President Barack Obama and Republican Nominee Donald Trump
Donald Trump is not the problem, Donald Trump is the symptom. The problem is the fear of losing a political majority; of losing the American ideal of the founding fathers.
When the 2016 Republican presidential candidate came down the escalator in June 2015 to announce his run for presidency, most of America thought it was a joke, including his own party. What most of America did not yet fully comprehend was the ire of millions of their fellow citizens who live in mortal fear of losing the country that they believe belongs to them.
The fear began to set in within days of the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama and quickly resulted in the birth of a new political party aimed at taking control of the electoral process and placing those who empathized with their views in federal, local and state offices across the nation. Their issues were clear; anti-immigration, anti-muslim, pro-life and their idea of extreme patriotism was undergirded by a nationalist ideal with a hint of sympathetic nostalgia for the civil war confederacy. It was a recipe for a strong cider that flooded the Republican party like a wave of prohibition moonshine.
The Rise of the Tea Party
In the years since, the tea party has moved close to 100 people to seats in both houses of Congress and hundreds of local and state seats across the country. Millions of dollars has been raised by political action committees from average Americans as part of a grassroots organizing effort to champion the causes that the contributors hold dear. This segment of the American population has made an impact on American culture, both civilian and political that will be felt for the foreseeable future and beyond. Nowhere has their presence been more felt however, than in the Republican party itself.
It’s not easy for a third party to fare well in American politics and even with the groundswell of enthusiastic support and contributions, the two-party system has always overshadowed every attempt to elevate new voices to the political discourse. Despite the many high ideals that come from third parties, America is still very much a social-political binary culture - it still boils down to ‘black’ and ‘white’ and no matter from which ethnic group one descends, a side must always be chosen. For that reason members of the two primary parties have swapped their allegiances back and forth for more than 150 years around the issue of how to deal with Indigenous and African descendants of colonialism, enslavement and Jim Crow. So what is an alt-right, extreme sometimes psueudo conservatism movement to do when the tide changes again? Take over the party that most sympathizes with your views. Prior to the introduction of tea party conservatives to the Grand Old Party, few would have considered former House Speaker John Boehner the liberal voice of any group; until he resigned “for the good of the party” in October 2015, unable to unify the GOP as it was literally being stripped from the hands of the establishment.
The Fall of the Latest Republican Party
The soul of the party shape shifted right before the eyes of the country and once again, voices that had become doldrums of the past were resurrected to speak about the modern day “State of Emergency” in the United States. That state of emergency according to former Nixon aid, two time Republican presidential nominee and now Trump surrogate, Pat Buchanan said Rachael Martin of National Public Radio, is that “by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built.” He has since amended the deadline of that clarion call to 2042. When asked by Martin if he could understand how sentiments of that kind could be interpreted as insendiary, he simply replied, “I don't care how that language sits with people. My job is not to make people happy; it's to tell the truth as I see it.” For this nearly 80 year old political activist, who in the late 1960s worked tirelessly beside then former Vice President, Richard Nixon to forge a new Republican party of southerners from both parties, this is a fire whose time has come - again.
The Rise of Trumpism
With the looming of the dubious deadline of becoming a minority by 2042, one Supreme Court seat hanging in the balance and the potential for two more during the next administration, the idea of possibly losing another eight years to an agenda that is viewed as adversarial to their interests is more than many in the splintered party can fathom. Enter Donald Trump. A self described glutton for attention, the reality TV real estate developer rode the wave of more than $2.9 billion in free advertising from the news media all the way to the top of the Republican ticket. Along the way, he has attempted to de-legitimize the first African American president, offended 60% percent of the American population, offered to pay legal expenses for people who got into physical altercations at his rallies and lately has declared war on the American electoral process by repeatedly calling it “rigged”. All this while the former tea party members of the new GOP watch on as proud parents of a toddler in potty training pointing to his first success. During the run for the nomination, Trump said that he could “shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue” and not expect any of his supporters to abandon his campaign.
In recent weeks, as the sexual assault allegations have come out, some of the mainstream members of the party have abandoned him, but many of them were already queasy in their support of aTrump presidency. And while he hasn’t shot anyone in midtown Manhattan, nothing that he has done has made his supporters lose sight of the goal which is to ensure their political hold on the reigns of America for posterity by legislative mandate to their leader who they believe is bold enough to follow their directive. Extreme right ideologist, Ann Coulter in her latest musing on Trumpism said, “There’s nothing Trump can do that won’t be forgiven. Except change his immigration policies”. Though she’s publicly referred to minorities who support the policies of the democratic party as “illiterate peasants” from autocratic societies, the often less stated reality of her position is the fact that not all Republicans fit into her ideal definition of true Americans. For Coulter, only those who are European descendants of colonists and those who immigrated to the United States prior to the 20th century are real Americans. Anyone who can morph their ancestral identity into that narrow definition has the right to identify with America and should be very afraid of a future that includes all others.
The Coming Minority of America
Today, 40 percent of the United States electorate is firmly planted in this group that is often referred to in the mainstream public discourse as ‘the American people’. Nonetheless, if their greatest concern is becoming the minority in the country that they believe belongs to them, it is not unfounded. The face of America is indeed changing. According to the 2010 Census, ethnic minorities and those Indigenous and African descendants of colonialism and enslavement accounted for 91.7% of the nation’s growth since 2000 with the majority of that increase from 2000 to 2010 at 56%, being attributed to Hispanics. Americans of European descent, who had the oldest median age in 2011 at 42.3, are still the majority population in the United States, but only accounted for 8.3% of the nation’s growth over the decade, hence the emphasis on immigration policy. Yet, unless that aging population starts reproducing at a much higher rate, it’s likely that even the strongest immigration policy will only delay the inevitability of the vision of the American melting pot not only being realized, but expanded to include those of other ethnic origins.
Whispers of Civil War
America has been here before. In 1858, the Republican Party was embroiled in battle over a whisper that was quickly becoming a rumble, over whether or not to end the institution of enslavement. A literal fist fight broke out in the halls of Congress between Galusa Grow, a Republican representative from Pennsylvania who had decided to cross the aisle and democrat Laurence M. Keitt from South Carolina. After Keitt refered to him as black Republican puppy” Grow responded that he wouldn’t “allow any nigger driver to crack a whip about my ears" to which he swiftly was met with Keitt’s hands around his throat. Keitt is often cited as giving voice to the “Fire-eaters” whose opposition to ending the enslavement of people of Indigenous and African descent ultimately aided in the acceptance of the succession movement which sparked the Civil War.
158 years later, Vice-President Joe Biden recently longed for a return to high school so that he might take Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump “behind the gym” to which Trump welcomed the invitation to join him, “behind the barn”. Tensions are at an all-time high in the fight for the soul of America once again. Trump supporters are calling for a revolution, a second civil war and making ominous threats against the Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton while their leader reminds people of their second amendment rights and implies that he may not accept the outcome of the election. There is even talk of succession again, as a Time Magazine report stated in August that 61% of Trump supporters would be in favor of that state’s succession from the United States. The state that was last to secede in the Civil War, is threatening to potentially be the first to secede today.
The nation is extremely uneasy and for good reason. As tensions rise, for reasons that are deeper and extend far beyond this election, many are bracing for a post-election America that is anything but unified. If the climate of the country gets worse, everyone who is defined as an “other” can expect increased hostility on all fronts; social, economic and political. Responses such as that of Colin Kaepernick, the Black Lives Matter movement and the indigenous people of Standing Rock will continue to grow in intensity and number. The face of America is not the same as it was in 1863, or even in 1963. Once again, the United States is at a pivotal moment in history. Still in its infancy as a nation, the face of America is comprised of many shades, ethnicities and national origins. Together, whether in peace or in war, they will define America and the definition of what it means to be an American.