I have been meaning to write about this and Paul Waldman beat me to it. It’s been driving me crazy ever since Trump came down that escalator:
We’re discussing the legacy and persistence of racism more now than in decades. And Trump understands that all this talk about institutional racism and White privilege makes many White people feel attacked and defensive, as though they’re being personally accused of sins they feel they haven’t committed.
So in response he gives them permission to stop feeling bad. Not only will I protect Confederate statues and banish talk of racism from schools, he claims, I’ll convince everyone that the real thing we need to eradicate isn’t racism itself but talking about racism.
Call it the White Innocence Project.
“We’re launching a new pro-American lesson plan,” Trump said later that day on a campaign trip. But the truth is that this will have precisely zero practical impact; the president himself has no power to dictate what schools teach, and even the federal government’s powers are limited.
There will be no “pro-American” curriculum distributed to every school district, no Trump-approved teaching materials vetted for their appropriately over-the-top boosterism — even though for most of our history, textbooks painted just the kind of cheery picture of slavery Trump seems to want.
Of course, a Republican candidate running on the idea that his love for America is deeper than that of his opponents is nothing new. Mitt Romney’s campaign biography written for 2012 was called “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” a reference to the conservative fantasy that President Barack Obama had gone on an “apology tour” belittling America around the world.
Yet Trump talks about America’s shortcomings all the time, just as conservatives always have. Four years ago, he told us that we were a country full of losers, suckers and fools. “Nothing works in our country,” he said, and his campaign book was called “Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again.”
He understood that the people whose votes he needed, particularly White men, felt a loss of status that was only partly economic; it also came from the ever-increasing diversity of American society. He channeled their anger and resentment, promising to deliver them back to their rightful place at the top of the hierarchy.
No idea was more central to that promise than his proposal to build a wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it: We’d kick out all the immigrants, then enact a ritual humiliation on someone else that would allow us to stand tall again.
The fact that it would never happen was almost beside the point. Just electing someone who talked that way was nearly an end in itself, the validation that allowed his supporters to feel like winners.
Now, with his new crusade against critical race theory, Trump offers his supporters another restoration, in which once again he will grant them back their dignity.AD
Having enacted a positively historic performance of cruelty toward immigrants — what says “America is great again” more than ripping children from their parents’ arms and throwing them in cages? — now he’ll show those ungrateful Black people and their White liberal enablers a thing or two.
This is the message Trump wants those supporters to hear: We’re done talking about slavery and racism. You don’t have to do any soul-searching, you don’t have to question how American institutions operate, and you sure as hell don’t have to feel guilty about anything. You, beleaguered White man, are the best there is, because you are America, not them.
Conservatives often convince themselves that when liberals point to societal problems and conditions that demand remedial action — the large number of Americans in poverty, or our high rates of homicide, or the fact that American police kill so many people — it’s because they hate America.
By contrast, when conservatives complain about problems and conditions they don’t like — increasing secularism; the fact that automated customer service systems give you an option for Spanish — they’re only being patriotic, because the things they don’t like about America are betrayals of its true spirit.
It is a neat trick. But it’s ridiculous. Nobody has had more complaints about how terrible America is and has been than Donald Trump. His inaugural address is known as “the American Carnage” speech, forgawdsakes. His followers are all upset about the “cancelling” of American founders and leaders of the past when their Dear Leader is the king of cancel culture. He even says he’s the greatest president in history, including Abraham Lincoln who he says didn’t do as much for Black people as he has done.
So let’s not hear anything more about “the left” hating America. Nobody hates America more than Donald Trump.