McCarthy’s Ghost Haunts the White House
Published in La Jornada
(Mexico) on 22 July 2019
by Arturo Balderas Rodríguez (link to original)
President Donald Trump has settled on his reelection strategy in anticipation of the 2020 presidential election. It is clear that, from now on, he has decided to play the racism, xenophobia and eschatology cards that characterize him.
Insult Without Apology
The serious nature of the insult to four young congresswomen when Donald Trump accused them of hating the United States and then urged them to return to their countries of origin (three of them were born in the U.S. and one is a U.S. citizen who was born in Somalia) was a clear demonstration of racism and of Trump’s reelection strategy.
Attacking and rudely insulting those who criticize and disagree with him, thereby rousing the basest instincts of the people who, for perverse reasons, support him, was the strategy he used to win the presidency and is now using to attempt to win a second term.
The outdated nativism of his claims that the waves of Protestant immigrants who colonized the native American territories are the only people with the natural right to live in the country he governs is a trick that only appeals to the ignorance and stupidity of those who think like him. This is the card that Trump played throughout the campaign he began in 2015 and during his entire term in office. Trump displayed similar nativist beliefs long before he was president when he refused to lease apartments in the buildings he owned to Latinos or African Americans.
Nobody in their right mind thought that a person with a background like Trump’s, whose greatest achievement was playing a buffoon on a reality show, could enter politics and have any chance of success. This was one of the reasons why the majority of media outlets immediately dismissed his chances of winning the Republican Party nomination.
What people lost sight of was the fact that a sector of U.S. society feels aggrieved by racial integration movements and the fight for gender and racial equality. Members of this sector of society invariably reject these causes because they regard them as an expression of elitism that has no connection to their culture.
Trump embodied this sentiment both because it served him to do so and because he believed in it. He took advantage of it to reach the White House, and is using it again in his efforts to remain there for another four years.
Regardless of what might happen in the 2020 election, we must be mindful of the fact that the seeds of discord have been sown and could flourish beyond next year’s election. There is fertile ground in the layer of society that refuses to understand that the racist and xenophobic stench exuded by Trump is corroding the foundation upon which this nation was built, from the very moment of its independence and, subsequently, as a result of a Civil War that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Trump has achieved his mission to once again divide U.S. society for his own gain.
The Party Remains Conveniently Silent
Ultimately, the president has needed acolytes to achieve his objectives. The most shameful aspect of this wave of insults against the four young congresswomen is the attitude taken by the Republican Party. The majority of the party, both inside and outside of Congress, has justified the conduct of the person responsible for the attack on our revered U.S. democracy and, at the same time, on Abraham Lincoln’s party. The convenient and hypocritical silence of the Republicans with respect to the president’s attitude is not only shameful, but also dangerous due to the consequences it could have in the short and medium term. Some of its members have dared to condemn the congresswomen who are the object of Trump’s recriminations as communists.
Does anyone remember the McCarthyism that cost some people their freedom and even their lives because, like so many people today, they expressed their liberal ideas?
The symptoms are serious; history could repeat itself. What we don’t know is whether the performance of this modern day Joseph Goebbels will be a tragedy or a farce.
Insult Without Apology
The serious nature of the insult to four young congresswomen when Donald Trump accused them of hating the United States and then urged them to return to their countries of origin (three of them were born in the U.S. and one is a U.S. citizen who was born in Somalia) was a clear demonstration of racism and of Trump’s reelection strategy.
Attacking and rudely insulting those who criticize and disagree with him, thereby rousing the basest instincts of the people who, for perverse reasons, support him, was the strategy he used to win the presidency and is now using to attempt to win a second term.
The outdated nativism of his claims that the waves of Protestant immigrants who colonized the native American territories are the only people with the natural right to live in the country he governs is a trick that only appeals to the ignorance and stupidity of those who think like him. This is the card that Trump played throughout the campaign he began in 2015 and during his entire term in office. Trump displayed similar nativist beliefs long before he was president when he refused to lease apartments in the buildings he owned to Latinos or African Americans.
Nobody in their right mind thought that a person with a background like Trump’s, whose greatest achievement was playing a buffoon on a reality show, could enter politics and have any chance of success. This was one of the reasons why the majority of media outlets immediately dismissed his chances of winning the Republican Party nomination.
What people lost sight of was the fact that a sector of U.S. society feels aggrieved by racial integration movements and the fight for gender and racial equality. Members of this sector of society invariably reject these causes because they regard them as an expression of elitism that has no connection to their culture.
Trump embodied this sentiment both because it served him to do so and because he believed in it. He took advantage of it to reach the White House, and is using it again in his efforts to remain there for another four years.
Regardless of what might happen in the 2020 election, we must be mindful of the fact that the seeds of discord have been sown and could flourish beyond next year’s election. There is fertile ground in the layer of society that refuses to understand that the racist and xenophobic stench exuded by Trump is corroding the foundation upon which this nation was built, from the very moment of its independence and, subsequently, as a result of a Civil War that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Trump has achieved his mission to once again divide U.S. society for his own gain.
The Party Remains Conveniently Silent
Ultimately, the president has needed acolytes to achieve his objectives. The most shameful aspect of this wave of insults against the four young congresswomen is the attitude taken by the Republican Party. The majority of the party, both inside and outside of Congress, has justified the conduct of the person responsible for the attack on our revered U.S. democracy and, at the same time, on Abraham Lincoln’s party. The convenient and hypocritical silence of the Republicans with respect to the president’s attitude is not only shameful, but also dangerous due to the consequences it could have in the short and medium term. Some of its members have dared to condemn the congresswomen who are the object of Trump’s recriminations as communists.
Does anyone remember the McCarthyism that cost some people their freedom and even their lives because, like so many people today, they expressed their liberal ideas?
The symptoms are serious; history could repeat itself. What we don’t know is whether the performance of this modern day Joseph Goebbels will be a tragedy or a farce.
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