In a recent article in L.A. Progressive entitled “No More Condescension: What We Can Do Now,” progressive Christian social activist Rev. Peter Laarman makes a desperate plea for capitulation to the forces of Donald Trump, whose victory he blames on a Democratic party whose shabby treatment of white people drove them into Trump's pussy-grabbing arms.
We ignored them, apparently, and the humiliation of appeasement is the only punishment shameful enough for such arrogance. According to Rev. Laarman, our only redemption lies in unconditional surrender to Cromwell and his roundheads. "If we can't or won't do that," says Laarman, "we will deserve what we get."
In the mind of Rev. Laarman, we had it coming.
As a Christian, Mr. Laarman presumably subscribes to the principles of pacifism exemplified in Christ’s admonition to “turn the other cheek.” As an atheist, I suffer no such handicap.
According to a survey published in Time, 20% of Trump’s voters believe that slavery should not have been abolished. Astonishing as that seems, it is no exaggeration, nor is it the most extreme thing I’ve heard from Trump surrogates I have encountered. The level of white rage and nationalist extremism among Trump followers is a lavishly underreported phenomenon.
I’m sorry that a growing number of whites are suffering a level of privation from which their race had previously excluded them. I regret that for thirty years they’ve doggedly elected politicians who galvanized them with evangelical rhetoric about God, guns, and gays while secretly working to outsource their jobs and destroy the unions that had enabled their fathers to earn decent wages and buy homes, even without a college education.
On Tuesday Nov. 8, these angry white voters had had enough. After three decades of faithfully voting for anarcho-capitalist politicians who sold them down the river, they decided to vote with their middle fingers by electing another anarcho-capitalist politician who will ultimately sell them down the river. If, as Einstein reportedly observed, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, Trump supporters are certifiably insane.
United by white rage and an unwillingness to adapt to the cultural changes in America, the fiery core of Trump’s coalition is an incomprehensible grab-bag of neo-Confederates, antisemitic neo-Nazis, and rabid, Muslim-hating Zionists–groups that have nothing in common except a devotion to Trump himself, a shared contempt for humanity, and an apocalyptic desire to “see the world burn.” In many ways, they are indistinguishable from the fanatical jihadists they profess to hate.
Having worked extensively in the labor movement and with victims of the criminal justice system, Mr. Laarman has surely seen enough of human cruelty to appreciate the fundamental flaw in his argument. When you meet a villain halfway, he doesn’t say “thanks,” he says “gotcha!”
In the aftermath of every general election, it is a tradition for the outgoing--and incoming--president to call for comity and unity in the interests of a peaceful transfer of power. Yesterday, President Obama urged the American people to put aside their political differences and "root for" the success of president-elect Donald Trump.
It was a noble thing to say, a gracious sentiment for the undeserved benefit of a graceless man whose appalling victory is a perversion of the office he will soon hold.
We owe nothing to Donald Trump. Not our courtesy, nor our cooperation, nor an atom of the fundamental civility he tirelessly immolated with his insults, his diatribes, and his infantile rants. We owe him nothing but our scorn, and our contempt, and a solemn vow that we will not rest until he no longer profanes the office to which a minority of the white American electorate, in their boundless appetite for idiocy, have chosen to appoint him.
It is our responsibility to thwart Trump at every turn, to block him at every opportunity. Working together, we will strive to achieve with Mr. Trump what Republicans vowed--and failed--to accomplish with Barack Obama: to make him a one-term president.
The Bullshitnado begins.
