Trump isn't a racist, and that should scare the hell out of you
Racism (n.): A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Donald Trump isn’t a racist.
He’s something far worse: an equal-opportunity oppressor.
Trump’s racist dog whistles and shout-outs to white supremacists don’t reflect any deeply held belief, because Trump doesn’t have any deeply held beliefs. He’s been on both sides of everything from abortion to DACA to the Electoral College; from his tax returns to his party affiliation. Whatever’s convenient at the time. The only thing he really believes in is this: The person with the power makes the rules. And he intends to be that person, at any and all costs.
Expressions of racism are just a means to the only end Trump cares about: seizing, consolidating, holding, and augmenting his own power. Racist tweets and policies help him because they convince other racists he’s like them.
But he’s not. He’s a spoiled billionaire who uses others to get what he wants, regardless of their skin color. That’s what he means by “winning”: getting his way. Not helping his constituents win. Not improving the nation. Not helping the Republican Party. Simply getting what HE wants — even at everyone else’s expense.
ESPECIALLY then, because if he’s the only one left standing, there’s no one left to challenge him. He’ll destroy everyone else to secure complete and total control.
Daddy’s boy
This is the kind of person who lets tens of thousands contract a virus he could have prevented by simply encouraging people to wear masks, stay home, and wash their hands. It’s the kind of person who pretends he doesn’t know people who were once intimate associates, if knowing them becomes an obstacle to his power or a threat to his image.
Trump got this philosophy, it seems, from his father. Niece Mary L. Trump expressed it like this: “In family, as in life, there could be only one winner; everybody else had to lose.”
Everybody else HAD TO LOSE.
Think about that. It’s not just that Trump had to win, it’s that he had to humiliate everyone else and leave them so cowed and broken that they would not, and could not, challenge his own perverse self-deification
We have clear, human evidence that he does just that. Ask John Kelly, Jim Mattis, Michael Cohen, John Bolton, Rex Tillerson... the list goes on. Don’t ask Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or Lindsey Graham, who received the same treatment but remain in “cowed and broken” mode, too scared to let even a shred of the truth about Trump pass through their quavering lips.
A chameleon and a viper
It’s not that Trump thinks Black people are inferior because of their skin color, it’s that he doesn’t care whether they are or not. That’s why some people can swear up and down that he hasn’t got a racist bone in his body, even though he’s done inarguably racist things in the past. People without a moral compass can flip on a dime, and seem very convincing talking from either side of their mouth. Donald Trump is such a person. If you crossed a chameleon and a viper, you’d get something that looks very much like Donald J. Trump.
Trump’s not a white supremacist. He’s a self-supremacist. He doesn’t care about race, religion, nationality, or even money. Don’t believe me? Just ask him:
“I don’t do it for the money,” he wrote in 1987’s Art of the Deal. “I’ve got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.”
For Trump, the only deal is one that’s a good deal for him. It means screwing other people so he comes out ahead. But here are the six words that matter the most in that excerpt:
“I do it to do it.”
Which means it doesn’t matter who the sucker is getting the short end of the deal. It doesn’t matter if it’s George Floyd or the entire United States of America. What matters is that he wins.
We’re all George Floyd
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller wrote this because he understood people like Trump, for whom the lust for power is colorblind. Trump doesn’t care who he steps on, as long as he “wins.” His racist dog-whistles aren’t the product of some deeply held prejudice; they’re a means to this end, because they trigger real racists (white supremacists) to support him. He’s using Black Americans, and he’s also using the people who hate them. Divide and conquer.
People like Trump will use any excuse to marginalize and degrade those who get in their way. That’s how prejudice works. It may target gender in one specific time and place, race in another, religion in yet another. It can be directed at Jews or Christians or Muslims or Buddhists. It can target Black or Asia people; indigenous groups or immigrants.
Prejudice in the United States is toxic, inhuman, and reprehensible. It’s a cancer on our reputation and our legacy. But what’s heartening is that so many of the people who are protesting the deaths of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor, and others at the hands of police officers aren’t Black. They look like a cross-section of America. Some of us, at least, have begun to recognize that humanity isn’t skin deep. People are beginning to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I... and ‘there’ is a place no human being should ever go.”
Common threads
Donald Trump’s shout-outs to white supremacists are explicitly intended to keep more people from realizing that. He doesn’t want us to recognize our common humanity, because then we’d recognize his lack of human decency. We’d realize that, because he must be the only winner, he views everyone not named Donald Trump as his common enemy. And that makes him — by his own definition — OUR common enemy. The nation’s common enemy. The common enemy of humanity.
Racism is the warped belief that some human beings are inherently inferior to others. Donald Trump believes ALL human beings are inherently inferior to him, and he’ll do anything to demonstrate it. Let a pandemic rage. Put children in cages. Make deals with Russians. Pardon criminals. Condemn the innocent. Pervert justice to punish his enemies.
As heinous as racism is, Trump’s motivation is even worse: a cold-blooded, sociopathic form of indifference to human suffering. It’s colorblind, mindless, and all-consuming in its need to dominate and devastate everyone and everything in its path, by any means necessary.
It’s not just Black Americans who are being tear-gassed, beaten, and abducted by camouflaged federal troops ordered into cities by Donald Trump. It’s anyone who gets in his way. It’s no coincidence that troops are being sent into cities where opposition to Trump is the greatest. This isn’t an attempt to restore peace, it’s a calculated reign of terror. And unless we the people stop him, it’s only just begun.
He does it to do it. Because he can.