Fever Swamp: A Journey Through the Strange Neverland of the 2016 Presidential Race by Richard North Patterson

Fever Swamp: A Journey Through the Strange Neverland of the 2016 Presidential Race by Richard North Patterson

Author:Richard North Patterson [Patterson, Richard North]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL040010 Political Science / American Government / Executive Branch
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2017-01-09T23:00:00+00:00


The GOP Reaps the Whirlwind

Racism, Nativism, Xenophobia—And Donald Trump

JULY 12, 2016

The warning comes from the Hebrew book of Hosea: “Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.”

So it is with the Republican Party and Donald Trump.

True, Trump personifies a fear and hatred of “the other” embodied by some of our history’s more frightening and despicable figures: Father Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace. These emotions spawned some of our most shameful chapters—lynchings, anti-immigrant violence, the internment of Japanese-Americans. Because such tragedies are so searing, we view them as unique.

But they do not arise from nowhere. Nor did Donald Trump. Those who are shocked by his success have given scant notice to the darker forces that stain our society and roil our politics. Or, more likely, they pretended not to notice.230

Most deplorably, the Republican Party.

The terrible tragedies of last week have muted, for all too brief a moment, the racial politics that suffuse the Trump campaign. But they are there, and will persist. So there will never be a better time than now to examine how Trump became the Republican nominee.

From his entry on the political scene, Trump has left no doubt as to how he proposed to rise. He began by fomenting the birther hysteria against Barack Obama, neatly fusing racism—the fear of Blacks, nativism (Obama must be from Kenya), and xenophobia (our president is a closet Muslim). An avid audience awaited him within the white working-class base of the Republican Party—fearful of minorities, immigrants, and the tide of globalization. Even now, a near-majority of Republicans believe Obama to be a foreign-born Muslim.

Small wonder, then, that Trump secured the Republican nomination by targeting nonwhites—at home or abroad—as the preeminent threats to our way of life.

He labeled undocumented Mexican immigrants criminals, murderers, and rapists. He promised to deport all 11 million, including children who grew up here. He pledged to build a wall on the border and make the Mexican government pay for it. When his rallies grew “a little boring,” he bragged, “I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ and they just go nuts.”231

Among Republican primary voters, his poll numbers shot upward.

In the wake of terrorist shootings, he started going after Muslims. He suggested registering American Muslims on a national database. He proposed monitoring Muslim neighborhoods and mosques. He promised to bar all Muslims from entering the United States—including refugees from the tragic slaughter in Syria. And he began winning primary after primary.

He fomented violence at rallies, once pledging to pay the legal fees of a man who assaulted a black protester. Ever the opportunist, he paid special attention to protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement. He falsely suggested that the greatest concentration of crime occurs in cities that, not so coincidentally, had a substantial African-American population. And, consistently, he used black demonstrators as foils.

In early May, he completely vanquished his last opposition, and became the GOP’s de facto nominee.

To what, one wonders, did the Republican establishment attribute his astonishing coup?

True, he also inveighed against free trade agreements, and promised to impose tariffs on the Mexicans and Chinese.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.