White Supremacy and the GOP

The modern GOP knows that they're sunk without white supremacists and thus white supremacy. That's why that memo that leaked about deflecting blame towards left-wing "extremism" and doing anything needed to pull focus from white nationalist terrorism was written in the first place––if they had nothing to do with white supremacy and didn't want white supremacists in their party, such a memo would be an awfully strange thing to write.

But they do and they do.

They need white supremacists. They can't live without them. Their pencil thin margins of victory (even after all the disenfranchising and gerrymandering and not stopping Russian interference and cheating they can muster) absolutely REQUIRE the white supremacists for political support. They jumped in bed with virulent racism during the Southern Strategy and now they CANNOT win without courting it.

The 2016 election defied the wisdom (of the GOP leadership, I might add) that they could no longer win while focusing exclusively white voters. Basically everyone thought the "wink wink nudge nudge" days of racism had to be dialed back so they could pull more women and non-white voters on board. They were prepared to expunge some of their dog whistling and broaden their coalition in order to survive.

But it was never JUST a strategy.

Instead Trump went all the way in. He dropped the euphemism, just said the quiet part out loud, he won the primary as "their guy" and now they HAVE no choice. If they lose the white supremacist vote, they lose. That's all there is to it. White supremacy, always more powerful than white America would admit, has hijacked the Republican party. THEY are the mainstream now.

That is who the Republicans are now. (That is who they have been for my lifetime with a tacit nod and a conspicuous silence, but now they are out and open about it.) And while some of them don't appreciate having the quiet part said out, their struggles have been superficial and tepid at best. White nationalism is the no-longer-deniable moral stain and legacy of their party all grown up and calling the shots.

You'll Never Convince the Racists That They're Racists

About 30 percent of the country (almost all white) will never admit that Trump is racist. They never ever will. We should divest ourselves of whatever fantasies we might have that some day Trump will do something SO outrageous that they will finally realize it. It is in their interest not to see his racism, and so they will not. Not ever. These people lost the ability to control the narrative that racism is okay (about forty years ago), and so they embraced the secondary ability to smirk and say, "That's not *really* racism."  At least until they can embolden white nationalism enough to come right out and say it as they could before––something they are dying to do.

And the scripts of white supremacy (even on the left) support them. Every time a liberal white person says, "Sure I hate racism, but THIS is not an example of it" to a person of color who is pointing out racism, or a white liberal goes to the mat for a six-hundred-comment thread in the name of "intellectual integrity" to say that some act with racial impact wasn't INTENDED and could have had something (anything) other than stark, naked racism that motivated a person to do something racist, they are enacting this same script. Bigotry is "bad" so no one can ever be labeled as a bigot without some "soulbeam" mindreader bullshit proof. Instead of just acknowledging that we are all racists (even we liberal white people), we all do racist things, we all have work to do, and the people best able to explain it to us are the folks who live with our fucking bullshit every day.

So the well-meaning often provide plenty of ground cover for the smarmy insistence (now that people at the tops of social hierarchies can't just BE bigots) that marginalized people have no say in what counts AS bigotry. Men, white people, heterosexuals, cis...they will be the arbiters of what counts.

And we're NEVER going to convince them that what Trump did is racist because they know EXACTLY what will happen to their entire paradigm if they, even once, say "Maybe you're right." Like Trump himself, there will be no moment where they feel shame. They have abandoned this. Because then they might have to question a lot more than just this one moment of abject racism.

We don't call these things for them––not for those 30%. They are wrong. They are callow, obstinate, and wrong and they will probably die callow, obstinate, and wrong. Maybe some of them will change, but not from one shining moment of "Oh shit, he really IS a racist." They already know. Their moral and ethical die has been cast.

We don't scream and point at every "go back where you came from" or "shithole countries" or his casino records on racial issues or his property records on racial issues or his attacks on the Central Park 5. Or from his followers the "he says what I feel" or the "he's not hurting the right people" or most recently after his comments that four US citizens should go back where they came from: "this is why we voted for him."

We're never going to "prove" it to their satisfaction. That's because we live in a country with an ongoing legacy of white supremacy and a cultural bedrock of bigotry, and it'll take white people confronting that to undo it. Don't forget that the first thing the Mel Gibsons and Paula Deens and Tim Burtons and Hulk Hogans of the world say after they get caught being unequivocally racist is to look at the camera and say, "I'm not racist." That's all that's happening here. It's the Nigerian Finance Minister email that says in the subject line, "This is not spam!"

They have picked their moral quality. We shall never sway them. Time to work around them.

We DO it for the 1 or 2% of those who will peel off from the right. (Maybe who will abstain from voting in 2020 for moral reasons.) We do it for the outliers for whom this might be the last straw. For those who, while I adamantly disagree with them, really ARE Republicans because they want smaller tax burdens and who are not comfortable with the Faustian deal their modern party has made with white nationalists and bigots.

We do it to scream that this is not normal. Or more accurately that it kind of is, but we're not going back to a time when saying it out loud was okay, or that we won't stand up and speak out against the regressive blowback to any vestige of progress. And we're not going to give up until it really ISN'T normal.

We do it to be counted, both by those we face down and the ones we stand beside.

In Any Other Context

Here’s the thing, and there’s no getting around it.

If you saw ANY other society--in a distant corner of the world, in a dystopian YA science fiction novel, or on a television show--go from having ONE demographic group be completely, utterly, unapologetically, overtly in charge of everyone else (leadership positions, economic power, property owners, and all of them openly, nakedly, saying that they were the superior demographic), to a series of “sweeping" reforms in which that demographic group lost power until they were only about 85-90% in charge of everything. Oh they still ran most things, still held most power, most political leaders were from their ranks, and still had more social standing in virtually any situation. If you saw all this, you would need absolutely NO help to realize how absurd it would be for all the other demographics pushing hard for continued and ongoing reform to be considered "just as bad" when they got frustrated or annoyed, particularly at those who were saying the loss of 10-15% of the power meant that THEY were now the subjugated ones.

That would be ridiculous, right?

Compound this absurdity with the inclusion of violence on only one side. The group struggling for continued reforms speaks out mostly of its experiences in a world that doesn’t treat them as equals. Despite constant attempts to silence them from the dominant group, they are angry, but almost never violent, and the violence it does express is usually property damage when frustrations boil over. In fact, folks within this demographic are themselves most often the ones hurt and killed on the regular, both by open proponents of the demographic that want to be completely in charge again as well as by armed agents of the state that is still run by the dominant group and maintains a criminal justice system that is demonstrably, statistically, and indisputably more brutal and cruel to others than it is to the favored demographic…at every level.

No question, right? This would be piss-easy to “decode.” Like if this were a video game, movie, or book, you would think it was actually a little ham-handed.

You would roll your eyes and know exactly what was going on when the powerful demographic complained about their loss of absolute hegemony. You would need no help to realize how feckless it was of most to value stability and peace and the status quo more than they did the continued reform. You would see right through their attempts to slow things down or to calm those dedicated to change who used harsh language and fierce rhetoric (though not ever the same violence that was used to bring them to heel). You wouldn’t be fooled when the folks in charge held up individuals or small groups from these underclass demographics who said things were great and people should stop complaining.

And most of all, you would know exactly what was up when they kept saying “Slow down. Slow down. Slow down.”

This would not be a difficult scenario for you to put together. You would have no issue seeing that those who had power were trying to maintain power, and that they were violating the social conventions of civility (that they themselves had created––and which they were more than happy to break with the stroke of a pen, wearing a suit, and sporting a smile) in order to silence those trying to achieve equality. It would be UTTERLY almost PAINFULLY obvious to you observing this foreign society that the levers and pulleys of systematic power were being exploited to KEEP that group in power (or even roll back the existing reforms).

Yet somehow when it’s our own society, the cries that struggles for equality and justice have “gone too far," are actually taken seriously.

There Will Be No Bridge

I know they want all this nuance and these bridges built, but all I consistently see––outside of the few people who know how to stick to those erudite talking points when a camera is in their face––is an entire wing of US politics throwing a tantrum because it's been asked to respect human dignity for someone other than them.

They are SO angry that they can't just make fun of trans folks, or just repeat the word "immigration" enough times and not have their solution of a concentration camp for brown kids on the southern border given a pass as being a tough but necessary decision, and not in the least bit racist....how dare you even insinuate such a thing. They are SO incensed that naked displays of racism, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia have consequences beyond a few gasps at a party and a knowing look from the guy across the table, or that the double standards they've taken for granted are so much as being DESCRIBED by the people on the shit end of them. They are SO infuriated that women have the temerity to define behavior that is unacceptable and that makes them feel unsafe and disrespected and can no longer blow off up to and including sexual assault (for reasons––always for reasons).

More than any policy or platform, this hatred unites them. They hate "social justice," "PC culture," and us "libt*rds with our identity politics" (a clever way of saying that any issue not brought up BY cishet white men FOR cishet white men is beneath them). They want their bigotry-adjacent rhetoric legitimized and exculpated as "economic anxieties" (as if no one on the left is economically anxious or left wing policies aren't trying to improve the economic situations of poor people by doing things like raising minimum wage, taking care of healthcare since it's the number one cause of bankruptcy, or passing massive infrastructure jobs packages). As if excusing someone's naked racism because that person might be doling you out some money isn't itself kind of racist...how dare you even insinuate such a thing. But then they turn around and cozy up to and/or become white nationalists, supremacists, and literal Nazis when the rubber hits the road. And they put increasingly zealous support behind a leader who will say aloud all the things they've been quietly, conspicuously, guiltily keeping to themselves at the office parties. The absolute fury they have at being called out is a more cohesive glue for their politics than the special rust belt manufacturing renaissance that was promised just for them or that tax cut that turned out to be for corporations and the 1% or even a health care reform that doesn't shoot themselves in the foot.

And so they've become cartoonish in their reactionary swing. Hateful. Cruel for cruelty's sake. Practically daring anyone to stop them. They disenfranchise voters change the democratic bylaws in one naked power grab after another. And they have embraced ever the persecuted victim when their behavior is anything but lauded (like standing in the middle of 37 indictments, convictions, guilty pleas, an emoluments nightmare, periods of "private chats" with Putin, and verified Russian interference that were cheered on by the President of the United States, and instead of intellectually grasping why that might have looked bad, they demanded apologies and started talking treason). They slash budgets because "fuck you, that's why." And their ideology is one tissue-paper-thin rationelle away from being right on the surface all the time these days. Skim off one layer of slick-ass talking heads who know to wear a suit and tie and avoid saying "those people," and their bigotry is all right there in a boiling cauldron that is powering right wing political will right now.

That is why there is no careful examination of nuance. It is just the nuance of bigotry and we've had quite enough of that. That is why no one is building those bridges. They are bridges only to the very worst of human nature.

Occam's Racist

In the 16th century when Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model, it explained everything. (Well okay, not everything. It took Kepler to see that the orbits were elliptical rather than perfect circles, and we've been tweaking it ever since, but MOSTLY for this story, it explained everything.)  This was generally unacceptable to the Catholic church. Christ being born on Earth, that was clearly the center of the universe.

Before Copernicus, astronomers used the Ptolemaic model, but they still had to account for the fact that the planets will go BACKWARDS against the background stars. (This is what it means when your astrologer says your shit is in "retrograde.") They did have an explanation. Epicycles.

Basically they said that as the planets were going around the Earth, they acted kind of like a spirograph.

The problem was, the more data came in, the more the Ptolemaic couldn't explain the motions, but the Copernican model could. So the church kept funding science research that would create epicycles within epicycles to try to explain what was being seen. While this technically explained what was being seen, it would become insufficient and require further explanation almost immediately. However, if one just assumed the sun was in the center of the solar system, suddenly EVERY. SINGLE. OBSERVATION. made sense and fit elegantly. But instead, trying to work backwards from a solution (the home of Jesus had to be the center of the universe), the explanations got more and more and more convoluted.

There's this idea that when you're trying to figure out big patterns, you want the most elegant and simple explanation. (Occam's razor.)

Right now the president is embroiled in yet another scandal. He tweet-attacked another person of color––this time calling the entire city of Baltimore "rat infested" to get to Representative Cummings.

It's not that Trump never attacks white people. Indeed, his best defense seems to be a good Twitter offense (the more offensive, the better) but the THINGS he says about people of color...or women, the LANGUAGE he uses is completely different. He tells them to go back where they came from, says things about infestations, talks about rats, calls people animals, and uses a kind of viscerally deplorable language. You can of course operate from the presupposition that he is not racist, and then you have to have a very convoluted system of "epicycles" to explain his birtherism, his "shithole countries" comments, his position on The Central Park Five, his multiple fair housing violations, his casino floor managers ordering black people off the floor, his quote as saying he hates black people counting his money, disparaging comments about the look of Indians, his calling Senator Warren Pocahontas, his calling Mexicans rapists, slowness condemning white supremacy, his "both side"ism after a murder by a white supremacist during a protest, his telling a judge of Latin descent that he had to recuse himself when it came to building a wall, and of course his latest Twitter outburst, telling four women of color (three of whom were born in the U.S. and the fourth who was a naturalized [the right and legal way] citizen) to "go back where they came from," which is a phrase that is LITERALLY out of the US's racial discrimination handbook.

And some people DO try to explain all of this away. They have an answer for each thing. They have a huge tangled thicket of explanations ("epicycles" within "epicycles") from conspiracies to lies to simple misunderstandings. They start with the result and craft the explanation to fit, no matter how ridiculous and convoluted it becomes.

And the GOP goes right along with him, defending him to the last.

It's not surprising to me that many conservatives are part of Team Epicycles. They dutifully steer the conversation to the race-adjacent issues like "immigration," legislate and create policy with racist impacts but plausible deniability, throw as many smoke and mirrors in front of the fact that we're operating concentration camps within the legal definition of genocide (to say nothing of their complete unethicalness), and make up excuses for one racist tweet after another. After all, they literally walked through the election season praising him for saying what was on their minds. They can't very well come out and say what they are actually thinking. Despite a recent uprising of white nationalism to the contrary, we've pretty well established in our culture that being a racist is an a-hole move.

But what makes more sense? This hodgepodge of concern over terrorism (that somehow doesn't apply to the white supremacist domestic kind) and immigration (that somehow doesn't apply to European countries) and concern for Baltimore's poverty and crime (that somehow doesn't apply to poverty or crime in white-majority cities) and the wish for Democratic representatives to "feel free to leave" (that never seems to get said to Pelosi, Clyburn or Hoyer) and of course an INTENSE DEDICATION to rationalizing the absolutely non-racist things Trump "really" meant by certain turns of phrase.

Or that they are also racists and they are protecting him?

Simple. Elegant. Explains all this disparate data perfectly and can even be predictive about future behavior.

And by the way, this works perfectly with other forms of bigotry too. Want to know why Republican lawmakers care so much about children when they're writing bathroom bills and not when they're running pedophiles on their tickets? Try seeing how elegantly transphobia explains everything. It works with sexism, homophobia...basically any bigotry you can imagine.

Like I said, their behavior doesn't surprise me. They kind of have to play faux innocent, grab plausible deniability, and claim it is something (ANYTHING) else.

What surprises me is how many moderates (and no small number of liberals) engage with their "epicycles" in good faith. Like, if you don't realize by now that you're not ACTUALLY having a conversation about lawful vs. unlawful immigration with a conservative, and that they are actually racists who don't really like brown people, I don't know what to say. It's going to be a very confusing conversation to you with a lot of unexplained double standards and exceptions.

If you haven't "cracked the cypher" that they know full well by now that seeking asylum is lawful and they just don't care. That they are a-okay with "certain" people waiting in a detention facility without basic amenities. And separating children from their parents (even after an injunction) because of minor infractions and traffic violations. That they're going along with the "pretend" discussion that it's all about budgets and laws and citizens grabbed not because they "looked" like they were undocumented (you know why), but that they really did believe all that documentation was forged....it's like having a debate about why epicycles on epicycles wouldn't explain the Ptolemaic model for more than a month or two when it got out of sync when you already know that what explains everything is that sun is at the center of the solar system.

The word salads justifying the need for more and more secret facilities, and the rationalization for broad, virtually unchecked powers of an extrajudicial enforcement agency, and bloated budgets and a big giant wall are this absolute quagmire of mutually exclusive values (like fiscal conservatism), pretense, an incomprehensible resistance to the actual facts of immigration law or criminal justice statistics, and a curiously strong value for the "rule of law" unless it is a judge who has ordered that children stop being separated from parents, and the weird way that nothing ever counts as racism because they say so (unless the exact same happens to white people and then suddenly they have incredibly sensitive racism detectors). This includes (though isn't limited to) saying that things everyone considers racism––INCLUDING THEMSELVES WHEN IT IS ABOUT THEM––isn't really racism when they do it. And "Gosh we don't know why white nationalists and the head of the KKK are so excited about Trump."

Until you look at the data using one simple supposition.

Suddenly, everything becomes clear, crisp, understandable, totally explained, and fully predictable if you simply plug in this one assumption: WE ARE BEING GOVERNED BY WHITE NATIONALISTS WHOSE SUPPORTERS ARE VIRULENT RACISTS.

It's the simplest explanation.