I am sure that I have written an article detailing why Donald Trump has consolidated and held the segment of the population he has in his grasp. Notwithstanding, if you allow me, I will clumsily and inarticulately try to break it down for you.
Unlike the watered-down BS the mainstream media pundits give you, I will do so in a way that is unnuanced and truthful.
First, we must acknowledge that they gravitated to Donald Trump long before he announced his intentions to run for the presidency of the United States in 2016. It is also important to acknowledge that he was one of the chief architects of the birther conspiracy against Barack Obama, the first black President. He continued to make baseless claims as a provocateur throughout the eight years of Obama’s presidency, which forced Obama to release his long-form birth certificate to the media in the hope of dispelling Donald Trump’s lies.
It was a throwback of slavery days, which police do every day in America when they stop black men and demand they show Identification.
Despite being President of the United States, Barack Obama, bowed to the lies of Donald Trump a low-life con artiste and showed his papers.
Obama, a timid and trusting man, believed that that would end the lies, but he was wrong; they only brought on more lies from Trump and others who had decided that there was hay to be made for continuing with the lie that he was not born in America.
I daresay that to this day, Barack Obama has no clue how bowing to the pressure of a two-bit clown, one he would later characterize as a carnival barker, empowered him and galvanized a Fascist movement behind him.
America had been looking for a white supremacist president since Andrew Jackson, the recalibrated Republican party that constituted after the civil rights gain ofthe1960’s was in search of that white man.
No one seemed to fit the bill until Arizona US Senator Bary Goldwater came along. But Goldwater went down in crushing defeat to John F Kennedy in the 1964 Presidential elections. Despite Goldwater’s loss, many credited his life’s work for firmly establishing what they called the modern Conservative movement.
Speaking at his nomination in the 64 elections, faced with mounting criticisms and disaffection by liberal Republicans about what they viewed as his extremism, Goldwater said the following; “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Goldwater is also credited with helping to make possible the so-called Reagan revolution. Ronald Reagan was another many pinned their hopes on, hoping for that President that would allow white racism to thrive out in the open.
Whether or not Ronald Reagan lived up to those expectations is for others to decide. Sufficing to say that Ronald Reagan, though dead, is still held in high regard by that segment of the American population.
By the time Donald Trump came down that escalator and declared Mexicans are murderers and thieves, that segment of the population was primed to throw their support to him in defense of whiteness.
If a dog had Trump’s history and came down that escalator making the offensive statements he did, they would have supported the dog. I realized it had nothing to do with Donald Trump; he was merely a vessel to channel their anger and animosity.
How dare America twice elect a Black man to be president? They were losing what they stridently believed was theirs and theirs alone, the land they stole from the Native Americans-all of it.
And those other not-so-real people, the not white, how dare they have power? They are taking our jobs. Well, you never bothered to go to college, so there was that…
As you saw last week, Mitch McConnell’s mouth went ahead of his brain, and he gave away that he did not believe Black people were Americans. The supporters of Donald Trump shared those views as well.
It mattered not that at the 2016 debates, Trump was clearly out of his league among the group of Republican candidates; by then, his support was growing, and every wrong he did was brushed aside, every flub explained away as organic.
Regardless of the dirt opposition research turned up against him, his supporters had some silly explanation for it. By then, they were coming out of the woodwork in support of him as his statements got more racist, more xenophobic, and more bellicose against everyone, not white Anglo-Saxon.
It was exactly what they wanted to hear; by the time the tape was released of him bragging about grabbing young women by their pussies; his supporters were gleeful that their candidate was brave and strong enough to grab girls eager to win a pageant by their genitalia.
Many of those supporters were older, they claimed they had never voted before, had not gone to college, and of course, they were mostly all white.
But there was much more to this impressionable lot; many have never visited another country, some never even left the county they were born in. And, of course, what passed for their logic and reasoning left absolutely no doubt that they never attended college.
It was clear that their affinity for Donald Trump had nothing to do with his policy positions; he had none. They were drawn to the glorified con-artiste because he was that candidate they had been searching for since Barry Goldwater.
He regularized and said what they are told they could not say in a civilized society. The stench of racism he stirred up never went anywhere; it did not go away with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency; if anything, his ascendency to that office made the rancid swamp more toxic.
The divisiveness permeating America today, from the rulings on the highest court (dismantling section 4B of the 1965 voting rights act) for no good reason but that it worked too well; to the madness occurring in the congress all the way down to state legislatures and onto the streets, is a direct result of what Trump supporters see as whites losing control.
Donald Trump possesses nothing good that anyone would or should clamor to be a part of; his entire candidacy in 2016 was about using racism to gain office so that he could enrich himself and his cronies.
The older men and women in Ohio and Iowa, Michigan and Arizona, and all places in between, who claim they never voted before Trump must be believed.
Of course, they never voted, previous candidates of the Republican party were racist, but they never had the recklessness of Donald Trump. Trump does not mind destroying the country to get what he wants; he may very well get his way.
.
.
.
.
.
Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.