The Witness Chronicles, September 24, 2024

Reason v. Racism in America

Photo by Hrt+Soul Design on Unsplash

Are We Racists? No. Are You Sure?

The election is deadlocked and the right is betting on racism

When you have no legitimate policy, few actual accomplishments, and a long history of lying, and you may be losing, what do you do? If you’re the Trump/Vance campaign you try to scare people into voting for you. And the tool you use is racism, blatant racial-level hatred of anyone who is different.

And that’s exactly where we are. And what it tells me is far too many of us, on some level, harbor fears that can be exploited by inflaming hatred, especially if the target is visually or culturally different than the supposed American norm: white, middle class, Christian, etc.

You know, those happy people in advertising from the 1950s. Dad in his suit, mom in her apron, and three kids looking at dad with awe.

But there is a big problem with this fantasy, and that is that it doesn't exist and never did. I was born in the fifties and one of the main lessons I remember from my early schooling was the concept of America as the world’s melting pot.

Everyone was welcome and would be seamlessly assimilated into a new kind of free society.

Now it’s seventy-five years later and that melting pot crap seems quaint and hopelessly optimistic. And we have a presidential candidate who openly hates anyone who disagrees with his fantasy view of the world. And who is now willing to use that hatred to try and win an election.

A shameful number of Americans support him while pretending they are not racists, haters, or filled with irrational fears. The targets of Trump’s recent rhetoric include Haitians, the Congo (?), Jews, women, non-Christians, and any immigrant who comes, legally or not, from a non-white country.

When he lists the immigrants sources we should be scared of, they are always countries and continents where people of color are the majority.

He recently claimed, at a rally, that every single job created in the US in the past two years was taken by an illegal immigrant. Every single one. And the crowd of knuckleheads cheered this nonsense. WTF?

Ok, I know I am stating the obvious here. We all know he is a racist, if it suits his immediate purposes. That statement is very specifically worded. Trump will say anything, support anything and anyone, and pretend he is what he is not, to get elected.

Since when do we celebrate hypocrisy on a dangerous scale never seen before, and reward it with votes and money and power?

Despite the polls, I do not believe a majority of us will vote for this man and whatever it is he stands for, not this time around. And as for those polls, when people are afraid, they are not going to reveal anything about themselves to a stranger on the phone asking questions. Pollsters claim to have surmounted this obstacle but polling is a lucrative business and they need to keep us believing they represent the voice of the people.

Well, if they truly do, they are telling us that fifty percent of our neighbors are racists quaking in fear of the immigrant hordes pouring out of foreign prisons and mental institutions.

I don’t see it and I don’t buy it. Those poor citizens of Springfield, Ohio are not afraid of Haitians, or weren’t until Vance and Trump started lying about Haitians. They invited them there, legally. What they are afraid of is anonymous bomb threats from actual domestic terrorist neo-Nazi groups. In other words the real fear is actual racists.

There are many strange things about this election. But this blatant, open racism as a political tool by an ex-president is beyond shameful. And so is the notion that a majority of us secretly are haters, cowering in fear of a dark skinned invasion.

If Trump wins, he will have revealed a terrible truth about America. And we will get what many of us deserve, a real look at what a racist society, operating in the open, looks like.

We’ve seen it before in Germany in the 1930s under Adolf Hitler. That led to the deaths worldwide of an estimated 50 million people.

I know this sounds hysterical, but listen to the language we are hearing from the right and you will hear the same thing over and over again, and it’s ugly.

The German people back then went all in on Hitler’s vision and it destroyed their country. We are not Germany during the depression, an entirely white country. We are that melting pot and have been for years. Kamala Harris knows it because she is literally the successful product of it.

Because of that she will not run on racial division, fear, and lies, and this drives men like Donald Trump and JD Vance nuts. At least it certainly looks like they have lost their minds. But we haven’t, and we’re seeing that every day as the election nears and more and more people are supporting Harris and Walz, regardless of their respective party affiliations.

Your subscriptions, paid upgrades, and small donations, via Buy Me A Coffee, are the only compensation I get for my writing, beyond the satisfaction that some find value in it, which is a big deal. Please consider supporting my work. Thank you.