Because Trump still Threatens us, we Must Diagnose the Trumpian Illness
By
David Gottfried
On or about April 2, 2022, Donald Trump held another one of his exceptionally moronic rallies. Among other things, he had the exceptional gall to state that Biden was responsible for the recent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan when in fact Biden simply complied with the agreement, to withdraw from Afghanistan and let the Taliban have their way, that Trump had negotiated (And Trump, you may recall, said that he was a great negotiator).
Even though Trump lied through his teeth, and even though his language and train of disordered thoughts made him seem mildly retarded, the crowd applauded enthusiastically, and like Pavlov’s dogs, obediently screamed “lock her up” whenever the orange orangutang uttered the name “Hillary Clinton.”
Very simply, despite all of the shit that has gone down since he was knocked off the throne, Trump still is a threat. He and his minions of mousey men, who make believe they are macho men, are fixated on the past, still ranting about Hillary’s emails, still spewing psychotic gibberish about Democratic Party pizza parlors imprisoning child sex slaves, and still imbibing Marjorie Taylor Greene’s lunatic pronouncements like babes at the breast of some deranged Delphic oracle. It’s all about spreading dirt on the other side because it’s all about Trump, and sidekicks like Il Duce Guiliani, and their infantile, over-arching egotism.
Trump’s power, in large measure, derives from the tendency of poor white people to support right wing candidates. Of course, the tendency of poor whites to vote Right is nothing new. We saw this with Presidential contenders such as Ross Perot, George Wallace, Lester Madox and Huey Long (he had some left of center economic policies, but his dictatorial tendencies infused him with more than a whiff of fascism). However, none of the aforementioned rabble rousers had the power to completely cripple America’s very imperfect “democracy.” By contrast, Trump will tell lies as outlandish as Hitler’s lie that the Communists burned down the Reichstag, and Trump’s imbecilic soldiers are intent on making him Der Fuhrer. And please don’t tell me that America is too gifted or advanced to crumple into Nazism. People, in the 20’s and 30’s, said that Germany, the most well-educated nation in the world (the percent of the populace which were PhDs was higher in Germany than in any other country; intellectual excellence is no marker of virtue or goodness), would never, ever support a man like Hitler.
I think it is high time that we identify the dynamics which drive poor whites to the Right. In the above video, I seek to illuminate one of the causes of this Rightest impetus. It is by no means the only cause. There are other causes, such as white racism and the fear that liberals address black deprivation at the expense of white deprivation. The above video does not address the racial component of the white slide into the arms of the Right because I think the pervasiveness of white racism, and if not racism very intense fear, is already known, and I don’t want to bore the viewer by discussing subjects that he is already well-acquainted with.
This video explains how the brutality of poverty hardens and embitters poor whites and turns them to the Right.