Greeting from AmeriKKK: Where White Makes Right...Weiss über Alles

When I found out Trump — a proud xenophobe and boorish demagogue who’s the candidate of choice for America’s white supremacists — had picked up his third straight win…I got on Twitter to try and articulate how much fear I was feeling, for myself and for my country…. Then the backlash began. Hundreds of people have tweeted at me in the past 12 hours with messages that echo various notes Trump has struck on the campaign trail — his contempt for black people and their concerns, his casual misogyny, his anything-but-compassionate language regarding mental illness and his genuinely frightening readiness to suggest that maybe it’s OK to meet words with physical violence…. It’s been argued many times that Trump has been able to surge because he’s tapping into the fears of some (not all) white voters and some (not all) male voters — voters who sense, correctly, that their invisible, unearned privileges are finally coming under interrogation. As the U.S. continues its trajectory toward being a majority-minority country, the kind of people for whom this is a terrifying prospect are taking more and more conservative positions on race-related and race-neutral policies.

I promised some time ago that I’m done writing about Donald Trump…and I am. This is tangentially about Trump, in that he’s the proximate cause for providing racists and White supremacists with the patina of legitimacy. The Donald has validated those who believe White Makes Right and that minorities and non-Christians had best be watching their backs…because a President Trump may well purge America of “undesirables”- i.e.- those not fortunate enough to be born White, Conservative, and Christian.

That so many Americans have willingly coalesced behind a buffoon is disturbing enough. That they’re eagerly supporting a racist, xenophobic thug whose arguably the modern-day reincarnation of Benito Mussolini should terrify any thinking American with a shred of decency. The amount of racism, hatred, and disdain for those who aren’t White, Conservative, and Christian extant in this country today is astonishing…and frightening. The idea that some- thankfully, a pronounced minority- could seriously discuss the liquidation and/or enslavement of non-Whites and perhaps even non-Sonservatives is a truly chilling prospect.

This Presidential election has revealed- because the Right has chosen to exploit it- the deep vein of hatred and bigotry still running through American culture. It’s never stopped running. The truth is that Americans hate virulently- not all Americans, of course, and likely a fairly small minority- and they don’t much care who knows. They’re willing to broadcast their hatred and willingness/desire to destroy those who look, act, think, believe, live, and/or love differently…and sometimes even those who merely disagree with them. They dehumanize those they despise…because it’s much easier to destroy people you view as sub-human, as “less than” and unworthy of the fellowship and benefits that accrue to REAL Americans.

These days, merely having the temerity to go on Twitter and question the motives of those who traffic in racism and hatred is enough to incur the wrath of haters and bigots who sound an awful lot like supporters of Adolf Hitler from WWII Germany.