Ever wondered why supposedly patriotic Donald Trump voters are so quick to dismiss the “Russia hoax” despite clear evidence of Trump’s collusion with Vladimr Putin? Or to welcome Russia’s overt support for the American president?
There is a conceptual connection between their indifference to Trump-Putin ties and the terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer by right-wing militants— and, more generally, to calls for insurrection and civil war. The truth is that these people — non-college-educated whites who are the core of Trump support — no longer feel at home in modern America. They see themselves as patriots — except they are a minority and not the voice of the American people.
There is a bitter irony in that they now get to feel about the United States the way many African Americans have felt for hundreds of years.
The 1958 Hollywood classic The Defiant Ones is about two convicts — a white and an African American. Shackled together, they manage to escape and are forced to cooperate, gradually developing a genuine bond. In the end, the white guy takes a bullet for his buddy and the black one forgoes a chance for freedom, stays with him, and gets captured.
Racism is America’s original sin, which is why the film was so relevant then, and is perhaps even more relevant today, when white supremacy is getting support from the White House.
There used to be this justification for slavery: the enslavement of black Africans made even the poorest white man a kind of master, equal to the richest planter. Thus, the reasoning went, the equality enshrined in the Constitution was achieved—albeit on the backs of other human beings.
Long after the end of slavery, the ruling class continued to use racism to keep white and black workers apart. Poor whites were encouraged to feel superior to the people of color in the North and the industrial Midwest no less than in the South.
Throughout American history, there have been two broad strains in the African American social thought. The one represented by Martin Luther King strove for equal rights and full integration of African Americans into the mainstream. The other, Black Nationalism, believed that African Americans had no future in America.
The civil rights movement gave rise to a substantial black middle class. Before the pandemic, unemployment among African Americans was the lowest ever —- because the current generation is the best educated and the most skilled — all due to the civil rights movement.
However, the other strain didn’t die out entirely. One of the longest-serving political figures in Washington, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has come out of black nationalism and, perhaps not so bizarrely, has managed to combine it with extreme conservatism. Like Jamaica-born Marcus Garvey in the first half of the 20th century, he makes little distinction between overt racists and white liberals.
In practice, black Americans remain separated from mainstream America in many ways. So few of them vote, essentially telling the American establishment “a plague on both your houses.” They are also more likely to engage in “antisocial” behavior, and society responds by incarceration and police brutality, which only serves to alienate this population further.
On the other hand, the government used to take good care of America’s white working class. They were the main beneficiaries of the New Deal, while Franklin D. Roosevelt ignored the oppression in the Jim Crow South as long as Southern Democrats supported his policies.
With the outbreak of the Cold War, providing a middle-class lifestyle for its blue-collar “proletariat” became Washington’s trump card in the ideological struggle against Moscow. American trade unions became a bastion of anti-communism while white American workers became the most patriotic class in society.
With the end of the Cold War came the end of the American dream for American workers, too. Just as Reagan did not single-handedly defeat the Soviet Union, so the end of the Cold War was just one factor in the demise of the blue-collar middle class. Other factors were in play, too, such as the glorification of greed and the anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric of the Reagan Administration, which resulted in the libertarian and new-liberal policies of successive governments, both Democratic and Republican.
Add to this globalization and technological revolution, which depressed wages and destroyed jobs.
It is not that the white American labor force has been severely impoverished—at least not yet. It was, to use a Marxist term, lumpenized. Career jobs of which a man could be proud and which were part of personal identity disappeared. Work became temporary and meaningless — a gig. Family structures disintegrated next, and generational social mobility became much more difficult. American workers gave up on themselves, becoming resentful, obese and addicted to drugs.
These trends among non-college whites came into sharp focus after the 2008-09 financial crisis, which hit them particularly hard. They looked around and suddenly they felt like African Americans had been feeling for generations: that they didn’t quite belong in their own country. While they struggled to stay afloat, the “elites” (I.e., urban professionals, many of them new immigrants) were doing just fine, driving foreign cars, going to the opera and vacationing in their summer homes and abroad.
Racism also played a role, since the country’s president was a black man with a foreign name, during whose terms the country suffered the fastest growth in income differentials in its history.
But, unlike African Americans, who tend to drop out of the system which they regard as not entirely theirs, this group feel that it is their country and that it has been taken over by alien and hostile groups. They want it back — which is the true meaning of the Make America Great Again slogan.
Trump has always enjoyed the unwavering support of non-college whites. Weirdly enough, they identify themselves with this buffoonish New York property developer and professional swindler. That’s because he too is full of resentment against the true rich, the egg-headed, condescending elites and against today’s America in general, which he also feels has passed him by.
They wrap themselves in a flag and never stop talking about their love of the country. In reality, they hate it with a passion. This is why they don’t mind that Trump pays no taxes and games the system. They love the sight of Trump trampling over America’s most cherished constitutional principles, norms, and centuries-old political and legal traditions. They enjoy the debasement of the presidency and the degradation of American institutions. They don’t mind the rest of the world laughing at America. They accept his mangling of the English language. They are happy even to spread the coronavirus across the land that they purportedly love. like Trump, they don’t give a damn about hundreds of thousands of Americans dead.
They are the kind of patriots who have joined the cult of a draft dodger who routinely disrespects American military heroes, including those who died for their country.
And this is ultimately why they welcome Putin’s support and don’t mind the pro-Russian shenanigans emanating from the Trump White House.
