Racism and unknown risk consequences for democracy

Echo opinion published in the History News Network by Donne Levy, a retired community college history instructor. 

The term “Trumpism,” alluding to a cult of personality surrounding the #FormerGuy, has penetrated the American vernacular. 

(Maine Writer: Trumpism is the modern euphemism for Naziism)

So much about the Trump presidency has been weirdly unprecedented. 

But, the cult phenomenon is not new.  

Apparently, a cult of personality also engulfed Ronald Reagan. Although the two men are very different from one another in character, their cults of personality share similar qualities. Both were not always truthful, both made serious mistakes and both were tinged with racism.

A political cult of personality means a strong and irrational admiration and devotion to a leader. Frequently, the leader spreads fame widely through mass media. Followers become enamored to the point of idolizing the leader, while overlooking or ignoring shortcomings. This characterizes the public life of both Trump and Reagan.

Familiar to millions of Americans by appearing in movies and hosting the weekly General Electric Theater on Sunday night television, Ronald Reagan began a political career on October 27, 1964 with a nationally televised speech on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. It was a week before the election. The speech was filled with false claims about the overbearing U.S. government and unverified anecdotes. This was all to support Reagan’s view that government needed to get out of the way of the economic freedom of the American people. Reagan created #fakenews by falsely claimed that farmers could be imprisoned who did not cooperate with federal government programs, and that the Federal Reserve Board planned inflation.

Reagan also said, “We were told four years ago that seventeen million people went to be hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.” (OMG!) Due to his building a cult of personality, this particularly callous and inaccurate quote was overlooked. When Reagan spoke, more than 36 million Americans were living in poverty, nearly one-fifth of the country. Following the formula of that speech, Reagan won the California governorship two years later by a landslide and would go on to win the presidency twice, by equally impressive margins. The Reagan cult of personality enabled him to remain popular with his followers even when violating his own conservative principles. Throughout his political career, Reagan railed against big government deficit spending. But when the national debt rose by 189 percent, he suffered no political consequences. When Reagan admitted to misleading Americans during the Iran-Contra scandal, his popularity went down temporarily, but bounced back by the end of his presidency.

Donald Trump, like Reagan, gained fame with the American public through show business. Trump starred in a reality television show called The Apprentice. Many Americans assumed that Trump was the “boss” starring in his own program, but in reality Trump was an actor employed by a television production company, just as Reagan was an actor employed by the General Electric Company. 

Trump's strangely favorable celebrity status leading toward a political cult of personality was supported by the appearances on The Apprentice. While Reagan launched his political career with a televised speech, Trump began his with a nationally televised (racist!) accusation that Barack Obama should not be president because he was not a natural-born U.S. citizen. With no proof other than his words, Trump claimed to have investigators in Hawaii uncovering evidence that Obama was not born there as his birth certificate indicated. “They couldn’t believe what they’re finding,” Trump asserted. Several years later, shortly before winning the presidency, Trump admitted that he believed Obama is a U.S. citizen.

When Trump announced his presidential candidacy, he declared, “Sadly the American dream is dead.” The campaign slogan became “Make America Great Again” That is not unlike Reagan’s decrying big government for destroying our freedom. The Reagan 1980 campaign slogan “Morning in America” is not very different in meaning from the Trump 2016 slogan. Like Reagan, Trump deviated from facts to support political points. Examples of this are legion, from Trump’s assertion that he saw thousands of Muslims on 9/11 cheering the collapse of the twin-towers to his claim of Obamacare imploding. One difference however is that Reagan’s factual deviations usually served to buttress his political points, while Trump’s were often to boost himself, from the false claim to have graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania at the top of his class, and the boast of being a “very stable genius.” That arrogance was not in Reagan’s character.

Trump’s personality cult protected him to some extent as it did Reagan. Trump’s popularity was never high as Reagan’s was. But his approval ratings always remained in the middle 40s, not dropping precipitously as in the case of Nixon and Carter for example. That is despite numerous scandals, including the Russia investigation, and a poorly-handled pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. Unfortunately, in the end, 74 million Americans (incredulously!) voted for Trump. The cult of personality remained intact.

Another and more sinister similarity in the Reagan and Trump cults of personality is white racism. Both men saw an opportunity to advance their political careers by appealing to white voters in a racially prejudicial way. In Reagan’s 1966 campaign for governor he appealed to white voters disgusted with the “beatniks, radicals, and filthy speech advocates” as Reagan termed it. In his 1976 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Reagan frequently told the “welfare queen” story about a woman on welfare who allegedly defrauded the U.S. Government of $150,000. The story was significantly embellished, but was in keeping with Reagan’s political views. He once called welfare recipients a “faceless mass waiting for a handout.” He did not mention race, but the implication was abundantly clear that the welfare queen is black. In his 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan after winning the nomination, traveled to Mississippi to give a speech at the Neshoba County Fair to a white audience glorifying states’ rights, which has long been the cry of white Southerners fighting civil rights. Neshoba County is the site where three civil rights workers were infamously killed in 1964.

Donald Trump’s appeal to white racism has been more blatant. In August 2017, the Unite the Right rally occurred with one counter-protester killed. Trump said that “you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.” One side had neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, and Alt-Right people. In the last presidential campaign, Trump in numerous ways appealed to racism attempting to win re-election. For example, he condemned NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag. He condemned Black Lives Matter and predicted the “beautiful suburbs” will be destroyed by low-income housing if Biden wins. He blamed big city Democrats and their black voters for stealing the election, ignoring the fact that he lost battleground states because too many whites in the suburbs deserted him.

Two recent presidents have had cults of personality, although that is antithetical to democracy. That enabled both to win their party nominations and the general election. It gave both men the luxury of deviating from truthfulness and enabled Reagan to survive a severe scandal and Trump to be incompetent, scandalous and profane while maintaining a base of popularity. This also indicates something ominous about America. If a candidate has a cult of personality, and develops a large number of devoted followers who believe he or she can do no wrong, it could potentially make white supremacy or other malignant elements of politics seem permissible, with unknown consequences for democracy.

Nevada echo- Immigration made America great: "nativism" and its consequences

We always have been a country of immigrants.  A Nevada point of view with quotes from The New York Times.

A prayer after leaving a tribute near Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Saturday. Forty-one people died there, the authorities said. Credit Cornell Tukiri for The New York Times

An echo opinion published in the Nevada Reno Gazette Journal newspaper, by Donne Levy

This opinion was published on February 14, 2019, weeks before the March 15, heinous murder of 50 innocent Muslims in Christchurch New Zealand. Tragically, the massacre was committed without provocation by an evil White Supremacist who referenced Donald Trump in his racist manifesto. "Americans need to understand and address the poisonous pipeline of extremism (and White Supremicism) that has emerged over the past several years, whose ultimate effects are impossible to quantify but clearly far too big to ignore," wrote Kevin Roose in the March 15, 2019 The New York Times.   (MaineWriter- the consequences of "nativism")

Nevada opinion:  America has been built on immigration ever since the first Europeans arrived and proceeded to seize the land from the Native Americans. We always have been a country of immigrants. Yet we have gone through periods of strong hostility toward immigration tinged heavily with racism. We are now in one of those periods.

A prejudicial reaction against immigrants called “nativism” has reared its ugly head throughout American history. For example, a mid-19th century common feature of newspaper want-ads for jobs ended with “Irish Need Not Apply.” In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act banning Chinese laborers from immigrating, in effect excluding an entire ethnic group from America. In 2016 a presidential candidate advocated banning an entire religion (Islam) from America.

In 1924, Congress passed a quota law permitting immigration from only two percent of the number of people of each nationality in the U.S. as of 1890. Previously, most immigrants were from Western Europe. Beginning around 1890, America experienced the “new immigration,” Italians with swarthy skin and Eastern European Jews. The law was designed to keep America white and Christian as much as possible.

In 1965, Congress destroyed the racist quota system with a law establishing immigration based on reuniting families and attracting skilled labor. President Lyndon Johnson signed the law at the Statue of Liberty. That basically was America’s immigration policy until the Trump era.

America must welcome immigrants because our nation's current population demographic is not sustainable without their valuable contribution to our economic growth

In discussing immigration, we must recognize its value. Our economy depends on immigrants. Undocumented immigrants pay about $11.5 billion in taxes a year and their payments help sustain Social Security as many do find employment. Without continued immigration to fill jobs, the economy would stagnate.

Yet Trump tries to reduce legal immigration of nonwhites. He capped refugee immigration at its lowest level since the Refugee Act of 1980. Hewants to destroy the Diversity Visa Program that encourages Asian and African immigration. He wants to deny immigration for extended families. Trump has said it himself that he wants immigration from Norway, not s---hole African countries.

With accusations about Mexican rapists, murderers and drug traffickers, Trump proposed a wall stretching thousands of miles trying to bring back the pre-1965 racist era. Yet no evidence exists that his wall makes America safer. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says that 80 to 90 percent of hard drugs enter through ports of entry, not the vast border. With the ability to build tunnels, a wall costing tens of billions is useless. Already with increased patrol, appropriate fencing and technology, illegal crossings have dropped by 90 percent since the year 2000.

Economically, we need immigration while creating a citizenship path for those brought here as children and the 11 million undocumented. However, if you want America as white as possible, support Trump.  (MaineWriter post script- But we already know that Caucasian Americans do not want to do the kinds of labor intense jobs, the ones we hire immigrants to do for us.)

Donne Levy is a former community college history instructor.