Frugal Ron has spent the last four years trying to understand how anyone could possibly vote for Donald Trump or approve of his performance as president. After engaging in countless social media and real life conversations and spending a great deal of time listening, three reasons come up:
- Racism.
- Abortion.
- Stupidity.
These three reasons are not mutually exclusive, meaning a racist might also be just plain stupid. The most rabid Trump supporters may in fact qualify with all three reasons.
Far and away the most important reason people support Trump is their mutual racism. Trump owes his victory in 2016 to racism and there is published research documenting this. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/polq.12737. Consequently, this article focuses on racism in the US.
This article isn’t going to solve the issue of white racism. Frugal Ron’s goals are much more limited. Hopefully, we can define racism, identify the level of racism in the US, show the ridiculous non-logic of racism and identify ways to prevent racists from ever again electing another lying, incompetent racist like Donald Trump.
This article is about racists and helping non-racist voters understand the ugliness Donald Trump represents. Consequently, the language used is the way racists talk. Please be offended, not at Frugal Ron but at racists.
Racism defined
Racism is defined as, “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.”
Racism requires a societal power structure behind it to empower the discrimination. Trump supporters fear this power structure is threatened. Indeed, to racists, electing a black man to two terms of the presidency is about as serious a threat to white privilege as you can get.
Identifying the amount of racism in the US is difficult. For some reason, racists refuse to own-up to being racists. Even neo-Nazis refuse to admit being racists. They may refer to themselves as “realists” who believe white people are superior, but they are never “racists”. Think of how miserable it must be for people whose whole lives are defined by their racism and yet they are too ashamed to admit it.
This is a real problem for racists. Trump supporters can’t defend his racism without clearly identifying themselves as racists. Yet, they can’t stand to see Trump denigrated. So, they foolishly try and defend his stupidity, his incompetence and his lies. People who somehow manage to dress themselves in the morning and somehow manage to hold jobs, wind-up sounding like blathering idiots defending Trump’s actions.
Trump has a special bond with fellow racists. No matter how badly Trump’s policies impact his racist followers, their loyalty never wavers. For example, Trump designated the US steel industry for special protections. He put tariffs on steel imports and affected countries put reciprocal tariffs on US agricultural products.
According to Laurie Fischer, CEO of the American Dairy Coalition, “Overall, the impact of the trade war on exports has taken more than 10%— or $1.78 per hundredweight — from already depressed US milk prices.” In addition, Trump’s efforts to curtail immigration threatens the very existence of many dairy operations. And, taking stupidity to new heights, Trump threatens to close the US/Mexico border forcing Mexico’s remaining buyers of US milk products to look for more dependable suppliers. Yet, dairy producers, probably some of the most racist people in the US, remain firmly committed to Trump.
A large majority of voters believe the Trump presidency is a disaster, However, to evangelical racists, not only is Trump the greatest president in history, he was delivered to us by God to save our country at this critical juncture. Racists and the rest of us truly live in two separate worlds.
The Republican conundrum
Republicans proudly claim they are fiscal watchdogs, always on the lookout for government waste. However, they are very selective about what they perceive as government waste.
For example, President George W. Bush’s handpicked leaders of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with their cronies, robbed US taxpayers blind. In Afghanistan, US government auditors say $6 billion was lost and another $8 billion was wasted from 2003 to 2012.
In Iraq, $12 billion in U.S. currency was transported from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad in April 2003 and June 2004, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. A Vanity Fair magazine report concluded that of this sum, “at least $9 billion has gone missing”.
No Republican groundswell ever complained about all this waste of hard earned taxpayer money and nothing was ever done until President Barack Obama took office and ordered audits.
In another example, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted by a jury of cheating US taxpayers out of $6 million. But, to watchdog Republicans, this was just a show trial. “All millionaires cheat on their taxes,” one of these Republican guardians of our nation’s finances stated as an excuse for their lack of interest.
In an exhaustive and thoroughly documented analysis https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage The New York Times reported Donald Trump and his parents avoided nearly $500 million in taxes, partially by underreporting assets and using shell companies. To Republicans, there is nothing wrong with lying to avoid taxes, “That is just smart business.”
However, if a black man in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is collecting between $54 and $370 per week in unemployment benefits and another $105.63 per month in food stamps, that is a different story altogether. “That’s what’s destroying this country! Nigger’s living like kings and sitting on their asses while being supported by hardworking white taxpayers!
Measuring racism
Because people won’t own up to being racists, measuring the level of racism in the US requires us to use proxy measures. A CNN poll http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/05/07/rel5b.-.trump.pdf of adults released last May found Americans, by a wide margin (56 percent to 37 percent, with a +/- 3.5 percent margin of error), think Barack Obama was a better president than Donald Trump.
That’s all fine and well, but it is the 37 percent figure that is important. The 37 percent of respondents who are so blinded by their hatred that they got the answer to that question wrong are what we can easily define as racists. I don’t know of a more accurate measure of racism in the US than this CNN poll.
At this writing, the Gallup poll measures Trump’s approval rating at 39 percent. This matches the average throughout his term. While some political analysts marvel at how consistent Trump’s poll numbers are, Frugal Ron has an easy explanation. Trump’s racist followers will never leave him and another two percent of the population are just plain stupid, or expect he will pass an anti abortion law. Even Trump can figure out how important the racist vote is to his future. Without them, he’s done. And, the economy may crash or Trump may blunder his way into a war and that 37 percent of racist voters will never desert him.
At first glance, a 37 percent voting block doesn’t seem dominant. What is important is the concentration. First of all, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans floats around 85-90 percent. All those 37 percent of voters who we identified as racists fit into the group of Republicans who support Trump. They are the tail that wags the Republican dog. Combine racists with greedy rich people willing to donate big money to Republican candidates in exchange for tax cuts and you have a potent political force.
As far as concentration, white racism rules in rural areas and small towns. These areas are Trump’s strongholds. With Republican gerrymandering of Congressional and state legislative districts and the outsized weight given to low population rural states by the Electoral College, the 37 percent of voters who are racists have a large influence.
Outside of the South, these are also areas that have virtually no black people living there. The typical Midwestern white racist has maybe only seen a handful of black people during their entire lives and has never actually had a conversation with a black person.
Frugal Ron often uses the terms “Trump supporter”, “racist” and “Republican” interchangeably. Granted, there may be a few people misidentified. Perhaps, they can identify with African Americans and Hispanics that have put up with stereotyping for centuries?
Republicans have actively courted racists since 1964, when Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater voted against voting rights bills for black people. Today, without the racist vote, Republicans would be irrelevant as a political party.
Frugality forgotten
On the flip side, the Republican party sold it’s soul to recruit racists. Republicans had a trademark of fiscal frugality. Now, they are the party of hyper-borrow and hyper-spend. Donald Trump’s $trillion government spending deficits (the largest non-recession deficits in our country’s history) and his spending increases make a mockery of the Republican brand.
When Obama left office, US defense spending was more than the next six biggest defense spending countries in the world combined. At the start of the Trump Administration, the US had 4,018 active nuclear warheads.
According to research published in Safety magazine https://www.mdpi.com/2313-576X/4/2/25 , “The results found that 100 nuclear warheads is adequate for nuclear deterrence in the worst case scenario, while using more than 100 nuclear weapons by any aggressor nation (including the best positioned strategically to handle the unintended consequences) even with optimistic assumptions (including no retaliation) would cause unacceptable damage to their own society.
One might assume this is the time to cut spending. But not Trump. Since taking office, he has raised defense spending by $200 billion annually.
There is obviously a dichotomy here. A Wisconsin dairy producer who couldn’t defend Trump’s wasteful defense spending answered, “Well, at least he isn’t giving all the money to Niggers like Hillary would have!” But of course, none of these dairy operators will admit to being racists.
It is hard to fathom how far the Republican party has fallen. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (the last great Republican president) once noted, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
In today’s environment, a forward thinking Republican that wants to make life better for all US citizens and will work with Democrats to achieve that end will find their legislative career ending in the next Republican primary.
Nigger money
College educated people born and raised in urban environments have no idea of the level of racism and hatred in rural areas and small towns. Frugal Ron spent half his life on a farm in Jackson County, Wisconsin and learned to despise rural close mindedness and many rural residents blaming their problems on someone else.
The “someone else” was anyone that was different from them that these folks figured are getting a better shake than they are. Racists are obsessed with what they call “Nigger money”. Nigger money is legislation voted on by liberal Democrats that will enable black people to live like kings without working. These programs are paid for by hardworking, under appreciated white taxpayers.
A perfect example of Nigger money is the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. Racists are livid that they are paying the health care costs of irresponsible, drug using, black people who never worked a day in their lives. The reality is that the most indigent black people qualified for Medicaid before and after Obamacare and far more white people than black people are taking advantage of the Affordable Care Act.
Economists can’t understand why low income rural white people insist on voting against their own self interests when they support politicians like Trump who want to eliminate the Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, you have to live in rural America to understand that improving their and their families lives means nothing to racists if they perceive blacks and Hispanics’ lives will improve because of Obamacare.
The threat to America
The emergency on our southern border has nothing to do with hoards of imaginary Mexican criminals coming across the border and raping and killing native born citizens. To racists, the real emergency is that the US is on the way to becoming a non-white majority country, somewhere around 2045. Huge influxes of non-white immigrants having babies born in the US able to vote in 18 years are the real national emergency.
To hear one of them tell it, “The Niggers, Mexicans, towel-heads and all the rest will get together and elect a Nigger president who’ll raise taxes on white people like Obama did so Niggers can live even better than us. They’ll tax hard working white people so hard we won’t be able to survive!”
Just as a matter of clarification, Obama did raise taxes on rich people, and a great majority of them are white. The tax increase cut the federal budget deficit in half. As far as spending, Obama raised federal government spending 28.9 percent over his two terms in office. This is the lowest percent spending increase of any two term president since Bureau of Economic Analysis records were collected in 1929.
The other point that non-white people will vote for their own self interests hasn’t been established. However, given that white people have voted for their own self interest throughout the majority of the US’s history lends credibility to racist fears.
Attacking our culture
Trump supporters are paranoid that their Christian values and culture are under attack. Again, some clarification is needed here.
Indeed the values Jesus Christ espoused and practiced of providing free healing, food, shelter, charity and unconditional love to the destitute while condemning the rich for their greed is under daily attack, by Donald Trump and his supporters.
On the other hand, the religion of hate, prejudice and greed practiced by Trump and his supporters is also under attack. Every television show and movie that depicts people of color or non-majority sexual orientation as real people chips away at their culture. Every time a rural person finds accurate news and information on the internet, that chips away at their culture that is founded on ignorance.
The worst threat of all is rural de-population. Every time an old, set-in-their way, racist dies is one less Republican vote. Every time a rural young person goes off to college or to the city for a job and finds that black people and gays are ordinary people, that is another Republican vote lost.
So yes, there is a culture war going on in this country. The undeniable truth is that knowledge is power. Unfortunately for Trump supporters, an anti-knowledge president may provide some temporary comic relief, but time, knowledge and truth are racists biggest enemies.
The “other problems” racists deal with
Considering white people are supposed to be a master race, white racists certainly have a difficult time finding intelligent leadership. Donald Trump’s lack of intelligence is well documented. From claiming windmills cause cancer to considering nominating his daughter to head the World Bank, you don’t find find this kind of stupid everyday.
In another example, James Hart Stern, a 54-year-old black man, is the new president of the National Socialist Movement (NSM). Stern convinced Jeff Schoep, the long time leader of the neo-Nazi hate organization to hand over leadership to him. You just can’t make this kind of stuff up!
Stern’s first move as president was to address a pending lawsuit against the group by asking a Virginia judge to find it guilty of conspiring to commit violence at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Next, he plans to transform the hate group’s website into a space for Holocaust history lessons.
Schoep, the group’s former leader, claims he was, “Duped”. I expect this happens quite frequently to Mr. Schoep.
Besides less than intelligent leadership, racists deal with their own lack of logic. Racists became openly hostile to professional football players who knelt during the National Anthem. “Disgusting lack of respect for the flag and dishonor to fallen soldiers who fought for the flag as well as a miserable lack of patriotism,” racists claimed.
Yet the same racists seemed to think it was a very good idea to preserve monuments to Confederate leaders that showed no patriotism whatsoever when they broke their oaths to defend the United States, destroyed and desecrated many US flags on the battlefield and were responsible for killing many soldiers defending the US and the flag.
Surprising how the actions of those people who claim that white people are the most intelligent race are the best example of why white people aren’t the most intelligent race.
Dealing with racism
Derek Black was one of the rising stars of the neo-Nazi movement. He disavowed his beliefs, transformed his life, changed his name to Roland Derek Black, wrote a book, Rising Out of Hatred and started a PhD program at the University of Chicago.
Megan Phelps Roper’s parents headed the Westboro Baptist Church. While growing up, Ms. Roper and her family would picket at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq holding up “God hates Fags” signs. Ms. Roper left the Westboro Church and broke with her family. She is no longer preaching hate and fear—but instead, a message of love, tolerance and anti-bullying. She has become an advocate for people and ideas she was once taught to despise; Ms. Roper is now an activist and speaker who lobbies to overcome divisions and hatred between religious and political divides.
These are great stories, but unfortunately, too few of them exist. In both of these cases, transformations occurred at young ages. People who worked to convert them would constantly show them how ludicrous their beliefs were.
The important point here is that this is not about traditional Democrat and Republican issues. What we are talking about is man’s inhumanity to man that Donald Trump and his supporters represent. We are a country of immigrants. Do we want to be a country that separates thousands of immigrant parents from their children because they happen to have been born with the wrong color skin?
It is worth pointing out again that knowledge is power. One of the best ways to combat racism and hate is for government to spend money to bring high speed internet service and knowledge to rural areas. If you’ve ever tried to access the internet in many rural areas, you can understand how frustrating it is to get rudimentary information on the web. Ignorance, hate and racism flourish in this environment.
In summary, don’t expect 60 year old farmers with no contact with black people to suddenly give up their racism. In a democracy, to take power away from the Donald Trump’s of the world, rational people of all colors need to vote together for leaders that work for the good of all citizens.
