it possible fo live a middle class life with no personal investment in education beyond high school. Now, that low level of ambition rarely succeeds. Success in the current career market requires mastery of the abstract thought processes that colleges require. Those who can’t, or won’t, attain them, find themselves at a significant disadvantage.
This, then, morphs into rage at “coastal elites,” the kind of rage that people feel when something that seems beyond their control affects them. But their support for Trump isn’t going to change anything because, as is his nature, he is simply using them to gain power. His sales pitch is a shell game, and he has nothing but empty promises to offers to those foolish enough to believe his promises. Trump is predictable. What’s surprising is Republican support.
14
This article is spot on. The less people have the more strenuously they defend it. Southern society was created and still is a plantation society. It is a form of colonization. Coop a group, poor whites, by creating an artificial categorization. They will then defend it to the death, aka, the Civil War. Use “the Other” as a constant threat. It is one of the oldest form of social control.
The North started to break free from this through the Labor Union movement, but human nature got in the way. Perhaps we deserve this situation.
8
Really excellent analysis, far above the standard of the average columnist restating the obvious. The public lynching is an important aspect of early American public life that crossed over with more wholesome activities like carnivals and the public casting of votes (before the introduction of the secret ballot). Public executions were also the norm in the U.S. through much of the 19th Century, intended to excite crowds and create fear, such as when 39 Sioux Indians were hanged on a huge platform in the very center of Mankato, MN. The Trump supporters in North Carolina show that these old habits remain alive in our culture. Finally, kudos to Mr. Bouie for dealing with racism as a matter of individual choice and even social pleasure, not as a moral abstraction, which makes it easier to dismiss.
12
Trump voters, I am an immigrant (yes, legal). Before you "send me back to where I came from," I want you to know that I have an advanced degree from MIT and a world leading expert in Robotic Automation. I used to feel empathy that my life's work puts people out of jobs. No more. I see the faces in the photo, and now I hope my work puts many of you out of work, and eliminates jobs in the future that your children may have filled. I can continue my work in India and be handsomely paid. But your children may grow up without any job prospects, and live their lives in hunger and poverty.
Was it worth it?
862
@MoneyRules
I do not think you get to pick and choose whose jobs are eliminated. It may be people who are targets of this group more than the group itself.
Progress is a good thing, but it is also human, and I would hope other people fortunate enough to have advanced engineering degrees would not discard their empathy so easily.
151
@Alan Machines lower prices and produce new goods and services. There is no limit to man’s ideas and desires. Robots will increase jobs just as did textile and clothing factories in 18th century Britain. Contra the modernist mind fragmented in transcendental self-consciousness, man’s mind is a tool for survival, not an arcade game. See Aristotle and Rand, not Kant.
10
@MoneyRules
I understand your anger but this is no way of making Trump supporter realize their mistake. I think we should follow the lead of MLK, Nelson Mandela, and MK Gandhi.
117
I have a brother who has worked in many southern states like Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina ... his take has always been that you have a huge racism problem.
16
Thank you so much, Mr. Bouie, for this very poignant opinion piece. I have never understood "woman's or man's inhumanity towards woman or man". But as you state, Trump's "rhetoric frees them from the norms that keep their grievance in check" and this allows, as one reader wrote, the worst of human nature to de-humanize and terrify others.
The pictures are a powerful reminder of the ugly group-think that is on display from history and, so unfortunately, alive today. We need to do everything we can to refute these toxic behaviors and re-educate anyone who is open to civil discourse and learning. And VOTE for democrats in 2020.
15
Thanks for those clear and precise quotes from Du Bois. That sort of plainspoken precision and clarity gives us a better chance to get past reactivity and bring reason and conscience to bear.
4
I'm a historian. This article hit upon many of my own initial thoughts after hearing about the rally. Spectacle lynchings, and by extension segregation, were not predicated upon a fear of difference between whites and blacks; they were predicated upon a fear of sameness, a fear of racial equality, a fear of growing white impotency.
I'm also a white southerner, born and raised. I grew up around the kind of folks who attend these rallies. I still live among them. My whiteness enables me to walk among them without fear of censure or bodily harm. They're kind to me -- hospitable, even. Yet these are the same folks who, on a dime, would cheer on Trump's racism, and would perhaps even act upon it if incited.
That white southern split-personality reminds of a quote from historian Grace Hall's book "Making Whiteness" (1998): "It was an uneasy landscape, the early twentieth-century South, a small-town, small-city world of ice companies and beauty parlors, soda fountains and gas stations. It was a world where people who went to church some days watched or participated in the torture of their neighbors on others."
730
@A. Walgren
Equality does not equal white impotence. This is the kind of rhetoric that gets us in trouble, that inflames the white fear of losing power. Equality strengthens us all.
29
@dutchiris,
If it wasn't apparent in my response, I was referring to the idea, held by many white southerners at the time, that racial equality would equal white impotency. I'm certainly not implying that this idea was, is, or ever will be correct.
123
@dutchiris
I went to school in Berkeley, CA, and agree that equality strengthens us all. But I disagree with your interpretation of A.Walgren's "rhetoric."
17
This might sound naive, but I think that many people go to Trump's rallies the way they might go in for professional wrestling, knowing that there's a lot of fakery and artifice behind it, that the golden-haired contenders aren't really what they make themselves out to be, but they're still drawn to the spectacle for the sheer entertainment of it all. A few weeks ago someone on NPR mentioned that his relatives on both sides of the border would rather attend a Trump rally than that of a conventional politician, because with his rallies you'd never know what craziness was going to come out of his mouth.
On the other hand, it is scary that Trump should have so little regard for the safety of our elected representatives, or for people of color in general. A loose cannon is rolling around the deck, and nobody does anything to stop it.
107
I agree fully. It is like Professional Wrestling and Professional Religion have been rolled up into a strange and unhealthy form of entertainment.
26
@St. Paulite I still think the administration uses our tax dollars to buy fill-ins if the crowd is predicted to be not 'uge enough...
22
Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.
-Werner Twertzog
12
Watching and following from Canada with lots of concern.
I predicted some of this. i remember a discussion with an American early in the Trump administration. I told him that I myself lived through 30 years of divisive politics in Quebec. I new the playbook. Politicians , for political gain, drive a racial wedge through the populace to divide. The societal costs are very high, there is no gain, only loss.
A second problem is that this emboldened racism will get exported to other countries with amplified effects.
Thank you Trump voters for stinking up the place!
Thank you Republican Senators, men who should know better, for being complacent, derelict and therefor complicit!
13
This article is very informative about the history of mob mentality of whites in this country, particularly when it finds a black person to demonize. As a 71 year old black woman, I am terrified that I will experience this sort of hatred directed at me or a black person I know and love. Sometimes, I'm so frightened and paranoid, that I have a hard time leaving the house. Trump has made me a nervous wreck, to be honest with you. For the first time in my life, I feel this country is on the verge of a race war and I am terrified. God forgive them, for they know not what they do.
18
@Donna Bailey
I cannot imagine how it must feel to live in such fear. My heart goes out to you. I am sure these racists are in the minority, but they are receiving a lot of news coverage these days. Perhaps you can find support with the many good people who must live in your community? You are not alone.
This is a unique piece, worth saving and reflection. The joy of hate is not a concept publicly discussed. It requires a moment of thought, joy and hate seeming at odds. Yet a feeling of joy rewards the hater. That joyful feeling must be strong and the feeling seems to be addictive, like from a street drug. The drug is hate; Trump is the dealer. An antidote is needed. Would that be love?
3
It is a blessing when a journalist has such a keen sense of History. When I saw the mob in Greenville I sensed they would lynch Ilhan Omar in a different time. The hatred was palpable and how Trump basked in it!
I fear for the future because I am not sure this ugliness will go away after Trump is gone.
14
@Maria
Yes, it will.
Other countries have recovered from worse (Germany after Hitler, Cambodia after Pol Pot, China following the cultural revolution of Mao Zedong).
The USA is strong. She will rebound and grow from from this experience.
Trump rallies are not yet the same as the lynching spectacles described in this article.
They are both public rituals and both racially driven, but there the similarity stops.
Lynching in America was always part of the extra-judicial system of white domination of African Americans. There were deadly efficient means of state control in place, but white supremacy required more. Ritual lynchings served to reinforce the fear of blackness while training both communities, white and black in how quickly white fear could be translated into violence, the ultimate method of social control.
They also served to create a physical manifestation of whiteness.
Lynch mobs required a visceral hatred of blacks. Anyone and everyone who was white was expected to be part of that system whether willing or not.
But white people at Trump rallies don't see themselves as haters. They see themselves as forgotten people about to lose the status and economic position that whiteness has historically insured for them.
They have a very clear 'white consiousness' but believe that it is no different than black or Latino identity. But mostly they are driven by fear. Trump plays that fear like a musician.
But unlike the lynch mob Trump rallies are told that he, as president will preserve whiteness. There's no need for civil violence, at least not yet. The Trump state will take care of it for you.
Of course he can't their and won't and when they become aware of this then the real danger begins.
2
Who are these people? Who is the Trump supporter that goes to the rally and revels in the joy that it gives them? Where do they live? Who are their friends? Are they poor? Are they educated beyond a high school level? Are they kind and loving to their white families and friends, only to turn and disparage people of color? I would love to see the daily lives of 10 of these people when they didn't know anyone was watching.
We are told not to go low when dealing with those who go low on a daily basis. We are told not to stoop down to their levels. We are told to try and understand them when they spew intolerant, bigoted, racist, homophobic or misogynistic speech towards millions of other American citizens. Where has this gotten us? What has changed? Do we think things will magically change inside the thinking of the Trump supporter? Will they suddenly become tolerant and kind towards all people if we go high? What is the correct response? Should they be treated kindly even as they disparage others in hurtful and sometimes evil ways?
I believe they should be called out. I believe they should be treated the way they treat others. I believe we need to stand up in unison and point a finger directly at them and call them what they are when they spew their venom.
There comes a time when a measured, logical, rational response will not stop a human being from the kind of behavior we see exhibited at these rallies.
That time is here and we better do whatever it takes to stop it.
12
“It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage,”
There it is. The explanation for why Trumpers support him despite the economic benefits he pushes for everyone but them. This is their compensation for supporting him: the feeling of superiority that is his gift to them that they otherwise will never have.
14
The explanation in this piece is clear and, I believe, correct. The question it evokes is "How can we make people see the error of their ways?" I suggest that we must make an economic argument to convinced them.
3
My wife had a great idea. All Progressives should register Republican so all GOP nominees become moderates at least. My Mom registered Republican so she could vote against the John Bircher representative of our district.
6
I'm glad to see a public recognition of the entertainment value of being a Trump supporter. When you can't tell your boss to "take this job and shove it," or strike back at the faceless bureaucracy that controls most of the important things in your life, at least you can cheer for a man who is free from all these constraints. Global warming, war, and loss of constitutional rights are irrelevant echoes in a daily life filled with humiliation and hopelessness. Until progressives address this fundamental problem, the reservoir of hatred and anger will continue to be a great resource for demagogues of every stripe.
8
All the retired teachers and first responders I know with fabulous pensions are Trump supporters. They got theirs and they want to keep it the way. The racism is extra icing.
5
All? Seems more likely you don’t know very many (or any) retired teachers and first responders with “fabulous pensions” much less Trump supporters who have “fabulous pensions”. You may on the other hand know numerous Trump supporters whose pensions have been looted by the financial predators that own both political parties. I know that neither Trump nor any republican politician cares about the destruction of traditional pensions nor the disingenuous lies behind 401k “investment” pensions. That doesn’t blind me to the complicity of the Clinton era democrats who genuflected to the tech and financial bros as they went on their way to creating a new sweatshop economy. The younger democrats, Warren and Sanders seem to get it but we’ll have to see. That all being said, do you really resent those of us who worked years and earned our pensions? Why? More than protecting what I earned I deeply resent that the bean counters of America have undermined both the private and much of the public pension systems for their own greed and profit. They have robbed my children and grandchildren’s generations so the investor class can be richer still. Think about that when identifying who Trump supporters are and why. Oh and I’m not even close to being a supporter of Trump the Twitter troll who doesn’t care either.
5
@John Chastain
All the ones who moved to Florida.
People who get their Medicare refunded. People with $100k plus pensions
People who are not struggling
2
Reality is happening, good/bad.
Depression is relative too, Einstein
experienced some prejudicial treatment.
I miss deadpan humor a la Richard Pryor, and
when he got emotional, hard to tell
which kind, such is real life, so don't categorize complexity, Cohen.
Your description of a Texas town's barbarism
is in my consciousness, and
would be too horrible for a documentary movie.
2
I'm glad someone is writing about the crowd and not just Trump. The crowd is the challenge much more than Trump the individual. Trump could not and cannot succeed in stoking this fire if there wasn't a fertile ground for him to work with. The problem goes deep and it will not be resolved with one election defeat come November 2020 - and even that is not guaranteed.
10
Trump is inciting a race war. White supremacists feel emboldened by his tacit support. White evangelicals go to church and hear what a great job Trump is doing, but then leave with hatred in their hearts for brown people and immigrants—hatred that their professed worship of Jesus abhors. We have a choice in 2020: vote for Trump and watch as he and the Republican Party pit citizen against citizen that eventually will result in armed conflict in the streets, or vote for Democrats who want to invest in job-creating alternative energy sources, improve healthcare for the millions of Americans who have none, lower drug costs, renew failing infrastructure, and create fair taxes.
Trump and Republicans are pushing the same old tired refrain, complaining about every social issue they can stir up but doing nothing to actually invest in this country. Trump and Republicans had two years of complete control of all three branches of government, and what did they choose to do? They spent all their time trying to take healthcare away from millions of people who would have none without the ACA and giving a huge tax break to the ultra wealthy that more than doubled the national deficit. That’s it for two whole years. No immigration reform. No infrastructure investment. Nothing for the opioid crisis. No lowering of drug prices (just increases). No better healthcare plan. Republicans showed us in those two years what they will do if re-elected. Nothing that helps average people.
18
Does someone hand out tissues when it (the rally) is all over?
Most of the rally-goers aren't of the attractive type, therefore I surmise there is something else going on that cameras don't catch.
But good news...his base hasn't expanded and I have stopped inviting my trump-loving friends and family over to my casa.
America will be great again...in the meantime...laugh at them.
6
This is one powerful article, with insights we -- white people -- should all take to heart. Those in power rarely know how to challenge their own assumptions, especially those deeper psychological elements that maintain their power over others over time.
Trump's followers blend rage and joy when they respond to his speeches, as Bouie says, because he knows how to reach into their brains and rattle their fears and stimulate their desire to destroy those who challenge their superiority.
I still believe we can't allow ourselves to think we are better human beings than these crowds -- but we have to do better, say better, organize better, and certainly turn out the vote better to defeat this force that is draining America of its humanity.
6
Not so fast - a reasonable reader will conclude that NYT, its opinion-writers of whom this one is one of the worst offenders, and the majority of commentators, relish in incessant, years-long insulting of DT and his supporters, and foster white-heat rage and hatred against him/them. In their crossed-eyes and quirky minds this is absolutely in place, perfectly normal, since that scrum does not deserve any better and some one needs to teach them a rough but badly needed lesson.
Go on with such blindness and intolerance (there is actually no way back now) 4 more years to spew venom are awaiting.
4
@ss
Please stop deflecting, and start taking responsibility for yourself. When I am repeatedly called a libtard and un-American (!) it means nothing, nor does it affect my vote or my politics. I do have intolerance for hate and hypocrisy, am I supposed to muzzle it so that i don't hurt racist's feeling?
8
@ss
Rich, coming from someone calling themselves SS.
I always wonder how the folks at these rallies and in the picture explain their attitude to their co-workers, neighbours some of whom will be immigrants. Do they have the courage to tell them to their faces that they should leave? I wonder.
5
@Jacques
All their neighbours and coworkers—or at least all they ever associate with—are just like them.
We've got to stop deceiving ourselves. America as it exists now is irreparable. The best thing that could happen is for the country to divide and for the more progressive parts of the nation form their own government with a more modern constitution.
11
@617to416
Sowing more dissent is not helpful.
@617to416
New America and Gilead.
Thank you, Mr. Bouie, for a very valuable column. I'm absolutely not a Marxist, but I do agree strongly with Dr. Du Bois' analysis of the corrupt bargain between rich white Southern slaveowners/sharecropper employers and the poor Southern whites, where poor Southern whites anesthetized themselves to their pain with the drug of racism, while the wealthy whites acted as dealers. It's no surprise to see the sorts of things we're seeing now when the present-day Republican Party is so dominated by the ideological, and quite often the genetic, heirs of the Southern white Democrats who switched parties in the 1960s, 70s and on.
8
I do not know what to say after reading Jamelle Bouie's poignant essay. I guess I can start with the words, "I am sorry. I am ashamed." The hate that is part of Trump's DNA knows no limit. But here is the perniciousness and perdition of it all: This fraud, this corrupt so-called president is a reflection of the dark side within too many human beings. This evil genius knows that many are conflicted and that it is their weaknesses as human beings which are the most vulnerable and fragile. Trump has successfully corralled his MAGA supporters and has fed their ravenous appetites with ill-will toward the "other." The power of crowd psychology, indeed. Maybe there are no visible lynchings during this day and age. But there are certainly metaphorical ones. The attempt to destroy the black and brown skinned, the gay, the non-"Christian," is too alive but so unwell.
752
@Kathy Lollock
Yes, Trump needs enemies, and he knows there are folks out there who now seethe "other" as an enemy.
But I would ask you and readers to consider just who these Trump supporters are. In in Central Virginia I live next tp several such people. Some I cannot talk to. But they all share an upbringing that I believe stokes that deep resentment we saw in NC this week. These are folks who have to work crazy shifts, dead end jobs, local government work, landscaping, mechanic, etc.
On top of the future-less feeling is the white superiority of their bosses, immediate and all the way up the ladder. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" rules here. There is no alternative. Education as a way out? Anyone who tries that is open to scorn, even from the teachers. Hopelessness personified.
I did meet some who "trusted" or "had hope" and voted for Obama. But they were disappointed. Henry Gates in the White House for a beer-that went nowhere. I will not go on about Obama. But the most common saying I heard before the 2016 election was "Trump says things I cannot say."
This to me is the clearest evidence that Democratic candidates have failed to unearth and address where that sentiment comes from, as I have tried to do above. If all we do is call each other names, democracy does not have much of a future.
20
@Kathy Lollock I truly appreciate your sentiments. The dark energy that Trump is stoking can only have dire consequences for everyone. For me, it's not that Trump is an "evil genius." I don't think he strategizes much at all (he has his team for that) or really cares what the ramifications of his behavior are, as long as he gets the adulation he so cravenly needs. So he will invoke a cultural civil war simply for some misplaced devotion and headlines. And don't get me started on his followers, who so happily toss aside democratic ideals of freedom (for which many have struggled for decades to realize) for some some good old-fashioned fascist fun.
55
@Dave R. The tragedy is that the people you describe vote for a man and a party that push policies that actually damage them! So the only thing that appeals to them is that Trump is exploiting their weaknesses and their feeling of belonging to whiteness. Democrats need to clearly point out that THEY are the party that supports workers' rights, NOT the Republicans or Trump. The problem is NOT just going to college (and college should be affordable, not a luxury for the few). The problem is that people who do any kind of job should receive decent wages with full benefits. And Republicans are definitely NOT fighting to achieve that goal!
48
In early 2017, I said here and elsewhere that the reason Trump won was because of racism, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia. And the response I uniformly got was that I was wrong - that his voters felt "left behind" and that we should "reach out" to them.
Fast forward nearly three years later. I still believe that hatred is what drives Trump's voters. And now, fewer people are disagreeing with me. Trump voters don't have a "beautiful" health care plan. They didn't get their jobs back. And they don't care. Instead, most of them are just one hospital visit from bankruptcy, and higher education is increasingly out of their reach.
But they don't care. Because what Trump voters really want is to hate, and to be able to take out their hatred on the rest of us. And their president has told them that it is just fine for them to do so.
But understand this. Shoving Hispanic infants and children into camps is only the beginning. Trump voters will soon grow dissatisfied with just this one act of cruelty. They will want Trump to begin targeting the rest of us -- you know, folks like us who aren't white, who aren't Christian, who aren't straight?
Trump will come for us too, because he is desperate to stay in power and out of prison. And he knows that the more people he targets, the happier his base will be. He needs to keep feeding the beast, and Hispanic children won't be enough to satisfy their viciousness.
For the rest of us, it is no longer a question of "if", but of "when".
807
@Noah Drummer
Yep, you're right.
61
@Noah Drummer
"... he knows that the more people he targets, the happier his base will be. "
I think you are right. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
49
@Noah Drummer
Trump's base is certainly composes of racists, bigots, and xenophobes.
But there aren't quite enough of those to have won him the election. That happened because some people who voted for Obama in critical states shifted to Trump because he was running to the LEFT of Hillary Clinton on certain working class economic concerns, such as trade--at least in his campaign rhetoric, which, if they are honest, they now realize was merely a grifter's lie.
It also happened because a lot of African American male voters in crucial Midwest and Florida urban areas didn't come out to vote for Hillary as they did for Barack, and a lot of younger people didn't either, or voted third party.
The "Deplorables" are voting for Trump and those like him no matter what. But some others who voted for Trump might be able to be peeled off, and others who DIDN'T vote at all should be persuadable votes against him, especially now.
66
Many commenters here and elsewhere state that it is the pointing out of the actions of Trump supporters, and "calling them names" i.e. deplorables, that will ensure re-election for Trump, in fact it is the very reason he won. This is a fallacy that I am tired of hearing. It could just as easily be said that these people look down on liberals. That they in their heart believe that they are the only real Americans. And yet I have yet to hear any pundit beg them to tone it down, to moderate, so that they can get people to vote their way. Are they angry? Yes, at the wrong people. Am I, a progressive angry? Yes furious. Furious that we live under a system that minority rules. That low populated states have essentially more power than large ones. I won't apologize for being progressive, I am proud of it. I will not hesitate to call a spade a spade either.
25
@LFK: You're right, there is a lot of contempt for this sector of Trump supporters, frequently expressed by more "civilized" Trump supporters. It's as if they recognize that we are intelligent and thoughtful, and can be expected to exercise some kind of self control, while the rally screamers (and many other less wealthy conservatives) are seen as somehow childlike, or even deranged: we are advised not to say anything to upset them, because it is assumed that they will react on the most primitive level. We, of course, are expected to tolerate the worst kinds of insults. We are told to take Trump "seriously but not literally", or whatever it is, and of course we aren't supposed to pay any attention to Fox news or talk radio, or heaven forbid to his followers themselves. It's like hearing someone explain how we are supposed to put up with their spoiled three-year old.
8
By some estimates, in as few as 20 years Whites will be the minority in the U.S. The tables will be turned. It will be immigrants and their descendants who are in positions of power and influence. There will be more politicians like A.O.C. and Omar in not only state governments, but in Congress and even eventually the White House. A rude awakening could be coming for those who think their White privilege is God-given. What goes around, comes around.
6
The current political arena is more akin to professional wrestling than actual governance and should not be taken too, too seriously by onlookers and fans alike. Trump, the Squad, Graham, Pelosi, McConnell and other cartoonish modern day politicians seem only too willing to assume alternating roles as wrestling heroes and heels to wrestle the spotlight of public attention from one another. It’s spectacle wrapped in tragedy. And it’s breathlessly presented to us 24/7 as news and entertainment. Thank goodness for checks and balances and the fourth estate.
1
When Bouie says that those at Trump rallies are not a lynch mob, he leaves out "Not yet". Their obvious joy is the joy of those who have been told that they no longer have to act like they are doing the hard work of overcoming their worst impulses, of living up to the ideals of our founding documents, of acting like true Christians. Trump tells them they can be as bad as they want, and that they are good and patriotic to do so.
The result is straight out of Golding's "Lord of the Flies". Unlike the book, however, no outsiders are coming to stop them at the last minute.
13
Well done! Terrific essay connecting current events to long-term historical trends. I live practically in the shadow of the W.E.B Du Bois library at UMass, and it's wonderful to see the great man's work so cogently applied.
8
We have been witness to the horrifying spectacle of Trump rallies. When will the dissemination of those sounds and images cross the threshold in the national consciousness to unify Americans against irrational hatred.
7
It really is up to decent people everywhere to do everything in their power to stop the Trump juggernaut that is rapidly degrading this nation in every way.
The scary thing is, though, that this would depend on moderate Republicans having the backbone to say, "Enough!!" All indications are, though, that they've decided that jumping on the Trump bandwagon is a better option.
History will consider this a very, very dark time in America whether the republic survives it or not.
7
This is what the psychologists call projection. If you want to see hate on full display just read the comment sections after an article criticizing Trump right here in the NYT. It's all hate all the time. It's the liberals who have a problem with unconstrained, righteous hate at the wholesale level.
2
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus
Ever notice how Trump supporters who moan about liberals’ supposed hatred in the comment sections never, ever acknowledge the body count caused by the right, including the dozen innocents massacred in two synagogues just in the last year, by gunmen quoting the president’s rhetoric verbatim?
1
I wonder if the author knows that W.E.B. Du Bois believed in and supported the American Eugenics movement? You know, racial purity and all that.
1
"We shouldn’t conflate the past with the present, but we should also be aware of ideas and experiences that persist through time."
The consistent, universal thread that persists through time is the irredeemable nature of 'humanity.' It is inhuman. Simply different actors in different times and places but the same inhuman pulse to torture and kill one another.
The Paris crowd had the best and worst of the community gathered as one to celebrate the immolation of a person.
They shared the same rotten core of 'humanity.'
If the supposedly educated among them could provide example of support, why surprised if the poor and illiterate joined hands and hearts?
'Humanity' is the problem. Why bring a child into this cauldron? It is immoral.
The sooner global warming mercifully destroys this species it will the moment for the cosmos to celebrate.
1
Trump foments hatred and surfs to power on the wave he’s created. It has nothing to do with his policies—his policies don’t favor these supporters. It’s the most recent and perfect example of the phenomenon described in the song Bob Dylan wrote when Medgar Evers was assassinated, “Only a Pawn in Their Game.”
3
The question is why these people/this class of white people gets to revel in this style of mass hatred/mass blame of the other yet never gets a taste/a vision of a life that might bring them closer to a sense of personal advancement that includes others and even the planet. How can a politician say those others are responsible for your problems and be so easily believed when it might be obvious that this very politician is responsible for those problems?
5
Its ironic the way they fling the term “snowflake” around, when they are the ones assembling gun collections to protect themselves from destitute refugees, people of color, intellectuals, facts, and much much more.
I propose the media observe Trumpless Tuesdays. Just one day a week where I don’t have to change the channel when a video of him is playing. No airing of tweets. Remove his oxygen for one day. I understand the media benefits financially from the constant outrage, even though it’s deserved. I also know that they are like moths drawn to a flame, but I am exhausted by the constant chaos and toxicity and have begun to tune out. I turn off the news, especially when I hear his voice; I briefly scan the articles, checking the comments to see what others are saying. It’s actually been more pleasant to do yard work in this July heatwave.
7
What had been overlooked by press is the physical assaults on protesters at Trump rallies. There was a brief glimpse of white attendees hitting black protesters while they were escorted out of the NC rally. Protesters were led out by security who allowed the anti -Trump people to be physically assaulted. And press ignores this level of violence. MSNBC reporter Katy Tur describes the violent behavior evidenced at Trump rallies in her book about the 2016 election. Why this story continues to be ignored is baffling. Another example of institutional racism in the press.
8
Communal cruelty existed in Canada as well. Our 633 First Nations communities were devastated by policies such as our placing them on “reserves,”, removing forcibly if needed, their children from home to residential schools, to “ take the Indian out of the Indian”, as one of our 19 th century politicians said. Those travesties happened. What is also happening now is a slow, painful, process of public acknowledgement by the rest of us of the wrongs of history, and tectonic but visible shifts of reconciliation. It is public policy.
This article and references to lynchings, to Dubois, to communal racism, may hasten the day of examination and revulsion for elements of your history. Perhaps an unexpected consequence of your President’s unleashing of the anger in his white supporters will lead to an examination of the roots of this anger, and perhaps reconciliation.
2
Ilhan Omar has a right to express her thoughts, and to push her programs, as vehemently as she wishes, as one of hundreds of Congressional representatives. She has the right to use her election as a megaphone. She has, however, no right to be free from criticism for exploiting her sex, or the color of her skin , to suppress the views of others. She has no right to be free from criticism for her overt collectivist political posture, and for her antisemitic utterances, in concert with three others so inclined.
Those who disagree with her are granted that right, to be expressed with the same vehemence with which she expresses her views, like it or not.
This, you see, is what America is all about. It does appear that she is unhappy with that difficult reality. She and her advocates have a chance to manifest their positions at the ballot box or voting machine, and legally to cause change consistent with views of the American people as a whole.
This is what her parents decided for her when they chose America for a place of refuge, which refuge was granted to them.
She, so long as she chooses to remain an American citizen, Is not free to deny that right to others, or to attempt radically and extrajudicially to alter the nature of American democracy for others. This is what happened repeatedly, and is still happening, in, for only one example, Somalia, a tragic example of a failed state.
7
@Arthur Taub MD PhD
"She has, however, no right to be free from criticism for exploiting her sex, or the color of her skin , to suppress the views of others."
Give an example of how Omar has suppressed the views of others. Oh, wait, you can't because she hasn't done that.
1
@Arthur Taub MD PhD: US politics is a paralytic psychopathology of perpetual antagonism for fundraising. Nobody bawls about criticism louder than Donald J. Trump.
1
The vilify people of color for the same reason they oppose public healthcare and other common goods: they are sadists. They could have nominated someone like Mike Pence as President - with all the same policies as Trump without the offense factor. But that was icing on the cake for them. Trump's offensiveness is a feature, not a bug, as far as they are concerned.
19
Indeed, had they nominated any of the other candidates, they would have had even more success with their policies, because those people actually know what they're doing. Racism was the point.
2
As a naturalized citizen who has been in the US for decades and created many high-paying jobs, I empathize with the white Trump majority lamenting its relative decline. Most PhD students are non-white, and in the brainpower industries of the future they will lead the way, globally.
My empathy is running low. If the white Trump majority feels it is entitled to the future without doing the hard work that goes along with it, and without deferring gratification and investing in education, then it deserves to decline.
The US is not Europe. It reinvents itself by design, and if my ilk inherit it because they deserve to, then so be it!
22
@Baddy Khan
I think a higher education is simply out of reach for so many in the US because of the very high cost. As you indicate, it is to the detriment of the US to continue this way when other countries are investing heavily in the education of their citizens.
There isn't much hope for meaningful communication when the same words mean different things to different people. The US doesn't even agree that the public sector of a mixed economy is inherently socialism: taxing the public to pay for projects and services of public benefit.
10
When will they Learn? Everyday the news media, both in print and on TV reports stories like this giving these "Haters" publicity , recognition and a voice to perpetuate Trump and his agenda. The definition of Madness is repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different outcome. It is past time for the news media to come together and decide collectively to not report this MADNESS.
6
@Mongo817: US media sells eyeballs to advertisers. This is why what bleeds always leads. Trump dominates the news with sheer gall.
@Mongo817: Another useful definition of madness is living in a house full of people screaming and throwing furniture, and pretending nothing is happening. What a beautiful day, would you like a cup of tea?
@Mongo817
But it’s happening. Would you just close your eyes so you cannot see reality?
1
We are living in a frightening time. My heart is so broken. Please not another 4 years.
15
I think that the last paragraph summed it all up. "He gets us, he has a backbone, he says what we're thinking". Wow!!! There are times that I get some of the people in my circle to actually read an article that outlines how Trump lies, and makes up stories, etc. It never takes, the words they read don't register. How did this hatred become so ingrained? And, I grew up with some of these people. Thanks for the article, as usual it's read by the choir.
20
many of us, including this old-time (think fdr not aoc) progressive democrat heard the "fun" trump's troops were having, but not a trace of anger or hate, certainly nothing approaching the hatred for america, israel and anyone who disagrees with their hijacked splinter of the party that some of the "squad" have proclaimed.
for rancor, try the shouting of the antifa lot or the free speech opponents at your local institute of higher education (to use a phrase now gone past the irony of quotation marks)...
if we (the party) don't lay off the whine, we'll have four more years of trump and a bigger hangover ...
what trump did in a long free-flowing speech was hold a rally, he rallied his base...who have we got who could command the same size full house, much less keep it rapt...we traded (and permanently damaged) a likely voice for a bland candidate whose fatal stroke was a self-inflicted hateful remark condemning half the country to damnation, unless "irredeemable" has some other meaning, missed here, and whose legacy was the party she factionalized.
wake up mr bouille, our problem ain't trump...when he's gone the erosion of political acuity and critical sensibility that has denatured the party and the press will still be with us, like key scratches on your new car.
6
@ecco
Great post. I share your feelings. You do not have to be a Trump fan to find the new Democrats utterly repellent. They dig the hole deeper everyday.
Compelled by current events, I've struggled to distinguish authoritarianism and fascism. Others have as well, and it is fair to say that the distinction is elusive.
Nevertheless, I suggest that there is a fundamental difference. Authoritarianism refers to the unilateral power of the state over individuals, while fascism aims to replace individual grounding by circumstance by that of state. It is the state, not individual circumstance, that presents itself as the source of personal identity and a power to transcend circumstance.
I'm old enough to remember World War II. Crowds joyfully saluted Hitler despite the personal misery brought by the Depression and the deprivations of war. Hitler offered a psychic transcendence of the facts of life that conveyed relief and joy.
I initially saw Trump as authoritarian rather than fascist, but in time have changed by mind: he is both. How else explain his support that is at once enthusiastic (in the literal sense of the word) and irrational? Trump does not bring real relief from life's difficulties, and he even promotes policies contrary to most people's real interests.
15
The last line sums it up perfectly.
"and what he says is what the rest of us are thinking."
For years many people (white) kept silent on their real feelings for African Americans (and likewise other people of color).
Although the problem of racism has always existed, white folks became complacent because it was not as publically displayed as it is now. We all knew about specific incidents but we considered it as the exception.
Now we know the whole extent of the problem as it is out in the open and people are actively showing the hate they have always felt.
Now we all know there are people (and a lot of people) that are angry and hateful people. And among them is the person that occupies the white house.
Truly sad, but now we can really see it and how prevalent it is.
Sad day for America.
12
I only hope that the resurgence of overt racism is like a boil bursting open, spewing pus. Ugly and apparently getting worse, but actually by coming to the surface it is a stage in the body dealing with an infection that was previously hidden, and a turning point in getting rid of the poison.
George Wallace and David Duke on steroids, funded by the billionaire ($1,000,000,000) donors among the 1%, enjoying their tax cut.
8
@Samm
There are more 1%ers supporting the Democrats than the Republicans.
Did these people never learn right from wrong?
Doing the right thing has nothing to do with politics.
Doing the wrong thing has everything to do with what people are taught by their families.
Nobody is born racist. Nobody is born full of hate.
Is this something preached to them in their respective house of worship? Isn’t that the sort of place that teaches love and the dangers of falling into hate.
Didn’t they even see Star Wars and learn about the Dark Side?
Their obvious pleasure in participating in a group chant of a hateful expression, one of the basest, was sickening. Look at photos from the 1930s in Germany and you’ll see some striking similarities. I don’t agree with everything The Squad supports, but they’re elected officials and have the right to promote it. Today, it’s four people. Maybe it will be more in the future.
Is this the direction we’re headed toward? What will it take to stop it? The hate was always there, but trump has made it ok to express it and to be proud of it. This group is a lot bigger than four people - it’s millions. We’re all in big trouble.
4
A movie made in 1960 with Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow, Fredric March as William Jennings Bryan is a depiction of the Scopes "Monkey" trial, the real life courtroom debate of the teaching of evolution in schools. The movie recreates the communal, white anger/joy that Jamelle Bouie witnessed at Trump rallies. I also would recommend books by H.L. Mencken the 20's, 30's columnist of the old Baltimore Sun newspaper who details the same crowd phenomenon.
3
It is simply exhausting.
This fills me with shame.
Can these be our people?
11
Until this President, the general idea of treating all people with dignity and respect was growing and evolving, slowly to be sure, but steadily onward and upwards towards the highest ideals. We are meant to become great, grow out from the cave and step into the heavens. This is our fate. I know this short run of backwardness will turn around soon, very soon.
4
Look at the faces in the crowd. They are all the same, white with a look a desparation on their faces. Trump's base is a homogeneous group that all lack a real purpose in their lives. Trump gives them the purpose they need which is to hate those that don't look like them. The divisiveness and hate in this country today are a direct result of the lack of moral and value based leadership. We keep looking to Trump to help us out of this, which is ridiculous when he is the very one that got us here.
7
I recently watched a clip of Wallace’s rally from 1968. It was horrifically similar to Trumps. He won 5 southern states that year! 5!
Now in 2019 I believe he would win more. I know Trump supporters and don’t know how they could admit it and not be ashamed.
7
They could just as well be chanting "I 'm not going to change ! I don't want to change! I hate change !"
4
I have a bi-racial granddaughter.
My husband and I invited her father and stepmother with their daughter to spend time with us at our log cabin in Kent, Connecticut.
Our neighbor (trump fan) pulled my husband aside and asked him “how can you have them in your home- why don’t you just tell your wife no?”
Unbelievable. Refuse to have anything to do with them now.
1473
@Mary Susan Williams
I have learned that in the Southern Culture the apt phrase for the community that Trump goads into a frenzied fever in such a visceral context is
"Bless their hearts ..." You could help the neighbor learn, it is one small step but a giant leap for mankind, consider giving it a try.
34
@Mary Susan Williams
They are the "basket of deplorables" that Hillary Clinton identified for which she was vilified. Now every one is calling them that and it is accepted as an apt description of the Trump voters
160
@Mary Susan Williams I am sure that the back roads of Ken, CT are described as "idylicc", oasis of calm and well preserved homesteads" however what is also well preserved among that peaceful landscape and is not so calm is hostility toward "others"
35
There are communities in America today who would still burn people alive if there were not an explicit social taboo against it. Four more years of Donald Trump and who knows what will become socially acceptable.
82
I wept reading this. I come from a white working class family of people who glibly spoke of Black Americans in the worst possible terms. I remember my mother softening the blow of racism in my family because she would not join in. When I married a Black man, my mother, said I love who you love. Others rejected me. I see my white family in those rallies. I reject them. They are lost to reason. White people who are allies to black and brown people must accept they will never experience their lives. We cannot appropriate them, we cannot live them, we cannot know them. We need to listen, feel uncomfortable in our privilege, and never join in any way to racism. But first we need to recognize when we are joining in before we can fight alongside them.
1078
@NBN Smith Profound and beautiful words. Thank you.
128
@NBN Smith - But we can socialize with them, be friends and good neighbors with them: that way you CAN learn to know them.
It is not so hard. Among my 12-yr old son's best friends there is a child who came to the West as a refugee from Ethiopia, as well as a child of Asian origin. He's also recently made friends with two children originally from Nigeria - a boy and his sister. My son is really color-blind. If only all the "adults" were like that.
117
Well-intentioned words, Andy, but there is a difference between children and adults in this respect, and your own comment reflects this. I have on more than one occasion, been in city parks in Paris, in Berlin, in Marseille and elsewhere and watched children in school outings...walking along, two-by-two, holdings hands, skipping along, singing, laughing together. And those clasped hands, as much as the clothes they are wearing, are multi-coloured. Young kids are innocently and naturally HUMAN. The prejudices, the notions of "the other", the hatred...these come later, and we know where they come from.
Yes, by all means, use any avenue that presents itself to open a dialogue with those who fear "the other", but asking us to "socialize with them, and be friends..." is a big ask.
55
Such hatred and joy in the demeaning and death of “others” is against all the moral and religious teachings of our history. It results from ignorance, insecurity and fear but these excuses do not justify such actions. No one is better off because of these spectacles except Trump and the other racists who improve their status among the hating community. I was brought up by those who distrusted everyone different, but learned at school age that everyone had good and bad aspects irrespective of their differences or similarities to me. My kids grew up accepting everyone. There is hope in that. the people who elected Rep. Omar and all of the ‘Squad” show us there are plenty of Americans who see the best in everyone and accept that it is truly American to ask the United States to live up to its promise.
22
I am a white woman who was born in North Carolina and lived there until age 16, when I left for college.
Here's what I know about most white Southerners: they are exceptionally good at hating. They are trained to it at an early age, embrace it eagerly, and practice it often.
The further into the South you go, the more endemic this love affair with hatred. It is strongest when paired with racism and xenophobia.
However, many white Southerners will hate their family members, their friends or their white neighbours for real or perceived misdeeds with an amazing fervor. They will cosset their anger about comment made at a Christmas dinner 25 years ago, keeping it alive and hot. These kind of people wouldn't just walk past a wounded dark-skinned person lying in ditch, they would kick dirt over that person.
And to any readers wishing to set me straight about the spirit of love and kindness they believe prevails among good hearted white Southerners - yes, I knew and know those people. They work for racial justice, gender justice and economic justice. But they are vastly outnumbered by the haters.
346
@Donna s I dare say the people you describe are not just Southerners. We have them right here in NYC too.
23
@Donna s Yikes! Thank you for speaking plainly. This is so disheartening, but we need to face the truth.
22
@Donna s
Intellectually, I get it. The hate has deep, deep roots and is stirred regularly to keep it at a simmer.
But emotionally, I can't fathom it. Hate is not a comfortable emotional state. It does nasty things to your own body. Why would anyone willingly live that way? Do they know nothing else? Nothing good grows in a garden sown with bile.
26
"The Joy of Hatred"
Ilhan Omar hates the United States, who saved her, with every fiber of her body.
Trump pointed that out. There is nothing racist about it. Many white women, in social sciences academia, hate the US just as much. I remember them popping up after 9/11, arguing that that unprovoked attack was the US' fault. For not being accomodating and inclusive.
Trump targets them as well at his rallies, as the "academic elites."
It is refreshing to have finally a politician who is honest, rather than politically correct. It also comes from the fact that he is self financed, not at the whim of donors.
Let us hope that Trump continues to be brutally honest. A majority of voters appreciates it.
PS By the way of honesty, how many women in the street have you seen in images of Somalia? Would these woke women want that kind of confinement here, to be "accomodating and inclusive?"
I organized a math physics conference in Istanbul a while ago, and my wife pointed out that there were no women to be seen...
7
@novoad
"Let us hope that Trump continues to be brutally honest. A majority of voters appreciates it."
How can some one who lies continuously be considered honest? How can some one who got two million fewer votes than his opponent be appreciated by a majority? And finally, how can you be reading NYT and be so detached from reality?
27
@novoad
Yes, he pointed out that a lot of ignoramuses believe Ilhan Omar “hates her country” even though Trump has said far worse about the United States and they don’t mind at all. That’s why Trump support is described, accurately, as a cult.
Really sad that Trump supporters can’t hold two competing ideas at the same time: that they disagree with Omar, but she still loves being an American (so much so she dedicated her life to serving her district). Even sadder that Trump supporters can’t accept that a “majority of voters” rejected this unfit fool when he lost the popular vote election but got the job as a participation trophy and has never managed to gain majority approval, nor climb above majority approval since he pratfalled into office.
I am astounded that a person who goes to conferences about math and physics believes that Trump is self-financed. Are you a parody account and I’m just missing the joke?
I was watching on TV when the chant broke out and was immediately horrified. The mob mentality you describe immediately came to mind. How far would this mob go if they had the chance? I would hope not very far, but it was scary enough to make me wonder.
Looking at the photo I'm reminded of an NFL crowd where everyone is dressed in the colors of their team, ready to cheer for their players, and to boo the opposition. This has been a release of Americans for decades and is harmless and even fun when relegated to the meaningless world of sports. But now many of these folks are taking the same fanatical approach to something much more serious and much more dangerous.
The team they're cheering for is the white team. For years, the overwhelming decency of the country has forced them to suppress this prejudice, but now Trump allows them to show what team they really support. When they say "he tells it like it is" this is exactly what they mean. Are there Trump supporters who merely want their millionaire tax cuts and less regulations for their businesses? Sure. But many of them are simply cheering on the white team.
I'd like to think Trump represents the last gasp of the old racially unhinged white majority of yesteryear, which due to several unbelievable factors in 2016 effectively won the lottery and one last chance to govern. I'd also like to think that the majority of Americans are so appalled at this that they will overwhelmingly slam the breaks on it in 2020.
14
The photo accompanying this article looks much like many of the people I interact with in Montana on a regular basis. Very disheartening.
But there is some good news from my state.
When our senator, Steve Daines, tweeted out his support of Donald Trump, saying he spoke for his fellow Montanans, many in our state -- including including religious leaders and even our republican-leaning newspapers -- pushed back.
Turns out that rabid Trump supporters like Daines don't speak for my state when it comes to this overt racism. So there is a glimmer of light shining at the end of this red state's tunnel. 2020.
477
@avrds Good to hear, and I seem to recall that Montana has a record of electing Democrats statewide, despite its tendency to support the GOP candidate in presidential elections.
24
@Peter: This suggests to me that Daines is vulnerable when even the newspapers come out against him tweeting in support of racism.
Now if we could only convince the national Democrats to invest a little money our way. I miss Dean's 50 state strategy, which we desperately need to resurrect.
And if Steve Bullock, our Democratic governor, could get his presidential ambitions out of the way and run for Daines's seat, we could actually flip it. He's very popular in the state.
So there is a glimmer of hope -- even out here in Trump country!
63
@avrds Good to hear. As a transplanted Montanan, I often despair at the overt racism I hear from folks back home, and I can only hope they will eventually see the light.
13
"Win the argument, lose the sale." In every endeavor, I have embarked upon I have encountered three groups of people, those that agree with you, those that will never agree with you, and those who have not made up their minds. It is futile to waste time and energy on those in the second group mentioned above. We gain nothing by criticizing Individual-1 and his supporters. All efforts should be concentrated on the undecided. If the leadership of the DNC was worth its salt there would be a nationwide effort to register Democratic voters.
7
The behavior at Trump rallies (as well as the 2016 Republican primary "debates") show how far civility and polite behavior has fallen in America. What is worse is they feel enabled by the president to do it in public. When my biracial grand daughter is told to go back where she came from, that pretty much ended the conversation or any respect I have for Trump supporters. All I feel towards them is pity to have that much hate in their lives.
16
I am a white, 60 year old conservative democrat. I have never been to a political rally in my life, I have never voted Republican, and I would never be seen in the company of those individuals pictured in the photo accompanying this article.
However, increasingly I understand their passions. The democrats have put Mr. Trump on a skewer, and not once since his 2016 election victory have said or done anything that would acknowledge the legitimacy of his presidency.
The author has a lot of nerve to juxtapose a photo showing a lynching in 1893. This is the sort of propagandistic nonsense that infuriates me, whether it comes from left or right.
Mr. Bouie, you will be partly responsible for Mr. Trump's re-election in 2020. I hope you can live with yourself.
9
I am a white 60 year old progressive Democrat and would vote for a Republican if they were the best candidate all things considered. I cannot imagine that being possible any time soon. I do not think the comparison is so far fetched as there have been several incidents of violence at Trump events. To incite the worst behaviors of people is seriously dangerous and should be condemned. The article points out that righteous violence is pleasurable, it is the principle cheap thrill in so many of our violent movies. It is a flaw in human nature that should be recognized and guarded against. We have a president that cares nothing for our community and is exploiting this flaw for his gain with no regard to the consequences for our community. We ignore this at our peril.
@Frank J Haydn
6
@Frank J Haydn Frank you should go to a rally and you will not believe the negative energy in the dome. The people that sit right behind the Trump are paid to sit there and cheer! Seeing and hearing really is believing!
5
@Frank J Haydn
This is an emotion filled fact less argument. If you can’t see the similarities that does not mean they are not there. And guess who will be responsible if Trump is re-elected? The hateful people who vote for him.
The author is right, the chants are only the beginning of something that can get much more violent. The Trump administration is gnawing at the fundations of the state and the rule of law, and if Trump gets a second term there won't be enough left to protect people's rights.
8
The juxtaposition of President Kennedy's inspiring and uplifting words from the Apollo era and Trump's verbal road apples is depressing. How have we allowed our country to sink to this level?
8
It wasn't the crowd's joy for Trump's presence at the rally that stood out most glaringly for me.
Ir was the extent to which the crowd was reveling in its own ignorance.
These were people who didn't want to know or hear about the problems and possibilities of America and came to the rally to celebrate that fact.
It's difficult to imagine a serious political leader taking any real personal satisfaction in the support of yahoos like these, but Donald Trump has never been confused with a serious political leader.
18
The biggest problem in this country is the extreme involvement of government in our lives. Freedom isn’t supposed to be safe. The same freedom that allows Jeff Bezos to be the world’s wealthiest also creates 50,000 homeless in LA. The underlying issue is that liberals do not have the stomach for the survival-of-the-fittest nature that causes capitalism to endure. I haven’t had health coverage since my Army discharge nearly 40 years ago. That’s entirely a result of mine and my ancestors actions. Not my employer. Certainly not the taxpayer. I lost everything I owned in Sandy and had to live out of my car for three months. Liberals will tell you that I should be on the public dole and be comforted by the safety of a cradle to grave nanny state. No thanks. I’ll take my responsibilities and accept any failure or success as my own.
1
I look at these people and their anger and know they don't represent me. Trump doesn't represent me. All of that anger in people is something I can't relate to although having living in a southern state in the past I have seen it up close. They'll hate you based on any differences they see. It can be race, religion or a regional accent. It's just plain hateful.
22
@Lorraine
What about the anger expressed in this op-ed, showing a lynching and implying that the rally in the top photo was the same sort of event? Does that represent you? Is that not just plain hateful?
@Frank J Haydn
Not the same sort of "event;" just the same sort of people. Listen to them!
3
I am ashamed and dismayed that this display is part of my America. It takes me back to my Louisiana in the 20s and 30s.
17
It is time to stop the Congressional hearings, and to stop passing resolutions. It is time for our leaders - whomever they may be - to step in and step up. We need our own rallies, where we are whipped into the same frenzy as Trump supporters. Why do we content ourselves with toothless pronouncements from useless politicians? They don't seem to realize just how deep a hole we are in. We need to show our strength, as Trump supporters show theirs. We need to scare them the way they are scaring us. Will it be divisive? Of course. But how much more divided can this nation become without exploding into a full scale civil war?
9
@thebigmancat
Sounds great. Unfortunately, with the small state bias written into our Constitution and gerrymandering supported by the Supreme Court, the conservatives who you deplore have a huge structural advantage, to the degree that the liberals need well over 55% of the overall vote to have any kind of real political power.
3
I’ll pass on “the same frenzy,” thank you very much. Also on the civil war jazz.
Also on becoming what I oppose.
Thank you for this superb piece. It reminds us not only of white atrocities of the past, but also allows us to see the stinking abyss towards which the joyful Trump and his fellow Republicans are shepherding us.
Onward Christian soldiers!
15
"If you don't like it, leave" is a classic bully move. Guess you could call it, along with "You brought this on yourself," bully compassion. It doesn't take a "stable genius" to see the flaw (or cruelty) in this logic. But as long as the bullies are in power and under no threat to be viewed as an "other," they can carry on with it and, as we have observed, celebrate their culture of hate undeterred.
6
The ideation of “love it or leave it” is arguably ignorant but “you brought this on yourself” places responsibility where it wholly belongs - on the individual. I was the first in my family to graduate high school. From as early as 1790 through the end of WWII, my ancestors were small scale farmers and coal miners. I can’t expect the same education or opportunities as someone who comes from a long line of successful college educated men and women. My parents couldn’t afford college so I don’t belong there. No one else, especially those who’ve been hugely successful, should have to fund my education or housing costs or healthcare or retirement.
1
@From Where I Sit: You should read the Declaration of Independence, especially the part about how “all men are created equal.” All children deserve an equal start in life, beginning with good pre-natal care for the mother, continuing with nutritious food, good education, and a wholesome environment.
3
@Barbara
Equal in the eyes of the law as it pertains to government and its citizens. We are not all equal in intelligence, motivation, aptitude, pedigree, education, luck, skill or ambition. If someone wishes to voluntarily donate to charities supporting the things you cited, that is their absolute property right. But to confiscate it and distribute it as politicians and bureaucrats see fit is wrong.
2
How does a woman support Mr. Trump? Given what we know about Mr. Trump's view of women, what exactly do women who support him see in him? He is racist, sexist, narcissistic, a liar, an embarrassment to America, and a stain on the high office of President. You would have to be full of hatred and fear of the Other to support Mr. Trump, or ignorant, or both.
14
Racism has its roots in fear. Fear of the "other". Fear of people who do not look like you. I say, get over it. This is not just a country for white people. Our country is great because of its diversity.
The Trumpers are hopefully on the losing side. Hopefully most Americans are welcoming, not fearful.
4
Trump's contribution to public life was to convert political rallies to a Roman circus. He kept pushing the barriers of decency and the barriers kept toppling. With the exception of his core constituency, he insulted everyone. To everyone's surprise (including his, I suspect) his supporters stood rock solid behind him.
It was appalling to see the chants of "lock her up" from 2016 onwards. Who knew such rabid hate mongering could happen in 21st century America, the bastion of liberal democracy? The democrats and the media were weak and helpless in the face of the onslaught from Trump and his supporters in Fox and conservative radio. At least they fought. The republican party leaders, to their eternal disgrace, lined up behind Trump and defended him.
The pushback to the right wing blitzkrieg has finally gained traction with "send her back". This is such an incredibly offensive slogan for African Americans, Jews, Latinos and immigrants of all hues.
Trump has a toxic talent for inciting frightening, hateful behaviour from normal people. The 2020 election is not just about rejecting Trump, it is about rejecting the poison that he and his friends from Fox have injected into public life.
12
“He’s not afraid to say what he’s thinking “. That explains much of what motivates Trump and his disgusting followers. To them, as long as a person says what he/she thinks it’s to be admired. No matter that what they think and say is wrong, hurtful , hateful and just plain immoral, it’s ok because they’re speaking their minds.
It’s almost as though they believe that by mouthing their bile, it makes it the truth. Ignorant and loathsome , the whole lot of them.
14
Trump supporters make me ashamed of my white skin.
I hate that I will be able to "pass" in their world if it gets really ugly, and I fear it is going to.
Now Trump is saying Americans will not be allowed to criticize him or anything about America.
Republicans remain silent.
Vote Democratic on 2020.
Every seat, every office.
It may be our last chance.
14
trump has indeed tapped into the darker side of human nature. He is a hero to his "base" and no matter how antithetical to their interests his policies are, it doesn't matter. I pray that this madness will end.
8
The chemistry between Trump and his supporters has never been described better than the synopsis in the last two paragraphs of this piece.
Nailed it. Bullseye.
5
It's incomprehensible how people fall for the same divide-and-conquer strategy over and over. In return for a false sense of superiority and a few crumbs of privilege, they deny themselves the opportunity to work with other disadvantaged people and improve the world. What can we call this except ingrained, pernicious, small-minded, and willful ignorance?
5
"“He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”"
And that is the problem.
Trump's weak minded acolytes enable this carnival.
6
“He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
Now that Trump and his core supporters have cleared up any remaining possible confusion, it is time we added a couple of new definitions to the political lexicon.
ECONOMIC ANXIETY:
1. Republican all-purpose excuse for racism, nativism, and misogyny.
2. Term used by weak-kneed pundits and GOP propagandists to explain support for a racist, xenophobic president.
POPULIST
1. GOP preferred term for White Nationalist.
SOCIALIST
1. Anyone who believes in an inclusive democracy, disagrees with Trump, or looks, prays, or loves differently than the GOP leadership
Another horrific week in a horrific presidency. But at least the responsible wing of the media can now fully dispense with the fiction that Trump is selling, and his supporters are buying, anything other than hate. It's official, right? No more excuses?
13
@LT
Exactly.
As I wrote over a decade ago about the exclusiveness of “Empire-thinking” and the inclusiveness of love over hate:
“Fighter pilots have a saying that, "speed is life". But, for all the rest of us, "inclusiveness is life" --- and tribalism is death by the oldest lie of empire.
Racism is another deadly old lie of empire, as is aggressively fundamentalist religion.
Nationalism is a somewhat newer lie of empire, proving particularly deadly in the 20th century.
While, economic ideology is the newest, and current, lie of empire (which is causing our economic and environmental collapse).
But all the lies and deceptions of "empire-thinking" lead ineluctably to the very same grave --- so choose your empire poison, stupidly. Or choose your inclusiveness, wisely.”
Liberty, democracy, equality, and justice
Over
Violent (and disguised Vichy)
Empire,
Alan MacDonald
1
Rene Girard and his profound theory of human mimic behavior, and the unifying tribal need for scapegoats, is exemplified perfectly in the Trump movement.
4
@Jan-Peter Schuring
And then add a touch of the failure to get satisfactorily through Maslow's Esteem level and be stuck for life without ever being anybody at all to anyone who is anybody. The only thing left is to convince yourself that there's someone lower.
1
Indeed, Trump is a poor rich man-child, deeply insecure and immature (never had a chance to grow up, always self-centered) and trying to mask his cowardice by bullying 'the other' (read, non-white), the defenseless, the 'victim' daring to challenge his resentful, racist, behavior. Too bad we have so many in his 'base' that are impressed by Trump's purely emotional drive (as there is no intellectual rational content) in drawing their basest instincts in finding culprits for their own flaws and subconscious bias. However ignorant Trump is, he is an expert in demagoguery. And it shows. Given the sad history of low turn out in the voting booth, this treacherous Ugly American in-chief may be re-elected via the deeply anti-democratic Electoral College. And if so, we would fully deserve him and his spiderweb of intrigue. And, no doubt, despicable McConnell would applaud. One question still itches for an answer: Why would women support, some with passion, a misogynous swine?
8
Trump is vile and so are the cultists who so gleefully follow him. I would include in that bunch the complicit cowards that comprise the vast majority of the GOP as well. Shameful, scary times in this once great nation of ours.... Who would have thought, a leader whose main goal is to divide, rather than unite, a nation.
14
“And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.” That’s it, right there. Donald Trump gives these angry, mostly white Americans permission to be just as morally repugnant as he is, with no reprisals. They can be their naturally hateful, bigoted, racist selves openly and joyously, just like their hero, Trump. He’s everything they wish they could be - rich, brash, opinionated, no holds barred, and just as hateful as they are. No wonder they love and worship him. As much as I dislike him, it has only been in the last few days that I finally realized that almost half the country is just as awful as Donald Trump. This is not a comforting feeling. Yes, he is a symptom - of the apparently boundless hate that a large minority of Americans feel, but keep mostly hidden away. I truly had no idea.
6
I saw images of the video of this rally. I felt what you describe so precisely. You put words on my feelings.
I'm white, and I just feel sick to watch those images. It's like a collective trance, based on hatred. How insane.
8
Too many Americans can't grasp the simple truth that the more they focus their fear and hate on the lower classes, especially people of color, the more the guys at the top can get away with financial murder, and sometimes even the real thing. The "greatest" political achievement of the Republican party in my lifetime is their ability to convince large numbers of white Americans that most of their problems are caused by the people at the bottom, especially those with dark skin, diverting attention from those who are the true cause of their suffering.
8
While I despise Trump, JB's column is over the top. To conflate a southern mob burning a black scapegoat to a Trump's rally is nothing more that racist hyperbole on JB's part. While some Trump voters may be racist in the purest sense of the word, so many feel that their country and politicians have ignored them as globalization has outsourced their jobs, immigrants from Central and South America have taken many jobs in construction and other trades by undercutting wages because they are off the books (and sadly often exploited). They see the old Democratic Party care more about transgender bathrooms than jobs, they see terrible images of rap "musicians" on TV, and out of desperation are easily suckered by a con man who promises a return to the 1950's like that grade B actor Reagan did.
So when the Squad sets themselves up for a bashing by saying that Biden should apologize for having to deal with Dixie Democrats, or that he was against busing that was doomed to fail despite good intentions, it's giving Trump a gift wrapped in a bow.
Trumpers echo the cries of our desperate countrymen who have been marginalized and fear that they will never regain what they once had -- middle class lives.
They want a return to prosperity, pure and not so simple. So if you want to go on and dredge up the South's racist past to tar all these desperate people as a "basket of deplorables", you aren't making a legit woker-than-thou point...you playing the race card like crude cudgel, nothing more!
@Jon
These people have lived on the margins so since the their ancestors landed in this country, Jon, and no amount of excuses will change that.
What type of people would murder a fellow human being? The same type of people who are screaming hate at Trump rallies.
I ashamed to say I was raised in a racist and sexist family, and throughout my working career I found myself having to be in professional working relationships with conservatives who now support Trump.
As I've gotten older, I care less about fitting into groups.
I openly confront the racists I know. I don't call them names, I firmly state facts against their inconsistencies, hypocrisies and lies.
I almost wish they would just come out and say they hate women, or hate a specific group. They think their dog whistles and veils of patriotism cover up what they really feel.
Isn't that what addicts and alcoholics need to do before they can start on the path to recovery? Don't they need to admit they really have a problem?
7
I absolutely despise Trump and everything he stands for, and I always have. Every day Trump sinks lower and lower into the cesspool holding onto the hands of his morality blind supporters. I am also a white woman in Texas and when these Trump supporters say that "Trump just says what we're all thinking." I cringe. They are certainly not speaking for me. And when I meet new people, and particularly people of color, my first instinct is to want to blurt out, that I am NOT a Trump supporter. I want people to know that I am NOT one of 'them.'
7
Lot’s of politicians from all political stripes stoke these fears.
1
Trump rallies are fascist spectacle. The choreography, the simple, repetitive messaging, the audience as actors playing their part in the worship of the leader. It's a nice day out for many.
6
I grew up in the rural Deep South prior to civil rights gains in the 1960s and I've seen the joy of hatred up close and personal.
It's disgusting.
Trump has given people who are full of hate and spite for others a voice and a platform.
They don't care that he lies.
They don't care that he pounds his chest and struts around.
They cheer him on.
What a disgrace on our nation and the office of the presidency.
11
Racism is alive and well in the dear old USA and Donald J. Trump is its voice. One step forward (Obama), two steps back (Trump). Hatred (racial and otherwise) is the fuel that feeds the political affiliation and beliefs of many, many of our neighbors. To believe otherwise is nothing short of delusional. To look at the faces of those attending a Trump rally is truly terrifying. Under Trump, the dark has crept into the light. Those nasty, scary little creatures that live under rocks are crawling, crawling across the heartland. Daily I am reminded of Germany in the 1930s. Bigots cannot be shamed into open-mindedness. Given a voice, they will scream. I grieve for our country.
12
Hi,
The President threatened my children. What am I to do? My adult children were born in El Salvador. We know what our President thinks of El Salvador. If I am not mistaken, he included the country in his outdoor privy analogy. So, Send Her Back, is not only a deplorable sentiment, it is personal.
Well, not to put to nice a point on it, Hillary was right. Those people chanting "Send Her Back" are deplorable. Maybe deplorable like that bigoted Uncle for whom we still have affection. They are fellow Americans, just ignorant folk as one of the Squad noted. We are all ignorant of something--it is human nature NOT to know everything. But cruelty, that is another order of things.
I hear there chant and immediately think of my children, any child who is wounded by this. When do we get to say, you are wrong, you are deplorable, this is not who we are. Or, more to the point, this is not who we should be. We are struggling to be who we should be and this throws refuse, garbage, in our face.
7
There are two countries within this nation. Luckily it is easily fixed by the geographies being apart. Blue Us and Red US. I am done with nonsense!
6
Imagine if a man had an expansive inner feeling that he manifested in this expression: "I love all people with hairy knuckles." He had, on two occasions, been helped out of a bad situation by hairy-knuckled people, and now made an irrational, in fact delusional, generalization. We need to see people's hatred of groups as immature and sick as that.
3
Based on my experiences as a while senior male I would have to say that you would have to be willfully blind to believe that
The Republican Party reaches deep into the worst instincts of the human animal and transforms that into public policy. It's always been there, in America and elsewhere. The immorality resides in the cynical exploitation of Man's worst demons for political power. The Republican Party and all of its constituents should be deeply ashamed. But they are instead nihilistic and shameless.
5
Yes, the worst part was the crowd enjoying their racist chant. It was a crowd mentality that in numbers you can say and do what you want.
This is what Trump is counting on and he thinks that this will be the same as when the crowd yelled "lock her up".
It was sickening to hear that but it worked for him. There was no consequence for saying you would jail a political opponent.
Now we are witnessing an even more horrific chant. Will there be any consequences for this racist chant, for the racist tweets and disgusting comments uttered by our president?
One can only hope that we as a country are better than this blatant bigotry.
In 2020 we'll find out if there will be any consequences for this president who is a racist.
6
Bread and circuses. Keep them distracted and feed blood-lust, and they're on your side.
Only it makes bad democratic governance.
3
So Trump's followers are racists, dislike colored people, want white supremacy, etc. So Trump is a racist, dislikes colored people, wants white supremacy, etc.
So what? It's not against the law to think these things, to long for these results, or in most cases to say these things. That's always been the problem. It's against the law to DO something that harms someone else because of these attitudes.
Liberals need to compel the enforcement of these laws, and work for the enactment of laws that further circumscribe the broadcast of 'hate speech' and 'collaboration for purposes of promoting race hatred'.
Trump and his 'people' may have a right to their hatred, but it should not be made public.
1
I don't know. Maybe it's not as bad as all that, Mr. Bouie. It certainly bears watching, but think of Donald Trump as a political stand-up comedian for those "other people." Us leftie "elitists" have plenty to comedians to choose from. All they have is the president of the United States.
@abigail49 I really don't think hatred of a majority of Americans (or, indeed, the world) - minorities, women, non-Christians, foreigners - is funny.
I’m not sure why Trump supporters even bother to deny that bigotry and racism is the reason they support him. Maybe the lying and the obliviousness to how ridiculous they look is part of the personality defect that attracts them to someone like Donald Trump in the first place.
5
Trump is not a serious person by any stretch, but he knows how to work a crowd and use them to get a once proud political party under his thumb. We'll find out next year exactly how many Americans he can lead by the nose in this manner.
3
Your last quote, “What he says is what we’re thinking,” is the very heart of whiteness in America. We have to stop believing that this is an anomaly. White people are telling us what white people believe. They’re the experts so let’s take their word for it. It is the pure and simple heart of whiteness.
3
The people that revel in this are sick. No really I mean mentally ill. I think that racism is ingrained by culture and that it has become a mental illness. This illness can be overcome but it takes introspection. Most people associate with some people of different races. They must see that some of them are, well. A Okay. So how can all the others be bad? This has been very disappointing to me on so many levels.
The history of this country is racist and it was supposed to evolve to an equal society. Big setbacks.
The level that is most concerning is how dangerous this really is to our National Culture. Made for TV reality events based on Nuremberg. Who would have thought?
6
And amazingly amongst the DNC are those that still think they can work with Republicans - looking at you Biden and Pelosi.
Courting Trump voters is a massive waste of time and resources. There is a gigantic pool of votes waiting to be had - amongst those who don't normally vote. Give them something to vote for and you can bury Trump, electoral college and all.
6
Trump attracts lower educated voters.
It is the one characteristic that stands out in poll after poll. I remember these people from my high school days. These were the people who sat in the back of the class, who fooled around and were not paying attention, who obviously had not completed their homework assignments and when were called by the teacher gave laughable answers. They were many times mocked and ridiculed by their classmates. By the time senior graduation rolled around it was obvious they were going nowhere and would most like be stuck in dead end jobs for the rest of their lives. Many of them ended up in living in trailer camps leading rootless lives of self destruction.
And when they finally looked in the mirror instead of taking responsibility for their station in life all they saw we're minorities who had taken their opportunities away.
And then along comes Trump and he makes these people for the first time in their lives feel important. He nurtures their resentments and In return they give him dog loyalty.
And in 2020 they will come out in large numbers to vote for the man who makes them feel good about themselves.
10
While I agree with the thrust of this opinion piece, I don't think enough has been said about racist conditioning of kids. In the South Pacific song, "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught", racism is shown to be a construct that is not natural; one that is a learned behavior. There were many younger audience members at that despicable rally- including children.
They have been marinating their entire lives in the racist pool. Fox News is their limited, only source of information. And yes, they have been basically ignored for a very long time.
So there has been an hysterical reaction to the election of the first African-American president, and we have Hate Monger-In-Chief, but the roots of this disaster are the matriculation of generations of children in the School of Hate.
We can talk about historical parallels, but until we are prepared to take down this ever-turning Wheel, we will never defeat that hate.
3
In Orwell's "Oceania," people were obliged to attend "Hate Week"
rallies. In Trump's kingdom, they attend with pleasure, and don't seem to limit it to a given week, month or any other defined time period.
3
Projecting mirrors are such a strange phenomenon, especially with respects to mass culture. It is astounding that dominant white society considers African Americans a threat "— of defiling the white home and white society." as you wrote. Yet what has been hidden by white society is the history of a severely violent past of subjugation of blacks and other minorities by the use of rape, beatings, torture, and humiliation in the most malevolent and unfathomable practices. This was a part of daily life on the plantations and businesses of a growing culture of hate/profit in this country. Practices so malignant that the repercussions of this evil plague us to this day.
It fascinates and repulses me how the worst defilers of humanity can simply turn the mirror around and project their crimes upon their victims. Hatred is as incomprehensible as it is fathomless.
2
As a Southern expat, I completely endorse, and can confirm from long experience, what others have said here about the Deep South. Many of its people combine spontaneous hatred and intolerance with a veneer of charming gregariousness. Violence is baked into this culture. The South invokes and celebrates religiosity to perpetuate an oppressive social order rooted in hypocrisy, suspicion, and injured pride. It is truly grotesque.
In his book “A Turn in the South,” V.S. Naipaul observed (paraphrasing from memory) that if you don’t know who you are (possess a strong sense of self and agency), the South will destroy you. I have never forgotten those words.
I know these remarks sound hyperbolic, that they unfairly reinforce negative stereotypes and generalizations. Go ahead, then. Take a turn in the South.
2
I hope my fellow Americans realize the degree of racist hate that Trump is engendering throughout the country.
Trump is giving like minded Americans permission to be as hateful toward minorities as they want.
The damage to the country will be profound and long lived!
3
Thank you Jamelle Bouie for reminding anyone who needs reminding that there is a long American history of Americans taking great pleasure in engaging in or supporting violence against other Americans who differ in some way from the haters.
A nation with 40 percent of its voters supporting the master of multi-reason racism is a nation on the brink of free fall.
You note that the raucous crowds of (mostly) white Americans unite in frenzied hatred of a black woman.
I add information about the words used that I think are important.
In a recent column in The Guardian, the author was careful to note that the people in the raucous crowds are White Christians, that is a subset of the Americans that the Census Bureau places in its "white race" category.
That category also includes all Americans whose lines of descent trace back to the Middle East and North Africa, Americans very likely born Muslim.
It is essential that everyone understand that the president only takes christian whites into his embrace, not all who are seen as white.
The woman seen as black by the raucous crowds is Somali-born Ilhan Omar. I know 100s of Somali-born young people here in Linköping thanks to 18 years as volunteer at the Red Cross. These young people do not see themselves as black and, as for race, until I told them about America's race system, they understood that they belong to the same race as me, the human. No problem, they won't be moving to the US.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
3
There is no coherent political or economic philosophy that could possibly fuel this euphoric hatred (even those held by what we once knew as Republican).
I can't reach any conclusion other than that the core Trump supporter is an ignorant, fearful racist and their embrace of this "man" is a reflexive action borne of having to endure 8 years of a black man in the White House.
4
Hate is primal and unthinking. In fact it works best if you don't think too deeply about the object of your hatred. Hate feels good if you think you're entitled to it.
Tolerating someone, liking someone, or loving someone all take a lot of thoughtful effort to make that happen. Hate doesn't require any of that.
1
an outrageous column!
no matter what one
thinks of Donald Trump,
to compare his crowds
to spectators at a brutal
lynching is abominable.
they are sadly mistaken
people who voted and
will vote against their
own interest. they are
not crying out for blood
nor demanding anyone
be lynched or tortured.
these sort of columns
only inflame his base
and guarantee that
they will come out in
droves to vote for him.
3
@Frank
These are the same people, certainly, who screamed, "Lock her up!" Not quite so brutal, but then how long can one be locked up before it becomes so?
It's not a new sentiment.
When they are not happy, it's "take our country back."
If we are not happy, it's "well then pack up and leave."
4
They don't care he lies or is incompetent. They hate
the same people he does. Venom is the glue
that binds them together.
4
Is there such a thing as different kinds of contempt?
Can you feel contempt for a Muslim woman who happens to be black and feel no contempt for a non-Muslim woman who also happens to be black? The reason I'm asking is because Mr. Bouie doesn't make a differentiation, and it's possible that some in that crowd would take issue with Mr. Bouie's assertion of "racism" and make the distinction I am making above.
I'm not trying to defend this awful behavior, but Mr. Bouie should try to have more nuance. I've heard people make the distinction I make above, and some people will take issue with Bouie's characterization.
In a column from November 2017, Roger Cohen wrote "...We don't know yet how far the president is prepared to go in silencing critics who do not meet his test of patriotism, while inviting his supporters to give free rein to their inner bigot. "
We are beginning to find out.
4
Hate filled Trump rallies. Certainly America must be better than that. We will find out in 2020.
3
The Trump and GOP got the hatred from the Bible. There was so much bloodshed hatred against women in the Middle East and i am better than you mentality it was deeply rooted in there brains. That is why the major churches won’t speak up daily against them they teach the Bible every Sunday and all about wars and hatred towards each other. Very sad.
1
This is Festus, Missouri 1968. I am a young white male teacher at a Catholic high school. I distribute (at that time) a FREE NY Times weekly newspaper. We discuss the WORLD. I freely share my thoughts and invite dissent. Where I live nearby, in chalk, beneath my apartment window on the asphalt, in huge letters: "( my last name), GO BACK EAST" (Cleveland!). So this fear of the unknown, shared by a stranger, is nothing new on any level. Imagine. if they knew then that I am a gay man! The occupant of the Oval Office essentially encapsulates in one person, this huge quantity of ignorance and fear.
3
And this hatred must not be accepted as a behavior becoming a decent human being. The practitioners of this hatred must be subjected relentlessly to ridicule, mockery, and contempt. The time when such attitudes were acceptable for decent adult human beings to carry is long since gone, and the supporters of trump need to be reminded of the this constantly and vigorously.
149
@jeff dunford Within their bubble, I think part of their joy is to ridiculed by people they disrespect. Unless of course, they feel outnumbered.
12
@Larry: This is no doubt true, but that does not change the obligation of decent society to ostracize that which is indecent. It's the way progress is made and improvement is maintained. The barbarians are, quite literally, always at the door.
8
@jeff dunford
Not to worry, their hatred will be put to good use when they are drafted into the U.S. Army, and sent to Iran to fight another nation's war.
2
Aren't we growing a little tired of the way that Donald Trump milks every story about him from every angle?
On Day One of this latest contretemps, he says something offensive. On Day Two, he qualifies it or takes it back (on this occasion, denying that he approved of the crowd chanting "Take it Back"). On Day Three, he's on the offensive again. So he has three days of headlines for a story that is basically the same all along.
It's the same back-and-forth technique he uses to milk massive headlines about the tariff situation -- raising tariffs on one day, lowering them the next, and so on, and so; on, ad infinitum.....
When is the media going to get sick of being played for suckers, and stop giving him all this free publicity?
253
@Piri Halasz - The media will stop giving Trump all this publicity when there proves to be an inverse correlation of Trump stories and television ratings, and Trump stories and web hits. Less ratings and less web hits means less than can charge for advertising space.
9
@Piri Halasz
The answer is simple: the media will stop giving Mr. Trump publicity when they, the media, no longer have a profit motive. Until then, more of the same. 24/7.
16
@Piri Halasz
I wish I was as certain as you seem to be that this is all just harmless talk, as you seem to imply. I am scared when I hear anyone with the power of the presidency behind him use the language he does. I haven't watched the video of the rally but I find the description of it terrifying. I also
hate giving such a vile person publicity, but it seems really important that we are hearing the President of our country talk in such explicitly racist terms.
4
I would not characterize the Trump's people at his rally as hatred. It is more anger created by bias against Trump. Hunger for significant change was the rallying cry in 2016. In 2020 the rallying will be change is good if it brings better results for America.
When the President lies that these congresswomen hate America he is not doing it to engender anything other than hatred for them in return. Hate produces hate. Same thing when he claims Mexican immigrants are rapists, Muslims hate America, and other attacks he’s leveled. Trump gins up hatred because hateful people don’t think too clearly. Hatred clouds the mind. I’m not saying that everyone at Trump rallies or all of his supporters succumb to the hatred. I’m sure many honestly believe they are defending a champion of change who is being unfairly attacked by a corrupt system. But Trump is no change agent, at least not for the common people. Trump is exploiting their anxieties to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while allowing the same folks to pursue profits unburdened by regulation to protect people and the environment. All the while trying to take health care from those who gained it under Obama. Inciting fear and hatred is his way of keeping the have nots fighting amongst themselves while they are getting less and the Trumps are getting more.
I have no idea how to get Trumpists to slow down and listen to what’s actually being said, let alone how to get them to pay attention to reality. And I certainly have no idea how to get committed trumpists to think about what happens a few years down the line, when the financial, political, and environmental bills start tryily rolling in for what they think of as “making America great again.”
So, sorry if criticism distresses you. Sorry if noting facts distresses you. Sorry if pointing out what is likely to happen next distresses you.
But that chant was still racist.
And I do indeed object to what happens next, which is that somebody else gets inspired to go shoot people, and Trumpists will still try this, “Well, it’s all YOUR fault. If you hadn’t complained, this white guy wouldn’t have felt so picked on.”
Please: think about what you’re cheering for.
To be clear, the Trump rally was not a lynch mob.
Yet. But there are plenty of believers out there and I suspect quite a few are at a tipping point.
Excellent column and comments, but I'm struck by the photo. Yes, there are many very happy-looking people in it, but also some who don't look so happy, perhaps even disturbed. In photos of white crowds during the civil rights movement, I've also noticed that not all of them seem to be gleefully sharing the hate (probably b/c my family were among the southern whites who hated the system, too). One shouldn't read too much from one photo, but those not-smiling faces make me wonder (and maybe it's just wishful thinking) whether Trump's plan to supercharge his voters with this nastiness isn't giving some of them second thoughts.
4
This is a brilliant and terrifying essay.
11
As an outsider it probably ill behoves me to venture an opinion on this singularly painful topic, but watching the Trump rally in Greenville, N.C. the other evening I found myself asking what the crowd meant by what they were chanting.
To me it seemed that although the audible words were "Send her back", the unspoken sentiment was "Know your place". It felt as though the "back" they actually wanted to send Rep. Omar (among others) to was not a place but a time.
Or, to put it another way, it wasn't so much that they wanted to send an American woman of colour back to Somalia, though I'm sure many of them wanted that too: what they wanted was to send her back to the past.
22
@Aelwyd
Yes!
I am also an outsider, but your observations ring true to me.
The ultra wealthy have figured out a way to keep the less fortunate keep fighting among themselves for an ever-shrinking share of their pie. As long as the poor fight among themselves, their yachts and caviars and all else is pretty safe in their gated communities.
Will the "less fortunate" ever see through the ruse and call their bluff? That might friends is a zillion dollar question.
20
This columnist got lost in the tall weeds of historical racism. The Trump crowds at his rallies have nothing to do with the vile lynch mobs of the early 1900s. If the "Squad" was anti-immigration, anti-abortion & pro-capitalism their pictures would be hanging in many of these people's living rooms. This isn't about racial hatred so much as it's about hatred of progressives...which this crowd does unapologetically. It's not what they are for that matters, it's what they are against. Trump defies the normal metrics for success because his voters don't support him for what he does. They love him for what he opposes. Trump is against the libs, the Dems, the media, the Republican Rhinos, the Bushes, and the Clintons. Trump is against rapid change which for the working class encompasses everything they had but fear they are losing. Trump is against globalism and unrestricted immigration which has taken jobs from many Americans. It's not that a third of US voters are fervently on the side of Donald Trump - what's more relevant is that they are adamantly on the opposing side of a culture war that's been brewing here since the 1980s. Trump isn't causing this populist revolt, he's reflecting it. It's Conservative values vs Liberal values. Liberals are losing. They've been losing at a pretty steady clip for the last six years. That's what they're cheering for & want to see continue. These voters no longer are buying what the Democrats are selling. This fact can't be denied.
11
@Ed Davis
"Liberals are losing. They've been losing at a pretty steady clip for the last six years."
Okay, I'll bite. What in the heck did they "lose" last year, when the GOP had an 40-year, historic loss of seats in the house?
5
@Ed Davis If it is not about racial hatred why are all of the people being demonized people of color? The wiggle room for supporting a racist is getting smaller. The budget busting tax cuts were conservative? If you can get people to believe tariffs are good for them you can get them believe anything.Denial is not a river in Egypt.
4
If only the Trumpists had an answer.
Brilliant insight Mr. Bouie. Thank you for these reminders.
I read several books about racism by Du Bois years ago. His insights are vital to the understanding of true leadership in America.
6
I wish I could say this is new, but as a 71 year old, I can tell you this has been the Republican Party since Nixon.
The difference is, there were decent Republicans as well. The party is now in control of fully-corrupted fundamentalist evangelism and they at last have elected their own modern day George Wallace.
23
Shared perverse "joy" and "pleasure" evidenced in group hate and scapegoating is nothing new as this article notes in the reference to Southern lynch mobs. Burning people at the stake in Europe, and Salem witch trials of America's colonial period are also examples of this same group dynamic in their negative expression.
What is significant about all these events is that a positive direction can and could have given this same energy that would produce positive expressions of bringing people together.
Cohesion or destructiveness; choices we each make about how we will respond to events.
4
When I get depressed reading about the current state of our nation, I turn to The Soul of America by Jon Meacham. We've been through this before. The majority of your fellow citizens abhor this type of behavior. Get out and vote and it will get better.
12
I think your interpretation is way off, but it is predictable. Sometimes Presidents speak very smoothy, but do very little and even less that is good. Sometimes Presidents speak less smoothy, but accomplish great things.
2
And sometimes presidents speak horribly and accomplish nothing, or even accomplish harm. This is one of those times.
32
@Samuel How's your 401K doing? How's the job market for people you know? ...just to name but two. There are many more accomplishments which this president has achieved. Much more than the last president already.
Len....this President has accomplished one of the greatest cons of all time, another giant tax welfare check for billionaires in exchange for a giant bucket of white spite for the masses.
The last President steadied the ship after the Bush-Cheney Titanic crashed, made healthcare stronger for tens of millions and governed sanely.
I'll tale a President who can speak English in complete sentences any day of the week over a functionally illiterate President.
2
This is a profound essay, made more frightening by the talents of the writer. Well done sir
26
I heard a recent revelation from Edward Stack, CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods, who decided decided the company could no longer sell ARE-15-style rifles after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
A year after the ban was announced, Dick's polled current and former customers -- the ones who either applauded the decision or boycotted the store -- to see how they felt after this passage of time. A large number of those who loudly supported the decision and continued to shop at Dick's had completely forgotten about the AR-15 controversy, But near none of those who had protested and refused to shop there again had forgotten.
Stack summarized the research conclusion like this, and it's chilling: "Love is fleeting; but hate is forever."
21
Abraham Lincoln caught this kind of pivotal moment in his mid-Civil War speech to Congress in which he said (I paraphrase slightly re 2020), 'The struggle of today is not altogether a struggle for today. It is a struggle for the future'.
8
Trump's ten thousand plus lies are a matter of record. If he says what his fans are thinking, as the woman at the rally said, does that mean that they lie to themselves five times a day? I would think it was more. Clearly, the pursuit of propaganda leaves little room for actual thought.
33