The Interminable Hell We're In

 We have to start getting used to the idea that Trump and Trumpism are here to stay.

Trump himself, while never of sound mind, and despite his atrocious diet, obvious obesity, and tanning addiction, seems relatively sound of body. Abetted by a compliant Supreme Court, a loyal and entrenched Republican party, and a toothless opposition, there's no reason to think we won't follow through on his signals to stay in office in 2028. Nursed along by the best health care available, it's possible he'll last another 20 years in office, increasingly demented but with lackeys whose power is dependent on his continued figurehead of the MAGA cult.

Having recreated the federal bureaucracy not only to enable authoritarianism but to guide that authoritarian system to support a handful of tech-minded oligarchs, there's no reason to think that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, won't continue to support the regime that continues to support them. And even if one of them decides to depose Trump and install himself as dictator for life (and none of these men is all that old), there's little anyone would be able to do about it, with the federal system designed to avert such a thing as eroded as it already is.

Once power is completely aligned under Trump, which is almost already the case officially the case and clearly the case de facto, even a legal ouster under the 25th Amendment or an extra-legal ouster by other means won't, by themselves, restore democracy. The coup leader, be it JD Vance or someone else—Trump Jr., for example—would simply be installing himself atop an existing authoritarian system, not reforming one. And that would be the point: those in power now haven't gotten there because they have principles or value the popular will.

The idea that all authoritarian systems fall on their own, that they must give way, eventually, to the needs of the people, is specious: witness Spanish fascism, which lasted under Franco for almost forty years. Note that Castro's Cuba chugs along long after the revolutionary's demise. And then there's North Korea, now on its third generation of dynastic rule. Despite its recent transformations, "communist" China is still a repressive, one-party state, nearly eighty years after Mao's rise to power.

None of this is meant as an excuse for pessimism; it's simply meant as a warning: there is no natural end to dictatorship. For every Hitler, Mussolini, Ceaușescu, there are half a dozen others who never paid from their crimes, who, like Stalin, Franco, Castro, died in peaceful slumber, with nary a worry in mind.

Getting rid of dictators is not a political process. Instead, it is a matter of justice, and the failure of the Congress to find Trump guilty when it had two chances through impeachment, the failure of the State of New York and the federal justice system to jail Trump (or offer him exile), the failure that was the Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. USA have all but sealed our fate. With Democratic leadership capitulating to Trump and Republicans repulsively loyal, it's difficult to see any way out, hard to see just who, what leader or popular uprising, will be willing to wield the hammer of justice to nail the coffin shut on Trump, his movement, and all it entails.

But without it, we better get used to living in this hell for the long haul.

"Is Sending" and "Theft" as Trumpist Legerdemain

by Lael Ewy

Because I don’t want OnWords to become only about the ways Donald Trump abuses the language, I’m addressing here some special concerns.

In this case, it’s his use of “is sending” in regards to immigration from Mexico, and “theft” in the case of manufacturing jobs in China.

The president-elect assured us during the campaign that Mexico “is sending” people here in order to rape and sell drugs. This implies that there is some intentional, planned effort on the part of either the Mexican government or some other massive national organization to send people here.

As far as I can tell, unless this program is the world’s best kept secret, that’s poppycock.

People from Mexico risk their lives to come here because economic and social conditions in Mexico are very bad. They come here fleeing the violence created by drug gangs—gangs sustained by the immense appetite for drugs in the US. They come here because Mexico’s class structure prevents them from advancing. They come here because their farming communities have been devastated by cheap commodity exports from the US, thanks to NAFTA.

Nobody is sending anybody anywhere; people are coming here because it’s better to live poor in the US than it is for some people to live at all in Mexico.

In other words, they’re coming here for the same reason immigrants have always come here.

When Mr. Trump says that China is stealing American jobs, that this is unprecedented “job theft,” he is, likewise, simply not telling the truth. China welcomed US jobs, but they were sent here by manufacturers in the United States.

American executives chose to export those jobs, and their companies received nice rises in their stock prices when they did. The executives then used that increase in stock value to justify bonuses for themselves. They used that increase to raise the value of their own stock options.

They did it for the same reasons they have long sought to reduce labor costs. That payroll costs are the highest costs a business faces is axiomatic in American economic thought. Businessmen in this country seek to reduce payroll costs for that reason alone.

The last few decades have also seen US markets “mature” and growth slow. Because publicly traded companies are judged not on profitability but on the continual rise of profitability, American executives chose to show growth by reducing labor costs instead of lowering growth expectations or increasing efficiency or pursuing new markets.

Exporting US jobs also follows a long-term trend: in the ‘60s and ‘70s American companies outsourced manufacturing to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. When labor costs rose in those countries, they began to export to South Korea and China. As South Korea and China become more costly, they are moving jobs to India, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

Last, moving jobs overseas accomplished something American executives have sought to do for more than a century: it devastated the power of organized labor. Rather than shooting and killing striking workers as they did in the early 20^th century, rather than negotiating as they did through the middle part of the 20^th century, executives saw the opportunity to do an end-run around unions by sending jobs to a place where the authoritarian government and the massive number of available peasants assured little resistance to low pay and poor working conditions.

If anything was stolen, it was the profit created by US workers, and if it was stolen by anybody, it was stolen by shareholders and the executive class.

Trump’s rhetoric in these cases is dangerous not merely because it grossly misrepresents what’s going on. It’s dangerous because it distracts angry, working Americans by placing the blame for their plight on others who are simply acting in the same way any of us would given their circumstances.

His rhetoric is dangerous because it conflates desperation and opportunism with malice and foments enmity among those whose common interests suggest solidarity.

Dear Fellow White Americans:

We have a racism problem.

I know it’s not popular to say so right now, but as a middle class White guy, I’m calling us on it.

I grew up in a rural area near what is, for Kansas, a large city. My father was an executive, my neighbors and extended family farmers. I went to school with blue collar people and white collar people, the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers, factory workers and accountants.

One thing that was common, though not universal, in the White community, regardless of social class or education, was racism.

Because I am a White male, other Whites found it was OK to be racist around me, to share racist “jokes,” racist stereotypes, and sometimes simple racist invective, assuming I would agree.

To my shame, I did not, do not, often enough disagree.

In the aftermath of an election victory by a person who refused to distance himself from openly racist people, White establishment types on both the Right and the Left have gone out of their way to find other explanations for why so many supported him. The idea that it could be racism would put pundits and reporters in the difficult position of alienating most of their audience, so they repeat the ideas that “this was a change election,” and that Trump’s success was primarily a case of people “voting their pocketbooks.”

Maybe so. But if you’re really actively combating your own inner racism, Donald Trump would turn your stomach. Racism may not be the main reason people voted for him, but it sure didn’t dissuade too many people.

I think racism in White America comes in three not always easily distinguished classes.

The first are the hardcore racists. The active members of this group will be the ones who organize and turn violent. These are the Klan people, though most of them will never join the Klan. They’ll move out of a neighborhood that gets too “ethnic.” They’ll redline a whole community and disown a kid who marries across racial lines.

Statistics on White flight would indicate that hardcore racism is far more common than people admit.

Granted, most White Americans who harbor racist feelings and thoughts don’t think of themselves as racists. They’re of the “some of my best friends are Black” persuasion, and they probably don’t actively hate. But they still will tell you about the “bad” part of town. They bought into the “superpredator” rhetoric of the ‘90s.

This second category of White racists won’t redline a community, but they also won’t stop the bank executive who does. These people will read Charles Murray and note that “he makes some good points.”

They pride themselves on the common decency to say “Well, I’m no racist, but” before saying something racist.

On my more generous days, I’d say that this is the most common form of White racism. After November 8, 2016, I’m not so sure.

The third category is the one I’ll put myself in. Generally educated in identifying racism, or maybe even specifically educated in Critical Race Theory, we still haven’t fully confronted the structural racism in the institutions and organizations—mainly academic and non-profit—we pervade.

We’re the sort of folks who can even identify the definition of structural racism on a multiple choice test.

We also have a terrible track record of tokenism, of presiding over the English department with the one Black guy in it, of setting up the Diversity Office that employs half the Black folks on campus and has no real power.

We talk a good game. Sometimes we even publish anti-racist stuff. But our homes, our churches, our inner circles, are all lily-hued oases, free from the anxiety and discomfort diversity might make us feel.

Identity, to some degree, is at issue in all these categories—the ways we identify self from other. It’s stronger in those who frequently feel that identity is at risk. But there’s also a degree of lay tradition: we feel this way because that’s how we were taught to feel by our parents and grandparents, the important people in our lives.

We can move through these categories due to experiences, education, social situation. Even hardcore racists can change.

So there’s hope.

But the rest of us, those of us in the second and third categories listed here, need to stop hiding behind barriers of gentility, academic theory, and social respectability. We need to call it and confront it when we see racism, and when we perpetrate it.

It won’t be comfortable. But real change seldom is.

The Latent Heat of Victimization

by Lael Ewy

At first, it would seem odd that a nation bent on social climbing, personal betterment, and the acquisition of wealth would also be so enamored of victimization.

On further reflection, though, it makes sense: if we gear everything for competition, we have to have something to do with all the losers. And, more important, the losers have to have some type of identity other than “loser,” which is, in the United States, a much worse label than “died trying,” or even “cheated his way to the top.”

In some cases, the victim identity can be a way of bringing attention to real social inequities: those exposing racism, sexism, and rape culture have all successfully “played the victim card” in order to help the rest of us see the real problem for what it is. For some people who are victimized by their social conditions, publicizing victimization brings unexpected social power, such as in the case of Emmett Till, a 14-year old lynched in 1955. Till's mother insisted that his body be publicly displayed in order to show the brutality of the crime perpetrated against him, helping to further the cause of the Civil Rights movement of the time.

Inevitably, this necessary demonstration of social evil creates backlash among those on the wrong side of history via claims that it's not as bad as the victims say (“They were happier when they were slaves.”), that those pressing their social cause are undeserving (“They're faking,” or “They're gaming the system.”), that they had it coming anyway (“If you dress like that, you're asking for it.”), or that they are, themselves, the victimizers (“Feminazis.”).

The advantages of victimhood are, while powerful, by nature also limited: once the victim identity has been publicly acknowledged and attention to the cause secured, incremental court decisions or legislative changes are made, and then those in power, satisfied that they have “fixed it” go on doing their thing, which is staying in power. This, then, marks the end of the social power of victimhood and where the limitations of the individual power of victimhood become apparent. The victim, by using that term in order to gain power, finds that she only has power within that frame and can never again step beyond it and back into full, human identity. The disabled person may be able to press her case for a reasonable accommodation using the Americans with Disabilities Act, for example, but that does not guarantee access to executive positions, marriage partners, or academic appointments,

Both despite and because of the advent of things like Affirmative Action and the ADA, the power structure goes out of its way to increase the barriers to moving forward and moving up. “We've given you what you want,” the powerful seem to say, “now shut up and go away.” Understanding this attitude is key to understanding the sources of institutional discrimination and how oppression becomes structural. By setting up structural barriers, those in power protect themselves and those like them. As demographics shift, you'll see (and probably have already seen) the traditional, white, male power structure become ever stronger, the reins of power ever more difficult to take in hand for those who haven't proven their loyalty to the status quo.

Reverse victimization plays into the ways the powerful stay in power. Donald Trump insist that those whom he insulted apologize to him; white students claim “reverse discrimination” when they don't get into the college they want to get into; whole political movements rise to power on the idea that we need to “take America back” from the teeming mob who stole it from them. Those who play this game often fail to realize its limitations, that they, too, will be duped by the truly powerful people who help them promote their sense of victimization. The poor and middle class white people riding Trumpist and Tea Party politics will, if history is any indication, be no better off or even lose ground under the leadership they promote. This is just fine with those who stand to gain from such sentiments among the hoi polloi: after all, the Tea Party backers won't be “losers”; they'll be the perpetual victims of black people, brown people, and inner-city “welfare cheats,” perpetually able to be called upon to add “populist” credibility to what are essentially authoritarian political figures.

The culture of right-wing victimization has not yet, like the left, begun to move past the language of victimization and into the language of survivorship. Survivors of sexual assault, for example, have begun to harness this new power in order to be seen as credible brokers in dismantling rape culture on college campuses and in communicating a deeper understanding of how to end rape culture on the whole. The #blacklivesmatter movement has received criticism for its directness and for not being the squeaky-clean thing that white folks want it to be. That arises from #blacklivesmatter being made up of people who refuse to play the victim in the first place: the movement gets criticized because it's no longer possible to ignore. The white power structure had become comfortable with the image of the black victim—of poverty, racism, and overall downtroddenness. As long as there were black victims, whites could take comfort in a kind of well-meaning but entirely patronizing sympathy, to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. as a fallen national hero, to declare a black history month, and to mention Kwanzaa in defense of a “happy holidays” greeting. This is the same mentality that promotes the idea of the “Magical Negro” (noted by Spike Lee in regards to such characters as Bagger Vance) and safe sidekicks such as Danny Glover's character in the Lethal Weapon franchise. This safe view is distinctly challenged by the idea that black people are also allowed to be, you know, people.

In the mental health field, the antipsychiatry movement of the '60s and '70s transformed into the “consumer” movement of the '80s and '90s and into an “illness” movement of the '90s and '00s. The idea was that by identifying as “the mentally ill,” as victims of a blameless disease, suffering people would gain access to treatment, decent housing, and disability benefits. The “it's better than being on the streets” mentality has grown to embrace an acceptance of psychiatric incarceration, anathema to early activists.

The real danger looming in all this is that if people move beyond victimization and into survivorship, they might become assimilated into a culture that they don't recognize, and that people may lose their identity in the process. Can a black American be both an American and black when one of the defining features of American culture is structural racism? This is the field upon which Barack Obama has played out his political career, and the deep contradictions it creates can be seen in the deep contradictions of his administration: successfully bailing out some of the least deserving parts of the power structure, such as Wall Street and General Motors, while simultaneously challenging that power structure in the realm of gay rights. President Obama ground his entire political machine into dust in order to pass the Affordable Care Act, an immensely compromised attempt to expand access to health care that also carefully maintained the least deserving part of it: the profits of private insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies.

A fuller understanding of how power works in the US is in order, one that goes beyond the simple mechanisms of victim and perpetrator, loser and winner. Kimberlé Crenshaw's ideas about intersectionality move toward this, and may prove vital in understanding how power works in a nation in which there is no official, hereditary class structure. We are far from the point at which we can make such ideas meme-worthy, though, and you'd be hard-pressed to hear them discussed in a seven-minute spot on NPR, much less a two-and-a-half minute piece on the CBS Evening News.

Our next step, then, is not to create another reactionary political uprising, but to foment a genuine social movement that can articulate a vision of a future of both genuine equality and robust cultural diversity.