White Rage

You can believe your favorite blogger, "news" site, or talking head, and the pundits and analysts will also be busily at work trying to figure out how Donald Trump won the election.

Or you can get the short version from me and save yourself a lot of time:

Donald Trump won the election through White Rage.  

Read that bold-type sentence a few times, until it sinks in.

Trump didn't win on an economic platform.  He didn't win on a platform based on creating jobs or on "Making America Great Again."  He won it by stirring up the whites into a lather of rage and turning them on the rest of the country to bully non-believers into submission.

Now before you go playing a race card on me, I'm about as European as one can get.  My ancestry, as far back as I can trace it, comes from Europe.  Nothing from Asia, nothing from Central or South America, nothing from Africa or Australia, nothing Inuit (that's "Eskimo" to you Hard Righters), no Native American ("Indian" to you Righties).  100% European.  So unless somebody from centuries ago lived on Antarctica, I'm a European Whitey.

According to surveys, the average Trump supporter's median income is $72,000, or about
$20,000 above the national average, and over 80 of them are White non-Hispanic, compared to about 64% of the population as a whole.  

Now if you have a fan base of whites, and the idea is to tell them what they want to hear, a good place to start wouldn't be to step up to the podium wearing a shirt that reads; "Black Lives Matter" a cap with "Asians Do it Better" emblazoned on it, waving the Mexican flag, and beginning with: "Let us pause to honor Geronimo's birthday."   You're going to dress like a plump truck driver and tell them things that many Conservative whites want to hear, namely: get rid of immigrants, stop letting in foreign refugees, cut back on legal immigration numbers.  Since the last president was black (which is the main reason most people who hated on him did so), you're going to speak out against him whenever you can, provided it won't get you into trouble.  In other words, you're going to play the race and bigot cards as much as possible, because that's what White Conservatives want to hear.

But Trump took it a step further.  Knowing that there were only so many bigots and racists out there, he took to making them his personal messengers by firing them up with the most hateful speeches possible, while mixing in some vague economic plans, the repeal of everybody's favorite hate target: The Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), talk about creating jobs, and talk about cleaning up the corruption in Washington.  Like the good head-nodding robots that they are, the now-obsessed followers took to the streets, their places of employment, their clubs, bars, shopping centers --- and especially social media,  to spread the word.  Being worked up into near hysteria by Trump, they did not spread their message gently; instead, they proceeded to shove it down everybody else's throat incessantly.

But The Donald knew that even he couldn't be everywhere at once --- although it certainly seemed that way at times.  So he turned his campaign rallies into carnival shows, knowing that the media would cover every little detail and provide a few billion dollars worth of free advertising in the process.  This was fine with the media, which is in the business of making a profit, and no coverage of Trump means fewer viewers and readers.  It was fine with The Badyear Blimp, too, because it got his message through to the public day after day after day.  No amount of TV commercials, which viewers usually tune out of their minds anyway, could compete with the people seeing The Most Unavoidable Man on the Planet 30 times a day on the news, in the papers, on blog sites, Facebook, Twitter, etc.    Then, with his followers whipped into a frenzy, it was time for the final three weeks of the well-laid plan: tone it down a bit, with just enough rants to keep his followers happy, and emphasize the things that the more mainstream people wanted to hear: lower taxes, creating jobs, bringing jobs offshore back home, repealing Obamacare, and "cleaning out the swamp" in Washington.   Coupled with the endless rage of his fanatical supporters and a well-timed letter and withdrawal from James Comey,  it was just enough to get him crucial votes in crucial states and put him in the White House.

So barring a sensible defection of faithless voters in the Electoral College, Mr.  Trump will soon be President.  And you can thank White Rage for it.  You can also thank the return of and rise of white supremacist/nationalist groups, as these will certainly gain force under the new administration.  Because despite what Trump will tell you, you aren't one of his people if you aren't a Whitey like him, unless of course you're a female who is good in bed.

Tomorrow's column will deal with one of Trump's first confirmed appointments to his staff: Steve Bannon.