What else is new? Convicted felon Trump insulted, verbally attacked, and demeaned yet another American city the other day (Detroit) (and by definition, all of its inhabitants) even as that city was hosting him for his latest speech filled with bizarre, rant-filled, and incoherent musings.
This is nothing new, of course. He has been doing this for years — from Baltimore to San Francisco, from Chicago to Philadelphia. Hell, it would be news if he didn’t happily blast millions of Americans on a regular basis. But it speaks to a bigger theme which I don’t think the media focuses on nearly enough….. the fact that this cognitively failing traitor despises and loathes more than half the country he seeks to “lead.”
Sure, the media has repeatedly noted the violent, racist and dehumanizing rhetoric — the repeated references to rapists, criminals, destroyed cities, etc. It has occasionally noted the antisemitic undertones and racist dog whistles – – sometimes subtle and sometimes not. And the nonstop “otherization” of various sub groups of our society, from African-Americans to Jews to to the LGBTQ community and of course, immigrants. But it hasn’t hammered home what the collective result of all this messaging is - that this raging, increasingly incoherent and corrupt buffoon thinks all of the rest of us — which comprise the majority in this country — are deplorable. We are all, in fact, MAGA’s own, overflowing basket of deplorables.
It’s still hard for me to comprehend that someone like this — who insults, and is disgusted by — more than half the country he seeks to rule is treated with anything but the contempt he richly deserves.
Hillary was lambasted far and wide back in 2016 when she referred to a chunk of Trump supporters as deplorable. Of course, over the last several years, MAGA nuts — I mean, faithful — have proven over and over again that she was very, very right. Indeed, I would contend that she grossly understated the case — if anything, deplorable doesn’t adequately capture the putrid core of MAGAland. And yet, this one-time reference by Hillary in some ways came to define a part of her campaign — a sign of her arrogance and condescension — and was widely perceived to show how she — and by extension, Democrats broadly — look down on wide swaths of self-proclaimed “real America.” (President Obama encountered the same reaction to his “cling to guns and religion” comments from a few years earlier.
Meanwhile, convicted felon, and serial sexual assaulter Trump continues this similar “deplorable” messaging, demonizing this group or that group, effectively characterizing us all as deplorables, every damn week and every damn month with no similar condemnation in the media taking place.
As for that supposed arrogance and condescension which led Hillary to accurately describe what was already abundantly clear to anyone who looked, I’ll say this. As a guy who grew up in northern New Jersey, currently lives and works just outside of DC and has done so for most of my professional life, and who has lived almost exclusively in the northeast my entire life, no doubt I have many many blind spots and don’t have a great appreciation or understanding of life in different parts of the country or how different policies which is support might impact other areas. Unquestionably that’s true. As is the case that I have now formed pretty sweeping stereotypes of MAGA people and people who support extreme, right-wing conservatives, especially if they are from the South. Again, mea culpa. I can and should do better.
But what could possibly be more arrogant and condescending than proclaiming yourself and others like you as the “real Americans”?
With the implication, of course, that others are not.
This is nonsense that Democrats have had to listen to for decades, unquestionably for quite a long time before Sarah Palin latched on to that in 2008. Or how about the arrogance of the book banners and censors and body controllers throughout the GOP who seem to know better than the rest of us what we can do with our bodies and reproductive health care, what we should read or learn in school, and who we should love? So in that context, accusations of arrogance and condescension ring completely hollow.
It reminds me of some of the orthodox rabbinical leadership in Israel, who, unless things have changed (and they may have). had declared that as a reform Jew, I wasn’t really, officially Jewish, the arrogance of that decree was gobsmacking to me.
But I digress.
We are all Trump’s deplorables. Entire cities of us, albeit all which just happen to have significant African-American populations. Funny, that. And entire demographic groups. In these waning weeks of the campaign, I’d love to see more messaging reflect this — and the damn media to finally, and repeatedly, recognize this as such. Simultaneously, though, we should all embrace this Trump tag and wear it with honor, as MAGA groupies did in 2016. Bringing all of the disparate parts of our coalition under one banner — all the childless cat ladies, and Haitian immigrants, and transgender kids, and African American women, and the white dudes for Harris, and on and on.
I’m damn proud to be deplorable.
