Shame on us, white people.
We just rejected the most presidential, qualified candidate
in history to vote for a mentally ill buffoon who spews hate speech and has no
impulse control.
We voted against someone who has studied every issue and
developed a reasoned approach to each so we could vote for someone who has
displayed total ignorance and confusion on the basics of what constitutes
abortion, foreign trade, contemporary business practices, military strategy and
tactics and a wide range of other important matters.
Surveys say Americans want to protect and strengthen Social
Security, yet white people voted for the candidate whose platform wants to gut
this successful program. Surveys say we believe in a woman’s right to have an
abortion, yet whites voted for someone who says he wants to restrict those
rights. Surveys say we are wary of Russian motives, yet we voted for a Putin
apologist. Surveys show that a whopping
64% of all Americans worry about the effects of climate change, yet we whites
voted for someone who denies that climate change is occurring.
In the 2016 election, whites have done what they—what
we--have been doing since the election of Ronald Reagan—we voted against our
own interests.
Why?
Because the majority of whites are
racists? Because they secretly don’t think women capable of leading? Because we
secretly want an autocrat, no matter how erratic?
I am ashamed of the color of my skin this morning, but I
don’t place the primary blame on whites. I blame the mass media for
manipulating the fears and prejudices of whites and putting profits above ethics.
It was the mass media that decided that a clownish failed
real estate developer would play the role of a titan of business on TV. When
Trump started doing “The Apprentice,” his real estate empire was in shambles.
He was involved in thousands of lawsuits. The New York real estate industry
considered him a buffoon. He had mismanaged his family’s fortunes so much that
the Trumps were worth much less than if he had invested in mutual funds that
track the S&P 500. But the media
bought into Trump’s narcissistic self-delusions of business genius and by doing
so validated them to the world. Most importantly, the media created the
“celebrity culture” that glorifies selfish consumption and reduces all issues
to personal opinions, not the analysis of reality and facts.
The news media also bought into and publicized the
inaccurate image of Hillary Clinton that Republicans assiduously created. It
took years of bullshit investigations and false rumors, years of characterizing
her speeches as unexciting and her program as uninspiring, never with any
examples, since the examples would all prove the opposite. The news media followed
the GOP playbook. It also applied a double standard that blamed Hillary for
mistakes her peers also made and set a higher standard for evaluating her words
and actions.
Once Trump announced his run, it was the mass media who took
him seriously, giving his campaign far more coverage than what they gave to
other Republicans and the Democratic candidates. His insults and lies dominated the news
pages.
Finally, until very late in the campaign, the news media
refused to call Trump on his obvious lies. Illegal immigration from Mexico has been
negative for several years now, meaning more undocumented migrants are crossing
back into Mexico than are sneaking into the United States. Crime is down. Police
deaths are down. Acts of terrorism are way down. African-Americans do not for
the most part live in warzones. There is no such thing as an abortion in the
eighth month. Putin did invade the Ukraine. The list of Trump’s big and little
lies go on and on and on and on. But until Trump made the outrageous claim that
Hillary Clinton started the “birther” rumors and he ended them, the mainstream
media reported what he said, but never told us it was a pack of lies. I
understand that NBC producers were sitting on tapes which proved Trump
assaulted women and showed him using the “n” word, but they released them.
One of the network executives said during the primary
campaign that Trump might not be good for the country, but he was good for
ratings, and therefore made the networks a ton of money.
No consolation, but that worm is going to turn very quickly.
Economists and pundits are already talking and writing about a Trump recession.
By itself, any one of several Trump proposals will throw the country and the
world in to a deep economic crisis. Rounding up and kicking out 11 million
people will do it. Taking health
insurance away from 20 million people—the net effect of rescinding
Obamacare—will do it. Entering into a trade war with China or Europe will do
it. Lowering taxes on the wealthy will do it. Building a wall on our southern
border for hundreds of billions of dollars will do it. Withdrawing from trade
agreements will do it.
In other words, it’s likely that the media moguls who put
profits first will see their investment portfolios take a big hit and then take
years, if not decades to recover. The media itself will find itself under much
greater scrutiny during the administration of an autocrat, if Trump makes good
on his revenge threats and his threat to pass libel laws that infringe on press
freedom.
So the news media will suffer for their sins. Poetic
justice, except the rest of us will also suffer.
And maybe we deserve to suffer, at least white people.
Although I blame the news media for manipulating us, upholding the wrong values
and turning its back on the truth, we swallowed the nonsense. We swallowed it
because it confirmed the deep-seated racism, sexism and jingoism that it
appears most white still have. Because of voter suppression laws passed
by Republican legislatures in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and
other swing states, there were not enough African-American and Hispanic voters
to compensate for the failings of the white voter.
I would like personally to apologize to the African-American
and Hispanic communities, who saw through the garbage and voted for Hillary. I
would like to apologize to millennials, who will have to live a long time in
the dystopic world Trump and the GOP want to create. It would be grandiose to
apologize on behalf of all white people, so I do so for myself and my family.
This morning, I am as ashamed of my color and my nationality
as I could ever be.
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