Lbj if You Can Convince the Lowest White Man
'The Lowest White Man'
I judge Donald Trump was eager to counter the impression in Michael Wolff's book that he is irascible, mentally pocket-size and possibly insane. On Tuesday, he allowed a bipartisan session in the White House about clearing to be televised for nearly an hour.
Surely, he idea that he would be able to demonstrate to the earth his lucidity and acumen, his grasp of the issues and his savor for rapprochement with his political adversaries.
Simply instead what came through was the image of a man who had absolutely no idea what he was talking about; a man who says things that are 180 degrees from the things he has said earlier; a man who has no clear line of reasoning; a human being who is clearly out of his depth and willing to do and say anything to please the people in front end of him.
He demonstrated once again that he is a man without principle, interested only in how practiced he can make himself wait and how much money he can make.
Yeah, he has an intrinsic hostility to people who are not white, peculiarly when they challenge him, simply as a matter of policy, the whole idea of building a wall for which United mexican states would pay was just a cheap campaign stunt to, once over again, please the people in front of him.
Trump is not committed to that wall on principle. He is committed but to looking skilful as a result of any comes of it. Mexico is never going to pay for it, and he knows it. He has always known it. That was just another lie. Someone must have stuck the phrases "chain migration" and "diverseness lottery" into his brain — easy buzzwords, you lot see — and he can now rail confronting those ideas for adulation lines.
But he is completely malleable on actual immigration policy. He doesn't have the stamina for that much reading. Learning near immigration would require reading more words than would fit on a television news chyron.
If Donald Trump follows through with what he said during that meeting, his base will in one case again be betrayed. He will have proved once again that he was saying anything to keep them angry, fifty-fifty telling lies. He will have demonstrated one time again his incompetence and unfitness.
And in one case again, they won't intendance.
That is because Trump is man-equally-message, man-as-messiah. Trump support isn't philosophical just theological.
Trumpism is a religion founded on patriarchy and white supremacy.
It is the belief that even the least qualified human is a ameliorate choice than the most qualified woman and a belief that the most vile, anti-intellectual, scandal-plagued simpleton of a white man is sufficient to follow in the presidential footsteps of the all-time educated, most eloquent, almost affable black human.
As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in the 1960s to a young Bill Moyers: "If y'all tin convince the lowest white man he's meliorate than the best colored man, he won't observe you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to await downwardly on, and he'll empty his pockets for yous."
Trump'south supporters are saying to us, screaming to us, that although he may exist the "lowest white human," he is even so ameliorate than Barack Obama, the "best colored man."
In a way, Donald Trump represents white people'due south right to be wrong and still be correct. He is the embodiment of the unassailability of white ability and white privilege.
To abandon him is to requite up on the pact that America has made with its white citizens from the beginning: The government will aid to underwrite white safety and success, fifty-fifty at the expense of other people in this country, whether they be Native Americans, African-Americans or new immigrants.
But this idea of elevating the lowest white man over those more qualified or deserving didn't begin with Johnson's articulation and won't cease with Trump'south manifestation. This is woven into the material of the flag.
As I have written here earlier, when Alabama called a constitutional convention in 1901, Emmet O'Neal, who after became governor, argued that the state should "lay deep and stiff and permanent in the cardinal constabulary of the state the foundation of white supremacy forever in Alabama," and as part of that strategy he argued:
"I don't believe information technology is good policy to go up in the hills and tell them that Booker Washington or Councill or anybody else is allowed to vote because they are educated. The minute you practise that every white man who is not educated is disfranchised on the same proffer."
In his essay "Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880," Westward.E.B. Du Bois discussed why poor whites didn't make common cause with poor blacks and slaves but instead prized their roles as overseers and slave catchers, eagerly joining the Klan. This fed the white man's "vanity considering it associated him with the masters," Du Bois wrote.
He connected:
"Slavery bred in the poor white a dislike of Negro toil of all sorts. He never regarded himself every bit a laborer, or as role of any labor motion. If he had whatsoever ambition at all it was to become a planter and to ain 'niggers.' To these Negroes he transferred all the dislike and hatred which he had for the whole slave system. The issue was that the system was held stable and intact by the poor white."
For white supremacy to be fabricated perfect, the lowest white man must exist exalted in a higher place those who are black.
No affair how much of an embarrassment and a failure Trump proves to be, his exploits must be judged a success. He must be deemed a correction to Barack Obama and a superior selection to Hillary Clinton. White supremacy demands information technology. Patriarchy demands it. Trump'due south supporters need it.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/trump-immigration-white-supremacy.html
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