I'm going to keep this short, because I've written about this before. Twice actually in the past three months. Plus I'm in D.C. for the next day and it's 5pm on a Friday and I'm going to find some drinks and some wings and some Black people soon. Mostly though I hoped that maybe by now that this trend of White writers and bloggers and reporters and pundits reluctant to label Trump supporters as either blatantly racist and sexist and homophobic or perfectly fine with blatant racism, sexism, and homophobia existing — which is essentially the same thing — would have ended by now. Which, admittedly, was a foolish hope. But I also thought the Steelers would win last weekend and that Inspectah Deck would have the best solo career out the Wu, so I'm familiar with foolish hopes.
Anyway, "The More Trump Hates, the More America Rejects His Hatred" from Slate's William Saletan has a great title, a great subtitle (Whites and men elected him. But polls show they didn’t support his attacks on immigrants, Muslims, and women.), a great premise, uses great polling data to provide evidence for his premise, and ends with a greatly optimistic edict:
But the election wasn’t a mandate for chauvinism. It doesn’t show that whites liked Trump’s attacks on immigrants or Muslims. It doesn’t show that men liked his attacks on women. They didn’t, and they like it less every day. The people are on our side, and they get the last word. Let’s make sure they deliver it.
Unfortunately, as much as I want to believe in the latent goodness of Trump supporters — which, apparently, just needs some understanding and some sensitivity (and perhaps even some Ralph Tresvant) for that goodness to be extracted out — there's this annoying little thing preventing me from doing that.
They voted for him.
He made no effort to hide or spin his racism and sexism and hate for Muslims and Mexicans and non-alternative facts, and they voted for him. He's done nothing since being elected and inaugurated except exactly what he said he was going to do. Perhaps the polling data says something completely different, but didn't something major happen in America like three months ago that proved much of that type of polling data obsolete? Something that proved that while people know that they're supposed to feel a certain way about injustices against minorities and women and other vulnerable people, there's a huge difference — a yuge difference — between knowing they're supposed to feel that way (and answering questions to reflect that) and actually feeling that way. Maybe they didn't all vote for him specifically because of the melange of regressive fuckshit associated with him — although A LOT did — but they were fine enough with it. Those kind and nice and simple and just and concerned motherfuckers who are so apparently upset by the actions of that motherfucker voted for that motherfucker.
And, if they no longer want to be thought of as motherfuckers, then they should stop voting for and supporting motherfuckers. Until then, fuck them.