Make America White Again?

Here's how the coverage of the GOPer Nevada caucuses went on Tuesday: stories like this that declared Trump the winner, but included incidents of "irregularities" that look a lot like vote fraud.  And then pretty immediately, stories like this that analyze Trump's victory as if all those votes were legitimate.

The question for coming days is whether the media, which does not traditionally follow up stories about vote fraud, does so in this instance.  In newsrooms it may well be argued that Trump would have won anyway--which is probably true--so these risky stories would be for naught.  Except that the overwhelming percentage of his victory is a great deal of the story, and is a momentum-making argument for bowing to his aura of power and inevitability.

But sift through the tweets in that first New York Mag article, and see if you get the impression that the people who support Trump have little or no regard for the democratic process.  Because they're angry.

This is following right in goosestep with the rise of the proto-Trump in Germany in the 1930s.  His angry, less educated and economically backward supporters got weapons and snappy uniforms.  Trump's presumably already have caches of guns, so the brown shirts are all they'll need.  (Later on of course, rich, educated and cultured Germans latched on to the guy with immense and growing power, and got even sharper uniforms. Plus the houses of Jews and the run of wine cellars throughout Europe.  For awhile.)

The Nevada voters were older and angrier than earlier contests, and they were predominantly white. (That Trump maybe got the majority of a small number of Latinos is irrelevant.)  So they match up with the analysis developed and focused by several people but explained most recently in a Slate piece.   America was great not when the federal government left people alone (as in the current mythology) but when the recipients of federal help--the G.I. Bill, FHA housing loans, etc.--were mostly white.  Though there is some truth in the unfettered private sector argument--because without laws against racial discrimination in hiring, white people got all the jobs.

This story summarizes:    One of the reasons that there was so much of this "free stuff" available to white people back in the day is that it wasn't available to nonwhite people. Discrimination meant there were bigger slices of the pie to go around, so to speak, for every white person.

Non-white people are getting too much now, because they're getting anything at all.  So white taxpayers are paying for more than white people's needs. That has to stop---so returning to whites only is how to"Make America Great Again."

Which isn't going to happen.  Not without a fascist takeover, and no Supreme Court.

We can have compassion for people in pain, and politically seek to remedy unjust or unnecessary causes of that pain.  But politically we also have to understand how close we are getting to a very dangerous situation.