Presidential Toughness?
No. Privileged Belligerence? Yes.
This ”tough” talk and “tough” stance is coded language that resonates with the Trump base, while giving the appearance of a formidable leader with the much larger, general population. This mental contortion is remarkably deceiving.
Trump is only as formidable as we democratically allow him to be. If we remain democratically uninformed then we run the risk of becoming a plutocratic autocracy. To reiterate, this is a small contingency that conflates nationalistic pride with achieving the goal of anti-immigration, anti diversity policies.
But this is what dictators do to suppress any backlash on their positions or eliminate opposition to their reign. This should seem obvious to rational folks who can surmise and confirm the motivated ignorance and explicit rhetoric coming from this racist White House administration. It certainly culminates from the top and promulgates through policy.
The need for the Republican Party and its factions to contour American society is done in such a way as to exemplify a dominant framing of America First initiatives through a racially white power structure that seemingly and benevolently grants limited representation to non-whites. Those non-whites — of whom are applauded and awarded for their rugged individualism and loyalty— placate and appease whiteness by serving an administration that is hostile not only to the minority groups that they may or may not acknowledge, but to democratic principles that essentially, interdependently paved their way. Furthermore, they may or may note even care that their socioeconomic compensation for such subterfuge would pale in comparison to the ethical and moral value of qualitative diversity.
Non-whites have never profited nor benefitted off of the kind of oppression proffered and sustained by whites. It is not that easy for most non-whites to be taken in by selfishness, and most of us can read between the lines of the false narrative that we have been conditioned to believe in order to succeed.
We see you Mr Trump and we can pull up receipts. As did Rep Ted Lieu (D-CA, 33rd District) did in response to one of many of Trump’s uninformed tweets.
This president was elected due to a number of factors that when combined constitute mostly of motivated ignorance. It has coalesced so serendipitously well for Trump, that a year later the hangover from most of that support is still flummoxed by the president’s continued mental unpreparedness, lack of decorum and incompetence.
This notion offered by the White House that we the people — an advanced democracy should be so fortunate to have someone who exhibits uncompromising and inconsiderate attitudes or behaviors towards others is condescending and recklessly contrived.
Most will want to try and convince themselves still that racism does not factor much into Trumpism because of Donald Trump’s insistent proclamation that he is the least racist person. 🤔🤨
That sort of plausible deniability is meant to be digested as a moot point by the majority held in both parties. Some are afraid to admit that that sort of resentment and vindictiveness still lives on and in such glaring view from the White House.
“The language that was used, the attitude of the president, the expressions he made when it came to immigration just stunned me,” Mr. Durbin said.
Mr. Durbin, who has been in Congress for more than three decades and is no stranger to political back rooms, said the meeting was not the usual case of salty language shared among politicians gathered behind closed doors.
“It was beyond, and the intensity of the president’s feeling, and what he said there, as well as many other epithets during the course of it, I was surprised and shocked in a way,” he said, noting that upon his return to the Capitol, some colleagues commented on his demeanor.
“They said, ‘You look shaken,’ and I said I was,” he said. “After you have been in politics as long I have, it takes something to shake you up.”
“This may not be about security or American jobs at all,” Mr. Durbin said. “It may be about something else.”
Mr. Durbin stopped short, though, of branding Mr. Trump a racist.
“That’s a tough thing to say,” he said. “But I will tell you this: Some of the comments he made were clearly racial during the course of that meeting in the White House. They were hate-filled and vile.”
This absurd effort to give credence to the Trump base because he is president seems equally ignorant and belligerent with intolerant overtones. That base has to summarily be considerably smaller than the 62,979,879 Americans that voted for him in November 2016. Many people are not married to a vote they placed for a political candidate they have come to know as a charlatan.
Collectively, we are a democratically uninformed bunch of divisive and disillusioned dimwits who are taken in by sound bites coming from national media. Many Americans do not understand how this government works. While Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has amnesia over the same games he has played while President Obama was in office with a government shutdown, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer decides to that it would be only fitting to give the president what he wants…a government shutdown. Let’s see him save the government in order to reverse his low approval rating since the beginning of his presidency.
