The first published quote from Donald J. Trump was recorded in 1973. He was responding in the N.Y. Times to the charges that his and his father’s real estate business had been guilty of racial bias. “We have never discriminated, and we never would.” They did a cash settlement out of court.
Nearly 50 years later, there are now volumes of those denials. Up until about 5 years ago, he was just another racist embarrassing himself publicly periodically. As a civilian he hit his summit of unacknowledged racism by fomenting the Birther Conspiracy, trying to convince the public that the first African-American President of the United States was illegitimate and should be removed for cause. Many instances preceded it, perhaps most famously his full page ad in the N.Y. Times calling for the death penalty on some black minor boys who would be completely exonerated. There is a lifetime of examples to choose from in fact, but the attack on the President had traction for a time, and brought closet racists into the light all over the country, people willing to grab on to any lifeline to save them from a Negro in the White House. He appeared on television, including (inexplicably) news programs telling of the great progress they were making, that his investigators in Hawaii had discovered unbelievable things, it’s terrible, horrible. All would be revealed very soon. This was a travesty!
They had found nothing, of course, and the existence of a birth certificate that had been denied was released by Obama and the controversy, for the sane percentage of the public, was over. A barely perceptible admission of this came from the Trump camp, but you had to go looking for it. He essentially just stopped and retreated, ceding the field for the moment. His lack of a full-throated admission of the facts allowed a deeply racist and thankful base of support to solidify, so loyal in fact that the absurd conspiracy theory is still alive in those circles. Facts come and go, you see, but white supremacy is a calling, a life’s work. The truth is a luxury that they can not afford. There are bigger things at stake.
When the Correspondent’s Dinner came around in 2011, Trump attended. Not sure why. He was neither a member of the media nor the Federal government. He was a TV personality, nothing more, but the dinner had become a celebrity magnet over the years. All the cool kids went. With his conspiracy in tatters now, the President took satiric aim on him and roasted him mercilessly. Seth Myers followed it up and whipped him like a jockey coming down the stretch. It was hilarious, and in hindsight, a really bad idea.
As you watched Trump get eviscerated, you saw a man incapable of humor or humility. You watched the self-importance of the man burn, his humiliation at the hands of a Negro was unacceptable, un-American, and deserving of a tenfold response. He would have his revenge. Watching him in that broadcast was everything. It sealed our collective fate. He had become Benjamin Barker, his life’s calling clear and absolute. He would have vengeance.
Getting elected was just the beginning of his scorched earth policy toward anything Obama. Once in office he took aim on anything that had been fought for by the 44th President. Any policy, any program, any concept or fleeting thought from the former POTUS was to be attacked and eviscerated if at all possible. Treaties, global initiatives, the Affordable Care Act especially, environmental policy, anything that bore the imprimatur of President Barack Obama had to be destroyed with the last, ultimate goal as the cumulative bullseye, Obama’s reputation.
Since the President’s racism was really at the heart of his ire, it would be inevitable that this dark, fundamental trait would show through now and again, even with his best efforts to speak in coded language that had become part of the American lexicon since Richard Nixon made it a policy. Trump is not a politician, so the nuance of speaking in code was not as natural to him as it is to the regular denizens of Washington. Some of the pros had been speaking in tongues for decades. He has regularly tripped on his feet in the effort. Between a personal hatred for Obama and a more generalized hatred for inferiors that include all brown people, it was inevitable that it would occasionally slip out in clunky ways. “Look at my African-American!” he shouted at one of his campaign rallies. It seemed like he was pointing out one of his properties more than anything, as it was hard to see how he would be elevated by pointing out that one black man had been identified in the room. His reaction was to make the man his possession. What else could the creature be?
In the wake of the national humiliation that was the racist march on Charlottesville, he wanted to settle everyone down, that there were good people on both sides. Enough of the vilification of these patriots defending heritage! Again, the white supremacy that is at the core of the man leaked out a bit more than code protocol allowed. Not enough for censure, but a balancing act on the head of a pin. After some highlighting of the crack in the facade in the press, it disappeared. Nothing to see here. He bobbed, weaved and went on his way. That empowered him. All the passes have empowered him, and by extension empowered his followers. They knew they had an advocate.
Patriots groups, the KKK and the Senate all aligned behind him. David Duke and Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell all had his back, lifting him up as a great leader. The hate groups were expected, even after the President made the requisite denouncements of them, but there was no reason to vilify his Party brethren. They would carry the load for the hate groups, crafting a legitimacy to what had always been a disgusting underbelly to the American narrative. The KKK was bad, but their members were at heart just good folks that loved their country.
So they came out of the closet. They had protection at the top now, fear of exposure lifting from them like a Phoenix, removing the stench that had so unfairly attached to their righteous cause. They didn’t need the hoods anymore. They wanted to be seen, to be the face of an America that would be Great Again. The President had empowered them, had been the catalyst for a new pride, a new power, a new hope, a potent future. White was right again!
A black man working two jobs in Minneapolis has done the same thing for the rest of us.
George Floyd was murdered at the hands of one of President Trump’s empowered goons. The President has declared war on anyone that has the temerity to be upset about that, and shockingly to him the public has accepted the challenge.
George Floyd, a man humbly putting his life back together after serving time for a home invasion, a human being capable of both mistakes and redemption, a common man, a simple man just might topple a president.
George Floyd just might set us free.
Coded language is going to be very tough to get away with right now. It may be some time before it worms its way back into the acceptable political rhetoric, if it does at all. Is it a coincidence that Iowa Congressman Steve King, after holding his district for seventeen years, lost the primary for his seat just days after the assassination of George Floyd? King had been the most dependable and unapologetic racist in Congress for a very long time. He relished the role, seemingly unconcerned that any of his grotesque public mutterings would have any impact back home. To Iowa’s 4th district’s shame, he had been right for more than a decade. Yesterday he failed to get 40% of the vote from his own party. They elected a guy who is arguably even more right wing than King was, which is a feat in itself. So why change horses? What had King done to lose? How had he lost the confidence of the people? A more analytic postmortem will be necessary to truly answer these questions, but it is interesting.
Monday night, the President made his now historic strut across the street to St. John’s Church to publicly humiliate himself. He announced what seemed to be a credible threat to unleash regular military troops against the citizens of the United States. He stationed troops, thousands of them, mere miles outside the city of D.C., currently the only spot in the country he could actually carry out the crimes against his people he was suggesting as D.C. wasn’t a state, didn’t have those protections.
Tuesday night came. A curfew had been established, and it came and went. The peaceful protests continued as the huge crowds defied the curfew and the President, daring him to be the wartime president he fantasized he could be. They gave him no respect, no credibility. They didn’t fear him. It was more like ridicule, an acknowledgement that they were facing a paper tiger, a bully that would fold in a fair fight.
He did.
The people were beyond being fooled or intimidated. His words had no effect he could have predicted. Crowds around the country swelled, from Portland to Philadelphia, and now breaking the bounds of the country itself, seeing enormous crowds in Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Syria, Brazil and Mexico and more. This was a global admonition of the President of the United States, a universal dismissal of him as a world leader, a vote he couldn’t manipulate. The globe had aligned against him. It crossed economic lines, gender lines, color lines. Everyone was on the street. Curfews had no bite, no relevance. The people were united, and they were speaking in one voice, and they would not be silenced by a clown prince.
I have been a progressive my entire life. When Nixon was in office he started my political awareness. I grew into the very beginnings of my maturity during his years in office. I graduated from high school in 1974 and two months later the President of the United States resigned the office. It was a great and horrible day.
With all the atrocities that we can now factually attribute to Nixon, the lies, the hate lists, the war crimes and so on, he was still an animal of the system that he tried to undermine. In the end, he knew he couldn’t govern without the faith and support of the people. When that was gone and unrecoverable, he knew he had no other choice. He resigned. There was nowhere left to fight. The people had spoken and they had rejected him, convicted of bad faith with the public. It took some senators to make him understand, but he did, and he left.
The public is awakening again. Between being left to our good fortunes in the Covid-19 fight to being left to defend ourselves from institutionalized racism, the public trust has been severed. Senators are walking past journalists, mute to questions about the President’s activities. Literally walking past in masks, not saying a word in response to the questions about the President’s intent to turn our servicemen and women against us. Still not willing to speak against him, but no longer willing to defend him. He had created an impenetrable island with room for only one occupant. Politically, there was no bridge that went there, no cruise ship that visited, not even a ferry that could hold a few vehicles. In America, and on most of the globe, you just couldn’t get there from here.
I’m deeply sorry, George Floyd. More than you can know. In the end, however, what I think I may be is deeply grateful. Many have been sacrificed in this battle, who like you payed the ultimate price. You changed the game somehow. Maybe it was watching you pass as you didn’t struggle, the force so overwhelming it was pointless. Maybe it was watching Chauvin smirk at onlookers begging for mercy for Floyd, displaying a disdain that we, the public, would not forgive. Perhaps it was cumulative, the end of patience, the end of justice delayed. Maybe it was. But whatever it was, the genie was out. Something has changed, and it isn’t going away. Even law enforcement is pushing back, as more and more officers are taking knees before crowds of protesters, accepting their part in this atrocity, walking with their victims in shame of their fellow officers, hoping for a healing.
That isn’t what POTUS wants to see. He wants a rabid enforcement and a docile public. He isn’t getting it and that isn’t likely to change. For many of us he lost us decades ago. We knew he represented the worst characteristics that defined America, all the seamiest and cruelest elements that our system can allow, even foster. This is not an evolution. He came out of the box like this. All that changed were the opportunities. The one’s we gave him.
I think it is unlikely that he will be afforded that opportunity again. The worm turned this week. Those of us that were aware of the total depravity of this criminal are being joined by others who are awakening to what they have done. That is hard work in a person, to have to face a mistake so grotesque it is killing your fellow citizens, through disease, through neglect, through enforcement of privilege to just simple idiocy. All clearly identified in the campaign, refined in office, all ignored by an entertainment fueled, uneducated public. It all looked like such fun! He says the shit I think! Trump had been right. Manipulating fools is pretty damn easy, if you don’t let ethics get in the way.
Well, he never did have that burden. We knew it in 1973. He isn’t burdened by ethics now. He simply doesn’t understand them as a concept, and because of that, in spite of the loss of the public trust, he will never resign. His removal will be on us, our responsibility. He has assembled a cabinet that is perhaps the only one that could be put together that makes the 25th Amendment a paper tiger, an impossibility. In the end, their support and silence will condemn them, leaving no place to land in an awakened land. It won’t be sudden. They will make efforts to remain relevant in the public sphere, but they won’t last. They will slink back to the private sector where their lack of ethics is less public while just as applauded.
GOP senators may see the same fate if they continue to support what the public has found unsupportable. Silently walking past reporters as if they haven’t seen the news in a week or two won’t cut it. The video of them slinking by, clearly racked by shame and incapable of seeing what their response should be, is so damning it will be very difficult to recover from. Even the one Democratic darling of the Republican party, Utah Senator Mitt Romney, couldn’t face it. This should have been such low hanging fruit for him, a safe haven for his disgust of the President, an easy backhand down on open line, but instead he didn’t lift his racquet. He would bear our wrath with the rest and for the same crime.
AWOL.
The public isn’t AWOL. We’re here, Mr. President. We’re coming. You can shut down the Post Office. We will crawl to the polls if necessary. You can send trolls to our websites. It doesn’t work anymore. We recognize them and go to there pages and see the empty, repetitive posts. You can make up narratives against your opponents that are obvious ruses. We know you’re lying now, even the few you’ve been fooling are coming around. None of it will work now. We see you. We know you, and we reject you. You can’t threaten our funding, no one is voting for us so you can’t undermine our next run. We are not scared of you. We’ll still be here. You will still misunderstand what is happening, will continue with the same strategies that have led you to be a national punchline, a pariah.
We see you. It won’t be long before, at long last, you see us, too.
Won’t you be surprised.