Evidence that the Republican party is now firmly in the grasp of a shady, racist ex-president is seen at every level in a country that may be on a path to a real political civil war. The country’s second major political party has abandoned any pretense that it is not subject to any of the showboat whims of Donald J. Trump. He has shown that identity can precede policy by his willingness and ability to exploit an American white supremacy that has been with us since the country’s birth and remains powerful today.
In an essay called “The Bitter Heartland” by William Galston, a former member of the Clinton administration and now a senior member at Brookings, says, “Resentment is one of the most powerful forces in human life. Unleashing it is like splitting the atom. It creates enormous energy, which can lead to more honest discussions and long-delayed redress of grievances. It can also undermine personal relationships and political regimes, because its destructive potential is so great it must be faced.”
Galston continues saying that in recent decades, many of Trump’s most loyal supporters, “have witnessed the growth of a potent new locus of right-wing resentment at the intersection of race, culture, class and geography.”
Donald Trump—either uninformed or indifferent to the massive changes in this country and the world that have created daunting, unprecedented challenges for us—continues to pursue a course of self-aggrandizement that has put the nation in a precarious position.
In response to President Biden’s forthright speech that addressed the country’s deeply-entrenched systemic racism and racial discrimination, the Republicans sent the lone Black Republican in the U.S. Senate to insist that the country is not racist. Tim Scott conceded it may have been racist, but lamely says it has evolved out of it. Notwithstanding Scott’s role as an apologist for his party’s complete acquiescence to the leadership of Trump, his shady conduct and disingenuous protests about the outcome of his bid for a second term, there is a simple truth.
New York Times columnist Charles Blow reminds us that, “Historically, however, there is no question that the country was founded by racists and white supremacists, and that much of the early wealth of this country was built on the backs of enslaved Africans … Eight of the first 10 presidents personally enslaved Africans. In 1856, the chief justice of the United States wrote in the infamous ruling on the Dred Scott case that Black people ‘had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’”
When we say that the United States is a racist country, we don’t mean to suggest that all or even most Americans are themselves racist, but we can’t forget that almost half of the country voted for a loudly-outspoken racist, Donald Trump.
Yet we do see manifestations of the danger posed by Trump and the complicity of most of his party’s leaders, along with a full onboarding of a wide majority of elected Republicans and ordinary party members—and in no place more than Missouri.
In Washington D.C., the number two leader in the Republican House leadership has moved to oust highly-conservative U.S. Representative from Wyoming Liz Cheny from her leadership post because she has not backed down from her criticism of Trump. She has committed an unacceptable sin in today’s Republican party–calling out Trump’s election lies.
In our region, we see teachers in the Rockwood School District asking for protection from personal attacks and outright threats of violence because of a backlash against the district’s diversity and equity programs. The Webster Board of Education found it necessary to affirm a formal new policy on anti-racism and anti-bias that was developed by teachers, staff and high school students and others earlier in the school year.
With Trump winning Missouri by 15 points in 2020, Attorney Eric Schmitt and disgraced former Governor Eric Greitens are openly vying for the former president’s political embrace. Greitens announcement that Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Trump campaign advisor and Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend, will be his political campaign chair, appears to give him an edge despite Schmitt’s shameful and increasingly desperate attempts to earn Trump’s blessing.
It is in this political environment where you have a major political party maintaining that no election where it is defeated is legitimate and if we lose, we are free to just change the rules. That has led to massive efforts at the state level to promote voter suppression laws. Baltimore Law School professor Kimberly Wehle wrote that, “as of late March, state legislators have introduced 361 bills in 47 states this year that contain limitations around voting, a 43 precent increase from just a month earlier.
This attempted assault on access to the ballot–the foundation of democracy–can have disastrous consequences for the nation. We see what can happen when an unscrupulous leader is willing to exploit the darker aspects of a politically-fragmented society for his own selfish ends. Trump is showing that the United States is not immune to authoritarianism. There have been other recent attempts to circumvent democracy here but none so dangerous as the tyranny of a man who offers simple answers and rightly has been described as “almost a caricature textbook despot.” Let’s hope that there are enough attentive and informed Americans of a better nature who will resist this assault on the rule of law and the undermining of the country’s democratic system.
